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My D-Day was Thanksgiving night. The OM is a co-worker at my wife’s company who I also had worked with for nearly three years. I always considered him a friend. He is also married (unhappily) and has a two year old son.

At first my story seemed so strange and unique and now I have seen near exact examples of it on this forum over and over again. Likewise, our 25 year marriage has all the stress fractures and craters routinely discussed here. A lack of intimacy, no communication, no shared goals or dreams, no sexual contact and both of us preferring the ease of avoiding conflict by taking the easy path of silence.

In the weeks leading up to D-Day there were huge red flags that many here would recognize. Nervously, I chose to trust her.

- Buying sexier, younger styled new clothes and shoes.
- More frequent hair styling.
- Lots of care to toe nails and fingernails.
- Guarding her purse at night.
- Lots of new, very sexy panties.
- Insane increase in cell calls in and out.
- Later nights at work and drinks with work friends.
--Credit card charges to new restaurants I have never heard of.
- Changing musical taste (his music)

Two days before Thanksgiving (her birthday) she went to work at the company’s second facility about an hour out of town. She said that there would probably be a late dinner and that she would be home pretty late. She left the house before me and it was then I noticed she had taken her toothbrush and spare panties. A strange horrible and desperate paranoia took over my life as I spent the next two sleepless days turning the house over for more clues and evidence. On Thanksgiving night I confronted her and quite easily and calmly she admitted to it. In addition she told me she was in the initial planning stages of moving out in the spring.

I never in my life imagined the depths of emotion and despair I experienced over the next two weeks. I did everything wrong, and drove her even further away with my pathetic and embarrassing behavior. Then somehow like a light turning on I was in a better place and I knew what I had to do. To save my marriage to a woman I love very much, I had to be willing to lose her.

That night I told her that no matter what she decided to do that I would survive and be able to move on. I apologized for my neglect to the marriage that made the path she chose so much easier. I told her she could take as long as she wanted to make up her mind about leaving and when that time came I would help. If she left I wanted her to go to a good safe place and I would help buy and move furniture if needed. I told her that this home would be a warm, safe comfortable place for her in the time she wished to stay and that she would get nothing but long overdue respect, kindness and consideration. Finally, I told her that the two most important days of my life was the day she married me and the day I was man enough to let her go.

I immediately began to work on the huge changes I need to make to be a better husband and father, and I have a lot of work to do. I can’t turn back the clock so all I can do now is recognize that this is a tremendous wake-up call and in truth an opportunity to make a much better marriage. Even in failure I have the opportunity to be a better man.

We are already communicating far more honestly and clearly than we have in many years. Right now, instead of talking about moving out, she is talking about finding a new job that will remove the OM from our picture. Since the day I offered to let her go the cell phone contact with the OM dropped from an incredible 68 average minutes a day to nothing.

I only found this site a couple days ago but it has helped me a lot. I wish the best for all of you.


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She (and if not her then you) need to let OMW know regardless of how your situation turns out. OMW has a right to know so she can try and fix your marriage just like you are doing right now.


Jim

BS - 32 (me)
FWW - 33
Married 8/31/03
No kids (but 3 cats)
D-Days - 8/25/06 (EA), 11/3/06 (PA)
NC agreed to - 11/8/06
NC broken - 11/28/06, 12/16/06, 1/18/07, 1/26/07, 1/27/07
Status - In Recovery
Jim's Story
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Welcome to marriagebuilders. It is a good place to be under the circumstances. It sounds like you naturally have started a good Plan A. Continue doing that.

As long as they are working together, there is still contact which is dangerous to your marriage. Plan A includes exposure, and I suggest you do that. Start out by telling his wife.

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Thank you for your thoughts, support and input. This site has meant the world to me. The night before I made my first post here my wife and I had a conversation that lasted literally until dawn. It was humbling but had moments of real breakthrough. I know this will all move glacially slow, but each day is a new opportunity and a careful walk through a minefield.

I broached the subject that night about the OMW and her status and here is what I was told (I am new to all these acronyms but I will do my best):

The OMW of my WS is having her own PA with a co-worker MOM and is aware of her WS and his MOW (my WS). Assuming the best of the OMW of my WS’s OMW’s MOM, we can at best conclude that out of the three effected couples there are only two FS’s.

OMG! WTF?

Once I pushed my mouth back closed I thought maybe reporting in to a monastery in the French Alps, taking a vow of celibacy, a vow of silence (I don’t speak French anyway) and making wine the rest of my life sounded pretty good. That is of course if there is no monastery of French monks in Kentucky making bourbon. Is this plan C?

