No other possible option for me, I guess...

Hello dear friends,

I never thought I'd be posting here the day I discovered this forum.

I finally did what many people have done here, which is to post on JFO, then post on Reconciliation, then post here.

For those who have been following my posts, I waited 4 years after D-Day, I carried this reconciliation at arm's length, I did everything I could so that I could find in my wife the desire, the love that she had felt for another man, through everything she had written and done, for months, in 2020.

She made commitments, with me and in MC, but soon forgot them and went back to her old ways. As you may have guessed, she didn't read any of the books I'd suggested, didn't browse any of the forums she knew I wrote on. I know it because spied on her web searches for months and months, hoping to find some sign that she was looking for me to get better.

Unfortunately all I found were searches for her ex-lover's facebook or linkedin profile, and then, interspersed with searches on how to lose weight, how to look younger, clothes and jewelry, I found mostly phrases like "my husband is too jealous", "my husband takes away my freedom", or "husband too controlling". Not exactly the contrition one had been looking for, eh ?

Almost everyone here, when I described her behavior on my first post, told me she wasn't really remorseful. I didn't want to believe it, not after what she'd done. However, as I read in this very place a few days ago, what mattered to her was only that I got better so that she could feel better (still selfish), not to look for the root causes of my sadness and try to fix them (by crawling over broken glass, as some people here have also said).

I'm aware that I've got some work to do on myself, as I've actively participated in the deterioration of this relationship, and it's a point on which I'm being helped by a great therapist. She helped me realize that my wife had no regard for me, and probably hasn't for a very long time. I'm responsible for this because I put her on a pedestal and I've always tried to please her, to satisfy her needs even before she formulated them.

But today, through the terribly harsh words she may still have for me, it seems to me that she never really profoundly changed. On every argument we have she ends up criticizing my virility, my courage, even putting me down to the point of telling me during our last fight that I "wouldn't find better than her elsewhere", and that "I'd just end up an old bachelor masturbating alone in my room"...

I can't quote all the examples of her sentences because there really would be too many, but I'll just finish with the one that I think hurt me the most: after another argument in February, I heard her on the phone with her brother, distinctly saying "That's enough, I'm fed up with him playing this "You cheated on me" tune like a broken record, over and over again".

(For context, her brother is a narcissistic A-hole to whom she had confessed the infidelity 3 months before I discovered it, and who not only refrained from telling me or dissuading her, but told her that she had to leave me for her new lover, even knowing that his sister and I had been together for 17 years with a home and two young children. Since then I consider him an enemy of the relationship.)

It hurts me to admit it, but I think for 20 years I've been in love with a person that only existed in my mind. I fantasized her desire and love for me, I fantasized her courage and her intelligence. That was very likely just a projection of what I was expecting from her, and I'm responsible for this. Now and since DDAY I was just projecting on her the kind of loving and remorseful partner that would move mountains to help our marriage thrive. But she's not even close to this. She's a selfish, unloving, unintelligent 45+ woman, who were never single even for a week since puberty (well, she recently even had two guys at once as you know...) and never had to put up the slightest effort with men. I thought she was MY princess, but she's anybody's princess. She's just like an old, broke aristocrat : used to wealth, but actually pennyless, courageless, delusionnal and waiting for the next guy that will fill her gaping narcissic flaws. Sorry for that rant, I feel really bitter and I'm trying hard not to.

Today I'm heading for divorce. I had made a commitment to myself in 2023 to let her until November 14, 2024 (which would have been the anniversary of our first date) to give me what I wanted from her, but I know that's not going to happen. And to tell you the truth, I don't want it to happen anymore, at least not with her.

I've written her a long break-up letter, because I've got too much on my mind and I know that if I start by talking about it, not only will we fight, but I'll forget most of what I'd like to say to her before we part.

I've already contacted a lawyer and a notary to find out what's going to happen, and in my head I've already got one foot out the door, even though I'm very apprehensive about what's going to happen next, especially for my daughters.

To make matters worse, my parents, who used to live 2h30 away from us, have suddenly decided to sell to be closer to us...

Thanks for reading

20 comments posted: Wednesday, October 9th, 2024

Advice needed on an coworker who may be cheating... possibly a lot

Hi,

Lately, an acquaintance (coworker mostly) had a problem with his android phone. Knowing I'm a kind of a tech repair guru (been helping a lot of coworkers), he came to me to help him recover his data, since he had no access to his files anymore. So he left me his phone for a few hours and I used forensic tools to get the data back from the phone. The crash also seemed to have made the micro sd card he left inside unreadable, so I then tried to fix it too.

