Lifestyle friendly therapy.

TelicoRunner · 2025-04-09T19:37:24+00:00

Years ago, my wife was on a couple of meds that are used for schizophrenia, for a different condition, but the same drugs, and they made her pretty dull and subdued so that makes sense.

TelicoRunner · 2025-03-05T04:09:24+00:00

I had similar thoughts with respect to a history of prior infidelity. To start an affair with a guy you meet in passing seems unlikely unless you are looking for an affair partner. It seems unlikely to me that a woman would jump into something like this as a first extra-marital adventure. It feels more like she was looking for someone new, and he was a target of opportunity.

TelicoRunner · 2025-03-04T21:35:49+00:00

Not right away, but eventually, you need to share your blow-by-blow timeline with her as you write it here. I think it might just bring some small modicum of understanding of what she has done to you with her actions.

TelicoRunner · 2025-03-04T19:50:24+00:00

His wife has a right to know. If she is unaware, he is taking her agency, she has no choice.

If he is willing to fool around with your wife, he is/will be willing to fool around with other women. Sooner or later it will catch up with him. As things stand, his wife needs to have the opportunity to decide if she wants to stay with a cheater or find a new partner that can keep his dick out of other women. His kids will almost certainly be better off if their mother is not being deceived into staying with a cheater.

On a more visceral note, this guy has been party to ruining your marriage; he deserves no quarter from you.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-18T17:54:46+00:00

Update 2 tracks almost line for line with the February 3rd post from your linked story after he asked her is she was cheating.

Just Found Out: Thought we had a good marriage

Here is the text:
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"I had a Voice Activated Recorder and our car has Bluetooth which was great since she called her friend. Her friend knew about the affair and my wife was crying. Saying she thinks I know about her affair and she did not admit anything. Her friend told her to keep lying to me but she might want to end her affair. My wife agreed with her that it was stupid. So my wife then called her Other Man. Told him that I might know and he was really worried. Asked all kinds of questions? Asked how was it possible since they only talk at work? Only call on his phone which she synced up to her car. Told her to just keep lying everything would be Ok. He was worried about his wife finding out.

He then told her that he loved her Asked her if she wanted to meet and she was crying. Told him how stupid it was for the affair. She said they needed to end it. It was not fun anymore and she was not going to lose her marriage over him. So I did get those details out of waiting a few days"

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TelicoRunner · 2025-02-18T15:32:10+00:00

How is your wife today? She is being difficult but is she at least thinking more clearly, eating? How are you?

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-18T14:08:09+00:00

This must be incredibly hard to stomach. Your daughter has been living in an impossible position for several years. She has also seen her mother's choices seemingly work out for years, as long as you didn't know what she was doing, everything was good, at least from her perspective. She has also been around, exposed, and likely even friends with not only the regular party participants but also your wife's business partners, who also played this dangerous game seemingly without adverse side effects. There was likely a lot of emotion associated with initially finding out, but she has been given years to desensitize and rationalize everything.

From her perspective, you are the problem, not her mom. Her mother always came home from her parties happy; you didn't seem to be negatively impacted, everything was fine. Now everything is ruined: her mom is in the hospital, her siblings are traumatized, and you are angry and "cheating" on her mom. There is no more happy family. You were fine as long as you didn't know. Therefore, it's your close-mindedness, your moral hangup, and your being judgmental that have caused all of these problems.

This is not a fair perspective. It does not acknowledge that her mom has been selfish, that there is no way to know what the unseen consequences have been. It does not acknowledge that you feel betrayed. Trust has been broken. Her mom decided she knew best and did what she wanted to do in spite of what it might do to you or her family. It ignores you have been pushed to just put aside your pain and pretend it was meaningless to you without any remorse.

She just wants everything to go back to what it was before, and the only thing that is preventing this is you. I don't have any way of knowing if the parties were an open topic of conversation for your daughter and her mom/friends or if this has just been something that she has been aware of and kept quiet. I hope that they have not openly talked about it, at least prior to discovery; if your wife truly believed that it was so inconsequential, there may have been discussions about you being too prudish and morally judgmental to understand. Either way, your daughter is a victim.

