Should i end a marriage over this??

Honestly i was one to think id never have to post about something like this. Like most couples i felt that i could trust my wife. I was able to talk her up to coworkers friends and any family member that i still talk to.

We have been together for 11 years and married for about 1 year and 2 months almost to the day. We have a child (biologically not mine) that we have been raising the whole time.

But it happened over this weekend. The short of it? She lied about where she went after work and wound up hanging out with a male "friend" that she introduced me to a few weeks back. They wound up "kissing" and she stated that it started off as a long hug. Then he went in for a kiss, she didnt push away until (according to her) she realized she didnt want to do this.

Apparently they had more than that of a relationship through the texts they were sending back and forth. Shes always on her phone and has 1 or 2 other girls she texts and i have always been supportive of her privacy with her phone, never had to look or even worry before.

Anyways...

She didnt "confess" to any of this at first, she showed no signs of regret into the next day about it and she deleted the txt window when i foolishly gave her phone back to her after i saw enough to question where she went sunday.

She said that she was asked to stay the night but after the "guy kissed her" she left telling him that she couldnt do this and came home.

Now i would believe that she didnt want to make that mistake but this is only coming out after i had gone and looked at her phone and i did that out of needing her phone to call someone because i left mine home.

I know trust is extremely broken, but is this something i can forgive? Am i making a big thing out of this?

She worked from 3-8 that day and it reflected in the text, she was home by 11. But i didnt see any impression she was hiding something. Our relationship has been strained because of the normal reasons too.. money, no time together because we both work, kid, be lonely at home etc. etc.

I want to move on, but i dont know if should stay in this relationship and look weak for caring on or should i just work my way out? I would like some advice, thank you very much in advance...

I think you two should go to couples' counseling. Do not worry about "looking weak" - this is your life you are talking about!! You have a marriage and a kid so I don't think that this is something you should exit lightly. I'd recommend a couples' counselor to figure out where things stand with you guys. good luck

I don't think counselling can salvage the lack of trust, cheating causes. I'd be filing for divorce.

I'm sure more happened, but even if it was just that, she already cheated and it's too late.

Depending on their household situation, the average divorce can cost $15,000-$30,000. Not to mention issues with child custody. I wouldn't be so quick to throw away a 10+ year marriage over a kiss. I'd go to therapy and try to figure things out in there - if the situation is fixable or not.

We do live together. Divorce wouldnt be that much because my wife says shes willing to just go to a shelter and hand everything we have over to me. She'd be keeping our son because hes biologically not mine and he is currently apart of a custody battle. Thats part of the reason why i question if i should get out of this because of a kiss. Am i going to risk my sons schooling etc. for this? On the other hand, should i have to stay in this relationship and just come up with some way to fight for custody if and when i leave? I dont know what to feel or what to do at this point.

The biggest thing is her hiding what happened and then only telling me she kissed him but didnt wind up at home for almost 3 hours after work. That they were hanging out. We have been fighting about this and she keeps saying she didnt sleep with him, she didnt do more than that, that she left cause she couldnt when it did happen etc. etc. Stuff i feel i would be saying if i were cheating idk, i hadnt given it a full thought until this.

He's your son as well. I know that he's not your son biologically, but I really hope you have a deep attachment to this child as I'm sure he does to you - he's grown up with you!! I don't buy the whole moving into a shelter thing on her part.

Why don't you want to go to therapy? Have you had 1 foot out the door of this marriage for a while?

Just a question - why did you wait 10 years to get married?

We didnt want marriage, it was something neither of us wanted. And yes he has grown up with me, honestly im thinking about him in all this right now and is the biggest reason for staying and dealing with this atm. My wife adamantly stands that alls that happened was she did lie about going to hang out with this guy but that, as she was leaving, he hugged and kissed her and, although she didnt stop it at first, she said that she couldnt go through with it and pushed him away, though she thought she was capable of going through with it at first. Thats what shes telling me, this is an ongoing arguement and it will be for a while, i cant help but always feel betrayed or feeling extremely anxious when she goes to work and what have you.

So since then i had taken her phone, im not sure whether its the right thing to do, but thats all i could think of at that time. The guy txtd her on the next day but only asked how she was doing. He has said nothing all day today because i didnt reply to that txt. But the fact that he txtd during/after the confrontation i had with my wife about all this because apparently, even if she turned him down, she didnt tell him to stop talking to her, he would not have txtd the few times afterwards if he knew that it was me on the other end, at least the content of what he wrote at first (how are you, hows the car (we had car issues, he knows cars, apparently things they have talked about) but nothing about having a relationship with her so i dont know what to think.

