wifes history

Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist or that it isn't right for those who do believe it just as strongly as you don't.....& it is an important issue because along with the lie of omission of information which doesn't make sense between the 2 posts either.....one, she doesn't have any memory of what happened & the next, she's texting all about it in a 3 way text message.......it's also the wife that I am questioning in all of this also....not just CG IMO.

I feel that this post is excessive, since I already mentioned, in detail, that there is a valid issue of intentional omission of information which I acknowledge, for one, and that I did not want to discuss the FMM issue PER SE (outside of the fact of intentional misrepresentation) because to me people who do not differentiate between:

1) acts that victimize innocent people - be they infants or not

2) acts that do not victimize innocent people

lack the critical ability to tell right from wrong.

And, interestingly enough,

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are "good" (or right) and those that are "bad" (or wrong).

I can see why his morals/views on sex are important to him - and yes, there are many of people who think the same, especially in religions. But whereas I think that his wife lying is bad, (and I understand the pain) but I also think that his morals he decided some years back and set in stone are causing him pain too. This is his doing. When does one persons morals/views on sex become more important than the last 14 (happy) years? To find out that someone doesn't share them after all is sad and disappointing but does it have to be unforgivable and such a source of pain? Especially when 14 years of happy marriage proves that her different views on sex did not cause any harm - surely that should be speaking a thousand words? Be angry for her for the lies, but not for having different morals.

Maybe GG has mentioned morals, in whatever sense of the word, throughout the thread, but per the opening line of the OP, the issue was pure commonality:

That was search for commonality and not morals. To the extent that having lived happily otherwise for 14 years has proven the presence of ample commonality beyond any reasonable doubt, there is no point in going back in time. Clearly, 14 years of living together provide more data about commonality than one incidence of an FMM. I mean, the FMM part probably took a couple of hours total - and that is outweighing ... 14 years together?..

So that brings us back to the sole issue of misrepresentation.

OP if you are unable to forgive her for a lie 14 years ago.

You are angry , I'm assuming your wife is feeling terrible.

Just get Divorced , Go and find a woman that fits you specific rules about her sexual history .

Now let us talk about GG's wonderful and much celebrated "moral values".

When I was a child, I received a very firm grounding in secular morality that did not hinge on technicalities but reflected core human values.

One of the top moral values in that ethical system was that a man should RESPECT, CHERISH, and APPRECIATE the mother of his children.

This is not a technicality and it is not a relative issue. While reasonable people may differ in their stance on threesomes, reasonable people may not differ with respect to whether GG should respect his wife as the mother of his children. (Unfortunately, I did not live my own life according to that and allowed my ex H to call me an egg donor, but now that I have spent a lot of time re-evaluating my values, I realize that I was wrong).

So if there were no children in the marriage, GG's position would have been at least to some extent understandable.

To the extent that GG's wife gave him the children whom he values, she already paid for any misrepresentation that resulted in the marriage and, subsequently, the birth of the children.

Gender equality is fine until there are children. There is no gender equality once there are children involved, because men get their children for free, unless a pleasurable intercourse culminating in an ejaculation counts as hard work, and last time I checked, it didn't; women do not get their children for free; women "in pain ... shall bring forth children". It is a biological reality and will be so until medical technology evolves enough to alter it.

Since GG cannot undo the children, he cannot really do what he has been doing on this thread so far, which has been reveling in his self-righteousness. You cannot at the same time benefit from the birthing pain of your wife (he is happy he has his children as per the post I attached later, so he has benefitted from her birthing pain, morning sickness, stretch marks, diaper changes unless he did 100% of them, and all the rest of that).

A man for whom the sexual history of his wife prior to the marriage is more important than the fact that she ALREADY bore children to him is, in my book, IMMORAL - but again, I was taught morals that were not based on technicalities but were based on core human values.

PS

And, the way GG named his thread - "wife's history" - seems to have been intentional as it conceals the nature of the issue.

Imagine the thread named "History of the mother of my wonderful two children whom I love and cherish".

I am sure people would have reacted even more strongly than they did, trying to show GG the wrongness of his ways.

In other words, the way GG titled the thread, omitting what he omitted, constituted an intentional misrepresentation aimed at eliciting support for him from readers that he did not deserve.

Does not he accuse her of... an intentional misrepresentation aimed at eliciting his affection back then?..

Interesting, huh?

Perhaps it is because I am under-evolved, but I cannot believe that the same person can be making two statements that are polar opposites at the same time.

This was posted on 5/28.

I have never seen anything like this on here and with my post count shooting past 10K right now, I ***have*** read a lot of stories. But, nothing quite like this one...

