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I am so incredibly sorry. I have been through something similar. I gave up on the idea of reconciliation, but still find myself unable to initiate a divorce. For now, I'm allowing myself some time to regain a bit of stability.

Please ignore any comment that puts blame on you. Nobody knows what they would do in this situation until they've lived it. I certainly have done plenty of things that I never would have imagined I would do. Also please don't feel stupid for having trusted her in your marriage; I think that, where a person has been very good at deception and not given you an actual reason to suspect them, being trusting is a sign of a person functioning well in a relationship.

If you want certainty about your children's biological paternity, it is good that you have arranged testing. It is one of those things that once you know, you can't unknow. However if I were in your position, I would want to know too. Do consult a lawyer about the implications of the results.

Whatever her words, her behaviour is telling you lots. I do know how hard it is, believe me, but you have everything that you need inside you to build a much better life than this, and a much better situation for you and for your children.

So sorry to read this latest revelation. I don't have much to add but to tell you that you are not screaming into the void. We are here, man, and we hear you.

Gemmy

See my tagline?
I truly believe it and I think it applies to you and your situation.
In saying that, I’m not allocating any blame on you.
But… if you decide to remain in an unchanged situation you shouldn’t be surprised if you remain in an unchanged situation.

Your options might not be great, might not be the ones you wished for, but they might be the options open for you. Here is how I evaluate your situation:

Is your marriage salvageable? Well… I don’t know, not more than anyone else. I guess it boils down to some key issues that you might have to ask yourself:

First and foremost: Do you WANT to remain married to her? Many of us might question why, but the simple fact you have been battling these windmills for over a year suggests you had some hope of reconciliation. If you no longer have any wish to reconcile (and despite your anger in your post you are ambiguous on this being the final straw – as in "I believe this was the proverbial straw to be honest" rather than a more direct "this was the final straw") then start the process of getting out.

If there is any "yes" to that question then I would guess there are some other requirements you have. Just remember - we might want something, but that doesn’t mean we get it.

Can you get the message across that the truth is needed, why that’s important and what will happen if it’s not offered? Seems like she hasn’t understood that message to-date so it clearly isn’t getting over to her.
Is it clear she understands the message? Like does she confirm that she understands that she has some short period to be totally accountable and acknowledges the cost of a) not understanding that message and b) not being accountable?
Is there any way for you to confirm or support whatever she might say? Is there any situation where you can tell yourself that you have the truth? I doubt you are willing to take her word at face value so can you corroborate her story with phone-records, financial statements, friend-statements, a poly… Is that something you are willing to do or want to do?
Keep in mind we have a lot of stories here on SI where a WS passed a poly, and then the BS has retrospective doubts about it’s reliability. If you were to use a poly/hypnosis or whatever method to get "truth" you need to be willing to believe the result.

I don’t think you have any option of picking and choosing these requirements, I think that no matter how much you might WANT to save this marriage you need to have a sense of knowing the truth. I honestly think her inability to understand the immense gift you gave her of time to be truthful has irrevocably damaged your ability to believe her. All this might mean that you have to evaluate your options, what you need, what is open for you, and then select what might seem like the "least bad" option. Even if that might be separation or divorce despite some deep wish to reconcile.

Gemmy – the worst outcome of where you are today would not be that you are in the process of divorce a year from now. Nor would it be that you two are battling the process of real reconciliation work.
The absolute worst outcome IMHO would be that a year from now you are STILL where you are now, maritally, personally and emotionally.

Remember – you have power. You have options. You can make things happen.

I don’t think she is a psychopath. I do think she is a sociopath. A sociopath is one who fully understands right from wrong but who is indifferent when they do wrong. These people cannot be cured. This is their personality. I can see no reason to knowingly remain in a partnership with a sociopath. You love the false face, not the real person. If this is the last straw, act.

Let me preface this first, I am not trained to diagnose anyone. However, I do read, and I studied a great deal of this in college and have worked with people who suffer from PDs for my entire job.

