Small town, we go to the same church and Sunday School. WS is very adamant about continuing to go to this church because her support group is there. Is visually seeing each other in this very controlled environment contact?

I am not a pro, but I would certainly think so. I have a friend who left the church they attended because of this. I think it would be wise to leave. If your WS is adamant that they still go there, maybe the OM is the reason even if she says otherwise? I know I couldn't do that if my WS's OW was there. I would think that to be uncomfortable if you are trying to recover-unless it's only one of you trying to recover.

Just my $.02...

YES

I hear you but of course it gets more complicated.

My 10 year old son is a bit of a loner and his only best friend is the OM's son. He and his wife are using Dr Harley's stuff to get through this too. They are farther along and he wants to reconcile. We are trying to keep the boys from being punished by this and part of that is the church stuff.

Right now my WS is still a selfish alien and of course thinks this is all hunky-dory.

Any advice would be great.

No contact couldn't be any clearer. No contact, visual or otherwise and that extends to every person in your family, including your son.

All contact must cease immediately.

One of the consequences of your wife's A is SHE has destroyed the possiblity of a relationship of her child with his best friend. Thanks mom.

Sorry
\
FTS

Hopefully a pro will come along soon and help you more than I can at this point. I will just say that it would seem odd to me that two couples who are trying to recover their marriages using the methods that Dr. H prescribes would do it in the same enviroment? I don't know.

I know that you want to sacrafice for your son and can certainly understand that however, if it were me, and my situation were such, finding a new church would be cake compared to dealing with recovering a marriage in the same church the OP is.

In my situation, we are not in recovery because there still is some sort of contact because of work. I understand Harley to be pretty strong in his "no contact for life" deal and know that until my WH leaves this job, we will never recover. I thought differently before, but my true feelings are not going to change until WH leaves the job. I don't know your whole story but I don't think yours will either. It cannot be comfortable for you to sit in the same church as the OP who was in an A with your wife. Am I wrong?

You will never truly recover in such an environment.

Your son can either have his heart broken by losing his best friend, or have his heart ripped to shreds by losing his family.

Dr. Harley strongly recommends moving out of state. At the very least you should leave the area. For now, shop somewhere else, go to church somewhere else, send your son to school somewhere else, and get serious about getting out of there.

Or find a good divorce attorney.

Sorry to be so blunt, but the only other option of living in undending perdition while your WS desecrates and decimates your marriage, is not a real option at all.

CWS:

Your WS insists on going to THIS church so that she may continue seeing the OM.

Eye-contact is just that, eye-contact.

Does her support group KNOW?

And although it might be a small town, there are other churchs.

AND your son will get a new friend.

LG

All contact should end. You should quit that church and your son should not be in any contact with his son. If the town is very small, you would want to move. That is how serious this is. Every time she claps eyes on the OM puts her and you back to DAY ONE of recovery and makes recovery IMPOSSIBLE.


Your boys WILL BE PUNISHED if you do not do absolutely everything in your power to protect their family. Losing a kid friend is NOTHING compared to losing your family because your parents marriage ended in divorce due to an affair.

I don't expect your WW to understand the gravity of the harm she has caused, but frankly, I do expect a betrayed spouse to understand. It seems you have greatly underestimated that you are dealing with here by tolerating continued contact. You are looking at YEARS of dealing with recurrent contact and CONTINUED FOG. Your wife will remain FOGGY as long as she continues to see him.

cwslagga...

Yes, the situation you describe is most definitely contact and it will prevent you from recovering your marriage...Since recovery is your goal, this will need to be a boundary of yours...

It's a sad, but TRUE FACT that your son will have to give up that friendship...that is but one of the horrible consequences of your wife's adultery...It will be FAR better for your son to have an intact family that the friendship of this other little boy...Does your son know of the affair?

BigKahuna and his wife Mrs. Kahuna had a similar circumstance surrounding her affair and one of their son's friendships with the OM's son...I am hoping that one of them will post to you about this...They are in Australia, so it will be a bit before either of them are here today, but I feel they could offer you a lot of insight on this...I'll try to put a word out for them to do so...

