SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

So I saw a few emails between my WS and his AP but read just enough to figure out what was going on. I really want to read them all because I have this strong urge to learn all the details so I know the extent of it. Is that a bad idea? Just wondering what others have done and how it impacted any RC.

I have a therapy appointment later today and I’ll go over it with her but just was wondering how others handled this situation.

I hope you take advantage of The Healing Library on this website. Many good articles to help you.

In the Discovery/Confrontation section is an article titled "Joseph's Letter".

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/discovery/joseph-letter/

He writes this letter to his WS explaining why it is important to him about why he needed to learn all the details of their affair. If you read it you may get some of the answers to what you are seeking.

Good luck.

Good morning, Momofmatt. I'm glad you found this place - it's been an essential resource in my process, which began in early January this year. You seem to be in the thick of the early stages of discovery, and my heart hurts for you. For me, it was essential that I knew everything, and the more I knew, the more questions I asked, and on and on until I felt like I had enough information to stop me from creating my own version of the events that went on behind my back. My WH (wayward husband) swore that he held things back to protect me, but I persisted, even though I knew it would be painful to know the details. I just knew I needed them for my process. I know that everyone has different needs in this situation. Eventually, I required a disclosure statement, which I went over with a fine tooth comb, and which wasn't complete until I asked more questions and added more details which were important to me. Then, a polygraph. Only after all of this, did I feel that we could take a baby step forward from the disaster area.

Talk to your therapist - that, too, is an essential part of the healing for me.

Listen to your heart.

You have to make a decision on what suits you best.

And once you know something you cannot "unknow" it. No matter how painful it is.

It’s a hard decision to make. But some people have the position that they cannot forgive others if they don’t have all the facts.

Others believe "you had an affair and I don’t need the details" and move forward.

Typically an individual choice.

For me my H was planning to D me (before I even knew about the affair or OW). He then tried to downplay the whole affair like it was nothing. Ten days later he’s telling me he’s D me.

For me I needed to know everything (or as much as I could). If it comes to you in bits and pieces that is called trickle truth. Another marriage blow.

Thank you all for the thoughtful responses. I will check out that letter in the healing library. And talk to my therapist. I strongly suspect that I will not be able to move forward without knowing everything. But it is true that what has been seen can never be unseen. A lot to think about.

Mom,

Yes it's better to know, once you know you can make an informed decision.

This will prevent you from spending more years with a WH who crossed your red line/lines.

He is lying by omission now and by minimization.

Years from now you may find out more details when he lets something slip out. It happens.

Years from now your WH may backpedal and tell you that what you know now never happened, this is maddening.

Save your evidence as well.

It will also relieve your WH from having to lie to you and keep a close watch on his words.

If your WH had never lied the affair would never have happened, his continued lying sets up another affair

This is a very tough question and the answer will be different for everyone.

For me, I felt I had to know, although this was as painful as I imagined it would be. My wife's affair was predominantly physical. For me to then learn details about things I was already insecure about or felt where deficiencies resulted in my worst fears being realized. However I know for us, for me this was the only path to recovery. Our family and marriage are still together, which Im thankful every day but its not come without its pain and anguish.

Good luck.

In my mind, there is also another side to this. If the WS is not willing to share ALL the details, then they are protecting their A. They want to keep some part of it secret and "special". Often they say they want to protect the BS, but that is not really true. They are protecting themselves from their own actions and protecting the A from the exposure.

And I think the details are also a way to determine the ongoing truthfulness of the story— does it change with retellings, do the pieces make sense and the story seem reasonable? It helps soothe our brains and it helps a remorseful WS start with teeny tiny building blocks of trust.

So getting details for me was to satisfy my need to know as well as see if my WS was willing to be 100% truthful and vulnerable. (Morgan Freeman’s voice: He was neither.)

All that said, it is very individual. Some have requested two timelines. One high level, and one super detailed. Then the BS can read the high level and decide at any point to read the detailed one if they feel the need.

Also, I think it’s fair to maybe not want details today and change your mind later down the road as you process what you know.

Best of luck, MoM.

My recommendation is to get a copy of everything now and save it to a thumbdrive or the cloud or something so you can review later once you've made the decision. That enables you to kick the can down the road a bit if you're not sure what you want to do with them right now, but also preserves your ability to read them (and compare them to the story you're receiving from your WS now) before they can be deleted or lost.

As others have pointed out, I think there are differing views that exist here on how much is enough vs how much is too much in terms of knowledge. I absolutely fall into the camp of wanting to know it all. Like, I didn't need a play-by-play of absolutely every sexual experience that occurred (certainly I did want to know this about the first), but if I asked the question, I wanted the answer. My husband's willingness to answer hard questions (despite how much it hurt me or despite how embarrassing it might have been for him) without trying to minimize or make excuses, was actually a really good test for me of his willingness to do "whatever it takes" and was the first trust building exercise that occurred. I read every email that still existed between the two of them, and I was haunted by the stuff that was deleted and I wasn't able to be recovered. In most instances the truth was not as bad as my own imagination. In a few discrete cases, it was worse. But I felt it provided a window into something that felt absolutely incomprehensible to me. I also feel like certain topics allowed me to ask questions that may not have occurred to me otherwise.