As you may have guessed already, after the recovery, a folder popped up, with almost twenty subfolders that had girls names. I know I shouldn't have looked at those folders, but given my history with A, and as his current girlfriend is a very good friend of mine (let's call her Judy), I couldn't help but investigate.

So, inside these folders, as I expected, there were nude pictures and videos selfies of the girls, masturbating. Very graphic. He also was on some photos (but only a few). What's bothering me isn't the pictures themselves (heck, is suppose he can keep nudes as long as he doesn't post them online, if that's his thing) but the timestamps of the files & folders were concerning. According to them, many of the girls pictures & videos present in these folders where taken during his relationship with Judy (5+ years), so there's a very high probability he's been cheating on her a lot, and even to this day.

So I have two questions : 1/ Some girls have sent nudes of them only, but for like 4 years in a row (again, timestamps). Would a girl continue to send nude pictures of herself to an ex-lover if they weren't still hooking up ?

2/ How can I tell her ? DO I tell her ? What if these are old photos and the EXIF timestamps are wrong ? Should I risk ruining our friendship just because I feel he's cheating ?

Thanks

2 comments posted: Wednesday, April 17th, 2024

I thought we reconciled, and boy was I wrong

Hi all,

I've been browsing the forum for a few years now and this is the first post where I'm going to talk a bit about myself.

I am not a native English speaker, so please excuse me in advance for the way I express things.

I am 48 years old, my wife is 47, we have been together for almost 20 years.

I discovered the A by chance, almost 3 years ago. My wife had met a 50 year old man who was in the process of divorce, in the train at a time when she was looking for a sympathetic ear (the usual story : our couple was not going well anymore, we were not talking, etc.). You know the rest, the sympathetic ear — who also happened to have a penis — became a friend, and their friendship turned into an emotional and then physical relationship, which lasted six months, right under my nose. 20+ sexual relations, of course usually unprotected, in the forest, in the fields, in cars... I had access to 6 months of SMS exchanges, and so I have the extremely precise account of all their sexual and amorous antics...

After a month of pick-me-dance, I did the hard 180 and kicked her out. She was visibly shaken and began to understand the consequences of what she had done.

We both went to therapy, together and separately, my wife went to great lengths to understand where her problems came from that made her such a lousy partner, and such a sickening act possible.

Today we are reconciled and happily married, and overall we have a great time together. But not a day goes by when I don't think about what she did. I know I need to move on, but I can't help but notice the kind of woman she was when she was with him (through everything I've read) and who she is with me. Even if she tells me the opposite, I absolutely do not find the same intensity as in what I read, not the same thrill, not the same desire... He got the naughty, horny, always available girlfriend, and when it ended, I got the tired mother, the pre-menopausal wife that sometimes has sex with me but almost never gets kinky, naughty, or sexually excited (even though, and that puzzles me even more, she loves having sex with me — she even told me repeatedly that sex with me was and had always been way better — it wasn't for the sex that she cheated on me)

To give a precise example of what I'm feeling right now : during all these years, I always got a very vanilla, almost puritanical speech about sex: "we are not going to spend the day in bed making love, we are not teenagers", "sex accessories? what for, we don't need them", "sex in the shower? meh, if you want, if it's your thing...", "Again? but we already made love 3-4 days ago", etc. She's not really different now, she just initiates sex a little more I'd say.

However... I still find very hard to hear the words above, after having read things like "I could spend all day with you in bed", "We'll have a picnic, I'll be your dessert", "I want you so much", "I'll rip off your bathing suit" etc etc.

I am willing to accept, as my therapist tells me, that she was another person at the time of the adultery. That she had that Madonna-whore complex girls have when in an A. I can accept that an extramarital relationship can be more exciting, especially because it is new and secret, and because you never know when you can meet the AP again (as you don't know that, my therapist explained that you're in a kind of "always available" mode, sexually and emotionnaly).

As a couple, things are indeed better. Even sexually, I would say that it is better than before (which is not difficult, considering we had sex every 4-6 months). Yet I can't help but compare, I can't help but get that feeling that her AP has sexually freed her in many ways, but that now she's just back with her "good ole hubby" and I can't help but suffer from it. Every rejection, every failed attempt from me to get back to the level of intimacy and excitation she had with the AP triggers me so much I can get in a rage that takes some time to cool down...

Does it ever stop? Am I exaggerating, am I an eternal dissatisfied person? Am I the only one who feels this way?

Thank you for having read this far.

J.

120 comments posted: Wednesday, May 17th, 2023