That`s the trouble when you really love someone, you tend to think they are the exception, you know they have a past and part of you wants to know and part of you doesn`t. Better to concentrate on the here and now.I totally trusted someone and thought she would never "betray" me, I actually thought she was "different" but she turned out to be "just like all the rest". I wish I could stop using cliches.:} But generally people don`t/can`t live up to one`s expectations, one just has to accept that no-one is perfect.

Ok here's my input.
You love her, right? I mean, you fell in love with HER not her sexual history. Love isn't so easy to find. Let's say she told you about this 14 years ago (after you had already fallen in love with her) You would have walked away, correct? But why? Because of sexual experiences she's had? That doesn't sound very fair to me. A person's being is a lot more than their sexual orientation, or activity. If you loved her before you found out about this, you should love her now. So she experimented before she knew you, so what? You say that it makes you feel sick that she did that "with and for" another man...but why? At that point, you weren't even on her radar, neither of you knew the other existed, so she didn't wrong you.
I'm sorry that you're hurt that she didn't tell you, but as another poster said... "she wouldn't have had a snowballs chance in hell" with you if she had come clean about that...and if it's "true love" she did you a favor...just think of all you would have missed out on! (14 plus years of marriage)

Double post

I thought more about it. So in the ethics system that was taught to me, primarily by my late maternal grandmother, men who were TRUE men were supposed to be magnanimous. That would include being forgiving.

So a magnanimous man who finds out that the mother of his children whom he loves and cherishes had a one-time threesome experience before meeting him and concealed that experience in order to marry him would say the following to her:

"I feel blessed to the point of wanting to cry. I know that I would have turned you down had you told me about the threesome back then, and you and I would not have gotten married and you and I would never have had the children we did have... It was clearly a small miracle and an act of God's grace that you realized that you needed to conceal the threesome experience from me, because back then I would not have had the wisdom to see your true self if faced with the fact of a threesome, and now I do have the wisdom. It makes me shiver from fear to realize that it was such a close shave and I could have lost you and our two children would have never been born had you not had concealed the fact of the threesome from me."

So he would say that, kiss the wife, and continue living a happy life with her.

So instead GG focuses on being misled into the marriage. This is extremely petty and almost litiguous -- all those conversations about being tricked into marriage are quasi-litiguous.

While it is not a deadly sin to be petty and litiguous, the qualities of being petty and litiguous are unappealing to the point of being a turnoff for many people, I am sure.

So to sum up, GG, I invite you to view your wife's "lying" to you back then as a true moment of serendipity.

Sorry for the confusion. the 2 posts are about 2 different topics in my marriage right now. One is about her past rape. One is about her chosen sex life and the lying to me prior to marriage.

Not very interesting actually. just started on here and thought I was just giving a brief description of the topic I was about to post. Did not think for a minute that I was trying to hide anything. Sorry you think that. Next time I will begin the post with a description of the love I have for my wife, then post about the topic as I see it. It will be hard for me to post a title as you feel it should be written.

((((CG)))) I hope you will find a really good therapist to talk to regarding the issues surrounding:
(A) feeling tricked/deceived into your marriage; as well as (B) the incredible difference in tone and pov between your two separate threads (one sounded fairly flexible, sugary sweet, pollyana'ish and the other very angry, entitled and judgmental).

I dont mean to sound harsh but please reflect on those two strikingly different personas that you are displaying (if that IS you writing in both threads). I would hate to be uour wife on the other end of having to deal with the two polar opposites.

Best wishes to you and your family.

OK, got it, so it was not an intentional concealment, but more of a Freudian slip kind of thing, which is still meaningful.

Right, Rose. GG: the STRIKING difference was more in TONE than in facts presented.

I have great sympathy for the thread involving her rape.

In the second thread I have anger for being deceived, lied to etc..

Not sure how you see it as an issue for me to display different emotions for 2 very different issues.

2 different threads. One is involving her rape. so I am very compassionate and have great sympathy.

The other involves her having voluntary sex with 2 people at the same time and lying to me about it and me being upset about that.

Not sure, as I am new to this forum. I guess I should have posted them in different places.

I am curious with all your advice on how a husband is supposed to treat a wife. How long have you been married?
And we are not religious, so I appreciate you trying to help but anything involving god is of no use to me, personally.

This sounds more like a self-confidence issue on your part, CG. I agree she should have been open about her past activities, especially knowing how you feel about sexuality to begin with. This is apparently a sore subject for you and she should have seen that and been open from the start. If you were more comfortable with yourself, she would not have needed to divulge such info as it would have been a non-issue. Right now, she needs to deal with her rape trauma so she does not feel like 'damaged goods' as so many of us rape victims have a tendency to do. Dealing with your hurt feelings over being deceived over a sexual experimentation from over 14 years ago does nothing to help her heal either. Remember, her past is hers not yours. I hope you both get the help you need.

