I know. I know that my wife is having an A. She discussed with me 3 weeks ago that she was disappointed with our marriage and needed to work through some things. She said she wanted to work our marriage out. After she told me I did some snooping and saw the text messages between her and OM. They are very sexual. We have been to one counseling session and in a private conversation with the counselor he wants me to wait because he thinks she is getting ready to tell me. The 800 pound gorilla in the room that we aren't talking about is killing me. Wathcing her text him and chat on facebook (and hiding it from me is killing me. When should I confront and how?

Yesterday

What about the counselor's opinion? I feel like she is about to talk about it, almost wants me to ask. I know that for us to start rebuilding the affair has to stop, but I dont confront well. Very scared and angry. Angry that I am such a pushover and know that if she says she will stop and wants to work it out then I will jump and say yes.

Tonight. Just ask if she wants to get something off her chest? If she says like what then just say the fact that you are having an affair. Just get it out there!!!

Your counselor is not married to her.

Since you are not into confrontation. I would suggest you write her a letter and read it to her.

First tell her you know about her affair. Maybe like this.

First I want to tell you that I love you with all my heart. But I know that you are cheating on me with another man. I cannot explain how you have crushed me by this. You have betrayed our family, our love and our vows. I don't know how this was brought about. I felt that I was a loving, supportive and communicative husband. And that had you given me an indication that you were dissatisfied or that I was not meeting your emotional needs in some way, I would have moved heaven and earth to find out what those needs were and fill them. But instead of that you chose to defile our marriage by having sex with him, and you continue to do so now. Apparently our marriage was not important enough to you to concern yourself about my feelings. I have known about your affair for sometime, I was hoping and praying that you would come to me and confess. I guess your honesty is as bankrupt as your fidelity. Since you did not have either the honor or courage to confront the situation, you have left it up to me to expose this disgusting betrayal. Did you think I was an idiot? I will not allow you to cuckold me with this man.

As I told you I love you, and hope that we can reconcile our marriage, I am not naive about the depth of feelings you must have for the other man. So then I must put it to you plainly in my demands.

1. You WILL swear that you will never see him again.
2. You WILL tell me who he is.
3. You WILL write a no contact letter to him.
4. You WILL turnover to me all passwords to your phone and computer immediately.
5. You WILL live transparently, and honestly from now on. No more secrets.
6. We Will continue our marriage counseling.

IF you do not agree to these terms, and even though I love you. Do not think that I will just sit by and wait. I will divorce as soon as possible. Furthermore if we do reconcile, I am letting you know. That should I find out that you are ever unfaithful to me again, I will not hesitate, but will leave and divorce you immediately.

This is a hard line letter meant to hit her with both barrels. If you are not willing to make the demands. Don't read it to her.

Just because you confront her, doesn't mean you have to be a jerk about it. A lot of people I know don't like confrontation because they feel like they have to e a jerk. Just tell her that you want to rebuild also and in order to do that the two of you have to be completely honest with each other. Obviously you aren't going to leave her, so tell her if she has anything, anything at all she wants to come clean about, this is her chance. You will be as understanding as humanly possibly but she has to be honest AND has to be willing to put whatever it is aside in order to rebuild. You sound like you love your wife dearly and are willing to rebuild. Yes you are hurt but in order to get through this maybe she needs to feel like it is ok to tell you. Maybe she is afraid you will leave. I am in no way excusing what she did, don't get me wrong, but she may need a little nudge to get her talking. That is all I am getting at, but you do need to confront her.

Weird thing is the counselor and W told us in the first session was that I needed to stop repressing emotion and my feelings. W knows that I wear my heart on my sleeve but once it is hurt I hide my reaction. They both want me to express more and confront W when she makes me angry. But this is like going from a tricycle to Nascar in one day. I have this terrible guilt about violating her privacy. (what a [censored]).

I know she has a ton of guilt (panic attacks, weight loss, no appetiite) In a weird way that makes me feel better. My fear is that when she knows what I know I will have to fight to convince her to stay because she has first hand family experience to what the A does to a family. The guilt and her feelings of not being good enough for me. The conflict in emotion is really hard.

Look BHFF, Cut your wife some slack. If she is going through all this, you need to man up and confront her. Please, she needs you, she wants you to get up in her grill and demand her to stop. Damn get angry. Don't yell and scream but for your marriages sake. If you can't form the words. Print what I wrote and read it to her with some intensity! Your wife is doing some other guy!

MC is basically useless if there's an A going on.

