To bust or not to bust

[zinger]

Her story you mean?

 

I agree with the rest BTW.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Thanks for the background Zinger.

 

The story does sound plausible. It also sounds like your average affair. If it wasn't physical then it would have been if you didn't catch her. She specifically didn't exhibit any behaviors which would have been a deterrent. She liked the attention and sex was or would have been a way to keep that pipeline open.

 

Most affairs are not 'let me go get a penis in my vagina at 3pm!'. Most are a thrill-seeking mission where sex becomes a large part of the thrill. The thrill is attention, ego boosts, external validation, etc. Paternalistically, her affair is not very unique. VeryBrokenMan said it better in another thread

 

Make no assumptions that it would not have gone physical had more time elapsed. The OM was in it for one reason only, sex, because men almost always cheat for sex.

 

It's whyI understand where you are coming from on the physical thing, but my experience clouds that - in my experience (a PA and EA), it doesn't really matter, they're always eventually just about sex assuming they have physical access to each other.

[Friskyone4u]

Zinger,

 

The debate continues but you still have no answers. Also, not much is being said about WW other than she has reached out to family to try to influence you. So other than that her lkife goes on as normal and she is playing the perfect little wifey??????

If she seriously believes you are divorcing her has she retained an attorney or is she representing herself???? If she is doing nothing than she really does not think you are going through with anything. Neither the polygraph or the divorce filing takes an anormous time to set up.

If you read back many pages on this thread now, seems like total limbo has set in. That is not emotionally healthy for you. She is going to tedll you nothing so either you

(1) file for divorce and maybe that will shock her denough to try to do something other than stonewall you

(2) set up the darn poly already. My guess is she will refuse to take it. What will that tell you

(3) reconcile on the basis of her stonewalling you and wonder for years what you never found out and in essence she gets away with it which makes it more likely she will do it again

 

And again, no one vehemently opposed or who is denigrating the polygraph has suggested as an alternative. In other words, you just suck it up and believe her.

For every one of these "examples" or wikopedia nonsense about the polys an equal number of examples coujld easily be provided but that it a silly exercvise.

You either want to know or you do not. Your call.

That same attitude about dont do the poly is expressed a lot. There are those that would have considered hiring a PI, using a VAR and all the other things you did are invasion of her privacy.

Some thing that if you see a text that sayus "I enjoyed banging you last night" that your spouse still deserves their privacy and the betrayed should continue on like the village idiot in order to not stoop to low level of their spouse.

Your wife is NOT your friend right now. She has betrayed you in the worst possible way a woman can betray a man, and what you do about it you will have to live with, not us. But at some point you are going to have to cut off the debagte and move forward on one of tghe three ponts above. TGhere is no more information to find out. The only person who has that information refuses to talk about it. And you are doing yourself no favor by doing nothing since you are in turmoil yourself.

This is about you and what you need. I am not advocating at all on whether or not you should divorce her but treading water gets tiring if you do it for too long.

 

And lastly on the divergence of opinion. Anyone can post here and say anything they want. But if you have not been the BS in a relationship I really do not think you have any business giving advice. Its like giving advice to a football team if you have never played the game. Some of you will not like that, but like you I am also free to express my opinion.

[zinger]

To clarify : her life is far from normal. We sleep in different rooms, she had to take leave and is staying home. We don't talk much - I mean I never initiate discussion. Her family is mad at her. Few of her friends know and while they are reaching out with support I (and she BTW) have a feeling they are actually fishing for news. She is my healthy and dipressed.

1) work on progress. She is aware.

2) done. She agreed to take it.

3) not an option.

 

 

Zinger,

 

The debate continues but you still have no answers. Also, not much is being said about WW other than she has reached out to family to try to influence you. So other than that her lkife goes on as normal and she is playing the perfect little wifey??????

If she seriously believes you are divorcing her has she retained an attorney or is she representing herself???? If she is doing nothing than she really does not think you are going through with anything. Neither the polygraph or the divorce filing takes an anormous time to set up.

If you read back many pages on this thread now, seems like total limbo has set in. That is not emotionally healthy for you. She is going to tedll you nothing so either you

(1) file for divorce and maybe that will shock her denough to try to do something other than stonewall you

(2) set up the darn poly already. My guess is she will refuse to take it. What will that tell you

(3) reconcile on the basis of her stonewalling you and wonder for years what you never found out and in essence she gets away with it which makes it more likely she will do it again

 

And again, no one vehemently opposed or who is denigrating the polygraph has suggested as an alternative. In other words, you just suck it up and believe her.

