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She's the one who's primarily engaged with the investors, and as I understand it, their investments into the company are contingent on her staying in her position.

For what it’s worth, if the science is proving out, I would bet she could exit without tanking the business. We just replaced a founder-CEO "Key Person" at one of our portfolio companies. It can be done.

Her investors aren’t going to be psyched to have her go through a divorce either, by the way. She has private equity backers who rely on incentive-alignment, i.e., her equity. They will not want half of her stock/options ending up in your hands. They will consider that a very big issue, even if you yourself place no value on it.

One of the things I never understand in these threads is what am I (are we) supposed to be doing in this strange area where we're not actively separating or reconciling after D-day? Yes we're both going to IC, presumably she's working on herself, and I'm focusing more on me (good food, friends, fitness, etc.) We obviously still have to coparent, but since we're not at each other's throats, do we continue as a couple (e.g., hanging with common friends, dating, other activities)?

Personally, until she meets your requirements to even consider reconciling, I would choose to do the 180. There is an article in the healing library in this. It’s basically full detachment until the affair is over, and to me that’s reach through full NC.

The reason full NC is important is there is a high rate of relapse where the affair fully restarts, and it’s more intense than before because it’s even more high risk. The adrenaline is higher.

You did 180 her while you were gone, but it’s more complicated now that you are back. I am going to guess you came home and had sex and that’s a big part of pair bonding and it adds directly to the hopium. Read through the article and there are members who have done the 180 and may be able to answer further questions on it. It’s not a manipulation, it’s basically finding a way to be strong in insulating yourself until the time in which your wife is a safe candidate to consider reconciling.

I don’t know if she will choose the job, it’s definitely a high stakes decision for her, but these are the natural consequences of her actions. She can’t be in the AP’s orbit and keep her marriage because it offers no protection for you. She has taken away your security and certainty, she can’t restore it while still being in the same place it was taken. It just does not work, and it keeps you at risk. It does not provide and environment in which you can heal.

One of the things I never understand in these threads is what am I (are we) supposed to be doing in this strange area where we're not actively separating or reconciling after D-day?

The mantra here is that you cannot control another person. You can only control you.

Another mantra here is that the over-arching goal is to get yourself (as the betrayed spouse) out of infidelity.

To be clear, as long as your WW remains an active partner with her AP in the business venture, she and therefore you is/are in infidelity. A commonly used metaphore is: find yourself a boat, point it away from infidelity, get in it and row as hard and as fast away from that place as you can. If she ever decides to quit participating in infidelity, she will figure out a way to swim out and catch up with you. If she doesn't do that, the marriage never had a chance.

To distill all of that to more practical advice, the process of reconciliation is a long play. It can take many years of 100%, both feet all the way in emotional investment by both partners to even figure out whether reconciliation has a chance of succeeding. The affair will forever be a plus one in your marriage. Reconciliation works when the partners learn to live with this constant presence and adjust their marriage to succeed even with this plus one.

At present, your WW has not taken even the first step toward the process of reconciliation (in fact, due to her choices, she will not be in a position to even consider that first step for a year or more). Therefore you have not even started this multi-year process.

Further, your WW's affair was deeply immersive and emotional, and she is behaving in profoundly entitled, avoidant ways now. All of these factors augur for the conclusion that reconciliation is unlikely to ever succeed in your case even if she were to invest in reconciliation. That's not to say you couldn't stiff upper lip it and stubbornly remain nominally married, but it's unlikely you will achieve an actual happy, functioning relationship with your WW given the facts here.

I'd suggest looking in the bathroom mirror and having a long conversation with your 60-year old self. Ask that guy whether he thinks you made a wise decision investing 5-10 years of sturm und drang into what is likely a futile effort toward reconciliation with an un-remorseful cheating wife who refuses to disengage with her affair partner.

On that last point, the "painted in a corner" thing, I really do think the binary options are (a) leave the business venture now and watch it flounder and fail, or (b) see it through for a chance of success. I've been around a lot of startups. The capital stack and investor network at this stage is a delicate crystalline structure, not at all cemented into place. Just the slightest puff of a breeze could cause the whole thing to collapse and shatter.

