Wife demands I apologise to her lover as he is our neighbour and we will have to hang out with him

[Music] it has only been 476 days since i confronted her about it how do i know because every time i catch myself thinking about it i tell myself it's only been x days maybe you won't think about it tomorrow so to go back to the beginning i had just taken on a new project and new responsibilities at work i was working a lot of hours 60 plus per week and was noticeably stressed it was in may of 2015 that i noticed she had added a password to her phone when confronted about it she told me it was because she was planning my father's day present and didn't want me to ruin the surprise about a week later she came to me and told me that she felt guilty keeping a big secret from me and told me that she was having our neighbor a contractor build a home office for me as a present it struck me as odd as in our six years together she has never said she felt guilty about anything and always insists that she never regrets anything in her life time goes on her phone is still password protected and things don't feel right i see her using her phone and smiling to herself more and more often but when i ask her what she is doing she says nothing and puts her phone away so one morning i wait for her to get in the shower and i grab her phone before it requires the password i go through her messages and find that she is texting the neighbor i am all covered in frosting you want to lick it off there were no other messages to the neighbor but i found out later that was because she had set up her phone to delete messages after a certain amount of time i felt uncomfortable with it but i knew she had a perverted sense of humor and i thought she would never do anything to hurt me more time goes by and the neighbor is spending more and more time at our house but the office is being completed slower and slower i can't help but worry that something isn't right so i start checking her location using google timeline it was at this point that i realized there are large gaps in her gps history because she was turning off her phone's gps fast forward to july and at this point the paranoia is driving me nuts so i tell her i need to install new anti-virus on her phone while she had it unlocked for me i install anti-theft software so i can remotely turn the gps back on and set up a t message backup and restore so i can read all of her text messages from that point on my computer the next day my mother asked to spend time with my two kids so my wife drops them off with her and has the day to herself i watch my wife's activity from work as she spends the day trying to meet up with the neighbor but is unsuccessful because he is busy with another job site that night we get the kids back from my mom's house and we go out to dinner with the neighbor his girlfriend and his son my wife and his girlfriend are having a good time drinking laughing and just joking around his girlfriend mentions that she would like to see magic mike double xl i say it's a good idea i'll watch the kids so my wife and her can go so my wife and her go and the neighbor and i go back to my house so the kids can play video games together the kids are back in my son's room playing games and the neighbor is sitting across from me on the other couch it is at this point that my wife starts texting him she is describing s acts she would like to perform with him and he is reciprocating she tells him to check his snapchat and at the same time i get a snapchat from her too and it is her f herself and a bathroom stall they keep talking trying to figure out when they can meet up and have s they decide on monday morning after i go to work so in my head i had already planned to pretend to leave and circle back to catch them but then they tell each other that they love each other and it is all i can do to not leap off the couch and knock him out but i contain myself and continue reading the conversation unfolding in front of me then he tells her then he tells her you're my girl now to which she replies always have been ending with him writing always will be my wife and the neighbor's girlfriend returned from the movie and i asked them politely to sit down i then asked the kids to stay in my son's room and shut the door i return to the living room and confront my wife and the neighbor i say so you two love each other huh my wife goes into full blown denial mode and the neighbor's girlfriend starts smacking him i ask my wife if she has been texting him she says no so i show her the text messages she admits to it but says it was the first time it had gone that far i asked my wife if she has sent him pictures she says no so i show her the picture she admits it but says it was the first time i asked her if she is having s with him and she says no because i didn't wait to catch them having s together i didn't have evidence to prove her wrong so that one stayed unresolved i tell her that i am leaving her she tells me that she will make sure i never see my kids again if i do she planned on using the fact that i had attempted s in high school to prove me unfit to have the children she continues to say that it was my fault for being so busy with work and stressed out that she just wanted someone she could talk to then she gives me an ultimatum to decide what i'm going to do or she will decide for me the neighbor's girlfriend starts defending the two of them saying that it couldn't have been serious if they weren't having s and that my wife and i are too perfect together to let this break us up the neighbors go home and my wife and i argue for the rest of the night about what we are going to do we go to bed separately having not resolved anything we keep