Assuming I got the truth (and I will investigate), if exposure is required it will have to happen at their place of employment. As I indicated in my first post I worked there for three years and pretty much know everyone at the facility and their corporate headquarters.

Thank you all again.


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Anything your WW says to you about OMW is suspect. It is entirely possible that OM is feeding her these lies to justify his own affair, and WW is just repeating what she was told.

It is also possible that your WW is feeding you lies so you won't feel it necessary to expose to OMW. That way your WW can keep her affair under wraps, pacify you somewhat and wait for the heat to die down so they can resume.

Whether OMW is having her own A or not is irrelevant. You need to expose to OMW so she can make her own decisions. If the A has died on its own there may be no need to expose at work, as long as WW is seriously pursuing other employment.

Finally, make sure both of you get tested for STD's before you resume SF relations.

There is a redneck monastery in Kentucky that makes moonshine, if that helps. They like city boys <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

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It is standard operating procedure that the cheating spouse will lie about the cheating partner's spouse knowing about the affair. You will find that over 90% of the time the cheating spouse is lying to their spouse. If your wife was telling the truth (which is highly suspect) then there is no problem informing his spouse. The chances are great your wife is feeding you a bunch of bull. Once there is exposure the majority of time the affair is destroyed. By not exposing you are allowing to affair to contine on a later date. You are also sending a message to the OM that it is acceptable for him to have had sex with you wife in the past and apparently in the future as well. No consequnces to their actions equals no motivation to change. This deals with your wife and her cheating partner as well.

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Welcome to MB... you are a WONDERFUL writer!!! I hate to say it but I've enjoyed reading what you've written, not the content, of course, but you really have a way with words.

Bryanp is right... and you can carry it right through to almost every aspect of infidelity. It's one big lie, built on another lie, built on another. The script varies some, but it's sickening how after a few months of reading here (or seven years, as I have)... you can predict the next words out of the WS's mouth. It's truly... just like a script.

Please read more about exposure and getting your wife out of that workplace. NO CONTACT is essential to true recovery. I don't have a lot of time right now to write but wanted to say hello and welcome... you've come to the right place.



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Bomb’s Away.

We have exposure. The OM has a real treat waiting for him at the door tonight. Highlights at 10 PM.

I just got off the phone with the OMW. She is a truly wonderful woman. She has suspected the A and confronted him numerous times over the past few weeks but he has denied it every time.

We had quite a few stories and timelines to share. The MB script for WS’s stands intact. Do WS’s have their own web forum where they compare notes on being inept? She told me she does not want to mention my call but instead force him to step up like a man (she called him “girly-boy”) and admit it. I told her if he won’t do that, feel free to tell him I called. If that happens, I will be facing a shrieking vampiress burning away in the morning sunlight soon. I can’t wait!

Thank you all again. Your experience and wisdom has been invaluable to me. As usual you were all right on target with your thoughts. I am sorry for all of you on how you came to gain that experience and wisdom.

Talk about the Monty Python 10,000 pound weight being lifted off of me.

Plan A continues forward and Plan B is in the bomb bay when and if needed.

Thanks again.


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Chrisner, your wife is so fortunate to have you as a BS. My D-D was 8-8-04 then had another D-D because of continued contact with OM. I am the FWS. I think that did a lot of the damage. I betrayed him then betrayed him yet again.

It has been very difficult. I still don't feel my EN's are being met. I feel little attention or affection. My BS goes out with the guys until early in the morning. He obviously has a lot to say when he is out with them. He doesn't say much of anything to me. I feel that I cater to his needs: dinner, clean, iron his clothes, ask him if I can get anything for him when we are watching TV. Sit down on the floor next to him while watching TV. I tell him that I love him. I feel I initiate physical contact. My neighbor wonders if he is having a A. I don't think so. If I try to express my feelings, he turns it around and says that I think he is a jerk! I don't know what to do. I know marriage can be so much better. He has never treated me very well. I have a DD 11years old and DStepS - 21. He is still very suspicious of my actions. I still call him throughout the day, give him my iteniary for the day and have few friends now.
Any thoughts

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It was quite a weekend. With the exposure, I really expected the feces were going to impact the rotary oscillator. I told her Friday night that I had made the call to the OMW and it was met with quiet acceptance. The talks lasted all weekend.

She voiced surprise several times about how much I seem to know about these things and once commented, “You hit every nail on the head.” I have not told her about my secret army of support that now helps me.

