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.