Too much to try to summarize. So I will focus on main current dilemna for the moment.

My wife of 30 years has looked outside our marriage to meet her needs (over the past 2 years at least) as a result of my poor job of meeting them. She became "friends" with her chiropractor who lives in another city about 50 miles away. She has engaged in at least an emotional affair with him (lunches, walks in the park, texts, phone calls), but will not admit it. She says they were "too close", that there was "sexual tension", that she "had a crush on him" but talked about it with him and they have handled it as adults. She continues to text and talk to him and militantly claims her "rights" to choose her own friends and medical care, as if that is what I have objected to.

She is saying that although she was wavering (and threatened divorce about 6 times in the last year) she has decided she is now committed to our marriage even though she does not have feelings of love for me. She gives all of her attention to our two boys that are still at home. She has closed her heart to me.

She says she wants me to ask her to do things together and says she is giving me a chance to "win her heart back", but does not want to discuss the affair and will not acknowledge it. I feel she wants to sweep it all under the carpet. She insists she will continue her "friendship" with him, as this is her right. She accuses me of being controlling (she had never said that before I asked her to stop seeing him) and that she just can't live under "this oppression" caused by me being upset about her continuing her relationship with him and asking her to please stop all contact with him for the sake of our marriage.

Here is my difficulty at the moment.

She refuses to go to counseling with me. There is no ability to be honest as she flies off the handle whenever I say we need some help to work through the issues - both related to us both not meeting each other's needs well, as well as the emotional affair and the need to stop all contact.

I don't know how to spend time with her doing things to "rebuild" when these issues go unaddressed. So we just keep drifting apart. She says I need to "win her heart back."

I feel like if I separate as Dr. Harley suggests as Plan B in Surviving an Affair, she will just use it as an excuse for ending the marriage because "I left". I feel we need counseling but she won't consider it and has said no repeatedly.

I don't know what do to. I am nearing the end of my rope. (not suicidal or anything like that). I just don't know how to go on just watching our marriage die. I don't want to make the same mistake and go outside the marriage to get my needs met - but I am so lonely and distressed. I have lost my best friend, my lifetime companion, and my lover. She is in the same house, but light years away from me emotionally.
Any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

EOR, welcome to Marriage Builders, glad you are here. I would click on notify and ask the moderators to move this thread to the Surviving an Affair forum so we can help you save your marriage.

It sounds to me like this is an emotional affair, and perhaps even a physical affair. But I would find out how far this has gone by doing some sleuthing and gathering some evidence before you do anything else. You need to know exactly what they are doing and possess some solid evidence in order to develop a plan.

How do they communicate? Can you hire a PI?

And I would not risk your marriage with marriage counseling. First off, MC can be of no use when there is an affair, and marriage counselors are so destructive to marriages that it will likely make the problem worse. MC has an 84% failure rate and counselors have a higher personal divorce rate than the general population. They don't have the slightest idea how to save a marriage are rarely pro-marriage.

All of the things she is saying to you, ie: "controlling" etc are pretty classic statements from a wayward who is addicted to an affair. She sounds very addicted to him.


Translation: appease my cruel and tyrannical affair or I will punish you. Unfortunately, appeasing someone who is in an affair is the most likely path to divorce.

p.s. it will be impossible to "win her heart back" until she loses this loser. Her heart is with him. So the first step must be to run him off. Which we can help you with.

EndofmyRope,
though i am very new here, less than 5 days. MB - Marriage builders is an absoulte blessing in disguise. I chose to go to MC WoW didnt. That was 3 weeks ago.

I realized the moment she left, that i felt the same way you do. Now heres a couple of points.

A-She is still under your roof, this is a huge plus in your personal situation. MY Walk out wife, left to her parents, so i have no physical way daily of showing my personal growth. You on the other hand can and will counter act her behavior with the right tools. <---I am sure of it

B-If your like my and i am guessing thats why your here, you want to save your marriage. First off, i had to learn very fast not play the victim, and more importantly, that Combating a woman in the Fog-ese is impossible. Start reading as much as you can, go through and download Dr. Harleys Questionaires. It all helps, not to mention the folks on these boards are Amazing people themselves and giving of help and guidance.

Lastly, i am contacting Dr. Harly as we speak to get an Game Plan Appt set up this week. (hoping Cross fingers)

I can only say, had i been exposed to MB months ago, i have no doubt my wife would still be under my roof, and we would be working things out. Thats not the case, you have the opportunity here to try it, without doing it all on your own.

Hang in there my friend. I dated my wife for 8 years been married for 3, and waited til i was 38 and sure i would never get a Divorce. Stick in there, start reading and studying, and follow the amazing advice shared with you by others here at MB.

Welcome to the family...I am here rooting for you, even though you may feel alone now.

Warmest Regards,
RR

Thanks for your encouraging remarks.