Tell your W that you know what's going on, and you'd prefer that it stop immediately. And read up about Plans A and B here - you should be gearing up to practice them.

FF stands for Firefighter BTW. It is weird. If your house was on fire I could roll up on a Fire truck pull on my gear and walk in and take care of whatever needed to be done with courage. (Courage-not the absence of fear, but doing what needs to be done in spite of fear) This scares me. Scares me down to the core. It has absolutely controlled my life since D-day. For a week every where I turned there was evidence I wasn't looking before. Internet searches, cell phone bills, actions I hadn't payed a lot of attention to. I am regaining control however. Not total control, the storm of emotion is confusing, but better. The turning point was when I broke down in front of my boys. Slowly the steel has started to return. The next kick in the [censored] was when I called her best friend. I didn't reveal what I know, and didn't ask her to reveal what she knew, I was just looking for hope. (I know BF is supportive of me, makes WS mad) That really pissed of WS. But it did open my eyes to the fact that I wouldn't want to be around me either. My actions and emotions were not reflecting who I was or who I am. So now I still struggle with the emotions, I still struggle with confronting her. And I agree I should tell her. I dont agree with MC. How can our marriage be saved (which WS says she wants) if there is another party in the mix? But I do need to time it when we can talk with no little boys underfoot, I do need to be in control (not of her, but of myself)

I started plan A. Now I am convinced to just be a Man (by my definition, loyal, honest, true to her, a friend she would want, good to my boys, and somebody I think I would want to be married to)
Thank you all for your replies and advice. Finding my strength has come from reading the things posted by other people.

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Now I am convinced to just be a Man

Starts with confronting your wife with what you actually know. She may actually be relieved to get it off her chest.

I know. When you havent confronted before, and when your wife has lived with bad examples of marriage in her life, the set up is more difficult. But I think everyone is right. The 800 lb gorrilla we are not talking about has to come out and come out soon. I am amazed after reading so much here and else where how much this does affect kids even before my DDay when I started to lose my mind. Perceptive little devils aren't they?

BHFF,

Your marriage is burning down, There is a passionate fire some other man has started in your wife's soul. It is in danger of burning up your whole family, The only thing that will put this fire out is to vent the affair by busting a hole in the roof of it to allow the heat to exit. Your wife is trapped in this fire. She wants you to save her and you are standing around watching the flames paralyzed wondering if she will come out on her own. She is waiting for you to save. Her burns are getting more severe as will the scars from this affair. Throw some frigging cold water over yourself, grab your axe and DO YOUR DAMN JOB FIREFIGHTER!

WOW you know the right words. At work today, tomorrow.

GREAT!

If you haven't seen the movie FIREPROOF, watch it before you confront her. She may even confess. But one way or another you have to do it.

Weird thing-we did watch it. Without the drama some of it did apply to us, but I thought we were doing better then what was actually going on. Funny when I read these posts it is like we are acting from a script. We go down the actions, the words. People all over are not that different are they?

No they are not. When you're in it. You think no one has ever felt what your feeling. But they have. The MO of the cheater is always the same. You have to act on what is right. Not on your feelings.

I must ask you a question. If you were having sex with another woman and putting your wife's health at risk for STD's; do you honestly think that your wife would be too fearful to tell you that she knew you were cheating on her? I don't mean to be harsh but the fact that you know and say nothing which allows her to continue to have a sexualy affair with another man behind your back unabetted says a great deal about you. What in the world kind of a message you are sending? I am sorry but it sounds so pathetic that you are fearful of confronting your own spouse while she is cheating behind your back. What does it take for you to stand up to her? No consequences to her actions equals no motivatation to change. Again if the roles were reversed, I doubt she would be shaking in her boots and refuse to tell you that she knew and she insisted that you stop. How is your marriage supposed to grow if you refuse to confront your wife about what you know? It is bad enough that her actions show a complete lack of respect for you, but you compound this by your own lack of action. If you do not respect yourself then who will?

You know I went through all the emotions and feel like I went through them so fast. It really pisses me off I end up on an antidepressant and a sleep medicine. I obsessed over this and WS and MC thought I needed to be medicated. I feel like I had a right to those feelings and they were natural. But I spoke to my physician and he says the stress of this whole moment is more than anyone should have to bear and the Prozac is not going to hurt and may actually help control the emotions and keep me level headed. It may help when I start Plan A. The saddest thing I had to do is get tested for STD's. When that came into my head I almost said its over. But I realized I still love my wife and want this to work with all of my heart. The ball will be in her court.