I am not married now - I am in the process of a divorce and am glad I am.

I speak of god in symbolic terms as I am an atheist to the core. Many people who are atheists are still able to talk about serendipity. There is a metaphoric and symbolic meaning to it, and metaphors are accessible to everybody, regardless of the religion or no religion. We would not be humans who have acquired at least one language without metaphors - it is one of the most important things that separate us from animals. A sense of humor is another key thing that separates us from animals, and, unfortunately, right now you seem to be lacking that to an extreme degree.

A husband is supposed to not be petty when the mother of his children is concerned. To focus on the threesome and the deceit the way you have been doing is extremely petty. Pettiness is an unappealing personal quality, so it would make sense for you to work on overcoming pettiness regardless of whether you stay with or divorce your wife now, since should you, say, divorce her and look for another woman, your pettiness would make you a far less attractive candidate. Also, pettiness causes unhappiness to the petty person himself, and therefore you should address pettiness to be happier in life and to be a better partner.

On a more practical note: since you do have that petty, litigious streak in you, maybe you can shift focus away from the mother of your children onto somebody with whom you have more formal relationships. Say, evaluate any contract you have ever signed, evaluate whether the other party to contracts was fully disclosing, take it up with them if they were not fully disclosing, etc. In other words, redirect the energy into a different channel.

Finally, you need to realize that by judging your wife (this thread) and asking her to open up (the other thread), you are placing diverging expectations on her, so it would be difficult - no, NOT difficult, but IMPOSSIBLE for her to meet them at the same time. Just think it through carefully and you will see it for what it is.

Back to threesomes mentioned in media. Kate Perry sings of kissing a girl, so, a checkmark for same sex attraction, but where do you see ubiquitous mentions of threesomes? Maybe if you can list a few sources, we can double check and give you feedback on your degree of touch with reality.

The difference in tone is incredibly different. It is as if you are compartmentalizing your feelings and writing as two totally separate entities.

The anger, judgment and self-rightgeousness is astounding in comparison to the (supposed) compassion.

I do hope you will seek therapy to help you work this out for yourself. Basically what I am getting is "my poor wife was raped.how sad. On the other hand, I am extremely disgusted with her for tricking me into marrying her because I cannot trust her, am better than her and would never stoop so low to be with someone like THAT"

It is super confusing and again like two different people wrote the comments in each area.

To the question of tenure in marriage: the primary source of my ethical foundation that looks to the essence of things and not technicalities was my maternal grandmother who was married to the same man (the father of her two daughters) for about 60 years, from the time when he was 21 and she was 19 and they got married (without formally registering the marriage - they did register the marriage only after having the second daughter, many years later, and, the fact that they did not register the marriage illustrates the difference between the essence of things and the formal side of things, once again) and till he died, first, at age 80 (she survived and died at 94).

So the ethical foundation that I received from her has the benefit of being highly extensible. For instance, she, I am sure, did not know anything about threesomes or other less common sexual practices, and yet, the ethical foundation I received from her allows me to see that you are being in the moral wrong when you fail to rank the fact that your wife is (per you) a good mother to your children above the history with a threesome, and, even the lie that led to the marriage.

Extensibility is an enormously important feature that ethical systems should possess, because it is impossible to predict every possible scenario that life would throw at you. With your narrow and rigid system, you will be forever mired in technicalities and unable to rise above the level of detail and see the big picture. Also, I suspect that you did not grasp the fact that I was not religious and was using terms such as "serendipity" in their metaphoric/symbolic sense as another manifestation of the rigidity of your thought process (I do not mean it in a negative sense but just as an observation) - your thought process is too concrete and you are unable to grasp abstract notions. I would engage an individual therapist to explore those issues with thinking, as well as the issue with seeing mentions of threesomes broadly in popular media because the issue of seeing mentions of threesomes everywhere in popular media signals potential troubles with your individual thinking process, so it is not an issue for couples therapy.

Finally, the enormous amount of compartmentalizing that Rose noticed, above, is also highly unusual - most people would be able to see that it is impossible to expect your wife to open up and express her needs and the whole host of good things that you hope her to develop on your other thread AND hold her accountable for lying over a decade ago. You are unable to see it, and it is not some sort of an accidental omission - you continue to believe that it is possible and reiterate that your compartmentalization makes a whole lot of logical sense in your mind. This is, again, rigid and totally lacks normal intuition - most people would be able to avoid this sort of extreme compartmentalization simply by applying intuition, without much cognitive analysis.

All of it is not by way of criticizing you - I am just pointing out that your thought process is rigid and highly unusual, and individual therapy would be recommended to you for that reason.