I have been reading like crazy over the past year and a half trying to get some help. I have read His Needs, Her Needs (again), Love Must be Tough (Dobson), several books by John Eldredge and C.S. Lewis. And am now in the last chapter of Love Busters. After all the reading and Internet searching for advice on how to save a marriage, I have found Dr. Harley's advice to be the most realistic and hopeful.

Probably the biggest Love Buster at the moment is Independent Behavior by my wife. She seems like a different person than who I have been married to for 30 years.

I do feel I have lot better idea of how to go about meeting my wife's emotional needs, due to the reading and soul searching. But I am really having a hard time with the idea of "moving forward" with rebuilding our relationship when she is not willing to stop all contact with this guy. And there is a second guy (an art teacher) that she has had similar feelings towards (she admits having had a crush on him). She texts him 30 times a month. He does not respond, because at the beginning of their "friendship" after her art class ended, I went to talk to him myself when I saw they were talking on the phone and texting each other. This was always initiated by my wife, but many times it was after midnight and late into night. She maintains he and the chiropractor are just friends and I am the one that is being inappropriate by being uncomfortable with those behaviors on her part.

She says she can never trust me because I have checked on her email and texting, and that I am invading her privacy. She claims I am the one at fault for checking up on her after I became suspicious of her activities and these guys. i.e. I should respect her privacy and I need to regain her trust.

I never checked her email or her texts until after this all started with this chiropractor. I had trusted her completely.

Your instincts are exactly right. Your marriage will not move forward until you bust up this affair. It is impossible to recover your marriage until her affair ends. It will be easy enough to kill this affair if you get the goods. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so bringing this out into the open will be ruinous. That is the key to saving your marriage.

Your best bet is to hire a PI, but if that is too pricey, I would put a keylogger on her computer, flexispy on her phone and a GPS on her car.

If you get the goods and come back here, we can help you with next steps.


People who have nothing to hide, don't hide. She has alot to hide.

To answer your Questions, MelodyLane -- Primarily contact is through texting and cell phone calls. And when she visits the city he is in, they have had lunch multiple times. I never really know how much contact there is beyond what I can see in the phone records.

I know I can confront the chiropractor, but is seems to be she has to come to the realization that what she is doing is wrong and extremely harmful to our marriage. She claims "he has helped our marriage cause he has made it possible for me to stick around". If I confront him and end it, she will blame me for one more thing that she will never forgive me for.

Check out this article by Dr Harley: Exposure by Dr Harley

End,

Do your children and family know of her affair and continued contact with this man? If not, then they need to be exposed. Affairs endure in the dark and they flounder in the light of day.

Your W will not be happy, she will threaten you, she will tell you everything would have worked out, but not that you have exposed she will not work on it. She will tell you what all exposed cheaters say, but you have no chance of rebuilding this marriage if the contact and the affair continue. Hence, the only chance you have is to have the affair end and that usually happens when exposed to the light of day by honesty.

It is very likely that all of your children know something is terribly wrong in your marriage and home. They don't know what it is and they don't know if it is their fault, especially the younger children. They need honesty, your marriage needs honesty, you need honesty, and your W needs to be held accountable for her decisions.

Step 1 expose and start the deterioration of the affair. You cannot rebuild if she is in contact with him and has not gone through withdrawal.

Please think about this.

God Bless,

JL

This is why I would hire a PI. I suspect they are sleeping together. A PI could get the evidence in addition to a full background on the chiropractor so you could get the name and phone # of his wife, if any.


When you expose the affair and raise holy unmitigated hell with the chiropractor you will amazed at how quickly she will "come to the realization that what she is doing is wrong and extremely harmful to our marriage.." Trust me on this one!


Exactly... She will credit you for standing up for your marriage. As far as "forgiveness" goes, you can let her know you will give her an opportunity to earn your forgiveness if she justly compensates you and complies with your conditions.

You, on the other hand, don't require her "forgiveness" for doing the right thing and running off this scumbag OM. THEY require your forgiveness.

EOR, I fully expect your wife to be furious when you ruin her affair. But your marriage can survive her temporary anger, it cannot survive an ongoing affair. She will get over her anger quickly enough and when the affair fog wears off, she will thank you for manning up.

Now, do you want to save this marriage, Sir?

I have NUMEROUS ways that I can help you bring her to this important realization and save your marriage! You get the goods and we will help you with a plan to bring this realization about.

Here are some answers.

I have confronted her with the affair (about 8 months ago). I have also told my three oldest kids of it (the 26, 24, and 21 year old).. I have not told the 12 and 14 year old's that are still in the home.

She claims she has not had an emotional affair, that he is the "brother she never had" and that I am the problem for being jealous and controlling because of her friendship with this guy.

While admitting she was too close to him, she says she has done nothing wrong and that there is no need for her to give up this friendship. I am just giving you all her responses. I don't agree with any of them. So because she claims that she has backed way off with how close they were and are now "appropriate", she won't consider talking to a third party cause "no one is going to tell me who my friends can and can't be."

Also, thanks for the link to the article about Exposure. I will read that.