In my mind, you cannot heal from something you don't know about. You cannot forgive a hurt that you were not aware of. It is better to get that stuff out of the way now as for most of us our curiosity gets the best of us and we eventually want to know. A lot of BSs myself included - will tell you that they could "better handle" giant, awful, devastating revelations when they were delivered during the initial horrendous discovery period but learning even small details later on (sometimes months or even years later), after you thought you had a handle on things, can be absolutely DEVESTATING and can result in you seeing absolutely everything in a different light, and can set you back to the very beginning of your healing. For me, I learned a new detail (something miniscule that would not have registered as a big deal at the outset) 3 months out after I was assured I knew everything and I was almost ready to divorce over it.

It is incredibly common for Waywards to drip feed their BS information at the outset because they are still in self-preservation damage-control mode and they are used to lying. It's so common that we have a term for that here - it's call "trickle truth". Some waywards will tell themselves that their BS already knows so much and they are sparing the BS unnecessary details that will only cause them more pain. Emails are nice because they exist independently of the Wayward's foggy filter. They can help provide structure for a future timeline.

as well as see if my WS was willing to be 100% truthful and vulnerable. (Morgan Freeman’s voice: He was neither.)

After my wifes affairs, yes more than 1, our counsellor told us to sit in solace. That is remove ourselves from any outside interference, find a place that is calming and sedate in atmosphere, be comfortable with the idea of the situation, and then allow either of us to talk free of interjection and accusation. Worked great to commence, we went to a beach, found an isolated spot on the sand, enjoyed a nice lunch and relaxed. I opened by asking questions about her affairs and she destroyed it all by having to think about her responses and U-turning everything back to my faults. It probably would have worked great if she was on board but it just showed me that my wife is a narcissist. Her first affair was because my mate would come to our home?!?! her second was because I "let" her go on a holiday with her sister, and it was my fault both times.

If you can have an open and honest conversation without accusation, and empathetically hear and listen , this could be a great way to come back from pain you both will have and possibly avoid ever wanting to see someone you love hurt so badly ever again. If you can't then walk away and find a new life.

[This message edited by Theburna1957 at 12:44 AM, Friday, May 24th]

I think it's important to confront one's fears. If you're afraid of an answer, I think you owe it to yourself to ask the question. If an answer is important to you, I think you owe it to yourself to ask. You're a lot stronger than you think; you can hear the answers and survive.

IMO, asking questions helps whether your WS answers truthfully or not. If they answer truthfully, R is possible, if you don't uncover a deal killer. If they lie, you can't Reconcile; you can only D or rugsweep.

I urge you to give up trying to control the outcome. R may or may not be right for you. IOW, D may or may not be right for you. Your goal is to figure out what the best outcome is for you.

You have to make your own decisions, but IMO, the more info you have, the better decision you'll make.

*****

I did not use Joseph's Letter. I prefer https://survivinginfidelity.com/topics/324250/things-that-every-ws-needs-to-know/. The author provides good descriptions of the things done by WSes who are good candidates for R.

In my opinion whilst curiosity is human, I don’t think details matter that much.
It is more the whys that count and more importantly why now they want to reconcile or maybe to divorce, what has changed, what the affair has meant to them and what have they learnt about themselves, what can they now bring to the relationship.

It would be kind of powerful to uncover every little secret and make it lose its magic and privacy but what the WS has experienced there in their deep self is theirs and theirs only, no matter how many details you know, there will always something they will never disclose and will only belong to those two and you, the faithful spouse will always be excluded from it.

The fact that you need to know is that your spouse had been able to deceive you, lie to you, create a bond with another person, a bond so deep that they felt each other’s body and they repeated and repeated their choice whilst coming home to you and whilst the new memories kept them awake at night. And despite all, now they feel they are ready to come back to you.

Can you accept that? It is tough, somehow impossible to accept… BUT DOABLE!!

Don’t focus on the details of the past but on what you can build from the ashes of your relationship.

You will want to know the details for at least two reasons. First, because you wanna know the truth of what happened. Second, you will want to know that when you ask, that you will get the answer. That there should be no hesitation or reservation on the part of your WS and answering the question. They are being honest and forthcoming, and not holding anything back.

The sooner that you can get past the first reason, the need for you to know details, the better. Knowing the details never really helps, and they truly are an infinite amount of details to know. You can keep asking questions until the sun cools and not know everything. But the fact is, it takes time to get to the point where you no longer need to know anything else.

