KY,

I agree with you. I would want her to have no need for information on OM on even want any contact. I am aware that she still has a bond with OM even if not sexual. I bring this up nearly everytime that she mentions him. If she has a conenction to him then her attention is not fully on our marriage. However, I don't know how to break this bond. If our marriage had ended, she would have had no feelings for me because of the state of our marriage at the time. However, the affair was argueably still strong when it was ended abruptly by her decision to make a go of our marriage. Therefore, there was no real reason for her to not continue to have feelings or a bond to the OM. She has repressed this as much as I think she can but as you can tell from previous posts, it comes out from time to time.

I can't "make" her want to end this bond or friendship. She claims that it can't be done the last time we talked about it. If I put my foot down, I am afraid that I will only push her away and not really solve the problem. How do we solve the problem?

KY is exactly right. Your W is not in recovery, Keith. She sounds nothing like a person in recovery because of her continued destructive behavior to you and your children. As long as she continues any contact with her lover, she cannot withdraw. And as long as she never withdraws, she can never be a full participant in your marriage.

She is the "recovering" alcholic who goes in the bar every day and just has a few "social" drinks. Before long she is back to binge drinking because it is not the 10th drink that gets ya, BUT THE FIRST. Every time she sees him she is taking another drink and goes back to day one of recovery. She never really reaches the withdrawal she so desperately needs to recover, because she continually gets her fixes.

But, those occasional "fixes" can only work for so long. As you can see, she now wants MORE. "For the children," of course. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Are you monitoring her movements and her phone calls, etc? How often is she speaking to this guy?

But what you are doing is not working, Keith. She already is pushed away with her continued contact with the OM, preventing you from ever trusting her or recovering your marriage. Do you think that your marriage will survive a few more years of this on again, off again affair? I don't.

I would suggest calling up Steve Harley of Marriage Builders for a counseling session. He is extremely good with these situations and may be able to help you achieve no contact. He will not waste a minute of your time and will give you a PLAN to deal with this. He will be worth every penny you pay him. [I think he is around $185] And he may be able to save your marriage.

But Keith, surely you see that something has to change here? Can you really envision living like this for even MORE years? I could not myself.

As far as I know, the 2 hour conversation is the last time they spoke (2 or 3 months ago). I don't monitor her movements as closely as when first revealed mainly because I work 45 minutes away and have no real way of doing so. In the past, she has used pay phones and other ways of concealing her activities. Recently she has informed me of any contact with OM but always afterward. If she was sneaking around still I don't think she would let me know at all of the contact.

KoasterKeith

Not "can't." But "WON'T." There is a huge difference and that difference should alarm you greatly. It should disturb you that she is willing to sacrifice her marriage and her family over a supposedly meaningless "friendship."

Her level of committment to maintain her relationship with her LOVER is much greater than her committment to her marriage and her children.

I DO. She is trying to carefully ease you into the idea of more open contact so you don't CATCH HER so easily. This helps cover her bases and opens the door for more contact. EXACTLY what she is striving to do. If she tells you just enough, all innocent, of course, then she knows YOU WON'T LOOK. RIGHT?

I wonder what you would find if you checked out her cell phone bill, put a tap on your home phone and perhaps put a voice activated recorder in her car?

It sounds like she believes she has you successfully fooled so she might get sloppy with the phones.

MelodyLane,

Maybe I am in denial but I don't think so. I think things are as she presents it to be. She has a friendship and connection with OM that she admits but has made the decision that her marriage is more important. However, with any strong emotional attachment, she has been unable to fully rid herself of these feelings. I have no reason to not trust her representations at this point. Our marriage is great other than this issue occasionally popping up. But with that said, this is a "big deal". I do keep asking myself when this will end. Is this something that I will be dealing with for the rest of our lives or will this eventually go away with time?

What if I say NC or else the following to going to happen:

We are changing churches
We are going to go to counseling

NC means no phone conversatons, no visits, no friendships for the kids, no casual conversations at church, no getting information on OM by other means, etc.

