Hello everyone,
I have been lurking here for the past couple of months, back when I first suspected my wife of having an emotional affair. Now that it has been a little bit since D-Day (mid-December), I thought that it might be cathartic to tell my story here and get some other people's viewpoints.
It started out innocuously enough - my wife told me that she had started talking to an old "friend" from another state that she had been involved with sexually before we met (when we first started dating, she cancelled a trip to see him in the interest of our then-new relationship). She mentioned that he was having problems with his wife, and she told me that it made her realize how much she appreciated me. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it planted the smallest seed of suspicion in my brain. Two weeks later, she mentioned talking to him again, asking me about something technology-related on his behalf. Again, innocent enough, but it made that little seed grow in my mind. So, I made the fateful decision to Google "how to tell if wife is having an affair", and I found this wonderful site occupied by like-minded people. I saw several suggestions to install a keylogger on her PC, so I spent a few hours at work testing a few free ones, until I settled on one that was ste althy enough for my tastes.
Ironically enough, the night that I decided to install it was D-Day. She was out shopping for Christmas gifts and I was at home. I popped open her laptop to begin the installation process, and Facebook had been left open. Then I saw the chat window open....yup, tons of sexual messages and "I love you's" back and forth. I quickly copied the chat log for safekeeping, and immediately called her on the phone to tell her what I found and to tell her to come home so that we could talk about it.
When she got home, we had a four-hour conversation about the extent of the affair, where I tried to find out the reasoning behind it. She tried the standard "I didn't feel loved" type of excuses at first, as well as denying the true extent of the affair (saying she didn't send him naked pictures, etc.) but the evidence I had was too damning, and that didn't last long. In the end, she accepted responsibility for the affair without blaming me (although she did mention some things that she thought I needed to work on) and showed some remorse. I demanded two things: 1. That she do a NC with the OM, and 2. that she agree to go to MC with me. She agreed to both of these things, and she did the NC the next day via phone call and Facebook message (and then unfriended him). We also had some serious conversations over the next couple of days about my feelings, triggers, etc.
Since then, there have been some good days and some bad days. She has been sympathetic about my triggers (mainly her phone at this point) as well as remorseful about the situation in general. We have had one MC session so far, which I thought was very beneficial, but she wasn't so sure. The extra complication is that OM is a therapist, so being in a therapist's office reminds her of him. I can understand this logic, so I'm not really sure what to say in response to that - at least for the short term, it looks like I'll be doing IC.
There has also been a situation where the OM attempted to contact her via email, which she told me about. I immediately told her to reply and say that she didn't want any further contact with him, but she (originally) wanted to ignore the message completely. We argued about it for a while, and the next morning she showed me that she had sent a reply asking him not to contact her any more, so that made me feel at ease a bit.
Anyways, that's the abridged version of my sad little tale, so if you hung in until the end, thank you. I'd be happy to provide more details or answer any questions if you have them - talking/typing about the ordeal makes me feel better about the whole thing.
I have been lurking here for the past couple of months, back when I first suspected my wife of having an emotional affair. Now that it has been a little bit since D-Day (mid-December), I thought that it might be cathartic to tell my story here and get some other people's viewpoints.
It started out innocuously enough - my wife told me that she had started talking to an old "friend" from another state that she had been involved with sexually before we met (when we first started dating, she cancelled a trip to see him in the interest of our then-new relationship). She mentioned that he was having problems with his wife, and she told me that it made her realize how much she appreciated me. I thought nothing of it at the time, but it planted the smallest seed of suspicion in my brain. Two weeks later, she mentioned talking to him again, asking me about something technology-related on his behalf. Again, innocent enough, but it made that little seed grow in my mind. So, I made the fateful decision to Google "how to tell if wife is having an affair", and I found this wonderful site occupied by like-minded people. I saw several suggestions to install a keylogger on her PC, so I spent a few hours at work testing a few free ones, until I settled on one that was ste althy enough for my tastes.
Ironically enough, the night that I decided to install it was D-Day. She was out shopping for Christmas gifts and I was at home. I popped open her laptop to begin the installation process, and Facebook had been left open. Then I saw the chat window open....yup, tons of sexual messages and "I love you's" back and forth. I quickly copied the chat log for safekeeping, and immediately called her on the phone to tell her what I found and to tell her to come home so that we could talk about it.
When she got home, we had a four-hour conversation about the extent of the affair, where I tried to find out the reasoning behind it. She tried the standard "I didn't feel loved" type of excuses at first, as well as denying the true extent of the affair (saying she didn't send him naked pictures, etc.) but the evidence I had was too damning, and that didn't last long. In the end, she accepted responsibility for the affair without blaming me (although she did mention some things that she thought I needed to work on) and showed some remorse. I demanded two things: 1. That she do a NC with the OM, and 2. that she agree to go to MC with me. She agreed to both of these things, and she did the NC the next day via phone call and Facebook message (and then unfriended him). We also had some serious conversations over the next couple of days about my feelings, triggers, etc.
Since then, there have been some good days and some bad days. She has been sympathetic about my triggers (mainly her phone at this point) as well as remorseful about the situation in general. We have had one MC session so far, which I thought was very beneficial, but she wasn't so sure. The extra complication is that OM is a therapist, so being in a therapist's office reminds her of him. I can understand this logic, so I'm not really sure what to say in response to that - at least for the short term, it looks like I'll be doing IC.
There has also been a situation where the OM attempted to contact her via email, which she told me about. I immediately told her to reply and say that she didn't want any further contact with him, but she (originally) wanted to ignore the message completely. We argued about it for a while, and the next morning she showed me that she had sent a reply asking him not to contact her any more, so that made me feel at ease a bit.
Anyways, that's the abridged version of my sad little tale, so if you hung in until the end, thank you. I'd be happy to provide more details or answer any questions if you have them - talking/typing about the ordeal makes me feel better about the whole thing.
Put the internet to work for you.
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