You need to become well acquainted with what the different personality disorders are. In the diagnostic manual that psychiatrist and psychologist use there is an area about personalities and their disorders. In Cluster B you need to become well acquainted with what are personality disorders. These are the ones where you have to accept the fact that the person you are involved with, in whatever capacity, does not have a healthy personality. They can be borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, sociopathic/psychopathic. In my job and oddly in my personal life, I have found that some of these bleed into each other. It’s my understanding that Europe just has everybody grouped under that PD heading. I’ll give you a short history of two people that I know have had it one was suffering from borderline personality disorder. These are the people that become barnacles in your life. They glom onto you and do not let go. Every time you make a move away from them, they go into total panic because their fear of an abandonment is what controls their lives. I finally had to disengage with a friend because she had gotten so possessive of me that I had difficulty just spending a day away from her. On the other side, I had one who was so passive that she did nothing on time. She was the most undependable person I have ever been around and I include looking after her own health. I became her full-time mother basically. Those two women wore out my friendships. Nothing ever changed even one iota, in how they processed life. In my job, I had to deal with people who were such raging adults that getting away from them and exhaling was a job. So in order to get you to look outside of what you know and look at what you don’t know might help you. One thing too is that they don’t change. You were born with a certain amount of genes and those are going to be with you from conception until death. The childhood you have will basically tell you what you will be like as an adult. There is a psychologist who says there is a difference between a psychopath and a sociopath. Sociopath is made by their childhood and a psychopath is born that way. I have no idea what’s going on with your wife, but the fact that she could sit there and completely disregard the agony you were in tells me that she is dealing with something unhealthy. I don’t have the right word to describe what it’s like to deal with someone who can see you in agony and feel nothing but people who lack empathy are dangerous.

This is the last thing, you cannot fix her and you cannot change her. Take that in. You cannot change her. If she has a personality disorder, and especially if it’s sociopathic, she has learned from very early childhood to put a mask on, and she could play up being normal when she is not at all, because behind that mask is a person who does not care. I don’t know and I’m never going to know how to diagnose someone because I have not had the formal training for it, but I was smart enough to know when I got pulled into it even though it took me a while.

My suggestion is for you to do a lot of research to see if she even resembles anyone on this cluster B because she might not. Your description of her makes it sound like she is but we are only getting who she is through your lens. They are damnable diagnoses because they cannot be fixed, they cannot be changed, I am reading where they’re doing some things in the brain that might or might not help but I promise you the ones I’ve dealt with nothing ever changed.

You can use the Internet for an overview, but you do need to do some deep diving to try to sort out just exactly who and what you’re dealing with. I want you to take yourself out of trying to manage someone who’s unmanageable. It sounds like it’s going to take a terrible toll on your health, mentally and physically, if you don’t get something squared away internally.

[This message edited by Cooley2here at 2:53 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

I'm sorry for what you are going through. This is beyond brutal.

One thing that stands out in your writing is intuition. Among the definitions, intuition is a subconscious knowledge based on patterns and past experience. It is thought to be more or less accurate for certain people and certain situations. Given that, I would say:

1. Your intuition was nagging at you that you did not have the entire truth.
2. Your intuition was spot on in this situation.
3. Your intuition is continuing to tell you that she's still not telling the entire truth.

Now personally, I'd rather make decisions based on conscious knowledge; but this is strong evidence. Your WW's answer to why indicates that she continues to lie because it's in her best interest. If she had changed, I think it's likely that your intuition would have noticed the shift. You seem well attuned to people and their actions and feelings. Is there a reason to expect any change with a new timeline or a polygraph? I just don't see it. She continues to have the same attitude and thought processes.

I'm really sorry your W doesn't understand what she's done and how to heal. As mentioned above, often it's behavior after d-day that kills an M, not the A in itself.

*****

Like Bigger, I believe you have options, and I believe you can be happy again. I also believe your approach to being betrayed will enable you to be happy again. As awful as you feel now, I believe you are on a healing path.

For now, I'm allowing myself some time to regain a bit of stability.

When you aren't sure what you want, this is an excellent tactic. You've shown a lot of strength in the past year, Gemmy. Have some faith in yourself to make good decisions.

Also like Bigger, I believe R is still an option if you want it and if your W can bring herself to come clean with herself and with you. I think most of us would end this type of M, but you know your sitch better than anyone here does.

Your W seems pretty broken, and I can't help thinking her healing will be very rough on both of you, so R is likely to be especially difficult. My reco is not to sign up for R unless you're ready for that - and if you think you're ready, make sure it's not co-dependence that's telling you so.