For every one of these "examples" or wikopedia nonsense about the polys an equal number of examples coujld easily be provided but that it a silly exercvise.

You either want to know or you do not. Your call.

That same attitude about dont do the poly is expressed a lot. There are those that would have considered hiring a PI, using a VAR and all the other things you did are invasion of her privacy.

Some thing that if you see a text that sayus "I enjoyed banging you last night" that your spouse still deserves their privacy and the betrayed should continue on like the village idiot in order to not stoop to low level of their spouse.

Your wife is NOT your friend right now. She has betrayed you in the worst possible way a woman can betray a man, and what you do about it you will have to live with, not us. But at some point you are going to have to cut off the debagte and move forward on one of tghe three ponts above. TGhere is no more information to find out. The only person who has that information refuses to talk about it. And you are doing yourself no favor by doing nothing since you are in turmoil yourself.

This is about you and what you need. I am not advocating at all on whether or not you should divorce her but treading water gets tiring if you do it for too long.

 

And lastly on the divergence of opinion. Anyone can post here and say anything they want. But if you have not been the BS in a relationship I really do not think you have any business giving advice. Its like giving advice to a football team if you have never played the game. Some of you will not like that, but like you I am also free to express my opinion.

[Friskyone4u]

Zinger

 

Thanks. Good for you.

(1) she is aware of you filing for divorce but has not done anything to get herself representation???? If not that means she is not believing it or she will just take what you offer I guess

(2) she agreed to the poly and you have it set up. So lets cut off the debate on it. It is happening folks

As far as her friends that know. Remember, they have probably gotten a more sanitized version than even you got so do not be surprised if some of them tell her she really did not do anything wrong.

 

Understand her agreeing to take it does not mean she actually will. You know that. If you think you saw "hiccups" before, you will see a major Caspewr The Ghost when she arrives at the poly examiners, if she actually goes.

 

And remember, even if she gives you a twenty pages letter on what she did, go through with the test. It is not unusual to get bits and pieces more than you know before the test.

[Mr Mind of Shazam]

Zinger,

 

I feel really bad for you, pal. I'm sorry you are going through this.

 

I think she will say just enough to get past the current conversation. Her narrative changes as tine goes on, telling you more but much of it is self serving. And she can't really prove it.

 

I bet the details change in a week.

 

I think she is aided by your desire to remain together, rooted in denial that they enjoyed a PA.

 

Honestly, it's possible but unlikely.

 

I wouldn't take a syllable she says to the bank.

[eric1]

Her story you mean?

 

I agree with the rest BTW.

 

Thank you.

 

yah, I do think that her story really fills out because frankly it's pretty standard.

 

She admitted basically she was in the affair for the long term, there were no signs of her stopping his advances other than a half-hearted going away present lie.

 

It was going to be physical if it wasn't already and she had committed herself to him more than she is letting on, but you probably already knew this. She has the resources to clear her name further but because she's not, you're unfortunately in the position of assuming the worst. And frankly it's not your job to do that leg work, the burden of proof is on her. I also think that at this point she's lied to herself so much that she probably couldn't tell you the straight truth if she tried.

 

Just my .02

[eric1]

I understand that my emotions are all over the place and the story itself plus the way I post here do not match the canonical scenario of other stories I studied here. Unfortunately these are my emotions I'm going through daily, I'm probably months away from ability to write things scientifically.

 

So I'll pull back, and will (after responding to recent posters) try to limit my posts for only factual and major updates for those still interested.

 

Thank you.

 

For what its worth I'm following you just fine. There are large blanks in your dialogue because they're still paused at some synapse in your brain for processing. At this point of your life your body is in shock and just can't process fact/opinion/guesses/idle ideas from the torrent of emotions shooting out of this awful firehose in your brain.

[singer23]

She was drawing out cash to buy him stuff. Doesn't fit well with the rest of her story.

 

 

Can you have her list all the stuff she bought for him or spent for him ?

 

Was she out of the city anytime since she started the affair ?

 

 

The ore time you wait, the evidence you lose as time goes on.

[sandylee1]

For what its worth I'm following you just fine. There are large blanks in your dialogue because they're still paused at some synapse in your brain for processing. At this point of your life your body is in shock and just can't process fact/opinion/guesses/idle ideas from the torrent of emotions shooting out of this awful firehose in your brain.

 

I agree with Eric. I'm following you just fine, so keep posting as you need to.

