It is mindf-cking you completely.  It starts out simple enough and maybe with just them saying it with conviction so you believe them or risk an argument.  Then they keep going until it essentially is memory manipulation.  It also opens you up for projecting, as you don't know what to believe anymore in the later stages.

For me, it was surrounding her seeming to always text a woman friend.  At first, when I questioned her she said just an online follower to her blog.  If I argued that I think it was the same person she kept texting yesterday, she'd deny it and pick an argument with me over something else.  

Hi Olebeecharmer,

I think it's good that you found this site helpful and you should feel welcome here.  I agree with vicky that you and your husband should try to figure out what each of you want and how you see your future independent of each other.  By that I mean, each of you should think what do you each want in a relationship with another person and how important each of those things are to you.  Finding your current authentic selves so to speak and then seeing if your authentic selves can mesh or not to help you decide if it might be time to move your separate ways or not.  You both definitely deserve to be happy in your lives and relationship and I wish you the best of luck.

Just don't be close-minded about your family situation.  I've known families where the couple separated and divorced, and when the kid started having trouble in school, they adjusted by getting an adjacent house so that one parent and their new spouse lived in the one house and the other parent lived in the adjacent house so that they made a close coparenting situation and the kid freely went from house to house with both parents. With open and honest communication and the will power to realize what you want, a lot of things can be possible.

I'm a new member to Straight Spouse though I have been a straight spouse for a few years now.  It took me a while to find my way here, and it's nice to see so many people who I can relate to and feel like I'm not alone.  I just want to write out my story as it's been stewing inside me for a while and sometimes it feels like it will explode.  Thank you for your patience and I wish everyone the best.

The whole story goes back 19 years ago when I first met her, but everything she claims she told me is blurry.  It feels like my memories are not sure what actually happened and what didn't.  It's a haze.  We met in college, she came to the university with her green card as she pursued her graduate degree and I was a senior about to graduate.  The beginning was a little rocky as she turned me down two times when I asked her out, but by the third time, she relented and we began our relationship - a roller coaster I would later come to wish to have never happen at all.

Three years later, we start a long distance relationship as I get a job in a different city and she has to stay to finish her PhD.  When she graduates after two years of this LDR, we decide to get married and she finds a position that is in the same city.  Things seem to go well and we are blessed with our first and only child.  After our child is born, our activity in the bedroom wanes to extremes until it was no longer a dry spell but a drought bordering on a state of emergency.  I had heard that sexual interest wanes in marriage as comedians always joke how no one who is married does it, so I assumed maybe this is normal.  Eventually after one of her rejections, I decided I had enough and began masturbating again.  Long ago, I decided I would not cheat in a relationship and I would not enable someone else to cheat in a relationship, still having some amount of sex drive, I sought to find a compromise through masturbation.  As a couple, we worked well together as we considered each other bes