No matter what, however, remember: your W failed; you didn't. Her failure says nothing about you, except that you've handled yourself well under very difficult circumstances.

SI is here to support you, whichever option you choose. And the option I think I would choose in these circumstances is pretty much entirely irrelevant to you.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 4:50 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

TT is terrible.And it does take you back to below zero - because now you have reversed the tenuous threads of trust that you had been building.

What to do next? Tough one. It took a year for me to make the decision that I could not pt up with any more TT or lies. Sometimes you. Have to go through this to get to the point where you have no regrets but know the only forward.

Be sure to treat yourself well like it is a DDAY because in a way it is. Find outlets for that pain and anger. Sending strength as you decide your next steps.

Take this for what it’s worth.

I spent way too much time and agony over trying to understand and figure out why my ex did what she did, why did she ruin everything and throw in a bunch of cruelty on top of it all. No matter how much I read and thought, I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
Then one day I realized a simple statement, "She’s mentally fucked up, and she’ll always be mentally fucked up." No more agonizing over why what and how. No DSM manual needed.
It also helped quite a bit on my relationships past her too. I didn’t express that trauma towards any new GFs, as I just told myself, this one isn’t fucked up like my ex. Because now I can see that shit a mile away. And it was true.

Late to the thread — very sorry to hear Gemmy.

Trickle Truth seems to kill off more M than the original sins.

TT was horrible for me as well.

Our couples therapist explained TT as the WS fearing that one last bit of truth would be the final straw that breaks the M forever. The claim is that fear is the main reason for holding out or holding on to painful reveals.

The reality is, at least to me, is that people lie to protect themselves versus the person they are lying to.

It was a lesson it took my wife a long time to learn.

However, in my case, she did finally learn.

My TT was, when I confronted her about some odd situations back in the day about our family ‘friend’ — she confessed a one night stand 18-years after it happened.

The ONS became a four-month A — revealed 12-weeks after the initial confession.

The four-month A was then a two-year A, but ended when we moved out of state.

That was also a lie. She travelled back for work and the A continued two more years.

There were two or three horrific reveals, the worst ones she saved, nearly a YEAR after the initial reveal. Previously she swore they never spent the night together, but she basically lived at his house for a week when he sent his OBS and kids on a vacation to OBS parents place (for my wife, it was work travel).

There are a couple worse reveals than that, but I am saying I fully understand where you are today.

Fear of revealing the final straw turns into a painful irony for a WS, because it really can be the last thing you need to decide where you want to go now.

In my case, as I’ve said, I thought I was done, and we kept trying anyway — but the real reason was, my wife finally figured out authenticity was the ONLY chance to rebuild.

From that day on, all my questions got answered, including the horror show truth.

I couldn’t start R until I knew what it was I was being asked to conquer.

As always, I do think people know if they’re done, they’re done.

TT sucks. Sorry again that you got hit with more of it.

[This message edited by Oldwounds at 6:21 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

It is a delicate balance between the unfaithful spouse's healing, particularly their growing capacity for honesty, and the betrayed spouse's sense of safety.

On one hand, trickle truth is a terrible thing to put someone through. On the other, a new voluntary disclosure may actually indicate that the unfaithful spouse is making progress, becoming capable of confronting truths they previously could not bring themselves to acknowledge.

The irony is that progress in one person's healing can undermine the other person's recovery. The disclosure that represents a step forward for the unfaithful spouse can send the betrayed spouse right back to dday.

Reconciliation becomes a tightrope walk between the two, and it can end if either person falls.

I understand what you're trying to say, I believe, but I honestly could not disagree more.

The wayward spouse wants reconciliation so desperately, wants forgiveness, wants another chance, wants the betrayed spouse to recognize their efforts and acknowledge their progress. But somehow, through all of that, they still cannot manage to provide the **absolute bare minimum requirement for reconciliation: the truth.**

And why? Because it's difficult? Because confronting the absolutely horrific things you've done to another human being, someone you supposedly loved, is uncomfortable? Because acknowledging the depth of your own cruelty and deception threatens the image you have of yourself?

Too bad.

