CampDog,

Don't let the OM into your family's life -- ever.

I had the same situation many years ago. We still don't know who the biodad is. That daughter, who I love very much, is now 35 years old! She knows about it, but non of us knows who the OM was. Her mother and I divorced in 1981.

If your name, as the husband, was put down as the father on the birth certificate, then you are the child's father in the eyes of the law.

Got to go. More later, if desired.

Campdog:


Sound's like she's telling something near the truth. Withdrawal from an affair is a hard process---it's not unlike trying to kick a heroin habit (in fact the brain biochemistry around affairs or "new love" is similar to narcotic highs). If you think that Plan A is having a positive effect then you're doing a great job. I was convinced that my Plan A was horrible---until after Plan B was over and my wife told me how important it was to her that I had done such a great job in Plan A.

Tell me---what benefits do you see in allowing contact? How do you think you're going to limit it to once a month? I would suggest that (if your wife can agree) you "allow" nothing. Allow him to pursue this in court. Fight him (legally) every way. If he is successful, hit him where it hurts financially. If he's willing to do this and take that kind of punishment---then he's probably going to be a decent person to be involved in your son's life. But set that bar high---usually, OM's won't pursue it.

If you've been involved in law enforcement for 25 years, I'm sure you must have a 'friend' or two who could make this problem go away. But I didn't say nothin'... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Rag, your comments are not only desired they are welcome and gratefully accepted. K, it sounds as if I'm not the only one who ever contemplated renting a boat.... But seriously, always do your own dirty work. Once you get someone to commit a crime for you they own you forever. Anyway even though I have no words to describe the contempt and detestation I feel for my wife's lover I know that if it hadn't been him it would have been someone else. I can't place the blame for my tragedy solely on him.

You ask what the benefits of contact between my son and his father would be. For me personally there are none. As I said I find the idea repugnant. From a pragmatic point of view there are some pros to the idea. I start with the premise that he will NOT go away. Reaching a private agreement means that I can avoid court and the expense of a lawyer. Any agreement reached would be informal and not have the weight of law. Avoiding court means avoiding legally establishing my wife's lover as the baby's biological father. A private visitation agreement would have to take into account the feelings of all the people involved, including my wife's. My son could only benefit from a cordial, rather than hostile, environment regarding his father. There is no chance that I would conceal the truth of his paternity from my son even if he never saw his father. I don't believe in lying to my children.

The downside is that it may not be possible to find a solution that satisfies all parties involved. Also any agreement reached would have to be between myself and my wife's lover. I do NOT want her seeing or speaking to him even about this. So far she has resisted even the notion of giving me his phone number.

It's 6 AM here and I have been up for hours wrestling with my demons as my wife sleeps blissfully away. Reading the above I am struck how rationally I can consider an issue when it involves the people I love and yet have no clue as to how to mitigate my own torment. Funny how the brain works.

I can see where you're coming from in wanting to handle the situation without legal wrangling, but (though I am not a lawyer) it seems like it wouldn't do anything to mitigate his ability to seek legal remedy later -- in fact, if you allow him to develop a relationship etc. you could potentially strengthen his legal standing. The advice K gave you seems very solid. Make him pursue everything in the courts and live with the financial repercussions. Do nothing to weaken your current legal standing as the father. If everything comes "against" you legally later, it will still likely be before this child would remember anything different and no harm would be done.

I applaud your poise and strength of character in this painful situation. I would encourage you before anything else to get serious about addressing your marriage by entering joint counseling with the Harleys using the phone number posted above. I can unequivocally state that their counseling saved my marriage and family. Getting through the wreckage of an affair can be done, but your WW and you need some immediate ground rules in place, like Radical Honesty (wherein there is no ROOM to question her honesty) and Policy of Joint Agreement (so that both of you embark on this plan of action in total honest unity).

Campdog,

I understand your issues with handling this privately. It might even be a good idea, given the premise that the other party is honorable and has good intentions. But that doesn't describe the OM's recent track record, does it?

Talk with your lawyer. I think you'll probably get similar advice from him---the OM should jump through the appropriate legal hoops, and you shouldn't aid him one iota with regards to this. You don't have to be mean or nasty---but make sure he goes thrugh the legal system.

Hell no it doesn't describe his track record! He calls the married woman he impregnated his 'wife' and believes she had the baby as a 'gift' to him.

