SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I had never thought of that.

Sometimes I read what people share and catch myself wondering if certain actions and behaviors are normal and if I’m missing something.

Like… the gym owner told you that the OM had willingly left the gym in order as to not cause a scene… First of all – why did the gym owner share that with you, and second: why would the OM share that with the gym owner?

I’m guessing your wife and OM weren’t open about their affair. What with both being married and all that. Like… not making out at the rowing machine or behind the lockers. Like probably 99% of those having affairs I venture they thought they were so discreet and secretive that nobody knew… After all that is part of the excitement.
Yet… When you ask the gym-owner he confirms the OM is no longer a member, and that when asked the OM stated he was leaving "out of respect" for your daughter…
Now – I have joined numerous gyms over the years, and when I quit them, I just quit. I don’t phone the owner and give an excuse or report on why I quit. If I were to quit because of something like I had been doing Mrs Jones from Zumba class and now Mr Jones and Mrs Bigger were a bit angry I definitely would NOT be sharing that on a service survey!
Why did OM volunteer that tidbit to the gym-owner?

I don’t know if your wife and OM are still at it. I don’t know if the owner gives her a signal so she can sneak out the back door for a rendezvous with OM. Frankly I doubt it.
But I do think the gym owner knows more, and has known more, for a longer period. I think he’s involved in some way. Not as a threesome or someone who encouraged or enabled the affair when active, but his role NOW is suspect IMHO. If what he shares is true, it AT LEAST indicates a strong relationship with OM.

I think this gym has to be off-limits.

Bigger- I agree.

I believe the owner and AP knew each other enough to share that information with each other and then me so I felt safe enough to let her go back to some shred of normalcy (but obviously didn't/doesn't help me).

I have let her know her going every morning is a daily trigger for me, that place is simply a marriage cancer tumor to me. It's disheartening after giving her the choice of dozens of other options she CHOSE that. But I did give the choice to see what she chose......so I got what I got for now.

I've been overweight for many years. I've been using my anger to walk my ass off since D day and I am working with a nutritionalist so I am losing weight and not starving myself. Motivation to better myself, lose weight for my kids, or......will it be to enter the dating world in a year or two I don't know- but I'm not going to waste my anger energy on nothing. I was down #40 this morning. So another 40-50 and I might just join that fucking gym myself and really shake things up and see what goes on there.

[This message edited by MNBS at 7:00 PM, Friday, October 2nd]

But I did give the choice to see what she chose......so I got what I got.

Were you standing at an altar making a vow that reconciliation would carry on no matter the choice she made? You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re allowed to discontinue reconciliation over her choices. Your WW should be made starkly aware of that.

I think your wife is doing everything she can to hide things from you, run damage control, and has complete control over the narrative right now. She's authoring some grand fictitious story, and you're absolutely being penned as the bad guy. I have some experience with this. I took back control of my own character in my story by calling divorce lawyers right in front of my wife. When she realized I was serious, things took a very drastic turn. She suddenly discovered that she really didn't want a divorce.

My son was out of the house tho, so no young children involved, but I'm not sure if that would have made a difference. I found living in infidelity and uncertainty to be so intolerable that divorce became the lesser of 2 evils in my mind. Making those calls was the best thing could have done. My wife really turned the corner and has been rock solidly consistent for almost a year and a half now. Completely transparent, access to all of her devices, no disappearing messages, no more contact with AP, blocked him, put in for a location transfer at work, came completely clean to me, friends, and family, took ownership, etc.

Not all spouses will do that, tho. Some will even double down. I argue if they do, then your answer becomes much clearer. Would you want to remain married to someone like that?

I don't think women are as impulsive as men. I think for them to do this, they have already become dissatisfied with their marriage. somewhere along the decision tree, anyone must calculate the odds of getting caught and consider what might happen if they do. Your wife started this with a gym crush, in a gym that your daughter works at. The chances of rumor coming back around to you or to your daughter was very high. I'm not saying your daughter knew and helped hide it but that is also a possibility. But the fact that your daughter might catch wind of something going on with your wife and OM was very high and your wife knew that. Which means that she calculated that either you'd accept it and reconcile no matter what and she could just keep on doing it behind your back or she figured she was leaving the marriage anyway.

