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She thinks I'm stupid and she is playing me.

If this is what you truly believe, then do not stay with her. Get a D for your own sanity. Your gut seems to be saying she'd rather win the argument or present herself in a certain light for her own self-preservation than be authentic and vulnerable with you. If that FEELS true to you, then get a D. Because fighting and digging for truth is not the way to R.

You have to trust your gut in life. And your gut seems to be saying that she is unwilling to be vulnerable so can't be trusted. Ok then. THAT is your truth. Listen to it and live accordingly. Respect yourself and that you know what you want and need in a relationship, and this isn't it.

Absolutely, very very very different in my opinion. Love you or Love ya isn't at all the same thing or even the same connotation as I love you. I even asked my partner about it to double check with a guy's point of few and he said they seem to have different levels of seriousness

I say "Love ya" and "I love you" to my wife and she says the same to me and I am a male. The is no question how that should be taken.
Maybe if it were a lifelong friend, then I can see somewhat of a distinction but to an affair partner? I would call complete Bulls*** on that. Thats an intimate relationship she was in and a great many are EA as well as PA....so yeah, I wouldn't take that at face value from her.
I dont know your wife but I'd say she's lying to you, still.

She keeps saying I didn't say "I love you" she says she just said "you too" when he said "love you". She seems to think, because she didn't say "I love you" or "love you too" then she didn't say it back. But she said "you too" that is agreeing and saying she does too

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I knew my WH meant it when he said he’d willing to work on our marriage and himself when he stop saying shit like this and minimising his actions.

Your WW is still minimising her actions and these kind of statements are a form of gaslighting, trying to convince you that what you know to be true is actually false just because of semantics. She did say it back, she said "you too". If she truly meant it, if she truly did believe she loved him, that’s another thing, but to actually claim she didn’t REALLY say it back because she didn’t say "I love you too" is gaslighting.

You keep saying you aren’t getting your answers but you are, you know the answers and your instincts are telling you what the truth is, I think what you’re actually struggling with is the fact that your WW keeps minimising and won’t admit to it.

You see most of us are capable to imagine what happened during our spouses’ affairs. For example once my WH came through the door telling me he fell in love with another woman and that he loves us both, on Dday, it wasn’t hard for me to realise that giving her up immediately was a lie and his feelings would not disappear overnight. As of day 1 post dday my WH kept trying to convince me that his love for OW disappeared the moment I confronted him and he felt nothing for her anymore. Literally the next morning. I knew this isn’t true. It couldn’t be true, at least not for the man I knew as I husband (I was right by the way, he was lying). We kept having the same repetitive conversations, just like you and your WW are, because my brain could not accept what was an obvious lie. He would then get frustrated that I asked the same question every few hours…

This cycle only stopped in our case when he realised that the only way to move forward for us was either complete honesty, admitting to the most disgusting and terrible things, or divorce. Circling around the same subjects on and on because I knew his answers were minimising his actions and portraying a whole different story than the reality was exhausting for both of us. During those early days I kept a diary where I wrote what I believed to be the truth and once he truly came clean it matched my diary to the letter.

I knew I needed to witness him admitting his horrible actions, owning up to how bad this was, in order for me to feel safe to continue being married to him. I couldn’t feel safe next to someone who believed their actions aren’t "that bad" due to semantics. (And believe me, I also had conversations about semantics).

The reality is that once you see them willing to admit and own their horrible actions, semantics don’t really seem to matter. As an example OW told me that WH told her he wished she was at the hospital with him when his brother had a heart attack. I was there, at the hospital and literally took care of everyone whilst waiting to find out if BIL was still alive. That evening WH cried in my lap telling me he doesn’t know how he would have managed that horrible day without me. And then a month later ow tells me he stated he wished she was there.

His explaintion was this: he told her about the heart attack and she said "I bet you wished I was there" and he said "yes". He then said to me (paraphrasing) "regardless, I know why I did that, I told her what she wanted to hear, but it is really disrespectful to you and all you have done that day for my family whilst my brother could have died and there is no excuse for it".