 

Take care

[merrmeade]

I understand that my emotions are all over the place and the story itself plus the way I post here do not match the canonical scenario of other stories I studied here. Unfortunately these are my emotions I'm going through daily, I'm probably months away from ability to write things scientifically.

 

So I'll pull back, and will (after responding to recent posters) try to limit my posts for only factual and major updates for those still interested.

 

Thank you.

No, thank YOU, zinger, for being such a gentleman and responding so attentively to each poster. And I want to apologize for my first version of #944. I was writing it and didn't see #942, your extensive update, which addressed most of what I was writing about.

 

I was frustrated with the unsubstantiated information and did not mean to criticize you personally. You have every right to feel all those emotions. It's normal. It also is harder to edit yourself in that situation, writing in a second language, but the recent long post explained thoroughly.

Knowing my FWW personality that would be the most accurate description of key mindset possible (assuming she is not possessed by deamons). Perfectly illustrates the subsequent post by sandylee1 about standard behaviours : the accuracy of many observations here is amazing despite my lack of ability to post things in local order (I'll try once again). And please believe me on not like a medical college student who at year 3 starts to diagnose himself with all possible illnesses.

 

Add for the rest... Sister in law? I assume your brothers wife? Apologies if not my business bid this is... Bad.

Yes, my brother's wife. LONG story but true. Discovery of this affair opened my eyes and finally resulted in my husband's extended confession (trickle-truth - TT) of five affairs—mostly 'limited' PAs, if there is such a thing, which he called "flings" until I banned the word along with "flirtations."

 

I only wanted to convey to you that NO ONE can know anyone else's situation, needs, breaking line or will. I've done an extreme thing in beginning to help my husband understand what he did. I'm doing it while in IC which makes a huge difference, but it's still very hard. I do not have to explain why to anyone and do not suggest it would be right for anyone else.

 

Your situation is yet so completely different because of YOU! In my case, I was clueless even though THERE WERE OPPORTUNITIES and clues from the beginning. You were right on top of it from the beginning. Remember? That's why you came here. You're way ahead of me in this game and have absolutely no need to apologize to yourself or anyone else.

 

But precisely BECAUSE you caught it and there was no PA (even though there most definitely would have been), dialogue is possible, growth is possible, change, insight and a whole new relationship.

 

I've done many threads and posts here and dodged the issue of my husband's full accountability in all of them. Now, finally I am dealing with it, and it's worth it for ME. Divorce would not have given me this satisfaction. My 'revenge' is not punishment but bringing him to a place of truth and openness we both want and respect. I do not lose but gain every moment.

[CarrieT]

Zinger, regarding the polygraph, I think you should read this specific post by VeryBrokenMan, whose wife had an affair. His entire thread is about the process of discovering the affair and their reconciliation, but his specific testing of the polygraph on himself is somewhat telling.

[SpokenFor]

Zinger, the sooner the better for the poly, have you shared when it is scheduled? (With us here or with your wife?)

 

To other commenters, I wanted to speak up "in defense" of polygraphs. I am not in any way connected to anything about them but know folks who've taken them and was once on the periphery of an experiment on reliability.

 

A polygraph is intended to find folks who

1) Are providing deceptive answers

2) Know the answers are deceptive

3) Know that providing deceptive answers is "wrong"

 

#2 is why phrasing the questions correctly is vital... someone who figures out a loophole can correctly feel like they are able to answer without revealing the truth.

 

#3 is the biggest reason why experiments like VBM's fail -- I saw this happen in another experiment where a bunch of college kids took polygraphs and were encouraged to try to get away with deceptive answers. They didn't think there was anything wrong with providing deceptive answers and in fact were feeling good about providing them. VBM similarly felt zero guilt and thus had no problem stumping the exam.

 

I believe that Zinger can get properly posed questions and that his wife will feel guilt is she tries to deceive. Thus I would think it is the right way to go.

 

Zinger, I think you are managing things really well and hope you can get past this stress point soon... hope you are finding ways to bleed off the frustration and stress too.

[turnera]

VBM similarly felt zero guilt and thus had no problem stumping the exam.

Exactly.

 

It isn't about whether you're lying. It's about whether you feel GUILTY for lying.

[fellini]

So they are inappropriate named, and should be called guilt detectors?

 

And if they ask a question of which she knows herself to be guilty, like "did you enter into an inappropriate affair with another man" and she says Yes, but then starts to feel the guilt, how exactly does she turn OFF those emotions when the next question is "did you have intercourse with this man?". The machine can distinguish between guilty feelings for a specific questions, and guilty feelings in general can it?

 

Are you sure these machines measure whether or not you feel guilty for lying and not just lying?