It does not seem like she's doing anything to make you feel better. Pogre has given you the way to find out: File and see what she does with that. She might come clean and do every thing she can to fix it and she might just sign the papers and make her exit.

Your story terrifies me. My wife has lost 60+ pounds this year, undergone cool sculpting on her arms, body tone on her abs, joined a gym, has a personal trainer and is right now recovering from abdomioplasty to remove a pouch left over from an emergency C-section 42 years ago. She looks better than she has in our 39 year history. Way too much similarity. Lawyers have a term for these sorts of makeovers: Divorce Surgery.

[This message edited by Onceasailor at 11:47 PM, Friday, October 2nd]

I think for them to do this, they have already become dissatisfied with their marriage

This is generalizing genders and the unmet fallacy all in one.

Generally this idea of treating the affair as a symptom is totally wrong. It is comforting in a way because it gives an illusion of control. If I'm a good partner and my partner is happy with me they won't cheat.

Maybe less likely, but you can't affair proof a marriage. People that are generally happy still cheat. There is never too much pleasure for a cake eater.

It is though, the generally accepted excuse offered. "Women who are happy in their relationship, having their needs met, don't cheat." I don't know if it's true or not but ask a psychologist and that's what you will get. Most cheating women who leave their marriages will trumpet it.

But even if you reject the first two sentences, the logic holds for the rest of the post.

And, you don't have to agree with what I think. I don't care.

This0is0Fine is spot on. Assuming a woman only cheats because she is dissatisfied is a fallacy. It creates a false illusion of control—the myth that if you are just a good enough spouse, you can totally affair-proof your marriage.
The reality is that happy people in stable marriages cheat too. As Esther Perel notes, an affair is rarely a rejection of the spouse. Instead, it is often a quest for novelty, validation, or a desire to reconnect with a lost version of oneself. It isn't about wanting to leave a partner; it's about wanting to escape the monotony of who they have become in their daily life.
Furthermore, affairs do not operate on a rational "decision tree" of risk calculation. High-risk behavior—like fooling around where a daughter works—is a classic sign of impulsive, dopamine-driven behavior. The human brain is masterfully adept at compartmentalization. It allows someone to completely block out future consequences while chasing a temporary high.
Finally, we cannot take a cheater's revisionist history at face value. When a cheating spouse "trumpets" how miserable they were, they are usually engaging in retroactive rewriting. They unconsciously recast the marriage as a prison to shield their own ego from the crushing guilt of hurting people they love. Projecting these narrative shifts onto general self-improvement or personal makeovers is just paranoia, as getting in shape is far more often about aging and self-esteem than a desire for divorce.

One can never diagnose the "why". Because as I have stated here plenty of times, (IMO) the only valid "reason" is because they wanted to.

Good marriages, bad marriages, happy childhood, terrible childhood, great spouse or bad partner - none of it matters in the end. As an example - you can be an alcoholic but that doesn’t make you a cheater. Plenty of alcoholics don’t cheat.

The cheater relevant to this thread had some high risk behavior / knowing the daughter worked at the gym where she had her affair. Definitely red flags 🚩!

The fact she refused to give up the gym shoes you the level of selfishness and lack of respect for her betrayed spouse.

Look, this is becoming a semantic thread jack. I didn't say dissatisfaction with spouse but marriage. Boredom with the day to day monotony IS dissatisfaction. Whether true or not, I stated it as opinion. "I don't think women are as impulsive as men." That is clearly stated as opinion. "I think for them to do this, they have already become dissatisfied with their marriage." Two sentences, clearly stated as WHAT I THINK. Opinion. One opinion is as valid as the next.

The rest of the post, 99% of it, has to do with analyzing what MNBS's wife has done, as reported by him, and how she's gone about it and what I think it might mean. The same analysis that everyone here is doing.

But, yes. I do have some insecurity about my own marriage and I do spend significant time trying to stay connected to my wife in hopes that she won't stray, that she will remain satisfied with our marriage. But also because I believe (again opinion) that married people owe their partners that sort of attention. Focus on what you can add to your marriage rather than keeping score. If I encounter the dishwasher needing to be unloaded, I unload it. I'm not thinking that this is her job because I take the trash to the dump. She might mow the lawn tomorrow or be welding some busted thing back together. We don't score keep on chores. When it comes to the romantic stuff, dates, etc. We both try to find things to do, we are both couch potatoes by nature. We will sit here and watch TV for weeks if we don't make a point of looking for things to do. Touch, we always touch, hug, kiss, etc. That's all relationship maintenance and enjoyment. If you're not getting that at home, and you're missing it, human nature is to find it elsewhere.