OK. If I do this, what is that going to do except drive her away emotionally from me. The bond will still be there and this NC policy is more intended to keep him away from us. I am not sure that this will deal with the bigger issue of her continued bond with OM.

Keith, I don't see why it would go away. She has no motivation to end her affair. We can't call it a "friendship" because it has already evolved beyond that; you can turn a friendship into an affair, you can't turn an affair into a "friendship."

You have been dealing with it for years and I don't see why that would change in the future. As long as she can have BOTH of you meeting her needs, she will. So, I guess it all comes to down to acceptance and what you want out of a marriage.

You can see what you get when don't enforce a no contact boundary. If you are content with that, then acceptance is your answer. But if you are not, you must take some action. But most of all, if you refuse to help yourself, you can't very well complain about her continuing contact, because you have volunteered for it.

[but please please keep your kids out of it. They are not volunteers and don't deserve to be dragged into her affair. Same for the fiance, she should know the truth, too.]

It is not going to magically change all on its own; I predict it will continue to get worse over the years as it is now. You can SEE what happens with your own eyes.

As that silly Dr. Phil would say: "how's that working for ya?" <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Kieth, as long as you are in the same church there is contact- no contact means NO contact

That is the ANSWER to your problem. Your marriage is not likely to make it if contact continues. Once she ends contact with the OM, *THEN* she can draw to you and you can begin recovery. But recovery is not going to happen until she ends her relationship with her lover.

She is not there emotionally NOW because she is reinvesting in the OM.

HOWEVER, you can't expect this to change unless you DO something. She has no motivation to cut off contact.

If you are willing to go to counseling, why not call the Harley's specialize in adultery?

whoops! I misread your post. You said:


No contact should mean NO CONTACT. You HAVE to change churches to acheive no contact! Seeing each other at church is still contact. Why not just do it right the first time so you aren't back here dealing with this again in 6 months?

"Every contact "rekindles" her old feelings for the OM. This is why ending contact is imperative to recovery." Dr. Harley just made this statement on his radio show.

OK. I am beginning to get it. Here is a wrinkle. What about the OM exwife. My wife and her used to be best friends. Later on, I think this was a cover to continue the affair but deep down I think she still wants to be friends with her. From what I understand, the exwife has no desire to be friends with her. The issue is that they also occasionally see each other. The exwife works with our neighbor and my wife gets regular updates on her. Again, this was the most recent attempt to make contact by trying to get the kids together through the exwife. So not only am I dealing with the OM but indirectly dealing with by association with the Exwife. Again, my position has been NC but I have been lax in enforcing it at times in the effort to be compationate and loving. If I just ask her to discontinue any talk of the exwife , I don't know if that will solve anything but make her not be open and honest with me next time.

KoasterKeith

He made this comment in reply to what situation?

Keith, this was in response to a situation where a man's W has continued contact with her OM. She now wants to end her marriage because she has no feelings for her H. The affair was long ended, but she never ended contact.

Keith, your most critical issues that I can see are effecting no contact between your W and the OM. The secondary issue is dragging the children back into the morass. I suspect that she may have stayed in contact with the XOMW just to have access to the OM so addressing this other stuff may take care of that.


I understand you meant well, Keith, but can you see that this is like driving a "recovering" alcoholic to the bar and giving her money to drink? It is really not compassionate and loving if it prevents your marriage from recovering and threatens your childrens family.

I agree that she is trying to sheld some guilt by "making this right" even though when confronted with this she insists it is for the kids and not her needs.

Think about this for a minute.
What is the best thing for your kids?
The best possible thing is for them to have you and your W together as parents. Who their friends are is a very small thing compared to having an intact family.

My belief is that what your W is doing is a smoke screen for renewed contact. The signs are there. I can hear the klaxton going off in warning.