going back and forth on the subject all weekend and finally settle on we are going to separate temporarily while we figure out what we want i was going to stay in the house and she was going to take the kids and go to her mom's house that monday i go to work and i get a text from her in the middle of a meeting with my bosses stating that she had explained things to our kids but that they were upset and i needed to explain it to them also i get home from work to find my kids crying she had told them that mommy had to move out because dad was mad at her when my son wanted to stay with me she told him that he can't my son put it together that if mommy has to move out because i'm mad at her and he has to move out then i must have been mad at him too my daughter was crying because my son was i don't think she was old enough to understand what was happening it was at that moment i realized she was going to drag the kids through hell if i left her so i swallowed my feelings and begged her to stay she agreed and insisted that i apologize to our neighbor since we were still going to need to hang out with them because our sons are good friends i hate it but i do it anyway we still hang out with them from time to time and they come to our various birthday and holiday parties but i do anything for my kids and i behave civil every time things die down for a while i still think about it constantly i worry how i can keep from making her so unhappy that she cheats on me again then almost a year from the original incident around father's day again she sent him pictures again she claims it was on accident and that she meant to send them to me instead i don't fully believe her but i move on anyway things have been quiet on that front for about four months now but i still think about it constantly this is going to sound stupid but i feel like i have a part of my brain that i can't shut off that is always thinking i used to use that to solve programming problems and it made me very good at my job but ever since this incident the only thing it thinks about is her and him and if i did the right thing my job performance has suffered and i feel like i haven't gotten sleep in months i'm afraid that after this much time and the fact that i begged her back that to say i want a divorce now would only make her more vindictive towards my children didn't i i just feel like i have put myself so deep in a hole that i can never get back out i haven't really talked to anyone about this i didn't want to talk to my mom about it because i felt she would treat my wife differently and i didn't need the two fighting anymore than they already do i tried talking to one friend about it but his advice was to put my trust in god but that was not much solace for me as i am an atheist so i have no clue what to do with my feelings or how to move on from this instead of trying to fix something she doesn't want to fix she has refused counseling several times in the past before this even happened i am going to get myself and my kids out i meet with an attorney next week thank you everyone for helping me see how far i had my head up my a so this happened over a year ago and i don't usually carry grudges so long but this was so insane that every time i think about it i'm still completely bowled over i just have to share and get this off my chest my now ex-husband was a full-on double life sociopath the kind you see in psych thrillers we were married for seven years and throughout the marriage every one of our friends believed he loved me deeply and was a decent respectful guy he didn't act secretively no weird calls in the middle of the night no disappearing at odd hours showered me with compliments all the time and nothing seemed out of the ordinary we didn't fight often we didn't have any big issues he never criticized me i thought i hit the jackpot looking back he was a little distant maybe but i thought he was just an introvert i won't go into the whole backstory but basically one day i stumbled on proof that he had a mistress and the act of pulling on that thread unraveled a horror story so dark it shocked our entire community he didn't just have one mistress he'd been cheating with p since well before the wedding had been bringing women and men over for sea field s time in my bed without protection while i was away on business trips like a lot he was sleeping with some of my acquaintances male and female and he got off on the thrill of tricking me he'd do stuff like invite me to lunch with his mistresses who had all agreed beforehand to pretend they were his colleagues or friends and then enjoy watching me chit chat with them oblivious at final count he'd had 30 affairs all while i was working three jobs to financially support him while he finished school anyway to say i was blindsided and devastated is a massive understatement watching him take off the nice guy mask to reveal someone cold and unloving someone i didn't recognize someone who had been intentionally manipulating me and everyone i knew for years was so scary suffice to say dude had problems and we divorced anyway i told mother-in-law who had always been reasonably kind to me but who had also always been a little distant about the whole thing shortly after i found out because she deserved to know why we wouldn't be coming home for christmas that year i don't know what i expected maybe an expression of sympathy and for her to tell her son he'd screwed up big time but this is what happened instead me so we have to tell you something painful x has been prolifically cheating things are not looking good and the marriage is in crisis yada yada her long pause did i tell you we have red squirrels in the garden this year they're trying to get at the