Tackleberry
New member
Hi all,
I just posted a short intro in the introduction section, and I thought I'd share my story to this point. I've found a LOT of great resources and reads here. Even though a lot of these posts are 9+ years old, they are still very relevant and helpful; thanks to all who've contributed! As I'm reviewing this, it's a bit of a long story, so if you do read through all of this, then I want to thank you in advance for your patience and time!
My wife and I have been happily married for 15 years, and together for 20. She is an amazing person, definitely my unicorn in the sense that she is VERY practical, and is not into drama at all. From my perspective (and as i recently found out, from her's as well) the early years with children our sex life REALLY suffered, and that strained the relationship, but we both powered through it.
2-3 years after our second child, my wife lost weight and became a gym rat. This lifestyle change also sparked our intimacy, and the relationship became awesome again, almost NRE-style! We settled down a bit from NRE, but it's been great, which has been steady for the past 5-6 years.
My wife dropped and broke the screen of her phone 1-1/2 months ago and I gave her the option of either replacing the screen on a phone that was a few years old, or spring for a new phone. She chose the new phone and I helped her get everything transferred. The old one still worked with the broken screen, so that was simply put away and to be dealt with at a later date.
We homeschool our kids, and so she's with them JUST about all the time, so I've never had issues with her going out on weekends. She likes to see local bands, so she would typically get together with some of her friends and joy some good music. Well, one local venue I know of closes at 12:30am, and I was up just puttering around the house (I tend to be a night owl), and it was after 1:30 and she's still not home. I'm a bit concerned, but shrugged it off, because I trust her, and as I mentioned, our relationship has been great. Also, we had gone on a great family vacation in August with a nice side trip with just me and her, etc. etc.
The fact that she didn't come home until after 2am when the bar closes at 12:30am is nagging me even more, and so I go and turn on her old phone, and notice that Facebook is still connected via WiFi even though the phone itself shows "No Service". That is where I see her messenging someone and replying I Love You, and recounting some intimate acts, dropping "lover" back and forth, etc.
Needless to say, I'm a whirlwind of emotions. I wait until we are by ourselves and confront her with it using a screenshot of one of these conversation snippets (snapped a picture of the screen with my phone before it was deleted). To her credit, she did not try to deny or come up with some lame excuse; she owned up to it. During this discovery conversation, she mentioned open relationships, that she knows several people who do it, but felt that was NOT the time to discuss that IMO, there are more pressing matters to address, namely her CHEATING on me!
From there, it was multiple days of anger, resentment, jealousy, sadness, you name it. I constantly went back to the line of "if our relationship is going so well, then why the f@#k did you do this??" We go through talking back and forth, with me asking most of the questions. To her credit, she was giving me honest answers, but I wasn't so sure at that point, because she just lied to me for not only hiding a romantic relationship for 1-1/2 years from me, but also admitting that she's had one-night-stands with seven others before this guy! Because of this, and the fact that she responded (I'm guessing a knee-jerk response) I don't know as to whether or not there were any possibility of STD's, I ask her to get tested, and I got tested as well. Both received clean bills of health, so that is out of the way. Also, I decided that I wanted to go to couples therapy, to try and work things out, especially the WHY, and get things sorted out.
Now, I felt bad doing it, but I kept looking at that Facebook messenger account. For some reason, they continued to use it to communicate. Fortunately, this was the straw of sanity in all this for me, because the things she told me and talked to this guy about, was corroborated through this messenger link. One major detail that I felt I needed to hear was the WHY. My monogamous upbringing (both of our parents are still together, both parents hovering around 50 years of marriage) drilled into my brain that if you cheat, there must be something wrong with the relationship; unhappy, distant, arguing all the time, or some combination thereof. BUT, our marriage didn't have any of that, especially for the past 5-6 years. Furthermore, she said straight out, that she loved me, our relationship was great, nothing was missing, the sex was amazing, etc. So again and again, I asked: WHY???
Through all of this, we have been mostly communicating all our private conversations through texting and email. With her being an early bird to get to the gym and back before I need to get to work coupled with two night owl kids, we didn't get hardly any alone time to discuss this face-to-face. We talk and talk and talk. It seems more and more obvious to me that she does love and care deeply for me, and our family. Neither of us want to break the family apart.