1) The affair has gone physical. Some guy wouldn't stick around for that long if he wasn't getting any.

2) Expose to everyone, especially on OM's side. Run him off. Your WW will be furious as heck, but it will blow over after a month. Or you could just let things keep going the way they have. How many months has that lasted?

3) Clamp down on her phone and email even more. Get spy software for the computer and flexispy for the cell phone. Don't allow your WW loopholes to continue to see this OM.

4) It's time to sack up and take charge. Just clamp down and don't be apologetic. Avoid confrontations and arguments, but continue to disrupt the affair. She can yell at you, but you need to stay cool and walk away. Eventually she'll realize you aren't going to let this continue any more and she'll give it up. She ain't going anywhere. She just wants her husband and boyfried. She's not going to leave you for this guy with the kids still being involved. Eventually after she's withdrawn from the OM, you'll have a chance to start meeting her needs again.

Women don't behave inappropriately with 'the brother' they never had. They don't get 'too close' to them, either. But of course you know that.

EOR, I suspect this affair has very weak legs. The chiropractor has no reason to cool it with a woman who has probably told him that she's separated or is in the process of going through a divorce. You need to get the goods on this guy and lower the boom on him.

I am also wondering if there is some type of medical association that the chiropractor belongs to. I suspect that having an affair with a patient would not be something they would approve of or support.

EOR, please go get proof of the affair and then come back so we can help you with next steps. This is very salvagable.

Have you hacked into her email account? You could also try a VAR/GPS in the car. PI would be the best for sure. Anyway, it is senseless to confront her until you have some proof. Waywards will deny deny deny...

I understand the need to gather proof. I had gathered as much as possible when I confronted her in April 2010. This included cell phone records showing about 60 texts per month for nine months up to that point, and numerous phone calls. Some of the calls lasted up to an hour. And finally, I was able to access some "journal" entries she had made on her phone which clearly expressed her feelings toward the guy were not platonic, but were "I have finally found my soul mate" type of comments. The journal entries also indicated they had spent time taking walks in the park with "intimate, sensual conversation" (her words in her journal).

A month ago she finally said she would find a new chiropractor in our town because of "all the heat she has taken over her friendship" with this guy (from our kids and from me). When she told me she was changing chiropractors she said "I'm not admitting any wrongdoing" and I still plan on seeing "my friend" for lunches from time to time.

She has less contact than before, but there are still short phone calls and texts, especially when she has reason to be in that town.

Without a PI, I really have no practical way to have insight into the content in the calls and emails so I can dispute her claims they are innocent contacts "just like any other of my friends." She has a password on the phone and I don't want to jailbreak it, as is required by most of the spy software.

I am not afraid to confront her as I have already done with strong evidence of an emotional affair at a minimum. She gave conflicting feedback (i,e acknowledging they were too close, and have now backed off - and at the same time she had done nothing wrong). I agree with the Harley's position that the policy has to be no further contact. But she does not and says that is childish and that she has set better boundaries now and therefore should be able to maintain her friendship.

She wants to focus to be on us "rebuilding" (as long as she gets to do whatever she wants), and not on "the past". But without a full reckoning (coming clean, heartfelt apology, and agreement to stop all contact with him), I feel it is premature for me to put a lot of effort into meeting her needs better and as she says "winning her heart back"

So I am not sure if the time for gathering more data to prove the "friendship" is an affair or not now has come and gone, or at least is somewhat redundant right now. To me the fact that she wants to maintain any contact is the barrier and even if she has "backed off" as she says, all contact needs to stop. But her Independent Behavior here has convinced her that "she gets to pick her friends" and her actions.

EOR, I have a strong sense that the time has not passed or she would have dropped this guy already. I bet his wife knows and your WW is chasing him and keeping that door open just in case. I think it is only a matter of time before she contacts him or her other OM. When she contacts this chiropractor I have no doubt that there will be romantic discussions because every contact will trigger her feelings. Is this chiro married?

My suggestion would be to either jailbreak her iphone or put a voice activated recorder in her car or her room at home. Does she call him from your home?

I think that is one way you can bust this open. The other is to set her down and tell her that the only way to move forward here is to:

1. come clean - passing a polygraph [we can give you pointers on this]

2. end all contact with the OM and end all opposite sex friendships

3. account for all her time and become completely transparent

4. commit to a program of recovery

Tell her in no uncertain terms that this is what it will take to keep you interested in this marriage. If you don't set that standard, she will only live down to your standards.

Your marriage is hopeless unless she does all of those things anyway. You will die a death of a thousand cuts and she will have another affair, I assure you, so you have nothing to lose by giving her an ultimatum.

BUT... if you could get concrete, irrefutable evidence of an affair, you could use it to kill her affairs forever and shock her with a huge dose of much needed reality. You could use this type of evidence to scare the chiropractor to death by exposing him. As it is now, you have nothing because they can claim they are friends and he can easily claim that she was pursuing him and had a crush on him.