I asked for all the details I needed to know about the affair and she answered every question with simple brutal honesty. What I heard was agonizing for me but I have to know everything now so I can put it into the past and move on toward recovery.

She tearfully apologized for the hurt and damage her choice has caused me, our daughter, our home and our jobs.

She finally said for the first time that the affair was now over and she wants to join in the process of building a new marriage. I promised to do my best to be understanding of her withdrawal process.

Sunday night she brought in a collection of cards and emails from the OM she had saved, lit the fireplace and burned them.

So now the real hard work can begin. I have to recognize that prior to the affair I had been a true NS (that’s an acronym for neglectful sloth and there is no emoticon for that). She has commented on the changes and efforts I have made over the past six weeks. I must stay focused and true.

Sad – I wish I could give you some real breakthrough thoughts. I am still pretty much a rookie here but I am sure the other experts will have advice. I can only hope I can bring my WW to the place you have come back to for your H. Based on what you write he is deep in the same NS (see above paragraph) behavior that helped bring me here in the first place. I wish the best for you. Good people can make bad choices but they deserve the opportunity for forgiveness. Truly good people should be willing to extend that forgiveness.


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Sounds very promising. Your wife is immediately sorry, which is very unusual.

Are they still working together?

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Good show! This is wonderful news, but tread lightly.

I believe the next thing to happen is that she needs to write OM a NC (no contact) letter, approved by you. You can find plenty of examples on this site. There can be no contact between these two EVER again. Affairs have been likened to addiction, and you wouldn't offer a beer to a recovering alcoholic...same principle.

She also needs to become totally transparent and accountable to you for all her time and communications. Her life should become an open book to you - phone records, IM and text traffic, email accounts - everything.

What was their work relationship? Was he her supervisor? If so, then the company may dismiss him quietly rather than deal with a sexual harassment lawsuit. Otherwise, she needs to find a new job quickly. Every day she works with him is another day she risks contact.

No sex with her until STD and pregnancy testing is complete. If she's in withdrawl she may not want to be intimate anyway, or she may want to dive in to make-up sex. Either way, wait for a clean bill of health.

Continue your plan A changes. Recognize where YOU went wrong and make corrections. Remember that while you helped create the environment that made it possible for her to have the affair, the decision and the action to have the affair was 100% her responsibility. It is not your fault.

I'm no expert (nor do I play one on TV). If you repost on the GQ II forum you'll get tons more responses from people way smarter than I.

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Believer and bitbucket; thank you. Just to give you a little more info on the missing time between my original post here and exposure:

During the two weeks after D-Day and during my fetal position pity party, the cell phone contact between them went to a record high. Only when I finally got off the floor with a plan and told her I would survive and she could leave whenever she wanted did the contact back off.

The affair went into a period of “run silent, run deep”. They did maintain limited contact through the company cell equipment and email but I know both would worry about this. With her cell phone out of the picture as a means of contact they would have to adapt. She finally used the home computer to send an email to him but it got caught in my key logger. I brought it to her immediately and we were pretty close to a swift plan B. She was now becoming the scared one. I think she now realized she was living with Columbo by day and the Phantom of the Opera by night. In addition, the email had a small lie to OM in it. I asked her if she realized they were starting to lie to each other now.

I asked her if he had proposed getting a cell phone for her on his plan yet and told her if he hadn’t yet he soon would. The reaction on her face told me I was probably right on target.

Although she has not been close to the point yet of filling out an EN questionnaire, I did put one together about her based on our 25 years together. High on her list would be financial security and her feeling of worth generated by her employment. I started asking her when the occasion permitted if she understood the risk and gamble she was taking with her job. She responded that she did but her face told me she never really had. The pressure was building.

Additionally all this time I started dropping the word that the OMW deserved to be informed but I wanted the OM to step up and do it. This was met with the typical fear and resistance expected of a WS along with many stunningly illogical reasons why it would be a bad thing. In a moment of potential LB I asked her that if the OM cared so much for her why was he letting her walk the path of exposure alone? I praised her courage and honesty to admit to the affair and called him a coward hiding behind her shield. I told her I knew nothing about their relationship but I know who wears the pants. I told her she was ten times the man he is and called him “skirt-boy”. She took all this surprisingly well. Amazingly, two days later when I called OMW, she called him girly-boy for the same reason. I told my wife the clock was about up on OM’s comfortable days at home.