Mrs. W

CWS,

Please read "Surviving An Affair" by Dr. Harley.

You may have to move from your small town. I hope you believe your marriage is worth it.

Please trust God to guide you...because often we say our marriages are our top priority, and often live as if they are our second, third or last priority. Recovery helps us to live from truth...radical honesty...and part of this is choosing to act from marriage as highest priority, which means understanding and accepting consequences from the A...such as moving away so NC for life can be established and upheld from OM.

Thank you for being here, CWS, for acting bravely for your marriage. I hope you continue to use MB in this time of crisis; and in the future, when your marriage is thriving.

LA

Put another way, you are setting yourself up to die a death of a thousand cuts with an on-again, off again affair and a WW in a state of perpetual FOG. You see the way she is now? All fogged out with glazed over eyes and hostility towards you? Count on seeing that until all contact ends.

I mean no one can control if an unwanted person attends a football game or ends up at the same shopping mall ....
However,
with the way your describing the situation ......then Yes, that would qualify as continued ongoing Contact.

Truthfully,
Ever heard of a Glance / Wink across a crowded room??

Some persons really get charged up by that kind of thing.

IN addition,
if this building is the place that they first came into contact or HAD other [inappropriate] contact ......then the ghosts of that may be something you'd want to stay away from as well.

You personally may not need as much as I did,
but I believe our total Fresh start contributed greatly to our Still Being Together.

Honestly,
I'm almost afraid to ask BUT,
what type of Support Group are they both needing to attend?
Is this where they met and the A started?

Coping with Infidelity: Part 2
How Should Affairs End?


Never see or communicate with a former lover

Once an affair is first revealed, whether it's discovered or admitted, the victimized spouse is usually in a state of shock. The first reaction is usually panic, but it's quickly followed by anger. Divorce and sometimes even murder are contemplated. But after some time passes (usually about three weeks), most couples decide that they will try to pull together and save their marriage.

The one having an affair is in no position to bargain, but he or she usually tries anyway. The bargaining effort usually boils down to somehow keeping the lover in the loop. You'd think that the unfaithful spouse would be so aware of his or her weaknesses, and so aware of the pain inflicted, that every effort would be made to avoid further contact with the lover as an act of thoughtfulness to the stunned spouse. But instead, the unfaithful spouse argues that the relationship was "only sexual" or was "emotional but not sexual" or some other peculiar description to prove that continued contact with the lover would be okay.

Most victimized spouses intuitively understand that all contact with a lover must end for life. Permanent separation not only helps prevent a renewal of the affair, but it is also a crucial gesture of consideration to someone who has been through ******. What victimized spouse would ever want to know that his or her spouse is seeing or communicating with a former lover at work or in some other activity?

In spite of career sacrifices, friendships, and issues relating to children's schooling, I am adamant in recommending that there be no contact with a former lover for life. For many, that means a move to another state. But to do otherwise fails to recognize the nature of addiction and its cure.

Look at M.S.'s husband. Here he is, thousands of miles from his lover, and yet he still feels compelled to call her. Can you imagine the trouble M.S. would have had separating them if they had not moved? Their move was the best thing that could have happened to their marriage because it not only revealed the affair, but it also set up the conditions that would make ending it possible -- total separation.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

Hi cws,

MrsW put a call out for me and here I am.

I can only confirm what you have already been told by all the other posts to you here.

WS's often like to negotiate to keep the OP in the loop so they can just prolong their affair. LOL.

This is a deal breaker my friend. She can not have ANY contact with him because to do so would mean that the afair is still active and it's only a matter of time before they hook up. It's sad OM and his Wife are using Dr Harleys materials selectively because they should already know this and should have established NC as the most basic tenent of surviving an affair.

I was in a very similar situation although not in a church context.

My wife's OM was our next door neighbour. He was also my eldest son's football coach and my middle son was one of the support staff for the team. He idolised OM as well. Our families were very intertwined. We used to go on holidays together as well. My youngest son was also a bit of a loner and he and OM's youngest son were like blood brothers. Inseperable.