I don't get to avoid the consequences of your decisions because they're uncomfortable. I don't get to compartmentalize eighteen years of betrayal because the reality is too painful to confront. I don't get to choose when another piece of my own history comes crashing down around me. I am forced to live with the consequences of choices I never made, actions I never consented to, and a reality I was deliberately prevented from knowing.

Yet somehow, I'm supposed to view another devastating disclosure as evidence of your personal growth?

And perhaps this is where my anger speaks louder than my diplomacy, but quite frankly, fuck off with the expectation that I should celebrate your newfound ability to do what you should have been doing all along. You don't get to spend years systematically destroying my reality, continue withholding the truth while watching me struggle to survive the damage, and then expect a pat on the back because you've finally found the courage to stop lying about one more thing. You want credit for personal growth? Wonderful. Go grow somewhere that doesn't require me to keep bleeding for it.

I can acknowledge that voluntarily disclosing something previously concealed might represent progress for the wayward spouse. But I fundamentally reject the notion that their developing capacity for honesty should somehow mitigate the damage caused by their continued dishonesty. Honesty is not some extraordinary achievement deserving of recognition. It is the minimum standard that should have existed from the beginning.

And this is where I struggle with the tightrope analogy. It suggests two people navigating equally difficult paths toward reconciliation. But one person created the circumstances that put both of them on that tightrope in the first place. One person holds information the other desperately needs to make informed decisions about their own life.

Every additional disclosure doesn't simply send me back to D-Day. It tells me that while I was desperately trying to rebuild something, the person asking me to rebuild it with them was still withholding pieces of the foundation.

How exactly am I supposed to rebuild trust in someone's honesty when the evidence of their supposed progress is yet another demonstration of how easily they continued to lie to me?

Perhaps it is progress for them. But there comes a point where I have to ask why their progress must continually come at the expense of my destruction.

I don't need my wife to become comfortable enough with herself to eventually tell me the truth.

I needed her to respect me enough to tell me the truth even when doing so was uncomfortable.

There is a profound difference.

Perhaps it is progress for them. But there comes a point where I have to ask why their progress must continually come at the expense of my destruction.

I agree completely.

The cost was certainly higher than I ever thought I would have imagined.

Your anger is a righteous anger.

Sounds like you found the line.

I needed her to respect me enough to tell me the truth even when doing so was uncomfortable.

For my wife, all of the truth, belated as it was — was extremely uncomfortable for her.

The hardest bit of reality for my wife was fully understanding the damage was done already.

She was a WS who initially tried to take it to the grave, and regretted admitting anything.

The "what we don’t know, doesn’t hurt us" is a long-standing lie many WS hold on to for too long.

The cost of getting to that lesson was brutal.

I always understand when and why people have had enough.

Gemmy, I think you have more than enough information to make a final decision. What new information could possibly change things? You're legally divorced, correct? Why are you still co-habitating?

Here's a simple suggestion. Rent an apartment for six months. See what happens. Reduce all contact with your EXWW to texts and emails, no talking or sight. Cold turkey! Gray rock.

I'm willing to bet that within the first few weeks you're going to feel much better, healthier, happier, saner, and closer to peace.

[This message edited by Unhinged at 9:11 PM, Tuesday, November 10th]

I will quote myself from one of your first posts many months ago.

But man, for a person like her, that always played these games to be on top (perhaps foul games are the only method that she learned to use to not stay on the bottom) and fell from her high of being adored and in total control to this miserable state, if she manages to carry that long term, it will be a small miracle.

Well, she didn't even start to carry it fully. It's a very rare occurrence that a fundamentalny flawed person can do a 180 degrees U-turn on their pathological behaviours if those are very deeply engrained. I know it is difficult to give up, when you love and hope so much, but it's like planning your life around winning a lottery or naming your kid Tyson. It may miraculously pan out, but it's not a good plan.

Perhaps it is progress for them. But there comes a point where I have to ask why their progress must continually come at the expense of my destruction.

This is exactly what I meant about the tightrope. It IS two people trying to navigate an impossible situation. One whose nervous system is screaming to leave, to protect themselves from further harm, and another whose nervous system is screaming to hide from the shame and what they have done.

That doesn't excuse the behavior, nor does it mean the betrayed spouse should have to absorb endless suffering. It may very well be that you cannot continue with R, and that is ABSOLUTELY fine. Reconciliation requires two people, but it cannot require one person to continually sacrifice their own well-being to accommodate the other's struggles.