I will say a lot of my insecurity is driven by social media including reading this site. The last paragraph of my post expresses the similarities between MNBS's situation and mine with regard to our wives' physical transformations. Another source of insecurity for me. Our relationship started out in an unconventional way. She was not attracted to me at all. I'm the shortest man she's ever been with by far and although we were FWB, she would not date me in public. She only accepted my offer of a relationship AFTER she got dumped by the man she actually wanted, a Recon Marine BTW. So, she went from a snake eater Marine to an aviation maintenance Sailor who is 5'4". Yeah, 39 years later, that still concerns me. Although I am quite fit and well muscled, I'm still 5'4" and she now has a figure that she hasn't had for 39 years. What's that going to mean for our marriage? I don't know. Like everyone, I'm looking for clues. Clues in life and in relationship and faith. Life is a quest for understanding. So you can castigate me for two sentences of stated opinion. Try to keep in mind that I'm just a human trying to figure his way through life. Same as you.

My wife didn't go looking for an affair. She did lose a substantial amount of weight, but that was also unintentional. She went from a pretty sedentary job position to a much more physical one. Then she was told she was no longer safe to drive due to a seizure condition, so she started walking a lot more. The combination of the 2 just happened to lead to substantial weight loss. I'm not sure she even realized it for a while until her clothes started getting a lot looser.

What happened was a guy she worked with apparently noticed it and started giving her a lot more attention. She saw it as completely innocent at first and figured he was just being a nice guy. They had worked together for years, but when she lost all of that weight, he suddenly shifted gears from casual acquaintence/friend/co worker to suitor, and she found herself really liking the attention. It escalated from there.

I do think there are some situations where a woman will actively pursue physical improvements with the thought of finding someone new out of boredom or dissatisfaction in a marriage, but it's not always the case. Sometimes she can be perfectly content and someone new will put himself on her radar and awaken something nobody knew was there. Including herself. It happens with men, too.

For almost 27 years I had unquestioning fidelity and a wife who would never, ever even consider stepping outside of our marriage. Until she did. What my wife did was very impulsive and out of character. Yes, we did have problems in our marriage, but she had absolutely no intentions of ending up in an affair. Yet within a few weeks she was agreeing to book a motel room with a co worker.

This is why I still struggle to this day, a year and a half later, to wrap my mind around exactly wtf happened.

On my d day I didn't have time to prepare for it.

I didn't see it coming.

I wasn't looking for it.

I wasn't even thinking about infidelity when I left the house to search for her when she stopped replying to my texts that night.

It just hit me. It slammed into my reality out of nowhere. I was punched in the face by it and I didn't see it coming at all.

I think I have trouble finding language to describe what I felt because there probably isn't a sentence big enough for me to explain what happened to me.

I didn't just become sad when I found out. My entire understanding of my life with her was completely obliterated in an instant. In an instant. I went from "she's my wife" to "she apparently loves someone else very intensely and my marriage is over." All in an instant. I was beyond shocked and completely devastated in a single instant.

[This message edited by Pogre at 5:48 PM, Saturday, October 3rd]

Pogre, dont you think though that somewhere along the path to that motel room that she did some calculus? If i go incognito my husband will notice and figure this out. That will devistate him and likely end our marriage. She had to figure some of that. There is always a risk of detection and a possible negative reaction. She did it anyway. Not caring about you or whether the marriage survived. Everyone doing something like this has to calculate the odds of detection, gauge the probable reaction and accept some consequence as "worth it." When i speed, i keep it to 14 over, because its just a $90 ticket in Idaho. I accept that, I don't accept the $159 ticket. I behave a little better in Washington where its more expensive.

Onceasailor,

I probably came off a little harsh. This is a societal belief and framing that I think does more damage than good.

You are obviously entitled to have any opinion you want. This is an advice and support forum. I rarely comment on JFO anymore and maybe that's a bit of a dereliction of duty for me. But I just happened in here and I think this type of advice and thought for the newly betrayed really is damaging.