I have set NC as a boundry but it has been broken on a few occasions. Most recently about 2 months ago. She felt that the way things ended was not "right" and felt that she needed to have a conversation with the OM to end things face-to-face. I knew that she felt this way and I had been insisting that this not take place. Even our counselor's felt this was not a good idea. However, she did it anyway one day and let me that evening after it occured. In fact, the conversation that should have lasted only a few minutes ended up lasting 2 hours with them sort of rekindling their friendship. She maintains that they will always have a "friendship" since they were always on good terms and only choose to end the affair in order to save our marriage.

Warning ! Warning ! Warning!

You need to do damage control and you need to start now. She may not believe the A will start back up, but it is already.
She talks to him two hours without your knowledge or consent. She is pushing for the families to get back together against your better judgement. She is back in the EA even if she doesn't realize it.



We are at the point in our recovery that I trust her and feel our marriage is good but this "friendship" factor has always been something to give me pause and concern. I have tried to tell her that she can't have feelings for this person and not have it affect our marriage.

Tell her that a friendship with him is not possible, and contact is not an option. You have to be ready to D over it, it may come to that. Don't think this is a small thing.

IN other words, once you set your boundary, it needs to be a BOUNDARY. If it's not, you have NOTHING, and she is sucked back to the A. Decide now this is a line that can't be crossed.

She states that it is only a friendship and not sexual and is like the feelings that you have for a dead relative or spouse. I was very upset with her for a few days because of this most recent contact but I did not know what to do without pushing her away.

Often the WS says things like "You can't tell me who I can have for friend." Or "You are just trying to control me."

Know this for a sure thing. If a friend is so important that she will put it before your feelings, something is wrong. She should be going out of her way to protect your feelings, and her marriage, instead she is flirting with disaster. Tell her what you feel, and if she doesn't budge, or if she uses some of the lines listed above, you'll know what's happening for sure.

Then put your boundaries in place, and be willing to stand up for what is best for your family. You already know she won't.

I really don't want her to have contact and rekindle the kids relationship but I feel if I don't then I will be pushing her away. She feels I should trust her that nothing will happen and even if the OM tries something, she assures me that she is not going to respond back.

Putting boundaries in place that protect your marriage is not pushing her away unless she IS WANTING AN EXCUSE TO GET AWAY. If it pushes her away, you didn't have anything anyway. Do you?

Please think about this and protect yourself.

Part of me says that if I really trust her that I need to give this a shot but the other part of me is protective of my marriage and I do not want to give the OM the opportunity to make a move.

By having that two hour meeting with out your consent, she already showed she can't be trusted. YOU SHOULD NOT TRUST HER.

To say "nothing happened" is a smoke screen. That meeting should have never taken place without your agreeing to it, and she knows it. So do you. Don't let her call black white and have you belive it.

It may help you a great deal to call the Harleys for counseling. I think you would benefit from a good plan to create a really good marriage. Please don't wait to see what happens, I don't think you have the time.

SS

no contact... extraordinary measures to make sure NC remains in place. Move if you need to. Change any routine that involves them. Do not shop, frequent or go anywhere there is a chance of running into the OM.
NC means NO CONTACT... if your W still has contact with him she is having an A. You are enabling it.
Stop being afraid of pushing her away and letting that paralize you from doing the right thing. Now is the time to put an end to all of this nonsense. YOU are putting your family and marriage at great risk. NC is a plain and simple concept that gets all muddied up by fear and fog babble. Stop and learn from your past or it will surely repeat itself.

Keith,

I concur with these posts.

Absolute 100% NC is essential - change church, move, whatever you have to do. It's non-negotiable.

Our kids and OM's kids were also best friends, next door neighbours. We separated them. We moved away. They can't be friends. Just the price you and your kids pay for an affair.

I agree to keep them apart. They used the children!! The OW in my situation then made friends with my H EXWife so that she could continue to have contact with the daughter to get info about my H. SICK AND TWISTED!