SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Not to threadjack, but 5BlueDrops I've been wondering how your story has been going. It's been a bit since your last update and I know you've been struggling.

MusicalDad78,

The polygraph was supposed to happen yesterday as I understood it. Did it happen? Can you provide and update? I hope you are doing OK friend.

MusicalDad

As pointed out it’s been a couple of days since the planned poly. I can see that you have checking in.

Friend – I have a feeling that if she took the poly and passed with flying colors you would have shared. You would be telling us that we were wrong, that you have the unicorn of a fully truthful WW and that you two were headed to a better place.
I actually hope that you do post something like that. I truly hope you are getting what you wanted and I would be so happy for you if you were already on a great path towards reconciling.

Only… You haven’t been posting anything…
Friend – there is no shame in having hope or wishing for the best. There is no shame in having ignored some advice, or having chosen a different path. Like… I truly believe the advice I offered as the "best" for you, but what you do with it is totally yours. I won’t gloat about things not working out because you didn’t follow exactly what I suggested or anything like that. In fact – as staff I would probably have to reprimand myself if I did… We will protect you.
It’s OK for her to have failed, and yet you haven’t filed or packed your bags.
It’s OK to make mistakes. There are really few instances here where the BS takes the correct decision at each and every one of the million decision we need to take after d-day. In fact – the only ones I remember have been proven to be trolls.

Don’t be afraid of sharing your journey. We can offer help in possible next steps. You are safe here.

Hi everyone, thanks again for your amazing engagement and advice here.

The polygraph examination was quite an interesting experience. The person we met with was extremely experienced, with over 25 years in his craft.

He flat out told me in the pre-examination interview that in his experience, when a betraying spouse claims that the only physical thing that ever happened in the affair was just "kissing", that in about 95% of cases (his estimate), they are lying about this.

However, in my wife’s case, after going through the examination, where she was asked about any physical contact apart from the identified kissing with her paramour, with anyone going back to our wedding day, there was ‘no deception indicated’. Per the examination, she actually is part of that rare 5% cohort who didn’t go any further than kissing.

Still, the length of her affair, about 3 months, and the depths of deception involved, with hundreds of secret messages sent, and several in-person clandestine meetings, still weigh extremely heavily on my heart and soul.

I essentially feel as though I lost my wife for almost an entire quarter of this year. She basically jumped over to a different man and treated him as her actual husband during that time. The pain is very deep and it will probably always be with me.

With all of this being said, it was an extraordinary relief to me to know that, if I am to trust the results of the examination, my wife has actually been fully honest in her disclosure to me, and no deeper sexual contact was undergone.

Acquiring this information makes me feel much more confident as we go about the process of reconciling. Other than the behavioral hiccup I described from a couple of weeks ago, my wife has once again resumed compassionate, caring, supportive, and encouraging behavior towards me.

I truly hope this will be our ‘new normal’, and not simply a temporary ‘honeymoon period’ Which may fade away in time. Of course, there’s no way to know, other than to simply go forward and see how things develop.

I do feel like things have forever changed between us in some sense…however, I also see a glint of Hope, a light at the end of the tunnel: if my wife has truly learned the error of her ways, as she swears that she has, a new future is possible for us.

I have continued on in my personal counseling and trying to sort out my approach to this matter. On my wife’s side so far she’s had an extraordinarily difficult time trying to locate a counselor that has availability and experience with infidelity matters. She will continue working on this until she finds a suitable provider (I will make sure of this as well).

My wife has acknowledged her possible behavioral and character defects that may have been an underlying factor to her inability (and choice) to observe appropriate boundaries in this affair (and other social instances), and wants to seek a counselor’s input on specifically this area, as well as other aspects of her affair, and other personal issues for which she desires guidance.

I did not write back here for some days after the examination because I needed time to decompress; this has been a very emotional time and a very emotional experience for me. I’m a bit exhausted. But for the moment, I’m trying to rest and catch my breath and see how the initial stage of our reconciliation effort goes.

Thank you again to everyone who provided such excellent and thoughtful input, your expertise and guidance was key for me as I navigated this totally new and incredibly intense situation. You have all been a true godsend to me.

I hope I never have to go through anything like this again. If this ever happened again, I don’t think I could make it through a second time. It was just too painful.

I wouldn’t wish this experience on even my worst enemy’s dog, but having your advice, support, and input has helped me so much, everyone.

Again, I sincerely thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.

A surprising result indeed. I'm glad you are pleased.

A positive update. Take care of you and continue to heal. Consistency in her actions over time is what saved our M. Watch her actions more than her words.
Good luck.

I am very glad to hear that. I would like to recommend a coach for your wife. We cannot put links here, but I will describe how to find it.

In Facebook, search "Identity Life Coach". She specializes in betrayal and I think would do an amazing work with your wife.

I’m truly glad that she passed the poly.
I was thinking like the operator, that the odds of you having the truth were 1/20 at best. Something we always need to keep in mind on this site, that we are dealing with human interaction and although there might be trends and probabilities there are very few constants.

I’m also glad to see you believe in the poly. It would be dreadful if she passed, but you had doubts about its reliability.
Your emotions about this still being bad despite there not having been anything beyond the kissing… You don’t have to justify to yourself how bad this was. She had an affair – that in itself is bad enough. That they didn’t have sex doesn’t make it less of an affair, but it might help you deal with it.

I have this life-philosophy that works for me: EVERY experience you have can be used in a positive way. Even if the experience itself isn’t positive.
Like… decades ago I rear-ended a vehicle when driving an entry-ramp onto a highway because I was looking at the traffic on the highway and assumed the vehicle ahead would use the gap I saw. That was definitely not a positive experience. Since then I have a rule that I keep my eye on the vehicle ahead until I’m at the front. I turned the negative experience into a life-lesson for improved behavior.

I suggest the following:
Sit your wife down and tell her how you always envisioned eternity with her. That the emotion you had just a week or two ago that this marriage might be over was something very real and not expected. That you were truly 100% committed to divorce had she failed the poly, and even possibly if you discovered much more. That you have realized the emotion worse than losing her is sharing her – the situation she was offering you AT BEST while in her affair.
This is so important. That you both realize how close to the ledge your marriage was. This wasn’t an "adventure" like the Briges of Madison County or some "in another life we would be lovers" Hollywood scenario. This was actual get-the-defibrillator-cardiac-stop-level serious marital crisis.
Then tell her that you aren’t content with going back to where you were.
Although you are not accepting an iota of responsibility for her DECISION to have an affair then you acknowledge that there was something that she felt prevented her from telling you something was missing, or something was stirring in her. You don’t want that moving on.

Ask that while you two work on the infidelity-issues and the effects of the infidelity that you also think about how to create the marriage you both want. That you don’t stop therapy or communicating or whatever you are doing once you can tell her that her grocery runs don’t trigger you anymore, but that you make it a lifelong task to constantly be creating the best marriage ever.