I had told my wife that I would be willing to agree to a monthly or even bi weekly visit but I've changed my mind. It occurs to me that I was doing it againt my better instincts and ignoring my instincts is what got me to the place I'm in now. Let the courts decide the issue without me providing any aid to the turd who helped my wife burn my world down around my ears. If this decision drives her back into his arms, so be it. At least I'll know where I stand.

Assuming she sticks around and that he has the sand to go the distance what are your thoughts on letting him prove legally that he is my son's biological father?

No more doubts, they are still in contact. Went away for the weekend out of state with the kids. Stayed at a hotel, very nice we had some real nice times together. It was even romantic. This morning we were walking down the hall together and I saw a funny look on her face. I asked about it and she said her stomach felt funny, probably something she ate. Later I was alone in the hotel room and she called from her aunt's room to ask me to bring her her cell phone. It seemed odd since she could have made the call she said she wanted to make at any time. Then it hit me. It was Father's Day! I checked and sure enough there was a long tearful message from her lover swearing undying love and saying how much he missed her and 'his' son. In one part he thanked her for her message and for thinking of him.

So they are still having a relationship. Of course, she swears she hasn't seen him or had sex with him but then she swore she wasn't speaking to him either. I may have made a mistake but I told her I listened to her messages and that she had one from him. I had considered not saying anything but decided that I had to be honest. She hit the roof and told me that I had ruined the weekend. She said that I had no right to snoop in her personal business! She tried to make it seem that I was ruining the rapport we had been building with my prying. Totally missed the idea that it was the lies that were damaging our efforts to rebuild our marriage, not my uncovering them. She did not promise to stop contact with him and would not promise to stop lying about it which is honesty of a sort I suppose but hardly what I wanted to hear.

I am feeling right now that this may be the last straw. How can I believe anything when I keep uncovering lies? She was willing to have sex with me that one time to deceive me into thinking the baby was mine so how hard is it to force semblances of affection to keep me dancing to her tune? I told her that she couldn't keep up her relationship with him and keep me too and she told me I had to do what was best for myself and that maybe she should just go away to sort out her feelings.

Did I make a mistake in letting her know I knew about her deception? I am trying so hard to follow plan A but it is getting harder all the time. So far I have told no one about the affair but I read some posts on exposure and I wonder if threatening to expose the affair to her family (she could care less about mine) would force an end to the affair. Or would it drive her even further away if I 'pressure' her? Is it time for plan B? Even at this point I don't want to lose my marriage but I am forced to consider that I may be breaking my heart on a lost cause. I'm not dealing with my beloved wife, I'm living with some wierd, twisted pod people version of her. I know now what you mean by being kidnapped by aliens. I'd really like to hear from you guys. You have given me hope in the past and that's what I'm a little short of right now.

CD

You have to realise - no INTERNALISE this fact: Infidels are not capable of telling the truth if a lie appears slighty easier to them.

Your expectations are too high for your WW at this time. Your 'pod people' analogy is a good one. PLEASE remember that you are dealing witha temorarily insane person. Do not expect logic or truth. DO not depend on anything she says unverified.

There is strength in knowing this. You can disallow yourself from being hurt by such lies anymore. Its your WWs responsibility to become trustworthy to you once more, not yours to believe what she throws you.

Is OM attached ? I think that exposing to OMs W if there is one, or OMs parents may be the best first exposure.

Some advocate 'scorched earth' exposure ( everyone) but I found that most people just recieve the news as good gossip and could give a [censored] about the reporter's travails.

Find a significant other in OMs life and expose to them first. Use a PI if necessary.

you must detatch a bit CD. Treat plan A like a work project.

All blessings.

campdog,

This is no real surprise. I can lecture you about how privacy in marriage is a bad thing---but a definite lovebuster is for you to turn around and lecture your spouse about the same.

Getting as much information as you can about the affair isn't a bad thing at all. Remember that you are not to 'react' to the information, but rather to ACT accordingly to a plan. If you're not in counseling yet, I highly recommend it. Steve Harley was a godsend to me when I was dealing with this---and you can make appointments at 888-639-1639.

It sounds as though you are making some progress with your wife (I'm sure it doesn't feel like that much of the time). You need to be honest, transparent, and try to use the POJA to decide these issues of contact and visitation. Exposure is a good thing, even though it is hard (and the fallout can have some bad consequences for the marriage, in the short term). It sounds like you have more than this one child---how do you think your wife would react to asking her to leave until she comes to a decision regarding the marriage (Plan B)? It's hard for me to tell where you're at---and that's another reason you ought to be doing counseling with a pro.