I don't know your whole story. I read the post you authored about your 38 year old problem and I just think you need to know that *you* are not the reason she is or isn't lying to you about her history. Nothing you have or haven't done isn't what keeps her faithful to you. Her character is hers.

Onceasailor posted at 3:07 PM on Saturday, October 3rd, 2026

Pogre, dont you think though that somewhere along the path to that motel room that she did some calculus? If i go incognito my husband will notice and figure this out. That will devistate him and likely end our marriage. She had to figure some of that. There is always a risk of detection and a possible negative reaction. She did it anyway. Not caring about you or whether the marriage survived. Everyone doing something like this has to calculate the odds of detection, gauge the probable reaction and accept some consequence as "worth it." When i speed, i keep it to 14 over, because its just a $90 ticket in Idaho. I accept that, I don't accept the $159 ticket. I behave a little better in Washington where its more expensive.

I'm sure she ran some calculus and came to a decision, but her math was off. I think that she thought I wouldn't leave. That I'd be upset for a while, but would get over it and things would return back to normal. Maybe even with her retaining her AP as "just a friend."

She was wrong.

I put up with about a month of nonsense, but hit my limit. I decided that living in infidelity and uncertainty was worse than divorce. I chose the lesser of 2 evils. I made phone calls and set up consultations with a couple of different divorce lawyers right in front of her, and she started losing it. She became almost hysterical and literally begged me to not go through with it. She begged me. I let her sit with it for a couple of days to see if she'd walk it back and she didn't. So I canceled those consultations.

That was about 17 months ago and she's been fighting very hard for our marriage ever since. She dropped her AP like a hot potato, blocked him on everything, put in for a location transfer at work (AP was a co worker), and cut any and all possible ties to him. She has not tried to contact him once ever since. She cut off a couple of friends who were co conspirators in helping her conduct her affair and gave her alibis. One of them she'd been friends with since high school.

Of everything she had done and whatever calculus she had run, either her or I leaving the marriage was never a factor for her. She didn't think of it as a possibility, and she had no intentions of leaving me. She wanted both. She was a classic cake eater.

When faced with the reality that I was indeed at the end of my rope and seriously willing to end the marriage, all thoughts of her conducting an affair or even remaining friends with him went straight out the window. She did not, and does not want our marriage to end. As far as I can tell from her words and her actions, she was never fully done with the marriage. What she did was very impulsive and not very well thought through at all.

Right now we're still working on reconciliation and if anything goes awry or if we don't make it, it's going to be me that calls it quits. She's fully recommitted and intensely regretful and remorseful.

Just yesterday she gave me a 5 page hand-written letter describing her feelings at the time of the affair from beginning to end. How she allowed herself to be sucked in and the boundaries she knowingly crossed along the way. She also included her feelings now, how wrong she was about everything she did, and how she recognizes her blindspots at the time.

She's beginning to understand how much this has damaged me. She understands why I'm still hurting. She understands why I still have some issues believing her sometimes and doesn't blame me. She wants to earn that trust back. She acknowledged how terribly she had misjudged our relationship and how much I still love her. And finally, she reiterated how grateful she is for the 2nd chance. She explained that she is committed to spending the rest of her life making sure she doesn't take it for granted and that I don't regret offering it.

My wife is not a writer, but she toiled over that letter for hours. She had previously written something a while ago that was a little more generic, but this one is actually very well written and touching. I was surprised. I didn't think she had it in her to author something like this. It almost brought me to tears. I'm beginning to believe she actually "gets it" now. She poured her heart out to me and made herself very vulnerable in that letter.

Now, that's my experience. I'm not saying you're blanket wrong in your assessment. In fact I believe that can be the case in many instances of infidelity. But even while some of it does match up with my situation, overall it is a generalization that doesn't fit my story or my wife.

[This message edited by Pogre at 6:58 PM, Sunday, October 4th]

I agree with 1stwife. People cheat because they want to. BS will run themselves ragged trying to find the cause so they can fix it. So many people come here stating their spouse cheated because the BS was too busy, too distracted, too mean, too, too, too. I don’t do that. My husband knows I know. It wasn’t a romance. It was out of town while he traveled. He was very good at his job, very well thought of, and evidently a few drinks, some flirting moved things right along. I have no idea if it was once or more. He had a wife who loved him and a very active love life. In fact I am a very good, loyal, wife. He still cheated.
My suggestion to BS is to let go. If it takes policing to keep a marriage going it is not worth it. Be a good, decent, loving, human being and if that isn’t enough the problem has never been you.