However, I would remind you that, end of the day, your WW chose this. She is a smart, capable, accomplished woman. She was fully able to foresee that this would be exactly the position she would find herself in when she decided to launch a sexual affair with her start-up founding partner. Therefore, it is rational to conclude this is precisely the outcome she wanted to force upon you.

I want you to consider that. She chose this place for you, without your consent. If you had a friend in this position, what would you advise him to do?

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 2:31 PM, Friday, October 2nd]

Soon2B

IDK if anyone else has asked this but:

Suppose your best friend came to you and was in your situation. What would your advice be?

So, the way I see the career…

1. She leaves the job and goes NC for a chance to reconcile with you. Investors pull out. Company goes tits up. She still has future career opportunities.

2. She stays and you file. During discover, investors find out she’s in an affair with the AP, they panic and pull out. Company goes tits up. In addition to that, she gets essentially blacklisted by everyone with venture capital and everyone else they talk to.

She’s not making a smart choice. But you can!

S2B I appreciate that you keep your head up, but I doubt that in this holding pattern you will be able to remain that way for long time. This is a rollercoaster and in the moment you can feel pretty good, maybe even better then is natural to you. It's part of the trauma cycle. Once you win the "prize" in a few years you won't be able to look at it. If she falls ill and needs care, given the fact that she chose her lover over the venture that she chose over you, you will feel like the world's biggest looser. I hope that (formally) your wife will fix this somehow, though there's 0 evidence for that. I also hope that you can get yourself from the radioactive zone for the time being.

Your relationship with your wife is toast. She has a boyfriend to prove that. If you, for your own sake, want or need some sort of an autopsy of your marriage and her reasons for cheating, start from the point when she stopped looking at you as her partner and started looking at AP like he was the prize. If you were a super wealthy guy and had a prenup where she basically gets nothing in the divorce and loses her kids because you spend more time with them, she would probably think twice about doing this. But she obviously sees this other dude as her meal ticket and simply doesn't value you. Your best option would be #2 from @
OhItsYou post. You file and everything goes to shit for her. Why would you care, when she doesn't?

One of the things I never understand in these threads is what am I (are we) supposed to be doing in this strange area where we're not actively separating or reconciling after D-day?

Marriage can be what you both define it to be. If you are OK with your wife having a lover then fine, go ahead. There are numerous examples of people having all sorts of open or quiet arrangements for what they want and/or accept in a marriage. I have used this example and think it far enough in the past as well as vague enough to pass the site’s strict No Politics rule, but some of the older members here might remember the clips from the funeral procession of a French president where the wife and their sons walked behind the casket, and behind them his mistress and their daughter. No – it’s not the norm in France, but for that couple there seemed to be an acknowledgement of what was going on.

I think it’s very common that a spouse – maybe more so the wife – KNOWS that the other has a lover and either openly or indirectly accepts it. Like you pretend to believe the spouse who says they are visiting their aunt next weekend despite you knowing said aunt passed away last year, or who say they spent a Thursday evening at "the gym" or whatever. You could choose to ignore what might be going on at the next conference or business trip where he might be too. Not saying this flippantly, because a lot of people live that way.
Maybe something like that appeals to you? If so, don’t bother reading further.

If not, then you must contemplate how you intend to move on, and what moving on looks like.
That moving on can be divorce or it can be reconciliation. After all – the third option is the one I presented above, and if you are still reading you have refused that option.

It’s not necessarily a linear process, but possibly the absolute WORST outcome IMHO is stagnation, where you might remind you wife every now and then that you aren’t happy with the affair, or where you try to convince yourself that the moment jr leaves for college you plan to divorce or whatever, she tells you nothing is going on but refuses to cut off contact with OM. Maybe 2-3 years from now THIS affair is over (or it might even be over now), or you start feeling safe that it’s over. But you two never deal with the issues and simply learn to live with unhandled infidelity in your marriage.

