I don't mind objections when they're well considered, as yours obviously is. No apology necessary!

I'd always thought of Plan A as meeting ENs and avoiding LBs until the WS said they were ready to work on the marriage.

... And once the wayward spouse's mistake is acknowledged, it's much easier for him or her to take the first step toward recovery by agreeing to never see or talk to the lover again.

I was under the impression that relationship talk and marriage talk etc. with an actively wayward spouse would fall on deaf ears. Only when the wayward acknowledges a problem and decides they want to work on the marriage would relationship talk become appropriate. I could well be mistaken in my thinking here.

Because in essence when you "explain" things you are telling the other person that YOU understand, that YOU have the answers, and that THEY lack understanding, THEY don't understand, etc. It's an implicit assumption that the person you're explaining to is inferior/incorrect.

Stating your ENs, calling your spouse out on LBs, communicating your boundaries - those are all fine - as you say, depending on the way they're done. But when you start to teach, or explain, it becomes a DJ. In my opinion, of course. The way I was using the term, "explaining" was synonymous with "educating" or "preaching" or "prosletyzing". I didn't mean it to include communicating your perceptions or feelings.

Gosh, it's tough to communicate clearly with just the written word sometimes. I'm glad you questioned me on this!

Because Plan A is intended to end the affair, so Plan A implies an actively wayward spouse. In EVERY case I've seen on these boards, when an active wayward goes to counseling, they lie and the counseling is ineffective.

That is generally true. It is very important to warn a BS that this is the likelihood.

However, counselling is not ruled out in Dr Harley's guidleines on Plan A. Wouldn't you agree that MB coaching is sometimes undertaken in Plan A? In SAA, the main story involved Sue and Jon's coaching with Dr Harley while Sue was lying. Dr Harley suspected this and warned Jon about it - but he did not say "do not see me until this is over". Some posters here have undertaken MB coaching with a reluctant or even non-participating WS, during the affair.

When posters go to the useless, inexperienced counsellors that we warn against here, they are usually told to trust their spouses, not to snoop and to get over their obsession with the OP. No wonder this has no effect on the affair! Clearly this poster should be warned away from the average counsellor and told to go to the MB team.

Plan A does not have a high rate of success with ending the affair, but that must be true with or without Harley coaching (since Dr Harley himself said it). MB coaching probably would not end the affair in many cases, but would help the BS do a stonkingly good Plan A.

BTW, there have been a few affairs confessed in counselling (even in the useless variety). I can think of one. You know this poster; she is a long-timer who posed on tully's thread. So you do know one case where the waywards stopped lying and the counselling became effective!

To stillbrowneyes: I apologise if this seems to be a threadjack. I hope that it isn't really, and that you can get some useful information from the discussion about Plan A. I'm sorry that you are dealing with this horrible affair.

Very true in my case as well.


I'm not sure it's relevent to the discussion, but something Dr. Harley mentioned when we were at his seminar was, he never counseled couples dealing with infidelity in the same room at the same time.....he said it was counterproductive to do so.