This two-faced monster you're dealing with isn't your wife. The biochemistry of an affair helps to make this monster. I hope you can sit back and observe some of her behaviors with detachment---some of them are bound to be pretty funny in their incongruity. Just don't remind yourself that "but wait, this is MY life" too often---you'll get depressed.

One other thing...

Plan B will undoubtedly force her back into his arms. That may not be a bad thing---a lot of 1-on-1 time is good for injecting reality into a fantasy.

Thanks guys I hope it's not putting too much on you to tell you that right now you two are all the support group I have. I told one person in my life about the affair because I trust their judgement, heart, intelligence and actions. Unfortunately in the last two conversations we had their own anger towards my WS was apparent and I think it's best to let them contemplate the situation for a while before we can get into any serious discussions. God knows I have enough of my own anger to go around.

bOb, once again you come through in a pinch. Your advice in the beginning of your post is sound and reading your words let me breathe deeply again for the first time in 24 hours. I can see where I might find strength in detaching myself from expectations of honesty and disclosure, for now.
The other man is not attached if my wife is to be believed. She says that for the length of their affair she came to know his family as his 'girlfriend' and that they only told his family the truth when the baby was born and the family was pressuring them to marry. She says that her Partner in Adultery's (nice term, way better than lover) mother refused to have anything to do with her or the baby until she came clean to me. That was six months prior to my finding the birth control pills but she insists that it was the reason she disclosed the affair to me.
As far as scorched earth goes I think that right now it would do more harm than good. Her family is close knit and I am a darling in their eyes. She says one of her biggest dreads is about when they find out what she did. She says she is ashamed of herself and I think that to reveal her to her family at this time would just add more hurt to her already overflowing plate (remember the recently uncovered memories of her childhood rapes). As far as the PI goes my best friend is a PI and I was the lead investigator for a PI for the last two years. Funny, right? I have the number for the phone he left the message from but he called from his mom's house. It's still doable as a result to find him but I am not sure it would be worth the effort.

K, it's no surprise to me either but reading it about it and living it are two very different things. I have been going to marriage counseling for two years, mostly by myself. An unexpected result was that I was able to deal with my own issues of childhood abuse (physical and emotional, not sexual) and I am anger and alcohol free for the first time in my life. I have completly remade myself into the kind of man she can love and our counselor says that this is the main reason she chose to stay in the relationship rather than leave. I have reservations about this analysis but I am watching and waiting. Neither myself or our counselor was able to convince my wife to attend sessions on a regular basis for reasons that have only recently become clear. And when she DID come, of course, she lied to us both. She asked to go see our counselor by herslf on the day before d-day (May 11) and that clinched for me what I had already figured out when I found her birth control pills the week before.
Since d-day she has attended regularly but our most recent sessions (3 so far) have had mostly to do with helping her to deal with the rapes she had repressed for so long, rather than issues regarding the affair.

I have come to the realization that MC is useless at this point. My intention when we go for counseling tommorrow is to bow out of the sessions and let her have some IC without my presence. I have the utmost confidence in our counselor and trust him to do for her what he has done for me if she allows it. I know what I have to do to save our marriage and my problem is with having the strength to carry on, not my goal. I have you guys for support here and I want to thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. I can't imagine where I would be had I not found MB and you two. I know my sister will provide RL support as well once she works past the anger thing.

In my heart of hearts I see some movement towards reconcilliation and the kind of marriage I believe we both want. My idea at the present time is to carry on with plan A and see where we are around Holiday time. It scares me when I think of how hard that is to do at times such as these. I felt yesterday like I was going to get home from our trip and pack a bag and leave. Today I feel hope but I am exhausted from riding this roller coaster. My wife says the same thing and I worry that SHE will be the one to lose strength and hope. We have a nine year old son and I know that I haven't been giving him the attention he needs while I struggle to make it through each day. Thank God she is at work. Right now I just feel like shaking her until she wakes the f**k up. Don't abandon me guys, walk me through this. Thanks.

Campdog, I just wanted to tell you that I understand the feelings you are experiencing and I hope that things work out for you. I understand the emotional turmoil you are in, as I also am experiencing the same turmoil. Hang in there.

Right now I just feel like shaking her until she wakes the f**k up. Don't abandon me guys, walk me through this. Thanks.