So what should you be doing right now?
I think some hard evaluation of what you want and what you definitely don’t want, as well as what you can get and what you can’t get is in order, with the aim of reaching a conclusion of what your path forwards should be. Give yourself some time to go through that.

At some point – and I would guestimate this point was less than 6 months from d-day – you should have a clear picture of what you are being offered. Compare that to what you feel are your needs and requirements. If the offer falls short – your path out of infidelity is through divorce. If she offers something you can work with… you have a shot at reconciliation.

The BIG RISK and the trap I think way too many fall for (I venture 10% of those that post here eventually divorce, and 10% eventually reconcile. The remaining 80% fall into this trap…) is where you find a way to cohabit without dealing with the infidelity. It might be over, or it might not be over. But you find ways to cohabit, have occasional sex, behave like a normal family to everyone looking in, but the cause for the infidelity is still there, and the consequences are still there. Maybe you even subdue your emotions with reasoning such as you will divorce once the money is better, or when the youngest leaves for college, or whatever. But time after time we see that the deadline is pushed because people have gotten used to the misery they are in and find it more comforting than the possible (and inevitable) pain of the divorce process.

--
Finally: I have used this story to describe what your actions should be during the decision process several times in the past:
Imagine you had to go for some life-saving treatment at a distant city. The only way there is by train. You are told that the absolute last day you need this treatment is 30 days from now.
You let your wife know, and ask if she wants to come along with you. You explain why you need to make this trip, why it has to be by train and why this deadline is in place. She refuses to commit. You go online and reserve tickets for both of you. You let her know she’s welcome to come along. You rearrange your schedule, canceling all appointments and activities taking place AFTER you leave, and you might suggest to her that she do the same with joint commitments and/or rearrange them as going alone. You might even visit with close friends and let them know of the journey and when you inevitably leave.
Several times over the next 30 days you offer her to come along. Like when she asked you why the suitcase was out of the storage and in the bedroom you reminded her of the trio, and reiterated the offer that she could come along.
The day before you pack your suitcase. You might even throw some of her clothes into a suitcase in case she decides to tag along. You sit her down and ask again – do you want to come with me?
On the day of the journey she might drive you to the station. She follows you inside, all the way to the platform. Again – you show her the ticket you got for her and remind her that she can run to the car and get the suitcase you packed for her. She refuses. The doors close, but you call through the glass that she can still get on board. She refuses. The train starts pulling out of the station…

That’s your journey. You can give her chance after chance to set off on reconciliation with you. You might even adapt – like she wanted the brown suitcase and not the red one you got out of storage, she wanted first-class tickets and not standard, she wanted motion sickness medicine… whatever. But eventually YOU get on board the train that gets you out of infidelity – and if she’s not on board then the destination is divorce.

--

Finally: I’m having a hard time with her role in the company and the OM…
If he has all the patents the business is based on and can take them if removed from his role then what is the real value of the company?
What investor is willing to place money into a company that is totally dependent on ONE person? Like if I was contemplating putting money into that company – say a million dollars for 5% I could just as well offer the OM a job with a million signing-on fee. What assurances did investors get that the patents remain within the company? What are they really investing in?
Or if he is hit by a car? Or falls down a flight of stairs? Or get’s cancer? Investors OK with the patent being managed by his estate/inheritors or being in some limbo while that is all dealt with?
It’s too weak, and it’s a flag I would warn any potential investor about.

If the value is in the patents and they are his, then your wife has extremely limited value. No investor would put money into an idea based on a patent they don’t own simply because it’s fronted by someone they like. Excel doesn’t smile or look pretty…

Maybe OM knows this and this is why he’s fine with having your wife as a side-piece. That in turn indicates ethics that would make me – as an investor – be afraid for my money.

If he has all the patents the business is based on and can take them if removed from his role then what is the real value of the company?

I wonder if perhaps Soon2B was speaking colloquially about this division. The skills needed to develop patentable tech and establish proof of concept and scalability are different than the skills needed to attract investors and keep them invested through this process. Think of Elizabeth Holmes/Theranos. Holmes was not a scientist and did not have the ability to develop any type of blood testing machine. But Theranos could never have raised money without her.