So we had our d-day, I busted up the affair with some pretty effective widespread exposure and my wife returned to our home. But what to do - she would always seem to be leaving the house at the same time as OM was around (funny that) or else she would see OM'sW who would give her the death stare. OM wasn't even living there because he had been kicked to the kerb. But he was always there. We hadn't found MB at this point and were really struggling.

We decided to move and we were able to rent a property nearby so that my wife wouldn't go insane with the continued contact. In addition to this, my wife changed her shopping habits - in short did EVERYTHING she could to avoid contact. There was once the POS even chased her down (literally) in a supermarket and cornered her. But she told me right away and she has never broken NC.

The next year, my middle son was registered to play football and at the last second OM's eldest son also decided to play on the same team and OM was involved in the coaching so my wife was unable to go to watch him play that year. It also had a very adverse negative effect on me as well. The next year, my son changed football clubs.

OM is completely unwilling to lift a finger in order to ensure NC. It has all been on our shoulders. It cost us a lot of money renting another property. (OM eventually sold his house and we moved back into our home). Whenever there has been a NC breach, we have plugged that hole so it can't happen again.

At the start, my wife was devastated about the effect on my youngest son because he was so close to OM's son. But he has made other friends and the bottom line is that his relationship with OM's son is worth less than the survival and happiness of our marriage. You have to do whatever it takes to repair your marriageand NC is the most basic fundamental requirement.
We are over 2 years out from d-day now. It's our 25th wedding anniversary in a few weeks and we are renewing our vows. We will celebrate our anniversary in a tropical paradise - a second second honeymoon.

I know this is hard, but you have to take those hard decisions NOW.

Exactly.

I do hope you understand this.
Mulan

I remember shortly after d-d that my husband wanted to keep on going to places concerning his/our hobby. I wasn't excited about that.........we agreed not to go.
This topic kept on coming up and I still wasn't enthusiastic about it.

It took quit awhile until we talked about this again and when I told him that it would be ok with me if we started to go to those places again, he no longer wanted to.

I found out that xOW was indeed there many times shortly after d-d and she was hoping that my husband was going to be there too...........it didn't happen.

So all I can say is that as long as they are in the fog.....even eye-contact is contact. Just looking at each other can speak more than a thousand words and they will not be able to move on. At least not as long as they are in the fog.

Once they are out of the fog and thinking clearly, they will do everything themselves to prevent any contact. Well at least this is what happened in my situation.

But I'm pretty sure that this is typical for WS in the fog....

YES.....visualy seeing the OM is contact and it will affect the process of recovery...........it'll be many steps backwards......even if the WS says something else. NO CONTACT should be a life long decision and once your WS understands this, you will know that your marriage is on track again.

bb

CWS…in answer to your question…..YES YES YES.

I know you are probably not liking what you are reading here, but it is the yoice of experience so please listen and, most importantly, ACT!!

I really feel that you have to be the man here and lead your family as God has called you to. Your wife is fogged out and will say that you have to keep going to that church for the sake of your son, but she is also getting her ‘fix’ there each time she sees OM. Is that what you want?? She is dressing it up so she doesn’t have to be the ‘bad guy’ with your son. She can’t bear the fact that she is the reason why he has to lose a best friend. It breaks her mother’s heart.

I REALLY do know how responsible your wife must feel for the hurt she has caused you and her children. I have cried buckets for our sons, esp our youngest as OMs son was like a brother to him. My darling BigK summed up our sitch earlier in this thread.

And as someone else pointed out here, if the OM & his wife are following Harley’s advice as well, why are they still at your church????. I suppose it could be a case of ‘well we’ll stay and see what they will do/we were here first so they should go’ but I REALLY don’t think so….they ARE still in contact. Neither family will make progress until ALL contact is broken. I am actually surprised that you can sit in church with this person. I would have thought you would never want to see him again either.

I know how hard it must be for you to consider moving, which if you live in a small town is very traumatic for all involved. But new jobs, new friends etc are worth it if it means that your family is intact.

Prayers to you all

MrsK