Furthermore, I start asking hypotheticals on my concerns and fears. Chief among those is my fear of her finding someone that she would choose and leave me behind. I then said that I'm scared of losing her. Her response? "You couldn't get rid of me if you tried". I think THAT was the true turning point of all this; when I felt that maybe this can work out. She did go on to say that if I can't be happy with a non-monogamous marriage, "then we won't do it". *ding* Love & trust meter goes up one notch!
So as the information flows and my anger is sliding down, my curiosity is increasing, so I start asking general probing questions. For example, the one night stands were described from her as crazy-intense feelings for these guys (aka crush), and after the one-nighter, the crush was gone, she felt terrible, and then moved on. And again, and again, etc.
So, with my curiosity piqued despite the subject matter, I ask more about how long she's had these types of crushes. It turns out, she's had them for quite some time, even before we were married. OK. Then what changed? What was the straw that broke the camel's back and had you give in to these crushes? She couldn't tell me what that straw was. BUT she did give me another insight that was very helpful.
One of her friends she goes out with on the weekends (let's call her J) is in a poly relationship (not sure of the details, but I know that she practices). So J knows about her crushes, and I believe the first couple of one-night stands. She shows the Mrs. a TED talk titled "Are We Sexual Omnivores?" by Christopher Ryan. J confronted her husband about polyamory, and they ended up getting divorced because he was not interested in it. J's friend was in a similar situation, J helped her, and her friend was also divorced. THEREFORE, the Mrs. was then freaked out that the same will happen to us, and she was also scared of losing me & our family. HERE is at least ONE explanation as to the WHY she never told me.
So, shortly after this, my trust and love is swelling, as is other things, so I finally told her that I love her, I miss her and I want to have sex. She was at the gym in the morning, and I hadn't seen her move that fast in a while! The sex was great, and it felt like a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. After reiterating my fears (namely I am scared $h!tless of losing her), and her reinforcing her love and commitment to me and our family, I start to see her relationship with the cheatee as it is: a loving relationship with someone else.
After some soul searching and reassurances of the Mrs. feelings, my mind warms up to the idea of transitioning this cheating relationship into a non-monogamous poly relationship. I asked the Mrs. to setup a group chat, and the three of us discussed things in a civil manner, and I willingly gave my consent to move forward with this poly relationship with some ground rules/boundaries. It all went well, but at this point, there has not been any physical contact yet between the Mrs. and the other guy.
I just posted a short intro in the introduction section, and I thought I'd share my story to this point. I've found a LOT of great resources and reads here. Even though a lot of these posts are 9+ years old, they are still very relevant and helpful; thanks to all who've contributed! As I'm reviewing this, it's a bit of a long story, so if you do read through all of this, then I want to thank you in advance for your patience and time!
My wife and I have been happily married for 15 years, and together for 20. She is an amazing person, definitely my unicorn in the sense that she is VERY practical, and is not into drama at all. From my perspective (and as i recently found out, from her's as well) the early years with children our sex life REALLY suffered, and that strained the relationship, but we both powered through it.
2-3 years after our second child, my wife lost weight and became a gym rat. This lifestyle change also sparked our intimacy, and the relationship became awesome again, almost NRE-style! We settled down a bit from NRE, but it's been great, which has been steady for the past 5-6 years.
My wife dropped and broke the screen of her phone 1-1/2 months ago and I gave her the option of either replacing the screen on a phone that was a few years old, or spring for a new phone. She chose the new phone and I helped her get everything transferred. The old one still worked with the broken screen, so that was simply put away and to be dealt with at a later date.
We homeschool our kids, and so she's with them JUST about all the time, so I've never had issues with her going out on weekends. She likes to see local bands, so she would typically get together with some of her friends and joy some good music. Well, one local venue I know of closes at 12:30am, and I was up just puttering around the house (I tend to be a night owl), and it was after 1:30 and she's still not home. I'm a bit concerned, but shrugged it off, because I trust her, and as I mentioned, our relationship has been great. Also, we had gone on a great family vacation in August with a nice side trip with just me and her, etc. etc.
The fact that she didn't come home until after 2am when the bar closes at 12:30am is nagging me even more, and so I go and turn on her old phone, and notice that Facebook is still connected via WiFi even though the phone itself shows "No Service". That is where I see her messenging someone and replying I Love You, and recounting some intimate acts, dropping "lover" back and forth, etc.