OH yeah...I know that.

Here's another pinch of advice - you can't make her do ANYTHING.

You can only affect yourself and your kids. And that usually enough.

Study campdog. It wont be in your nature, heck it wasn't in mine either. But knowledge is strength.

Your pain is unique but your situation is boringly, sadly common and predictable.

Thats why tools like MB used properly can help, like drugs against a disease.

Your WW doesn't mean [censored] right now. She's gone, on the planet Tharg.

You and your kids are what important.

Get your head and heart straight and lock up any vengeful , angry or needful thoughts when you're around your WW.

Uninstinctive but it works.

All blessings.

No chance that I will shake anything bOb. The thing that separates us from the animals is our ability to overcome our impulses. We might want to kill the guy who cuts us off in a car and gives us the finger but how many actually do?

I have decided to let my wife do whatever she wants concerning the baby and visitation with his father with no further input from me. I have told her that I wanted the creep to go through the courts and our MC has advised the same thing. The way he put it the paternity issue is a huge hole in our efforts to rebuild our marriage and a lawyer would be a plug. He said we had enough to deal with as it is. Be that as it may the POJA is useless beacause A. she won't agree to or even read it and B. she will do whatever she feels like anyway and simply lie about it. I have a thread going in General Questions about this if you want more depth. I guess K is busy saving other souls more lost than I, good for him. 6,000 plus posts, yikes.

Christ! How long does this downward spiral go on? Where do you people find the strength to hope, and even succeed?

Actually campdog---I'm pretty much retired from the boards now, so I spend very little time here. 7 years and 6000+ posts does wear you out a bit... If it makes you feel better, when I do show up here the first thing I do is to look for your posts.

I would suggest that you spend the money to have a session or two with Steve Harley---so he can correct you instead of me... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />


Not a good decision. Why??? It doesn't build love, or marriage skills. It will erode your love for your wife. You need to be honest with her. Attempt to get her into conversations where you use good negotiation skills and the POJA to make decisions. It's expected that she will resist, and probably not stick to joint decisions right now. But your willingness to negotiate, to use honesty, and to NOT LOVEBUST will set the groundwork for recovery later.

If she's still doing a lot of lying, I'd encourage you to continue to "spy" on her and bring up her lies in a non-confrontational way (just that you know "X, Y, and Z", and then you can state how you feel about it, but not to harp, nag, or get angry). The more you can use honesty as a tool, not as a weapon---the more you will encourage her to be honest. Again, this will help to build the foundation for recovery.

Campdog first I would like to say I think you are one hell of a man. The fact that you know this child is not yours yet you talk about him as if he is your world says volume’s about your character. I don’t know ya but already love ya. I may be way off key here but I thought I would leave a woman’s point of view on you sitch. I feel your wife is an alien. I mean to have a H like you and yet still be torn to the other lover. I am confused as to why she hasn’t seen the light in him. However I do feel that she is treating you this way because you are allowing it. She has the best of both worlds right now. You claiming all the love in the world (hence feels your not going anywhere) and him doing the same. You said this A lasted two years and his family thinks she’s his girlfriend. OK that alone would be a red flag to me. This was more then an A. She has a full blown out relationship and now family with this guy. I mean how much time did she have away from you to carry on this type of affair? I don’t understand however if this guy and her are sooooo close (hence his wife statements) then why is she still holding on to you? I would think she would just leave. I do feel that you should meet this guy. I think you should walk right up and knock on his door. I say this because you have no idea what she’s been telling him about you. Example when I learned of my H’s OW I drove 5 hours to meet with her. Made her sit face to face with me and talk. We both learned a lot. She learned he completely lied to her about me. That I wasn’t this witch who bit the heads off of children. She actually felt awful to see that she had been hurting someone who was generally a nice person. She realized that day that my H was the looser and she had been used. Before he had been a God. She even told me that it was easy to do what she was doing when she didn’t know me and thought I was this living demon. Maybe guy feels the same way. It’s also easier to deal with a lot of things when you have a face to the problem. I learned how she was a victim to his lies and deception. But now I know she sees him in a different light. I do feel that you should also do plan B. Hard I know but if you read Dr. Harley’s book "Surviving an Affair” I think that it will be the same with your wife. Make them see reality. If she loves you then she’ll come back with a different and better attitude. If she stays with him then at least you know you need to move on. Life’s to short to cater to people who just don’t care. I think she will realize that you are one hell of a man to take on her problem with the love that you are. Maybe she’ll see guy’s true colors when it’s directly in her face. Right now he’s the fantasy. Reality is harsh. I just think you should push her into a decision one way or another. She needs to figure out if her M is worth working on. Sorry so long. Also you’ll know if she’s cut contact with guy when she changes that cell phone number. She holds onto it to hold onto him getting in touch with her. What woman hasn’t kept the cellphone/pager for the just in cases’s?