Theranos was a sort of one-woman show. The actual tech guys were employees of Theranos. In the case of Soon2B's wife, the tech guy is a founding partner with the wife.

In most cases, the money guys come with expensive, hard-working lawyers. They make sure that they have hooks in all of the tech so they can liquidate it if things go south and the tech has any value (in the case of Theranos the tech was completely fictional -- as in it didn't exist and had no value).

Assuming the capital stack is structured as normal, it would not likely be the case that if Soon2B's WW were to abandon the project, the other partner could take his toys and go play in another sandbox. However, it is quite likely that if she were to abandon the project, the money guys would take the tech and liquidate it, meaning the company would be dead in the water, leaving the other founder adrift. He'd probably have a solid lawsuit against her for breach of her fiduciary duty, which is one of the fundamental paradoxes of this thread. Partners owe one another what the law calls a fiduciary duty. It's one of the highest duties recognized in the law. The corner that Soon2B's wife has painted herself into is creating a structure where she owes this high legal/contractual duty to the man she has also been fucking on the side (and, as I've stated above, probably wishes she could still fuck on the side and would still be fucking if Soon2B hadn't discovered the affair).

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 7:21 PM, Monday, October 5th]

Just a quick update, since I'm short on time and weary after a long day of work.

Yes, I've been using 'he has the patents' as shorthand for 'he's the tech guy'. Or the guy whose discovery has the potential to be converted into a medicinal product. And my wife has taken on the role of the business operator. Attracting investors and developing the company. She's CEO & he's CSO of this small biotech startup.

So the other night, a few days after I returned from my two-week therapeutic getaway, we got to talking and she (yet again) admitted that she's unwilling to leave the company. In fact, she even stated that she's unable to put me and the family first. She needs to feel like her work matters and she's found that here.

I was surprised at her honesty and her selfishness. I don't know what's going on inside her, but this doesn't sound like the woman I married...

Anyway, I appreciate everyone's metaphors in this thread. They've really been helpful, and hopefully will help others who come across them. Though I'd consulted lawyers before, I think it's time to retain one and start moving out of infidelity.

I'll keep posting as we either watch her fully come around (unlikely) or her company implodes as the lawyers and I try to establish the appropriate valuation while investors watch.

I refuse to believe that she doesn’t know what’s going to happen once your attorney(s) start sniffing around. I think I believe she’s betting the farm that you are bluffing.

So sorry your wife is continuing to prioritize herself over you and the family. I have been a CFO for seven private-equity and/or venture backed companies. The private-equity backed ones were more mature in their cycle (ie $500m+ revenue / $200m+ EBITDA), but the venture-backed ranged from early stage (pre-revenue / seed) to early-growth to series b/c. I have had 3-4 instances where an executive was going through a divorce that involved a division of the executive's equity.

This can get messy when the company already has institutional investors as they will often have rights that may apply (i.e. right of first refusal or a ROFR, co-sale or tag along rights, etc). These are more applicable if early investors want liquidity, but regardless it introduces some complexity now that you will need to have legal counsel help you navigate. The investors will not be thrilled to have more messiness in the cap table as it impacts future fund raising / liquidity events especially if the holdings represent a significant portion of the overall equity. This impacts simple things as minor as getting shareholder consent for ordinary course activity, but can also impact major corporate decisions especially if you are in a location that has strong protections for minority shareholders.

I would strongly urge you to retain counsel that has experience in these scenarios (division of illiquid assets). My guess is you will want your divorce attorney to engage with expert counsel (maybe they have ones they have worked with, but if not you will want to ensure you engage one directly and coordinate). Depending on the vesting provisions your wife has and applicable laws you may be splitting all of the equity or none of it. You may need to evaluate immediate liquidity at a current valuation (which will be heavily negotiated) or holding your portion of the equity until there is a future liquidity event. I have typically favored the second approach as it avoids a messy battle over value (also very expensive), but you will need to ensure your future equity is protected (ie anti-dilution provisions) so it maintains the same value as your wife holds. We acquired one company where one of the original three founders left the company and relied on the other two to treat him fairly only to find out they issued themselves a new class of stock (split 50/50 between them) that effectively diluted his equity to the point it was worthless. One upside to immediate liquidity is you are not dependent on the continued success of the company and a future liquidity event. You give up the upside from the anticipated increase in value, but I have seen a number of promising companies whose founders never monetized for a variety of reasons (someone disrupted their market, poor execution, needed to sell so much of the company to sustain operations that initial equity was eventually worthless, etc). Lots to consider including the emotional toll of having a component of your net worth tied up in a venture with your ex-wife and OM.