One more thing. Every BS needs to look at what their WS’s childhood was like. It can make a difference in their ability to feel real love. Not euphoria from cheating but the kind that weathers storms of life. In my job as a social worker I have had parents give up their children. They can’t be bothered. When I asked their histories there was always some form of true neglect. Emotionally harmful neglect. It stopped them from forming deep relationships. They live on the surface. If that is who a BS is married to there is no fixing it. You cannot change another person.

So the point of those two controversial sentences is that the way men and women generally enter an affair differ. Not that the fault lays with anyone but the cheater. I know this is a generalization and doesn't fit every circumstance. Many men might take advantage of a one time offer from someone they just met with little to no thought that they'll get caught and never think that it'll end their marriage.

Women, in general, enter an affair via an emotional connection, with forethought, rather than jump in the sack with a stranger. Not that they go looking for it but that they have time to think about it. The guy at the gym, the coworker, are very common themes. Pogre, your wife thought about it for a couple of weeks and came to a decision. I think it's a more damaging kind of betrayal, but I'm sure women would disagree.

I just had a discussion with my wife about this, Pogre and MNBS' stories were in my head when i had it. I told her that if it ever were to happen, I would not be able to take it. She'd never lay eyes on me again, she'd deal only with my lawyer and that would be it. She knows my insecurities around our beginnings, my height and her recent transformation. She assures me that I have nothing to worry about, loves our life together, etc. I'm sure nearly every man on this board would have thought the same thing a day or two before discovery.

Edited to delete content that on reflection, was probably not helpful. Sorry.

[This message edited by Onceasailor at 2:37 PM, Monday, October 5th]

Sailor, I saw your post before your edit, and I just want to say that we had some similarities in our upbringing. No judgement from me there.

That said, I certainly don't want to argue your life experiences. You have some legitimate reasons for the way you feel and I'm not going to try and take that away from you. I think we may have a slight disagreement on some generalizations, but we're not so far apart that it's worth a lengthy back and forth about it.

I just want you to know that I really do empathize with what you're going through right now, as I know you do me. As I know we all do with MNBS. All of us here have been served the shittiest shit sandwich of all shit sandwiches that have ever been made, and no one's experience is smaller or less than than another's.

[This message edited by Pogre at 5:12 PM, Monday, October 5th]

Pogre, that is so accurate. Exactly what I experienced.

On my d day I didn't have time to prepare for it.

I didn't see it coming.

I wasn't looking for it.

I wasn't even thinking about infidelity when I left the house to search for her when she stopped replying to my texts that night.

It just hit me. It slammed into my reality out of nowhere. I was punched in the face by it and I didn't see it coming at all.

I think I have trouble finding language to describe what I felt because there probably isn't a sentence big enough for me to explain what happened to me.

I didn't just become sad when I found out. My entire understanding of my life with her was completely obliterated in an instant. In an instant. I went from "she's my wife" to "she apparently loves someone else very intensely and my marriage is over." All in an instant. I was beyond shocked and completely devastated in a single instant.

Reading it immediately brought it all back. My WH and I had gotten married only 18 months prior D-Day. On the day of our wedding his affair had been going on for a year or so. He told me that he didn't think of me for as much as a split second when it happened for the first time - only afterwards when he was back in his car: "I have to do everything to prevent that she ever finds out."

But once the first step was taken it got easier for him to block these thoughts out. Compartmentalization at work.

So: Our marriage was fresh and happy, he intended to spend the rest of his life with me (and so did the AP with her BS). It took him months of IC to find out that the AP had a certain function for him and that it wasn't about her at all.

MNBS:

Reconciliation requires radical changes from the WS. Your wife hasn't understood that yet. My WH is willing to do (or not do) whatever it takes to win me back. This may include quitting a job, leaving town, avoiding people who downplay the affair, cancelling trips, changing hobbies etc. The only person to decide what is necessary for your successful R is YOU.

[This message edited by 7m46s at 5:43 PM, Monday, October 5th]