@ tessalonia I feel like you and I have gone through an extremely similar experience. I have kids, I have a happy life, I love my wife, and I have always been 100% faithful. My wife has experienced the pain of her father's infidelity negatively impacting her family life growing up, and she has always had serious trust issues. When she accused me of cheating I was supportive at first, but eventually I became frustrated and indignant about her disgusting allegations. During a particularly bad fight I looked up a polygraph company and booked it on the spot for the very next day. Side note: Please remember that most people are unaware of the fallibility of these tests if they have no previous exposure to them. If you are reading this, you are not "most people." Obviously I would never have suggested this had I known what I know now. Please do not call me stupid, and don't you dare call tessalonia stupid. We are at worst, victims of being too naive, and overly trusting of what appears to be a legitimate procedure. I can personally attest that anyone going through this, is going through hell. Turning your back on them while they are looking for support is cruel. The next day felt exactly like tessalonia described it. I was happy, confident, and relieved that we finally came up with a way to shut down these accusations once and for all. My Wife was happy too and was already starting to apologize for what she too expected to be a test that exonerated me from any wrongdoing. I am sick to my stomach just thinking about that moment when we got the results. It was the single worst moment of my life. I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone. I screamed and cried and begged my wife to believe me, but she turned on me so hard. My soul mate, the one person I truly let all the way into my heart was tearing me apart from the inside with her words, and even got to the point of becoming physically abusive towards me. But the worst part of it all was that I was literally witnessing the person I love more than anything having to experience the pain of being cheated on. I promised I would never let her feel that pain for the rest of her life. While I've always remained vigilantly faithful, somehow I had failed this horrible test, and by doing so I had effectively broken my promise to her. After months of therapy, and a meticulous reconstruction of my activities and whereabouts for the times in question (from text records, call records, and GPS tags on photos) she has finally come around to start trusting me again. I also had to say that the way the test was conducted made me nervous, and that explains the false positive. That is true of course, but she still is holding on hope that a slight variation of the test would rule out this issue, allowing me to pass the polygraph test after all. When she brings it up I get uncomfortable to a level that I can only describe as PTSD. I have tried to delicately explain this to her but it, "just sounds like something a guilty person would say." While that may be true, it completely undermines my particular situation. The bottom line is that whenever she has a nervous feeling about me cheating, or ever having cheated in the past for that matter, this horrible polygraph test experience comes up. If I tell her how much her accusations hurt me, she points to the Polygraph Test, "Can you blame me for being suspicious now?" When I try to talk about how traumatic that experience was, and how much it hurts for her to even bring it up, she talks about how much she was hurt by the experience too. Either way you look at it, it's all my fault, and she is slowly but surely painting me into a box where the only "escape" would be submitting to another polygraph test. To tessalonia: You are not crazy and you are not stupid. I am sorry you are going through this, and I hope that things have gotten better since your post in June. If you ever see this please know that you are not alone. The polygraph test ruins people's lives, and it's about time more people hear our stories, and stop putting their faith in these horrible inaccurate tests. Hang in there.
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