I still have to wonder how investors will react when this all comes up. They will have to have visibility as a transfer of equity will require their consent and that will require a frank discussion with your wife and OM. Their relationship creates all sorts of risk to the company as they are both key players at this stage. Imagine the likely scenario where things go south on a personal level and the impact that has on their ability to work together professionally. At this stage in a company's life cycle, the investors are betting on the team as much as they are betting on the underlying technology. Introducing additional risk because of their irresponsible choices would not sit well with investors with whom I have worked.

Again sorry you are having to deal with this, but just want to make sure you get competent legal counsel to help guide your next steps as they will be critical to ensuring you receive a fair outcome when assets are divided.

Sorry Soon2B, that’s disappointing of her.

You should begin to implement The 180 (https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/documents/library/articles/discovery/understanding-the-180/.) Read the FAQ link as well.

I made a facetious post earlier about my grandfather on his deathbed regretting not prioritizing his career over his family. She’s actually doing that, and I think that in time she will come to lament that choice.

You and your kids deserve better.

Really good post, feelingverylow. I wholeheartedly endorse spinning up some lawyers who are familiar with these types of businesses and can understand the constituent documents, as the details will matter quite a lot.

I’ve seen some of these situations professionally too, and I agree that their investors will care. All investments of these types rely heavily on incentive alignment, and they will not be happy if half of her MIP ends up in your hands.

The only thing I would say, though, is that I’m not sure the reasons for her divorce will come to light. Her affair with AP may not end up being disclosed to them.

Probably a question for my lawyers, but does waiting to file make sense if they may be closing a funding round soon?

Definitely a question for legal as jurisdiction matters. Most of my experience is in California and there the date of separation is critical vs divorce filing. That said, a new funding round establishes an objective valuation if you are looking to get your portion of the equity cashed out right away. Investors may be inclined to allow a portion of the proceeds to go out as secondary in this situation (unusual at an early stage as you want existing employees/founders to be totally dependent on creating future value) to keep the cap table clean.

For that same reason I agree with Letmebefrank that investors will not be thrilled to see your wife's equity (or at least the vested portion) reduced by 50% as that is the primary incentive at this stage. Maybe they will give her a top up grant post divorce to try and offset, but that comes dilutes the equity pool for additional hires so not ideal.

I really hope she comes to her senses when the consequences become real.

The irony, of course, is that I think your wife is going to find her life much more challenging when she is trying to juggle work and single motherhood, and no longer has you a partner to support her dreams and keep the hearth fires burning.

Agree with FVL, talk to your lawyer.

Do you know how firm and how soon this round will close? My experience is that closings like these always slide to the right…

No idea when the round will actually close. Seems like it's been 'closing' for months already. And I'm loath to ask directly as it kind of goes counter to my idea of distancing myself / 180.

And yeah @BluerThanBlue, I've been thinking about that quite a bit. When she has to travel, and it's her custody time, should I step in to take the kids rather than leave them with their grandparents? Seems like I still end up subsidizing her work...

No idea when the round will actually close. Seems like it's been 'closing' for months already.

Yeah, that’s what I was worried about.

Again, worth talking to your lawyer, but if you file tomorrow and that’s the valuation date, and she closes this new round in the next month or two, it’d be hard for her to argue that the new money valuation is different than the value on the filing date, I have to believe. Obviously the value can move if it’s a matter of quarters, but I wouldn’t expect it if it’s only a month or two. Feelingverylow, please chime in if you see it differently, I rarely do early stage stuff.