K, it does make me feel better to read of your concern for me, better than I can express in words. I'm sorry if I come across as so needy but of course, I am. Finding out that she is still carrying on the affair has affected me as if it were d-day all over again. I haven't been able to eat or sleep much since last Sunday. I just haven't got the strength to do much else than suffer.
I hate the fact that I have to pull out of such an important issue in my son's life but what real choice is there? As I said above she will do whatever she feels like anyway and lie about it to me. A real Love Buster for sure but it is what it is.
I'd love to consult with Dr. Harley but I am not employed. I am a stay at home dad taking care of the baby and the other two kids. With only one income and my pension I simply can't afford the added expense. I have a marriage counselor who I trust implicitly and who helped me turn my own life around over the last two years. He has said he thinks we need intensive therapy and would like to counsel us both 3 times a week but the insurance won't cover that. It once again comes down to economics. Doesn't everything?
She is of course still lying and is unaware of how transparent her lies are. The latest was just last night when she insisted that she only saw her partner in adultery after work, that she never saw him when she was claiming to work or on days off when she said she had to work. She doesn't realize that since I know she has brought the baby to him on multiple occassions and NEVER took the baby to work then she has to be lying about that as well. This is a lie that she didn't even HAVE to tell me and yet did for whatever reasons seem sufficient to her.
I don't consider what I do with my wife 'spying'. I have explicit knowlege that she is still lying to me and deceiving me and I feel entitled to protect myself from these things to the best of my ability. I am conflicted on whether or not to reveal my knowlege of these lies to my wife. I really don't see much advantage to it.

Crazed, thank you for your post and your compliment. I really don't feel like much more than a pathetic fool who is letting himself be trashed by the person he loves most in the world. I can't really explain how it is that I still love her but I do. I spend an incredible amount of time soul searching and I am not the type to delude myself. It's not wishful thinking or fear or anything else. After all is said and done, so far, the bottom line is that she still holds my heart in her hands. I really, really appreciate your taking the time to give me your perspective and I thank you again for that.

To answer your question my wife is an executive for a major retail company and her job involves traveling from store to store to ensure that they are following company guidlines. No one in her company checks on her whereabouts, only on her performance. She has all the time to herself that she needs.
If she is telling the truth my wife and her Partner in Adultery presented her to his family as his girlfriend right up until she gave birth in November. She says they revealed the truth when the family began pressuring them to marry. Who knows what the truth is? The absurdities and inconsistensies in my wife's affair are things that I spend a lot of time weeping over. A lot of my torment and misery stem from questions I ask God beginning with How and Why. This is virgin territory for me and I am just plodding through as best I can. MB has been a Godsend in this respect but I am nearly used up.
Plan B is something I reserved for around Holiday time. I wanted to see where we were at then. I fear that my strength and determination will not last that long and I am the kind of man who will not return if I leave the relationship. I have made that mistake before in my life and I won't repeat it now. I want to rescue my wife and my marriage more than anything else in the world despite the damage I am receiving. Even now to contemplate losing my beloved and my new son is almost more than I can bear. But I am no teenager several times over and I know that if it comes to my world or my survival I will choose survival. I have cut people out of my heart before and I'm prepared to do it now and live on. I haven't reached bottom yet but I see it rushing towards me. I feel that when I finally hit it the failure will be from my own lack of guts and determination and thus will ultimately be mine. I will hang on for as long as I can. What else can I do?

Campdog,

It takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to do a long Plan A---and long Plan A's are only effective if there is a perceived defect in the marriage (on the BS's side) that you feel can be successfully addressed while this horror is ongoing. If your D-day was a month or so ago, I doubt that you will last to December. You should probably be planning more along the lines of August to September for Plan B. You have good intuition---you don't want to Plan A until your love for your wife is completely dead---at this point, you'll transition to Plan D. Instead, you want to negotiate an end to the affair (Plan A), and if unsuccessful in a reasonable period of time, you should transition to Plan B while you still have considerable feelings with regards to saving the marriage.