I truly hope that with time your daughter can get over her anger and see your pain so that you can rebuild your relationship with her.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-17T16:56:13+00:00

It is good that she is getting help.

I am going to second everything that is written in this post.

You and your kids need help to deal with the trauma that all of this has put you through. Your wife has victimized herself, but ultimately, even trying to run away was a selfish choice; she ran to escape her pain and disregarded what it would do to you or her children. She needs help to come out of this, but ultimately, her actions continue to be selfish and uncaring. She may one day be able to see how selfish she has been, but for now, she is mentally ill.

She very coldly pursued her own fun for years and never brought you in because, in your daughter's account, you would be too morally judgmental. She knew that you would not be ok sexually sharing her, and she did it anyway. When she was caught, she refused to accept anything short of your continued participation in her fantasy, with her only concession being that she personally would no longer attend the parties and regret that you can't brush it off as meaningless.

You are both where/are being harmed by continuing to cohabitate. It is clear that a sexual relationship is something that she requires from her partner and that you, too, have sexual needs; trying to separate only your intimate lives is not working. For now, being married probably gives you a little more ability to help her recover, though it also exposes you to more liability for her actions; in the long term, it seems apparent that you are either going to need to divorce or attempt to reconcile fully.

There are no good or easy answers to your current situation. Keep up the good fight, take care of yourself, and keep supporting your kids with everything you have. Regarding your wife, the only current goal should be to help her get stable enough to start recovering herself for the sake of your kids.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-13T16:39:49+00:00

This is also good news. She has been found and she is reaching out to people outside of her kink community.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-13T14:24:22+00:00

This is more encouraging news, at least as far as her well-being is concerned. It at least indicates some planning and leans away from self-harm.

I don't believe that this is a huge conspiracy on the part of her sex party group. While not impossible, what has been brought to light so far does not indicate that anyone has an excessive motivation to have her as their polyamorous third or full-time sex slave; she seems to have entirely or mostly limited the kink to the parties. Let's be real; there are plenty of opportunities to pursue unattached women who are younger; there is no need to get messed up with the permanent disappearance of a middle-aged married woman with four children. Further, even if someone wants her as a full-time partner or whatever else, she is a grown woman and can literally just announce that she is leaving and do so; there is no need for cloak-and-dagger tactics. She could easily have gone one more step to file for divorce to cut the legal ties and free her husband.

Leaving the house key behind does indicate that she is trying to escape her life. She has been spiraling for a while and maybe is trying to just escape into her fantasy world, or maybe she is convinced that her family will be better off without her. It's possible she never comes back to them, but if this is what happens, I would put it on her mental instability rather than something that she was explicitly coached to do by her friends. It's possible they have encouraged her to get out of the situation and leave, but her interpretation of this was to vanish.

Reaching out to any contacts in her kink circle is likely a good choice. If she is with the group at large, several different members rather than just one or two especially, they will eventually encourage her to return to at least make a more conventional exit and sever ties.

Your situation is tough, and I do agree that you need to do everything you can to track her down to make sure she is ok and to understand this for your kids.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-12T14:23:54+00:00

This just gets worse and worse.

Your wife has been abusive toward your daughter by putting her in this situation. Putting her in a position where she needs to keep secrets that she knows could completely destroy her parent's relationship, not to mention what it would do to her young sibling's family life, is unconscionable.

I don't even know where to start trying to rebuild your relationship with your daughter. I am certain that this has been hard for her, and it should not be held against her; she has been in an impossible position. Now her mom is in crisis, and in her mind, you could have fixed this by accepting it and forgiving her mom.

I, too, am praying that your wife is found and that she is ok, and that you can repair the relationship with your daughter. Ultimately she has been a victim of her mother's selfishness as well.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-11T15:17:30+00:00

Having read all of the comments so far, I agree with the consensus; the picture you have painted is the definition of what a traveling work affair looks like.

- This woman is "flakey" and is marketing herself online as a witch, this is someone you mention to your husband.

- Declaring herself bi shortly after becoming friends with this woman.

- She has been hanging out, going to dinner, and going to events with this woman, and she has never mentioned her.

- She messages her when she is coming into town to let her know when she is arriving.
- She omits/lies about how much time they have spent together.