Ugh, i can just be reading into it. I just feel so stupid right now for letting this happen.

divorce her pronto. how do you know she didnt have sex with him? because she told you she didnt? what reason have you to believe her? because you trust her? going to hang out with a guy from work and arriving 3 hrs late.

Girls do not cheat the same way men do.

 

When a man cheats, his love for his wife remains unchanged. Think back to basic biology: the more women a man has sex with, the higher success he has in passing his genes on to the next generation. His love for is wife does not need to compromise to fulfill this need.

 

The biology of a woman functions differently, when a woman is pregnant, it is a 9-month investment. Therefore, women are much pickier in the dating pool. Should she make a mistake and got pregnant by an inferior male, her success in having the most valuable offspring has just been undermined.

 

For those who disagrees, a quick search on Google will present:

 

 

 

and

 

 

 

When a woman cheats, her love for her husband almost always manifest itself in a full-blown emotional withdraw. Let me ask you: has your wife been much more distant lately?

 

A woman is attracted to the highest-quality, most superior man she can find, because that will guarantee her success in having the best offspring. That is the core of our biology. Your wife is talking to this guy without consciously/maliciously doing so, her actions are driven by a force much deeper and more primal. Contraceptives, marriage, and child custody are just the variables of the modern world that has been thrown into the equation, but when things go sideways, one can always think back to basic biology to help see pass all the noise.

 

What does this mean for you?

 

This means your wife has emotionally moved on. She is more attracted to another man, no need to let your pride get hurt. We have all been there. Whether you can "get her back" depends on how large the margin of error you have. And more importantly, should you even take her back? I am a proponent of "drawing a line in the sand", there is no need to fight or argue, if she crosses the line you politely excuse yourself from the relationship and leave. And "kissing" would have been where I drew the line, where your line is, I cannot answer for you.

 

Detach yourself from your pain and scrutize objectively. I know it is easier said than done, but rationality is your best friend at the moment.

 

I have sympathy for the child. He is innocent and is affected by his mother's irresponsible decisions. But do not let that muddle your judgement, whether he grows up with you is worth you enduring a broken relationship or not? Only you can answer that question.

 

You can potentially salvage this relationship (and if you do, we can continue this conversation) but like you said, your trust has been broken. Your energy is better off spent elsewhere.

What a bunch of crap!

OP, seek couples counseling.

What a bunch of crap!

 

OP, seek couples counseling.

Some of it may be crap, but I have found quite a bit of that to be true in my personal experiences.

OP, at the end of the day, only you know if you can get past this or not. Some people could, some people couldn't...but "some people" aren't in this situation. You are.

I think with time, it will get easier, assuming she keeps her behind in line. I think counseling would be a good start of you decide to stay. I think you probably CAN get past it, if you really want to. But the desire has to be there.

It seems like you're not sure if you even WANT to get past it. I can't blame you. I really don't know which side of the fence I'd fall on. Overall, if the marriage was good and I had been generally happy, I think I might want to try and get past it. If it had been several years of just going through the motions and just became comfortable, I think I might be more apt to cut my losses.

Evaluate your life, your marriage, your friendship with your wife, your relationship with your son. Is it worth fighting for? Is it worth doing everything you can to get over this speed bump? That's completely your decision, and no one could tell you that you were wrong no matter which road you choose. Just make sure you're absolutely committed to whichever route you decide.

I'm so sorry this has happened to you. I can only imagine....

You need to fix the "no time together" ASAP. FYI, money problems are a big cause of divorce as well. Neither excuse cheating.

And i also recommend marriage counseling.

Does it really matter if the guys penis was inside her or not? Really does it? She has been flirting with this guy, formed an emotional bond with him, went to his house to "hang out" instead of coming home and knew full well what he wanted. The physical part of cheating is just that, physical. It is all the lies, betrayal and shattered trust that causes all the serious problems.

This marriage was in serious trouble before this coworker came along. Stop fighting about this because it is getting you nowhere.

Sit down with her and tell her if the marriage is to be saved you need to attend couples counseling. If after counseling you feel you need to divorce her then you can do it knowing you tried to save it.

