I can't thank you all enough for preparing me for this. Knowledge of how she would react is what has kept me together so far. She is doing exactly what you all described.

She has been threatening to respond to all the messages she has been getting by telling them all the stupid, hurtful things I did to her during our marriage. I told her if she thought it would help our situation to go ahead and do it. I am not afraid of accepting responsibility for my actions.

I was willing to accept the outcome, but I was not going back to the way our life was before. I was not going to live in a loveless marriage full of disrespect and pain. I didn't ask her if she was going to end the affair, but instead I let it be known that I needed to know soon so I could plan my life. She briefly commented on how I ruined the marriage, but I stopped her by saying that right now we needed to focus on the affair.

When I got there she had bought me some new clothes (I work construction so I am dirty everyday)and offered to take me out to dinner. It was not what I was expecting.

We talked briefly about the exposure. She said at first she was leaving me, that I embarrassed her and humiliated her beyond belief.

She was especially interested in my personal counseling appointment I had today.

You took back control of your life. When you meet with her tomorrow, I would give her some conditions for her return. What I expect for her to do is to TRY and turn this back and go back to the current situation where she has her needs met in 2 places. You need to let her know that those days are done and you won't live like that anymore. Let her know you will only take her back if she ends all contact for life and commits to a program of recovery. See, she still believes she can manipulate you into allowing her to continue her affair.

Explain to her that you want to have a romantic, loving, SAFE marriage and that you are not willing to stay in a loveless marriage while she has an affair. Tell her you are willing to give her an opportunity to earn your forgiveness. In order for the marriage to recover, certain things have to happen. This is what it will take to keep you interested:

1. no more nights apart or going out without each other - create a healthy, integrated lifestyle

2. complete transparency - cell phone passwords, etc

3. no more opposite sex friendships

4. complete honesty about her affair � passing a polygraph if necessary

5. commit to a program of recovery that restores the romantic love in your marriage

Tell her "this is what it will take to keep me in this marriage." Whether your marriage ends up with success or failure will depend almost entirely on her willingness and ability to make radical changes. Her lifestyle must become absolutely transparent, holding nothing back. She is in no position to negotiate when it comes to extraordinary precautions, because those precautions are designed to prevent another affair and help you feel safe. She must also meet your emotional needs in a way that until now he has failed. Unless she makes a 180 degree turn in his approach to what it means to be a wife, your marriage won't recover, it will be a crippled version of your pre-affair marriage.

Step ONE is ending the affair. That is just the START. Don't stop there, Ray. Drive this home. Tell her what your conditions are. If she won't fully commit to recovery she is wasting your time.

Yes Mel, I have read it and I am creating my own conditions. We have marriage counseling this week. I want to present my conditions during that session. Since exposure, she is impossible to communicate with on a rational level.

I give you this advice because I want you and your spouse to be in love with each other, and I'm sure that you want that, too. But most marital therapists disagree with me on this issue. Because their advice is so pervasive, and so destructive to the love of couples that follow it, I use whatever opportunity I have to defend this crucial position.

The difference between my approach to saving marriages, and the approach of most other therapists, is that I focus on building romantic love (being "in love") between spouses, rather than simply focusing on conflict resolution. As it turns out, I also address conflict resolution, but I do it in a way that builds love between spouses.

Since most marital therapists fail to address the romantic love issue when they try to help couples, their approach to conflict resolution usually fails to build love, and as a result, the couples divorce, even after "resolving" some of their conflicts.

An example of this current effort to "resolve" marital conflicts is found in a book by Jacobson and Christensen, Integrative Couples Therapy (Norton, 1996). In this training manual for marital therapists, couples are to be encouraged by their therapists to lower their marital expectations by becoming more understanding of each other's dysfunctional background. Irreparable wounds inflicted during childhood should inspire empathy toward a thoughtless spouse, not disappointment. Awareness of each other's limitations should lead to acceptance of each other's behavior and a willingness to meet one's own needs, instead of expecting each other to meet those needs. The suggested goal of therapy is to teach each spouse to make themselves happy, and not look to each other for their happiness. While this approach to therapy may resolve a couple's conflict, it most certainly will not lead to love. When couples follow this advice, few love units are deposited and many are withdrawn. In the end, the couple is likely to divorce.

The same sort of advice is given in Getting the Love You Want by Hendrix (Holt Rinehart, & Winston, 1988). While the book title seems to address the issue of romantic love in marriage, the author's strategy for couples is to learn to accept each other's marital failures, rather than doing anything to overcome them. I guarantee you, if you follow this strategy, you will NOT get the love you want.

My experience, and the experience of a few others who are carefully studying what it takes for a couple to be satisfied with their marriage, proves the opposite of what is currently being popularly recommended. Instead of spouses trying to lower their expectations, I believe that they should raise them. Instead of spouses learning to meet their own emotional needs, I believe that they should expect to have them met by each other, and met in a professional manner. Why? Because that's what it takes for a couple to be in love and stay in love. Furthermore, couples should not waste their time trying to "understand" each other's failures, but rather, they should try to overcome them as quickly as possible so the issue does not have time to drain their Love Banks.

In a great, but mind-numbing, article entitled "The Mathematics of Marital Conflict: Dynamic Mathematical Nonlinear Modeling of Newlywed Marital Interaction" (Gottman, Swanson and Murray. J. of Family Psychology, 1999, Vol. 13, No.1, 3-19), the authors provide evidence that couples should not "let things ride and have a chance to build up" (p. 17). Instead, couples should address any conflict as soon as it arises, and resolve it quickly. The authors indicate that the biblical principle from Ephesians (4:26), may be helpful in marriage, "Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry."

In this study, newlyweds who divorced within 6 years were compared with those who remained married during those years. It was found that the divorced couples tended not to respond to each other's complaints as quickly as those who remained married. These divorced couples ignored each other's complaints until they became intensely negative. Those who remained married, on the other hand, went to work addressing each other's complaints soon after they were mentioned, not giving the complaint a chance to build up.

My experience with couples agrees with the results of this study. In successful marriages, spouses expect to change to accommodate each other's needs, so when a spouse registers a complaint, it's a signal for action. In failed marriages, on the other hand, spouses expect to be accepted as they are, without change. A complaint is interpreted as an unwillingness to love unconditionally, a failure of the complaining spouse. So instead of adjusting to the complaint, the defense is offered, "if you really loved me, you would not try to change me. You would let me continue to do whatever it is I'm doing."