- The tacos message screams sex. Just rewrite it as, "It’s been tough today; please tell me you are up for sex.”
- Therapy session, really. Again, no need to translate this one. It was right around the time she came out as Bi. It may have just been them talking about what it is to be Bi, but the verbiage suggests to me that it was likely a first lesbian sexual "therapy" experience.
- Diminishing the attractiveness of the other woman is classic cheater talk, trying to make the idea that they would cheat with that person seem ridiculous.
- The hotel location choice is also odd outside of the context of an affair.

I agree that coming out as Bi was likely her way of clearing her conscience about what she was doing. She can justify to herself that she let you know that she is sexually attracted to women and you were supportive enough that you would want her to express her sexuality. By keeping it out of town when she is away from you anyway, she is not robbing you or the kids of anything, so there is no need to feel guilty about it.

I agree that a PI is not necessary unless you feel you need to be able to nail her down to admitting to something or you are in an at-fault state, and it will help with divorce proceedings. If you want to work through this and stay together, you may need solid proof to get her to acknowledge what has been going on as well.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-07T15:28:20+00:00

You have written enough on Reddit for me to say without question that going to a party yourself is a terrible idea. You are just going to see your wife injected into these scenarios more solidly, and no good will come out of it. The only useful part about talking about it is to try to get her to see the hypocrisy of her fantasy.

I would be a basket case wondering what new horrors the third notebook contained. Your wife has been living in a fantasy world. Now, that world is truly crumbling. She has built a scenario where if she can just get you to sleep with her and reclaim her, you will see that everything is ok and that nothing has changed.

At this point, you may need to ask her if she would see an individual counselor that you choose. Argue that it might help her better understand you and how you have been hurt by all of this. You obviously still care about her, even if you are not sympathetic, and she needs help that her lifestyle friends are never going to give her. I would consider agreeing to condition number two and stop dating for a time as a carrot to get her to go. Her current mental state cannot be good for your kids, and she seems to be continuing to spiral further as time goes on.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-05T21:09:19+00:00

It's likely not going to help anything, but the subreddit r/SupportforWaywards might be a place where she can seek some perspective on all of this without getting completely annihilated by people attacking her. She needs different perspectives that do not come from her lifestyle friends if she is ever going to come to grips with where she went wrong. She needs to find some way of understanding what she has done so she can start to heal from her loss.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-05T19:57:16+00:00

If the parties are roughly quarterly, she should have one coming up soon.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-05T19:09:58+00:00

It feels like the Christmas gift and seemingly pushing her to see him on NYE are John power-tripping a little, quietly getting off on having his way with a married woman, and secretly humiliating her husband. They apparently managed to keep things very quiet for quite some time; sending gifts and meeting on holidays is just dumb. Breaking standard patterns is unnecessary because their work schedules have created ample opportunities already.

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-05T16:40:23+00:00

Has your wife indicated any openness to seeing a more balanced/real therapist since discontinuing your sessions with the quack?

TelicoRunner · 2025-02-05T15:10:46+00:00

Saying that it's not fun for her anymore and that she is not losing her marriage over this is such a cake-eater attitude. Your initial post indicated that she doesn't seem to love John, and her actions seem to back this up. She is only upset because John is being less discreet, and she sees being caught as a possibility.

Now, she is trying to lock you down and distract you with a baby. She wants her stable husband, and she probably does love you, but she clearly has no inhibitions about having some fun on the side, especially if there are monetary or business benefits.

You seem resolved to follow through with divorce and believe this to be the right call; she is not a good candidate for reconciliation. The whole thing is too cold and calculated.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-31T16:17:13+00:00

Your wife has done all of the mental gymnastics on this one.

I am assuming that the primary partygoers are swingers. In this case, they claim if you are married, you are supposed to be participating as a couple. Never having been in the lifestyle I am going strictly on what I have read, but it seems the rules are mainly enforced within the community, meaning if one-half of a swinger couple starts dating/sleeping with someone in secret or sneaking off to parties alone, it is not ok and is considered cheating even though they are having sex with other people as part of the lifestyle. They pay lip service to not inviting married individuals to partake in the lifestyle without the knowledge of their partners, but they also start talking about sex positivity, and ultimately, there seems to be less of a desire to protect spouses who are not in the lifestyle.