The bottom line is that Plan B will protect you from the daily grind of dealing with an active affair. Affairs don't last long (in general), and you need to do what you can to outlast it. 2 months of Plan A followed by 18 months of Plan B is better than 6 months of Plan A followed by divorce.

So---what do you need to do with regards to Plan A? I would suggest that you plan on exposing the affair to her family, your family, and if this is with a coworker---to her boss. Affairs thrive in secrecy, and this will help to squash the fantasy. I would recommend that you "POJA" this exposure with her as well---even though she won't agree, you will have the opportunity to explain why it's important to you that this affair not be kept secret (because it hurts your marriage), and that you want to save your marriage.

I'd also suggest that you prepare for Plan B. If you like your counselor, have them help with setting up the Plan B letter (lots of examples here). As a stay-at-home Dad, it might be ideal to ask your wife to move out first. She will probably refuse, but if she leaves---great. If not, then you should leave---maybe try to negotiate to take the kids (or at least the older ones). When I went to Plan B, I left my two children. It wasn't easy (and legally, you can get caught up in "abandonment" issues), but it ended up to be very effective in putting pressure on the fantasy of the affair.

Stayed away from these pages for a while. All the advice about leaving my wife scared the hell out of me and has taken some time to digest. My confidant, who is the only person I have confided in, has said the same thing. They think I am grasping at straws. I reread the Plan A/B stuff and realized that Plan B is not about ending my marriage but about saving it. I am planning to go to Plan B and am only undecided about when to do it.

In my own situation my wife has already stated that she would NOT leave if we separated. It would make more sense for her to do so since I am the primary care giver for the children while she is the financial provider. If she were to leave we could still keep our home and family together while she had her fun. She could even move in with the OM since she claims he is single. If I leave I would need my pension to live on and would only be able to contribute a part of it to the household. That would mean that we would lose our apartment since she cannot pay even half the rent and other expenses on her own.

I am also tormented by the fact that I cannot trust her word. Considering that she has lied about contact with her partner in adultery since d-day how can I rely on anything she tells me now, including protestations of renewed love and fresh commitment? I tend to believe that there has been no physical contact but it's not impossible that there has been nor is it impossible that there will be. Since learning of this latest deception it is d-day all over again. The crying jags and bad dreams have returned with a vengence. Physical contact or no my emotional reaction is the same. The affair continues.

It doesn't say so anywhere but it's obvious to me that Plan A must be sincere to have any effect. Just going through the motions is dishonest and and ultimately doomed to failure. I have reread K's story and I wonder how he found the strength and determination to follow through when faced with a similar situation. Mine is different only in that his wife was honest about the ongoing affair while mine lied to me. She says once again that she has broken off all contact but can offer no reassurances that this time it is true nor can I think of anything that would convince me that she is being honest. It is incredibly difficult to show honest love and support to my wife when there is always the thought in the back of my mind that she is deceiving me. I am desperate for some sign that I can trust that we are repairing our relationship and not just continuing on along the same path to disaster.

I see that a lot of people have viewed this thread and since few have posted I guess it's more for prurient interest than anything else. It makes me appreciate all the more you guys who have reached out to me. Can anyone suggest positive signs in their own situations that led them to believe that plan A was succeeding? I am terrified that I may be missing something significant.

I really don't know what to tell you and that may be why more people have not responded. In my case also told me that the A. was over. When I found cell found records that proved otherwise I told him I wanted a d. Only after that, did the truth come out that the A. had gone on much longer than I had thought. I know the pain of a 2nd dday because it makes you truly not know what is real and what is not real. Just take your time and think about what you need to do. Noone says you need to do Plan A for this long and Plan B for this long... You need to do what you feel is right for your marriage. A lot of people have told me to Plan B my H as he is still in contact w/ OW, although he also says the A. is over. In my case we can not d. right now, and I am pregnant, so I feel that I am doing what I need to do to get through this pregnancy in the best possible emotional state. My H is helping me w/ things around the house and for the baby. I can tell he is still confused and needs to work things out on his own. We don't discuss reconcilliation.

I am trying to tell you that you need to try to handle things in the way you think is best. I don't know how to tell you if Plan A is working. You will have to see and judge that by your wife's actions.

I wish you luck as it is obvious how much you want your marriage to work.