Needless to say, I'm a whirlwind of emotions. I wait until we are by ourselves and confront her with it using a screenshot of one of these conversation snippets (snapped a picture of the screen with my phone before it was deleted). To her credit, she did not try to deny or come up with some lame excuse; she owned up to it. During this discovery conversation, she mentioned open relationships, that she knows several people who do it, but felt that was NOT the time to discuss that IMO, there are more pressing matters to address, namely her CHEATING on me!
From there, it was multiple days of anger, resentment, jealousy, sadness, you name it. I constantly went back to the line of "if our relationship is going so well, then why the f@#k did you do this??" We go through talking back and forth, with me asking most of the questions. To her credit, she was giving me honest answers, but I wasn't so sure at that point, because she just lied to me for not only hiding a romantic relationship for 1-1/2 years from me, but also admitting that she's had one-night-stands with seven others before this guy! Because of this, and the fact that she responded (I'm guessing a knee-jerk response) I don't know as to whether or not there were any possibility of STD's, I ask her to get tested, and I got tested as well. Both received clean bills of health, so that is out of the way. Also, I decided that I wanted to go to couples therapy, to try and work things out, especially the WHY, and get things sorted out.
Now, I felt bad doing it, but I kept looking at that Facebook messenger account. For some reason, they continued to use it to communicate. Fortunately, this was the straw of sanity in all this for me, because the things she told me and talked to this guy about, was corroborated through this messenger link. One major detail that I felt I needed to hear was the WHY. My monogamous upbringing (both of our parents are still together, both parents hovering around 50 years of marriage) drilled into my brain that if you cheat, there must be something wrong with the relationship; unhappy, distant, arguing all the time, or some combination thereof. BUT, our marriage didn't have any of that, especially for the past 5-6 years. Furthermore, she said straight out, that she loved me, our relationship was great, nothing was missing, the sex was amazing, etc. So again and again, I asked: WHY???
Through all of this, we have been mostly communicating all our private conversations through texting and email. With her being an early bird to get to the gym and back before I need to get to work coupled with two night owl kids, we didn't get hardly any alone time to discuss this face-to-face. We talk and talk and talk. It seems more and more obvious to me that she does love and care deeply for me, and our family. Neither of us want to break the family apart.
Furthermore, I start asking hypotheticals on my concerns and fears. Chief among those is my fear of her finding someone that she would choose and leave me behind. I then said that I'm scared of losing her. Her response? "You couldn't get rid of me if you tried". I think THAT was the true turning point of all this; when I felt that maybe this can work out. She did go on to say that if I can't be happy with a non-monogamous marriage, "then we won't do it". *ding* Love & trust meter goes up one notch!
So as the information flows and my anger is sliding down, my curiosity is increasing, so I start asking general probing questions. For example, the one night stands were described from her as crazy-intense feelings for these guys (aka crush), and after the one-nighter, the crush was gone, she felt terrible, and then moved on. And again, and again, etc.
So, with my curiosity piqued despite the subject matter, I ask more about how long she's had these types of crushes. It turns out, she's had them for quite some time, even before we were married. OK. Then what changed? What was the straw that broke the camel's back and had you give in to these crushes? She couldn't tell me what that straw was. BUT she did give me another insight that was very helpful.
One of her friends she goes out with on the weekends (let's call her J) is in a poly relationship (not sure of the details, but I know that she practices). So J knows about her crushes, and I believe the first couple of one-night stands. She shows the Mrs. a TED talk titled "Are We Sexual Omnivores?" by Christopher Ryan. J confronted her husband about polyamory, and they ended up getting divorced because he was not interested in it. J's friend was in a similar situation, J helped her, and her friend was also divorced. THEREFORE, the Mrs. was then freaked out that the same will happen to us, and she was also scared of losing me & our family. HERE is at least ONE explanation as to the WHY she never told me.
So, shortly after this, my trust and love is swelling, as is other things, so I finally told her that I love her, I miss her and I want to have sex. She was at the gym in the morning, and I hadn't seen her move that fast in a while! The sex was great, and it felt like a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. After reiterating my fears (namely I am scared $h!tless of losing her), and her reinforcing her love and commitment to me and our family, I start to see her relationship with the cheatee as it is: a loving relationship with someone else.
After some soul searching and reassurances of the Mrs. feelings, my mind warms up to the idea of transitioning this cheating relationship into a non-monogamous poly relationship. I asked the Mrs. to setup a group chat, and the three of us discussed things in a civil manner, and I willingly gave my consent to move forward with this poly relationship with some ground rules/boundaries. It all went well, but at this point, there has not been any physical contact yet between the Mrs. and the other guy.