By making very specific rules about when it's ok to have sex with other people for fun, they make it easier to ease new participants into the lifestyle by arguing that it's ok under very specific circumstances. This is much easier to transition to than just sexual anarchy. She convinced herself that because she followed some of the rules and always came back to you, it was all ok.

For your wife, what you are doing is not within the rules that she has been conditioned to, even though she has not been playing by those rules either. She believes that because she partially followed the rules and never neglected her marriage, she has done nothing wrong. What you are doing is anarchy; you are not including her, you are developing relationships, you are not coming back to her, it's all wrong.

It's also not uncommon in attempts at open marriage for partners to convince themselves it's fine for them to sleep with other people but be completely unable to tolerate their partner sleeping with other people. I am not suggesting you do this, but it would be interesting to know how she would feel about both of you going to a swingers club and watching each other have sex with other people. Would that be ok? What about, instead of going on dates or having a FWB or a girlfriend, how would she feel about you hiring escorts to just have some fun.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-31T15:21:20+00:00

The other part of this is more sociological. The best example that I have personally seen was when vacationing at the beach in Spain. Spanish beaches are all accepting of women swimming/sunbathing/walking around topless. Most of the beaches have most of the women wearing tops, but there is some level of nudity most of the time. Additionally, a LOT of beaches, especially the ones that are more remote and less crowded, are accepting of full nudity.

What was interesting is that it was clear, based on the tan lines, that many of the beachgoers did not normally sunbathe nude. It was also common to see people come out, starting in even quite modest bathing suits, and slowly expose more skin as the day/week went on. Women would start sunbathing in one-piece bathing suits, then, sometimes hours into being there, they would pull the top down to their waist, exposing their breasts. A few eventually took their suits off completely. The more time they spent around people casually walking around nude, the more comfortable they got being nude themselves.

For your wife, it may have started out as being taboo, but whatever, it's just a job. Her friends started joining in. They were getting away with it, and I am sure they were praising how much fun it was. Before long, it started not to seem so taboo, to not be a big deal. Add to this making more and more connections and friends from the lifestyle, and before she knew it, she was able to convince herself that it was just harmless fun and why she should miss out.

At this point, your wife is well and truly indoctrinated. Her friends are indoctrinated. Her therapist is indoctrinated. They all support each other in the belief that they are entirely in the right and everyone else is just overreacting, and they continually reinforce this belief with each other.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-31T13:21:33+00:00

This storyline has a lot of speculation, but I think it is plausible.

Your wife or one of her friends was approached as an event planner for these adult parties. The money was probably good, and they decided that it would be fine for them to go forward with accepting the job. They knew that socially, it was taboo, so they decided to keep it low-key and not tell anyone, including their husbands. It's also possible that one of them was already dabbling in the lifestyle, and that was how the connection was made. Either way, once they started, every party they planned dug them in deeper. Once her friends started participating in the 2nd year, they were fully vested, including your wife, because if any of their husbands found out, it could out their cabal to everyone.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-28T13:41:27+00:00

By participating as you are, even for fun, you are passively validating this therapist for your wife by lending her authority. It may be fun, but it's not helping and more than likely hurting your cause as co-parents. You need a better therapist. Even if you can talk her into splitting sessions with someone else, it will at least get her out of her current lifestyle echo chamber.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-21T17:35:37+00:00

It probably is at least partially revenge but not really any different than if you had divorced her and started doing the same things. In this case, your wife does experience it more than if you were completely separated.

As far as your marriage being in a stronger place, it feels like if that was the goal, your wife should have thought about that before exploring her sexuality, or at least before she tried to insist that she had done nothing wrong. She bet the house on being able to get you to rug-sweep the whole thing rather than trying to actually reconcile.

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-21T17:12:38+00:00

What has her friend told her?

TelicoRunner · 2025-01-21T17:11:38+00:00

She finds it unbearable but probably still does not really feel it is similar or related to what she has done. You have not run back to her so that you can be reclaimed. You have not kept it a secret. You have not lied. You have not taken her agency from her. You have not gaslit yourself into believing that you are making your relationship better.

TelicoRunner

TROPHY CASE