 

Exactly.

 

It isn't about whether you're lying. It's about whether you feel GUILTY for lying.

[SpokenFor]

As I understand it, Yes, they pick up the very rapid physical changes that occur when someone is aware they are not telling the truth and that this is wrong. I haven't ever taken one, but I would think that rapid-fire hammering away on multiple critical questions would be a silly way to do a test like that, and so I'd assume that wouldn't be done by someone who wanted to give the best possible test.

[Friskyone4u]

Folks he is doing the polygraph . You've had your say and respect the mans decision .

 

To those of you who continue to beat on it , what is the alternative .

Take her word ?????

[No Limit]

To those of you who continue to beat on it , what is the alternative .

Take her word ?????

 

Apparently yes. At least that's the only other option, next to stopping to search for the truth and just disappearing.

[understand50]

Apparently yes. At least that's the only other option, next to stopping to search for the truth and just disappearing.

 

Zinger,

 

Good luck to both your wife and you. I hope that you both get whatever is needed from it, and you can make your decision on your life.

[BetrayedH]

Folks he is doing the polygraph . You've had your say and respect the mans decision .

 

To those of you who continue to beat on it , what is the alternative .

Take her word ?????

 

I wouldn't take the polygrapher's word, either.

 

The potential confession is the only value.

[Friskyone4u]

You wouldn't take the examiners decision . Well that is not your decision to make . It is Zingers .

And there is going to be no confession. Isn't that obvious by now .

So again I guess he just takes her word for it right ???

[CarrieT]

I'm just not sure why Zinger is going through the motions of a polygraph considering he is set on divorce and polygraphs are far from accurate.

[BetrayedH]

You wouldn't take the examiners decision . Well that is not your decision to make . It is Zingers .

And there is going to be no confession. Isn't that obvious by now .

So again I guess he just takes her word for it right ???

 

I'm quite aware that it's Zinger's decision to make. And I'm trying to influence that decision with facts and science. Polys are pseudo-science. Maybe Zinger will trust the results. Maybe he's just hoping for a parking lot confession. Those do happen, so no, it's not obvious that it won't happen.

 

Either way, I really don't need you telling me to shut up about it. I'll advise him the way I see fit. Feel free to do the same.

[eric1]

I'm just not sure why Zinger is going through the motions of a polygraph considering he is set on divorce and polygraphs are far from accurate.

 

He's said it a few times. He's divorcing as amicably as he can. He wants to know the details for 1. His own closure and 2. Because if it was physical the divorce and subsequent interaction (if any) will be completely different.

 

I think I'm a optimal world he'd like to get divorced and remain amicable. It'll just be a 'we broke up because we were different people'. Not 'I'm deleting you from my life you uncaring, narcissistic *******'

 

I personally can see the logic.

[sandylee1]

He's said it a few times. He's divorcing as amicably as he can. He wants to know the details for 1. His own closure and 2. Because if it was physical the divorce and subsequent interaction (if any) will be completely different.

 

I think I'm a optimal world he'd like to get divorced and remain amicable. It'll just be a 'we broke up because we were different people'. Not 'I'm deleting you from my life you uncaring, narcissistic *******'

 

I personally can see the logic.

 

I agree and he has said it before. It will enable him to see if there is any chance of a relationship in the future post divorce.

 

Having the truth gives you the knowledge.

 

His marriage , his call.

[fellini]

She takes the test. She passes on some questions, she fails on others, she gets indecisive on the remainder.

 

Is it your position that having answers "confirmed to be true" but might not be, "confirmed to be lies" that might be false negatives, and "inconclusives" which might be fundamental questions " is a source of personal empowerment?

 

I think it's fair to say that many people here believe that he actually setting himself up to be worse off than he is now.

 

What if she answers a question truthfully and he knows the answer to be false? Worse. What if she answers a question that the the machine says is a lie but he knows it is not!

 

What if she answers truthfully and the machine says is a lie and she swears, crying her eyes out that the machine is wrong?

 

Is he going to accuse her of fooling the machine, or should he accuse the machine of getting it wrong. How is he going to make that distinction?

 

How can anyone believe they are going to gain "knowledge is power" with so many possible errors. The only TRUTH that is KNOWLEDGE that I see is emerging from this point in the thread is that Private/commercial lie detector companies are dubious.

 

Now that is truth that is knowledge.

 

 

I agree and he has said it before. It will enable him to see if there is any chance of a relationship in the future post divorce.

 

Having the truth gives you the knowledge.

 

His marriage , his call.