Gemmy, I agree with you. Staggered disclosures like this are incredibly abusive. And imo it doesn't set the person who has been betrayed back to zero, it is worse than that, it makes the injury more complex and harder to heal.

The reasons why someone does it matter exactly the same amount as the reasons why someone engages in any other abusive behaviour. It very quickly becomes apparent that it is harming not protecting your partner. People do it to try to control their partner (prevent them from leaving) and/or to protect themselves from negative emotions (the same reasons for all abuse in intimate relationships). In this case that pattern of behaviour has been apparent for a long time. And the fact is that in a limited way, in the short term, it *does* work. It is extremely disorienting and destabilising, undermines a person's confidence and has a tendency to elicit a fawn response. So even if it is ultimately extremely destructive, in the short term it does tend to make someone tolerate things they would not otherwise tolerate.

I cannot tell you what to do, except to trust your gut. If your gut tells you to move on from your marriage you will not be falling, you will be standing in your own strength.

I want to clarify a couple of things:
First – you wrote:

The wayward spouse wants reconciliation so desperately, wants forgiveness, wants another chance, wants the betrayed spouse to recognize their efforts and acknowledge their progress. But somehow, through all of that, they still cannot manage to provide the **absolute bare minimum requirement for reconciliation: the truth.**

The wayward – as you describe above – doesn‘t want to reconcile. They want to move on, to ignore the issues, to rug-sweep. One of the big misunderstandings of reconciliation is when people equate not divorcing as reconciliation. Just because you haven’t filed does not mean you have been in reconciliation.
Deciding to reconcile can be compared to deciding to get into shape. Reconciling is the actual going to the gym, lifting those weights, running those miles and experiencing the pain and soreness while appreciating progress. At best – your wife has agreed to join the gym, but hasn’t been to a single session.
Your wife doesn’t want to reconcile until she realizes that telling the truth isn’t optional – it’s a basic requirement.

Second: I don’t think my original post was telling or suggesting you reconcile. I tried to list what I think you would need to see to even make reconciliation a possibility, and then to encourage you to evaluate if those requirements were being met. If not – then to base your decision on how to get out of unhappiness on what options are realistically open to you.

We here on this site can tell you to reconcile, or we can tell you to divorce, or we can tell you to base your decision on the reality of your situation. What I warn you about is that remaining in unchanged circumstances and expecting change is not sensible. It’s totally up to YOU to decide what you do.

@Gemmy

Firstly, I want to apologies for the tone of my first response. Never write in anger. I suspect it wasn't the most helpful to you.

What she is doing is an abusive tactic. If a wayward spouse drops the entire, unvarnished horror on the table on Day One, the natural human response is self-preservation: pack your bags and leave. Staggered disclosure prevents that sudden clarity by boiling the frog. By micro-dosing the truth over months or years, they gradually reset your baseline of what is "acceptable." You expend all your emotional stamina fighting skirmishes over a text, then a kiss, then a motel room, leaving you too depleted to confront the reality that the entire foundation was built on sand.

Worse, it strips you of informed consent. Withholding the truth is a calculated decision that says, "If you know what I actually did, you might leave—so I am going to deny you the facts you need to make choices about your own life, health, and future." That is relational entrapment. It also keeps you trapped in cognitive exhaustion, forcing you into the role of a forensic investigator instead of giving you the mental peace needed to plan an exit, all while quietly hooking you with the sunk-cost fallacy.

And as you rightly pushed back on, it weaponizes the language of "growth." It flips the script so that every belated revelation is framed as an act of newfound bravery, putting you in a double-bind where expressing righteous fury gets labeled as "punishing their honesty."

It’s not progress, Gemmy. It's self-preservation disguised as vulnerability, and it works by forcing you to bleed so they don't have to face the music. You don't owe anyone a pat on the back for putting out a fire they started, and you don't have to keep standing in the blast zone waiting for the next drop.

You need to go back and read your own post about your thoughts 1 year post DDay. I'm sure you remember them but Id recommend reading that post again. You covered much of what is happening to you again same feelings and thoughts. In my opinion it's time for you to break free from a person who actively tearing up your mental health.