birdseed we had to hang the feeder further out on the branch gotta go no joke that's word for word what she said i realized at that moment that his crazy had gone unchallenged so long because his family though they all seemed normal was completely and totally unable to confront difficult situations like pathologically incapable of moral courage and open communication mother-in-law wrote me a letter or two over the intervening months trying to express sympathy without directly addressing the situation but as more information about x's secrets came out and my world was burning down around me mother-in-law's tone quickly changed to this isn't my fault though i had never insinuated it was she seemed more afraid of being publicly embarrassed or blamed for bad parenting than she was concerned about my well-being true to form as soon as the divorce papers were signed mother-in-law and the rest of the family ghosted me like seven years of tight bonding completely gone as if i didn't exist i was hurt but i understood i figured it was probably for the best i mean what was there to talk about really from what i can tell she never confronted her son about it or made him get therapy or sat him down for a talk nothing nada i'm sure the next poor girl he brings home will hear nothing about it and he will undoubtedly do the same to her makes my heart hurt for whoever he's with next but i try not to think about it i can't save everyone i slowly put my life back together right at all the ships sorted out my finances a new apartment all that stuff it took three years to get my finances job and sanity back on track i have no contact with the ex and in the intervening time i heard nothing from mother-in-law until one day i get an email from her asking if you ready for this i can fix her website please because it broke no how are you no hey it's been a long time no are you still in your same apartment nothing just a long explanation of some php error she was getting i just how do you i mean that cannot be normal right can anyone even begin to armchair analyze that it seems beyond the realm of human understanding to me edit few comments asking about my response i actually ignored her first email at which point she sent another one just in case i didn't get the first one so i replied and gave her an earful about how callous her request was and she responded you're cruel and none of that was my fault the end i'm a mother of three the three male and five female and six female my biological daughter when my sister got pregnant the first time my parents asked me if i would be able to adopt her child my sister wasn't ready to be a mother and couldn't work a child into her lifestyle meanwhile i was a working mother in a relationship and my partner was open to the adoption i agreed to adopt her once the adoption was sorted my sister went back to university a few hours away which was the idea but she was also meant to come home every now and again to see her daughter which she never did the next time i saw her she was pregnant again we went through the same process as before except my partner left me suddenly after this adoption began leaving both girls who were two and three at the time with abandonment issues that required therapy for them to get over and until then they didn't want me to leave their sight when my sister graduated she moved two hours away from uni making her nearly six hours away from us it was at that point i stopped thinking of them as her children before this my family had treated me like a long-term babysitter on the assumption that when my sister graduated she would take them back her moving away confirmed to everyone that she wasn't going to step up for these kids and i took the opportunity to make it clear that i am their mother my sister finally met the kids last christmas and despite a few complaints she is overall satisfied with how i raised my kids she now wants them back i told her to get ducked which led to a confrontation our parents are siding with her and feel i should give the kids back the kids are aware of the adoption but have only met her that one time and they didn't like her both my sister and parents feel that this is my fault since christmas they've been asking me why i won't give my sister her kids back i had to block them on everything and later reset my social media when my sister's fiance kept creating new accounts to harass me over this someone from the council actually came to my house at one point to do a home check then today i made the mistake of checking my sister's social media she's made a mother's day post commemorating all the moms who gave birth to their kids adding that she misses her kids terribly and hopes they'll be a family soon then the comments are full of blatant lies saying she didn't want the adoption and hid the truth and only let her see the kids for the first time last christmas is there anything i can say or do to get her to stop this more importantly what should i be doing for the kids in this time other than keeping them out of it which i'm doing should i be getting them a therapist to talk this through with or would that be too far as for my parents how do i extract them from my children's lives without upsetting the kids who love them a lot see them regularly and still have some lingering abandonment issues

Channel: Ask Girl

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Keywords: reddit girl, reddit, r/askreddit, r/girl, askreddit, askreddit girl, reddit wife, reddit relationship, r/relationship, relationship adice, best videos of reddit, top reddit, askreddit wife, reddit siter, r/sister, askreddit sister

Id: 5RAw-uCLUag

Length: 17min 51sec (1071 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021