Do not make any promises of support to her or the child.

Lost

I think that before you make any major decisions, you need to give yourself time to calm down. Right now, you are rightfully upset, but that's leading you into making an awful lot of pretty wild presumptions on how other people should be acting. In other words, you are stoking your own fires. That's a normal reaction to the situation, but you do need to recognize that you are doing it and give yourself some time to cool down to where you are able to look at things more rationally.

Obviously there are problems in your marriage and all kinds of disconnects happening. This guy is more a symptom of the underlying issues than the cause. So, either you are both willing to roll up your sleeves and do some serious work on your relationship to make it good and solid or you can stick your head in the sand and use this as reason to walk away. Just make sure that you make that choice with a cool head and really think things through first. You are married, you have a child involved - this isn't a pitch a fit, cut loose and run situation. You've got all kinds of collateral damage.

Well, only if you actually address the underlying symptoms; she did this for attention.

"money, no time together" - So if she was able to come home at 11 pm, then there is money and time to do stuff. Is that guy still in the picture? Does she know the error of her ways?

Do you have family, any friends or family you can switch days to babysit for a night out or to even catch a movie together or a coffee? Can you cook meals together? How old is the kid? How long have you two not been spending time together.

And don't mean to be intrusive, but are you both having sex regularly (with eachother) before all this?

They guy trying to bed her is a huge D-Bag for sure but lets not blame him for her choices. She knew full well what she was doing.

Some sort of couples counseling is needed and fast. This marriage can be saved if you both want to. There is tons of work to be done and some sacrifices that need to be made. This may mean a career change or job change so you can be together instead of just two people occupying the same house and same marriage certificate.

Marriage takes work and yours sounds like it has been on cruise control for far to long. It happens all the time but this could be just the thing to remake this marriage into something so much better.

Don't give up, fight for what you always wanted.

Lost

We didnt want marriage, it was something neither of us wanted.

Then why did you marry? I find that people who don't want marriage get married, they don't take it seriously because they don't believe in it. That's what she is doing apparently. She doesn't get the whole fidelity part.

BTW, don't worry about the son's schooling. She chose to jeopardize everything, not you. He has a father who can help pay for his schooling.

I would go to marriage counseling ASAP as well. I would not fault you at all for divorcing her, though.

 

Depending on their household situation, the average divorce can cost $15,000-$30,000. Not to mention issues with child custody. I wouldn't be so quick to throw away a 10+ year marriage over a kiss. I'd go to therapy and try to figure things out in there - if the situation is fixable or not.

You should always take into account cost of divorse but that should never under any circumstances a desiring factor...

OP, this does seem pretty sketchy. I wouldn't be able to get over it. It also seems like you don't have the whole story. As much as you love this child it can't be the reason you stay with her.

Best of luck to you

What a bunch of crap!

 

OP, seek couples counseling.

Nah holly is right. Crap. Just because something is true for some people, sometimes, doesnt mean you can ever assume it with another person. That is called bigotry.

Read The State of Affairs. It's a book about infidelity. If you can't read it look up the author she has a thick accent and she did a podcast with tony Robbins about relationships and infidelity the soundfile is online and it's free. listen to it. Do not throw your marriage away because of this. Do not leave right away the way some people say.

Agree with Annie and others who have suggested caution. There have been some very good posts in this thread that talk about the relationship overall and the need for counselling.

OP, maybe there is more to this than what you know. Maybe there isn't. Obviously this is tough and I'm sorry you're experiencing it. But I am always stunned by the 'just leave!' statements that people make about others' relationships. You made a commitment, which you need to try and honour for all of your sakes. Unless there is a great deal more that you're not telling us, I wouldn't think that leaving the relationship is the next step. As others said, please go to counselling with her and try and work through what's going on with you, with her and with the relationship. And please give her back her phone.

I would first like to say thank you to everyone that responded to this. I wasnt expecting a lot of people to suggest advice to me. So its about 4 days out and yes i still feel hurt, sad, terrible, but ultimately ive made the decision to stick it out mainly becuase i love her, i love our son and nothing like this has happened to us. We are planning on doing some type of marriage counseling but my wife (who has a history of mental illness, seeing psychiatrists etc.) said she wants to find someone specifically to help her again and talk to them and bring me in on sessions, which i did in the past (about the first 4 years of our relationship) before all of it ended. I have yet to see any advancement on this.