Whilst all this hurts in the moment and for months/years to come, it is way easier to process pain when you know the aggressor owns up to it, rather than having to constantly convince them that saying "yes" in my example, and "you too" in your example is the same as saying the actual words (bear in mind that both you and I are actually processing something that may not be the truth in the first place, for all I know my WH may have actually said that he wished ow was there first and your WW may have actually said ILY 20 times a day).

Bottom line, I don’t think you’ll find peace with a WS that keeps arguing about semantics rather than owning her actions.

[This message edited by Luna10 at 1:27 PM, Sunday, November 27th]

Bottom line, I don’t think you’ll find peace with a WS that keeps arguing about semantics rather than owning her actions.

This is spot on.

I agree with Luna10, it wasn’t until my W was ready to dive deep into the how’s and whys that she was ready to own her shitty behavior.

Affairs are built on lies, those she told you and those she told the AP. When my W decided she wanted to save the M I required full transparency. As we went over and over the things that didn’t add up I could see how the fog lifted and she started seeing how disgusting the A was. She started seeing how she was used and lied to also. This is when she let her guard down and realized she was not going to bluff her way through R she was either in or out. Your W still thinks she can bluff her way through it.

I think the, "You too", comment does need further explanation. Hear me out . ..

My guess is that she at one time or another, possibly during the A, she has responded to your I love you with you too?

In your mind you always thought that meant she loves you too. Well, now that she said that it doesn't mean, "I love you," in the context of her A.

So that also means whenever it was said to you it did not mean what you've assumed it meant all along. That realization is painful.

Your wife is saying that isn't the case, but she can't have it both ways can she?

Further these in consistencies make it difficult to trust the words coming out of her mouth.

You are hurt because a good portion of the I love yous (or variations thereof) said to you over your relationship really don't mean what you've always thought they did.

Again, your wife can't have this both ways. You don't think your wife loves you because she has painted herself into a corner by minimizing her actions.

She needs to work on remorse. Rather that own up to what was said, she tries to get off on a technicality. That is not remorse and is counter intuitive to her goal of R. OR she really doesn't want R or to heal anything. Some part of her still blames you for her choices.

You've given it a good try, but you can't R with a WS that still minimizes their hurtful actions and tries to get you to accept their, "not so bad," reality.

I don't see anything changing unless your W begins to honestly own her choices without any technicalities that attempt to minimize the hurt she choose to bring into your life.

I commend you for trying, but unless she finds remorse your limbo will continue.

[This message edited by numb&dumb at 4:21 PM, Monday, November 28th]

If we are not talking in the context of a cheater saying these things, sure, "I love you" is likely not said to friends with with whom you say a more casual "love you". But we are talking about cheaters here, so the whole debate seems moot.

A cheater who, while cheating, tells their betrayed spouse "I love you", makes "I love you" no more special than the common, ambiguous, "love you". I don't think there is much difference. Cheaters make one the equal of the other, by their actions, choices, lies, deceptions, etc. What's the difference when if comes from the mouth of a cheater. Can you have genuine love heard in "I love you" and still be a deceiving, manipulator to the one you are saying it to? I don't think genuine "I Iove you" can coexist with betrayal, deception, lies, manipulation, etc. Love and these things are incompatible.

When the words "I love you" come from the mouth of an active or unremorseful cheater, the words don't have any relationship to love. They are just words. And in that case, love ya or I love you are equally meaningless to what love is.

I'm so sorry she can't face her actions with honesty.

I felt like my WH would spin me up over these things as a way of diverting my attention. Here, spin on this topic for days... kind of a way to say "Squirrel!" and get me off track

I saw this phrasing tossed back and forth in the chat I found on d-day. How’s this for the kind of BS a WS will say when caught red handed?

"I was just telling her what she wanted to hear."

"I never said it in person or on the phone. And that’s why I wrote it in chats … because that way it didn’t mean anything." (Wait! What???)

In any case it was likely the dopamine talking, so it wasn’t likely real or true, but it still hurts like hell none the less.

[This message edited by Copingmybest at 11:12 PM, Thursday, December 1st]