On Friday I called his wife as posted earlier. That evening my wife introduced the conversation that OM had called her that day and told her that the night before (Thursday) he had admitted everything to his wife and she had taken their son and went to her mothers. So I asked her why she thought the OMW had not told me that when I called her today? Open mouth, white faced shock. I asked her to truthfully tell me if this was her story, a joint conspiracy story or whether it really was just him who said this. She said it was just him and based on her reaction I believe her. What a surprise; OM caught in big lie. Score one for the home team.

Sunday, she told me the A was over and burned her “souvenirs”.

OM has taken a new position at the company’s other facility (still only 70 miles away) that should nearly, but unfortunately not quite, eliminate contact. It is urgent that we get her new employment. Maybe we could start the WSBS detective agency.


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Bump to see how you're doing?

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Hi bitbucket,

Thanks for stopping by. Lately I been doing my part as a traffic cop/greeter at the “Just Found Out” forum to direct people on to the GQII forum where all the action and experts are. This stuff is heartbreaking and infuriating. “I never meant to hurt you”, still rings in my ears. Until two months ago I never knew about any of this. It is still is absolutely surreal.

The only thread I started myself at GQII got everyone in trouble and locked by the administrators in a day. Opps. Sorry everyone (sheepish wave to crowd). I will blame it on the bourbon and a dark mood.

It is going slow and day by day right now. There is a clear withdrawal happening for my WW right now. It is hard and painful to watch her going through it. I did see my old friend for a few minutes on exposure weekend and she was beautiful. I have missed her a lot and it seems like such a terribly long time. She has slipped back into the fog of withdrawal but at least I know she is still there.

It is strange how our positions reversed over the course of seven weeks. On D-Day I was a clueless pathetic mess as she stood over me cross armed, tearless, stoic and allegedly with a master plan. We went into a war where she had all the weapons and the high ground. I did the only thing I could think of under the circumstances; end the war by surrendering and getting us both on the same level field. I then found this site, read everything I could, started working my Plan A, maneuvering for exposure and focusing on my future with or without my wife. Seven weeks later she sits rocking and sobbing at the dining room table with her head in her hands, scared, exhausted, confused and without a plan. She brought herself here but I found no joy in the plotting and actions I needed to take to do it. And is it not ironic that I can actually say in truth, “I never meant to hurt you”.

We have a lot of work to do now and the priority is getting her out of that company. OM is fairly well fenced out in his new position (I think the GM at the company may have pushed this move out of his own concerns about the relationship) but the risk of occasional contact remains. We updated the resume this weekend and started the search.

By the way, I guess the OM could not be brought to admit the affair on his own as the OMW desired so she finally had to tell him about my call to her. Skirt-Boy started doing me favors during the last days before exposure with some quality love busting of his own.

I am starting to have some feelings of anger now that are new, and as a male typically focused on the PA. This past weekend for the first time I realized that although I could hold out for as long as this process will take, weathering any setback along the way, I was not sure I wanted to. Oh well, what’s some more to work on.

Thanks again.

“In forming the plan of a campaign, it is requisite to foresee everything the enemy may do, and be prepared with the necessary means to counteract it.” – Napoleon I


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Hey Chrisner,

I also truly enjoy your writing in spite of the accompanying pain and anguish of our common reasons for being here.

I'm new so I missed the furor you say your only thread caused in GQII. But one of the first posts I read was yours and your writing was one of the reasons I slid off my shy surfboard of anonymity and registered less than 48 hours ago. (Did you really wreak such havoc....or was that an inside joke I didn't get due to my "rookieness"?)

Seriously, I do hope you get help with your anger....it comes and goes. At least mine did and still does. It helps me to try to focus on things I can change....like my own attitude and perspective. For instance, how would you be dealing with things if you had not found this (or other) helpful sites? Many of us did not find this help for months or years after our D-Day(s).

I also search for ways that my devastating experiences can one day (in the far far future) enable me to help others overcome their similar challenges.

But I have a little favor to ask....when you and your wife get it all together and ride off into the sunset, will you continue to post your wit and humor for those of us who might still be wallowing in our common threads that brought us here in the first place?

At least consider it, OK?


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4 D-Days: Jun-Nov 06 E/PA~OW#2 (OW#1 2000)
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Oh, here it is.

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Sadinohio,

have you posted a new thread about this?

it sounds like you need one if you didn't

are you in MC together, it sounds like your H is trying to make you pay, H could head for a revenge A.


Me-49 and staying there, course AARP sent me my card ugh
H-49
DD and SIL
GS the light of my life! 1 and a half, full of you know what
DS med school
always working on me
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. Ghandi

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