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Found out 2 months ago my wife had an affair with my best freind, went on for the past year. In councelling but not sure if she truely wants to be or if she is going thru the motions. We have 2 kids at home and I just don't know what to do. I want to hold the family together but feel like I am the only one willing to try at this point. Is it possible after all this for our relationship not to go down the drain it is circling?
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Found out 2 months ago my wife had an affair with my best freind, went on for the past year. In councelling but not sure if she truely wants to be or if she is going thru the motions. We have 2 kids at home and I just don't know what to do. I want to hold the family together but feel like I am the only one willing to try at this point. Is it possible after all this for our relationship not to go down the drain it is circling? n76, so sorry to hear about the affair.  You are in the right place. Most marriages do not ever recover from an affair. They limp along in a crippled state of the pre-affair marriage and are worse off than before. You don't have to be like that if you follow this program. What this program does is affair proofs your marriage and creates a romantic marriage to replace the bad marriage. There is a very strict path to recovery. The first step is to end all contact for LIFE with the other man. Next step is to give you the entire truth about the affair. The conditions that allowed the affair to take place should be eliminated. Typically, cheaters have very poor boundaries around members of the opposite sex. Your wife allowed another man to meet her needs which is what led to this affair. So, once the marriage is affair proofed, all contact ended with the OM and the truth is all out there, the next step is to create a romantic marriage. Has all contact ended with the OM? Is he married, and if so, has his wife been informed of the affair? Has the affair been exposed to your families and your children? I am sorry to hear you are counseling, because it is so destructive to marriage that it typically causes more problems that it ever solves. Marriage counselors don't have the slightest idea how to save a marriage and actually have a higher divorce rate than the general population.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Welcome to MB, Sorry you are here. This is the BEST place to give you the BEST chance at saving your marriage.
PLEASE listen to the vets here, especially Melody Lane. You have to expose the affair to anyone with influence over your spouse .. family, friends, co-workers... etc.
Do you have evidence of the affair? Maybe put a keylogger on your home PC .. a VAR in the car and some spyware on her phone.
I would also get some of the good books Dr.Harley has to offer. Starting with SURVIVING AN AFFAIR. ALso read all you can here and vent and ask questions as you go along. We will be glad to help however we can.
I would also FIRE your MC and use the coaching center here. MUCH more value for your money. MC's have an 84% failure rate and as ML said the highest rate of divorce of any occupation.
MNG
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She says all contact has ended but after all the lies it's hard to believe anything she says right now. OM is in the middle of a nasty divorce because his wife found out the same time I did. Everyone knows, her family, my family, our kids are very young and do not know. I am trying to hold this thing together but I think she is more broken about giving up the OM than helping our family heal.
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She says all contact has ended but after all the lies it's hard to believe anything she says right now. You are wise to not believe her. A better approach is to spy on her to make sure she is not in contact. If she is this foggy 2 months after the affair, then she is probably in contact. I would slip some spyware on her phone that has a built in GPS along with a keylogger on her computer and a VAR in her car. You should not believe a word she says. OM is in the middle of a nasty divorce because his wife found out the same time I did. Have you personally spoken to his wife about this affair? Everyone knows, her family, my family, our kids are very young and do not know. I am trying to hold this thing together but I think she is more broken about giving up the OM than helping our family heal. How old are your kids? How long married? Any of you ever had an affair before?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Also, how did you find out about the affair?
What is your counselors plan to save your marriage? What do you do when you are there?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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In all this I do know that I did not meet her Emotional needs and that I did contribute to what happened. I don't want to come to this forum and make it sound like I did not play a part in what happened. I do have the book listed above and I am reading them and applying them to my life. I am trying to change into the husband she needs and wants in life. I just don't know how long it will take her to come out of the fog and see what she is truely on the verge of loosing.
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I did speak to his wife, and both waywards have admited to the affair, our children are 2 and 4.
I have never cheated on her before and she says this is the only time it has happened.