The second reason, that they will answer when you ask, you will want to test them on for a long time. You need to know that they are all in with their honesty in the reconciliation. The way to find that out is to ask for details. You don’t care about what those details are, you care about whether they will answer your question.

Your goal should be to no longer need to ask them about the details for any reason. For sure, it takes time to get to that point. And you may never get there.

[This message edited by HouseOfPlane at 3:01 AM, Friday, May 24th]

I had to know everything. Everything. It was awful and I felt for a long time I would never recover from what I asked, but I did. It doesn’t haunt me anymore. Took almost a year, and yes it still hurts, but it’s nothing compared to what my mind was playing on repeat.

By having every horrible detail the mind movies went away.

Everyone has their own threshold, but I share my experience because many therapists will say it’s wrong and only makes it worse. I feel that isn’t true, and not knowing can be worse. Unfortunately, what and how deep you go for details is something only you can decide.
My opinion is that these things happened I have to know it all so I can chose now that
I know what reality is.

until I felt like I had enough information to stop me from creating my own version of the events that went on behind my back

^^^
This. I have an incredible imagination, the details helped stop that from trying to fill in all the gaps.

Keep in mind, you will never know it all, the WS doesn't go through this thinking "I need to remember all this so I can recount it later".

I wanted to know every little detail.

Much of it I found out on my own, the rest WH told me through TT for years.

IMO I think it's important to know exactly what you are dealing with in order to make an informed decision.

I posted recently in general about details if you have time to read it.

IMO knowing the details is the only way for me to lay his A to rest. The only way I know that they have no more dirty secrets. With every nasty , dirty, heart breaking detail I picture a knife being stabbed in his back and hers. He is hurting himself and betraying her to help me heal myself. My mental health came first… freaking finally.

I asked BRUTAL questions last night , I mean questions that made me not be able to swallow bc of the lump in my throat. After hearing the answers though it was almost like a weight was lifted? It’s really hard for me to put into words because it sucks and yet it’s amazing all rolled into one.

The questions I wanted to ask went through my brain on cycle for months and at that point I told
Myself I had to ask. Some questions fizzled out over time and became irrelevant. The ones that I couldn’t get out of my head just flowed out like word vomit. Mh H was crying and asked to take a break , I told him I was on a roll and I had to keep going (he was selfish and uncaring for 6 months) So why can’t I be? I did reassure him though , I looked him
In the eyes and told him that each answer he gave made me feel better, I told him it made me love him more. Although in his mind he couldn’t wrap his head around how hurting me helped he cried through it and answered me.

The vulnerability each of us showed was huge.

We bonded. We cried. We made up for the night.
Infidelity is weird, the pain seems to brings us closer. Taking about the A I enjoy more than watching our favorite movies , I don’t really get it and I effing hate it but it is what it is now.

With all that being said , I think you should
Ask whatever your brain tells you that you need to ask to heal , but keep in mind it will be like walking through hell…. But I came out stronger and really , so did he, and so could you.

Side note.
My brother was cheated on 10 yrs ago.
He never healed. He never asked the questions then… he rugswept and buried.
He is starting to ask questions now … that helps me because would I want to tear open this wound 10 years from now?! Hell freaking no. Let me heal this wound over time , scab over, and fall off.
Yes the scar will always be but I won’t have an option to pick at it and open that wound anymore. It will just be a really bad memory and a part of me forever

Sorry for the long post , I hope it helps , I’m still really early in this ride so it’s all raw as hell.

Hi, I'll contribute with my opinion.

If you read enough to know for sure that you don't want to continue with the relationship, then I think it's best to leave it at that and separate, to avoid the extra and unnecessary trauma.

If you still want to give the relationship a try, then I think it's best to know everything, to avoid your imagination filling in the gaps, or potentially coming across more information later on that could then change things.

All the best!

Since I walked in on them having sex I really didn’t have much of an option as far as the level of detail.

However... Whatever I can imagine is undoubtedly 100x worse than what I saw. My imagination could/would have caused me more damage than the reality I saw.

I think it boils down to what level of truth and detail you need. Personally – it probably would have been just as devastating had I only heard the sounds or had they been covered by the sheet or whatever. But I somehow doubt being told or hearing a rumor would have done it for me...

I think you need enough truth to make an informed decision. Both the decision of it there is something worth saving, and the decision what you might need to do that saving. Like the full truth on how they met, how they communicated, where they met, how costs were covered, how far it went, how long, who knew, who supported and so on. What you might not need is a list of sexual acts and positions. Doesn’t really make much difference if he enjoyed the sex or if they did it 53 times or 61. I think the level of truth to base your future on is very important.

Ask yourself a key-question: Can you deal with limited truth? If your husband all of a sudden get’s an interest in abstract art, will you be wondering if it’s something the OW got him into? If he wants to try a new sexual act/position – will you be wondering if it’s something he did with OW, or if it’s really a part of his work in rekindling your marriage?