Being that we have been together for 11 years (a little over a year of that being married) i am willing to stay and work it out. Nothing like this (again to my knowledge), has happened before. We have been having long conversations about all this and (although i didnt do any wrong-doing here) i felt that we both need to work on finding more time together, and being more supportive. I had told her (im not sure if this is right or wrong of me, but my wife was in complete agreement) that she needs to be proactive in fixing this situation since the fault here lands clearly on her shoulders and that she needs to stay on top of tasks and objectives that we both set for her instead of letting depression and other stuff bring her down to a point where she has to find solace in another person (which i told her that would be the end of everything if she did).

Im not sure if this parts relevant, but in the last 2 days we have been making love and she has climaxed 7-8 times. Im not exaggerating this because i want to know if this has any meaning. We havent been intimate like that in a long time and i feel that we were able to do this because we truly want to work this out and that she was truly sorry about even thinking of putting herself in a situation where a guy took advantage (which she knows is her fault in the first place). On the other hand, i was thinking that she could be more comfortable and relaxed to orgasm because she knew that she had won by telling me alls that happend was a kiss when it was more than that and felt that i had truly been deceived into believing what she told me. I dont know if that can just be me being paranoid, but who can blame me at this point?

I never was a jealous man either of her having male friends. I truly believed my wife was capable of having male friends i mean we have had mutual male friends in the past and i was comfortable with her txting them and me. Just like she trusted me to carry on convos with girls, which i did and which stayed completely plutonic so i never got upset when i see her texting a guy (ones i knew the situations of, like a coworker of hers, or a mutual male friend we met at a party etc.). I feel that thats completely changed now, my wife has stated that she doesnt want to have any more relationship with other guys, and that shes willing to give that up because she has hurt me. But this also forces me to be proactive in trying to keep her from doing that and i feel its going to make me seem like a over jealous and controlling husband now.

Since we have been having long conversations about this, she said she did what she did because she felt super depressed about her life, which she has been in the past (shes diagnosed with PTSD and BIPOLAR Disorder) and let it get the better of her and that she let herself get caught up in "feeling better" when this guy sent texts to her that were saying things like "i cant wait to snuggle you", "i cant wait to see you" and that he said she was nice etc. etc. I told her that that is no excuse for what she did, yes ill admit i was lacking in making her "feel better", but thats all do to stress of working all the time, cleaning all the time, fixing things, taking care of my son but i would never dream that that level of comfortable txt like that is all that it would take for her to do that so i took that as maybe i should be doing more, being more "nice" i guess?

Does that excuse on her part seem really sketchy? I told her it was and she said it is and that she knows that it was ''stupid'' of her.

I stated in the past that the txts from this guy only seemed to get like that over the weekend because they had planned to meet up after work on sunday, but when i gave the phone to her, she deleted the whole convo window in the 10 seconds she had her phone back, which is what kills me the most. That and that she said she was "thinking of hanging with paige after work sunday" on friday or thurs. the week before so she had been contemplating do this for more than a day and like i said i only got a chance to read the txt they sent on saturday and sunday and nothing from her said she wanted to have sex or she couldnt wait to see him, they were all just kinda like "yea, ok, im at work, im coming over" etc.

I also started keeping a seperate ''journal'' about all this, how i feel, how she felt, what im doing and what im observing about her as we move on.

All in all im still very much in pain, but im hoping that maybe it got this bad and has opened my eyes to being a better spouse as we move forward. As i said our relationship was dull, working a lot on both sides, not seeing each other, having nasty arguments about everything (in front of the child sometimes, which kills me). I know what she did is very unexcusable and the trust here is "shattered" but im hoping we can pick up the pieces (though there will always be that doubt now). Im going by the "fool me once, shame on you" here.

If you think im being stupid and/or weak by trying to work this out, please let me know. I just feel that throwing everything ive built here away for this is too much, but it certainly is the last time ill do this in this relationship.

Please don't worry about being stupid and weak! You are not. this is serious business, you shouldn't toss away your marriage the way you would a bad 2nd date.

Is your wife on medication for bipolar disorder and is she taking the medication consistently?

With the sudden increase in love making - my guess is that she's trying to make you stay with her. I don't know her, just the first thought that jumped into my head.

I think it's good that you two will go to counseling together. I hope you are able to have better clarity on the situation and can rebuild the trust there.

Again, I agree wholeheartedly with Annie.