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p.s. I would run to the bookstore and get this book, Surviving an Affair by Dr Bill Harley. That is the best book I have ever found about affairs. It gives you a solid plan to turn your marriage around. It is short, sweet and very action oriented. Here is Harley's plan for recovery in a nutshell: The plan I recommend for recovery after an affair is very specific. That's because I've found that even small deviations from that plan are usually disastrous. But when it's followed, it always works. The plan has two parts that must be implemented sequentially. The first part of the plan is for the unfaithful spouse to completely separate from the lover and eliminate the conditions that made the affair possible. The second part is for the couple to create a romantic relationship, using my Basic Concepts as a guide. I'll describe these two parts to you in a little more detail. The first step, complete separation from the lover and eliminating the conditions that made the affair possible, requires a complete understanding of the affair. All information regarding the affair must be revealed to the betrayed spouse, including the name of the lover, the conditions that made the affair possible (travel, internet, etc.), the details of what took place during the affair, all correspondence, and anything else that would shed light on the tragedy. This information is important for two reasons: (1) it creates accountability and transparency, making it essentially impossible for the unfaithful spouse to continue the affair or begin a new one unnoticed, and (2) it creates trust for the betrayed spouse, providing evidence that the affair is over and a new one is unlikely to take its place. The nightmares you experience are likely to continue until you have the facts that will lead to your assurance that your husband can be trusted. An analysis of the wayward spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them. After the first step is completed, the second step is to create a romantic relationship between you and your husband using my 10 Basic Concepts here as your guide. While your relationship may be improving, it won't lead to a romantic relationship because you are not being transparent toward each other. Unspoken issues in a marital relationship lead to a superficiality that ruins romance.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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In all this I do know that I did not meet her Emotional needs and that I did contribute to what happened. I don't want to come to this forum and make it sound like I did not play a part in what happened. I do have the book listed above and I am reading them and applying them to my life. I am trying to change into the husband she needs and wants in life. I just don't know how long it will take her to come out of the fog and see what she is truely on the verge of loosing. The fog will go away a few weeks after contact ends. This is why it is so important to find out if she is still in contact. The major contributor to the affair is her loose boundaries around men. Is that being addressed? If that is not addressed and corrected, she will have other affairs, no matter how well you meet her needs. Unmet needs do not cause affairs, loose boundaries DO.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Our councelors plan as of now is for alot of prayer and scripture along with looking at the root problems that were present prior to the affair.
p.s.
we have been married 7 1/2 years
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The accountability for her time has definatly changed. I told her if she wants to stay in our home she needs to be accountable to our family for her time. I do know that is hard for her but she knows thats the only way.
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The accountability for her time has definatly changed. I told her if she wants to stay in our home she needs to be accountable to our family for her time. I do know that is hard for her but she knows thats the only way. She goes out without you? Do you have separate leisure lifestyles?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Our councelors plan as of now is for alot of prayer and scripture along with looking at the root problems that were present prior to the affair. I agree that prayer and scripture is much needed, but more importantly, a plan to recover your marriage has to be in place. Having no plan is a plan to fail. Looking at past problems is a distraction from creating a great marriage and tends to keep you both angry. Harley does not do this because it only further kills the love in a already crippled marriage to sit around and discuss grievances. Couples leave counseling more angry than when they arrived. "As a clinical psychologist who has been in direct therapy with 50,000 individuals and supervised over 600 counselors, I have not found that resolving issues of the past does much to help people deal with issues of the present. In most cases I've witnessed, it makes matters worse because it drags the most unpleasant experiences of the past into the present. I know that my perspective is in conflict with many therapists who are trained to treat the past before they can treat the present, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that this approach is more effective than letting the past stay in the past. My personal experience is that dredging up the past actually increases the risk of suicide and other dangerous symptoms of mental disorders. Another important reason that I am opposed to bringing up issues of the past is that it wastes time. When you could be forming an effective plan and putting the plan into motion to resolve an issue of the present, you spend months, and even years focused on the past while the problems of the present keep building up, eventually burying the client.." A better plan is to practice new behaviors that will turn your marriage around and leave past grievances in the past. That means eliminating lovebusters, meeting each others emotional needs and spending 20+ hours of undivided attention each week. It is real important to create an interdependent, romantic relationship after an affair. It doesn't look like your counselor has a plan to do that. The key to creating a great marriage is scheduling 20+ hours a week of UA time. You can't transform your marriage without that step.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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The accountability for her time has definatly changed. I told her if she wants to stay in our home she needs to be accountable to our family for her time. I do know that is hard for her but she knows thats the only way. This sets off my alarms. Is she gone so much that this is a big deal? And why would that ever be hard for her? My husband and I know where each other is all day long every day and it is not hard at all. We talk on the phone 4 to 5 times while we are at work and send each other text messages. We are apart while we are at work but together all the rest of the time. Are you apart more than that? Do you go out without each other?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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She is not going out without me now
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She says all contact has ended but after all the lies it's hard to believe anything she says right now. OM is in the middle of a nasty divorce because his wife found out the same time I did. This is concerning because OM may now feel that he can continue to pursue your WW because he is getting divorced. Has he moved out of the marital home? How close does he live to you?
ME: BW
HIM: FWH
Married 18 yrs
DDay 09/2008 and 12/2008
Recovered
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He lives within 8 miles and now lives alone
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He lives within 8 miles and now lives alone ouch. That is bad news. Can you move?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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