It was the right move to expose quickly.

It was the wrong move to scream divorce quickly.

The reason is now if you do not file, your WW will of been taught that what you say about her affair will carry no wieght because you will not do as you say.

WW is addicited to her OM. Hard to break addictions.

At this point learn to control your mouth. Get an attorney to file but instruct him to stall once the filing is done.

This will serve as a wake up call.

And this is why you must you must act instead of reacting.

I am filling out D papers right now. Phone tracker still working as of this moment.

The first step is to KILL the affair.

Expose the continued contact to your wife's parents.
Expose POSOM OM continued contact with a married woman.
Expose skank neighbor.

I am praying for your family.

Warfare is the Tao of deception.
Thus:
Although you are capable, display incapability.
When committed to employing your forces, feign inactivity.
When your objective is nearby, make it appear distant; when distant, create the illusion of being nearby.
Display profits to entice them.
Create disorder in their forces and take them.
If they are substantial, prepare for them.
If they are strong, avoid them.
If they are angry, perturb them.
Be deferential to foster their arrogance.
If they are rested, force them to exert themselves.
If they are united, cause them to be separated.
Attack where they are unprepared.
Go forth where they will not expect it.
These are the ways military strategists are victorious. They cannot be spoken of in advance.

Force is the control of the balance of power, in accordance with advantages.

In Plan A ... the BS restores their power to affect change. Plan A gives the BS an advantage with their intimate knowledge of their spouse's ENs.

Warfare is the Way of deception.

Deception meaning .... showing more strength than you might possess at that given time ! Hiding your weaknesses. Plan A ... not begging, crying, pleading ... standing tall and presenting a self ready to battle & fight for the marriage.

Therefore, if able, appear unable,

Plan A ... let your WS provide you with things that save your energy for future need.

if active, appear not active,

When snooping about like a squirrel searching for seeds of the affair, appear calm & serene ... Plan A snooping is done quietly & without announcing >>> "Ah-Ha ... Look what I found !". Be stealth.

if near, appear far,

Plan A ... keep your WS guessing where you are.

if far, appear near.

What seems just out of reach is sometimes more attractive. What seems a sure thing, is taken for granted.

If they have advantage, entice them;

Offer the WS goodies ... as in meet their ENs.

if they are confused, take them,

Plan A is confusing to the WS. They would prefer the BS appear ugly & unattractive in order to justify their cheating. It is confusing for the WS to see an attractive BS.

if they are substantial, prepare for them,

Plan A ... get all your ducks lined up. Legal preparations. Financial preparations. Spiritual preparations. Etc.

if they are strong, avoid them,

Plan A is not plan doormat. They can wipe their feet elsewhere, but not on your back. Accepting abuse is not an attractive trait.

if they are angry, disturb them,

LOL .... this is precicely Orchid's "reverse babble" .... The WS speaks with foggy tongue, disturb them with O's reverse babble.

if they are humble, make them haughty,

If the WS is over-confident, they become sloppy & make errors.

if they are relaxed, toil them,

Keeping an affair going is exhausting to the WS. It's like a juggling act. Throw the WS another ball to keep in the air. The affair will fall when the juggler becomes exhausted by the added effort.

if they are united, separate them.

Do not become the fool that encourages both the WS and the OP to join forces. If you act insane during Plan A, they have a common enemy to fight ~~~> YOU !

Attack where they are not prepared, go out to where they do not expect.

Do the UNexpected in Plan A. Keep the WS guessing & wondering.

This specialized warfare leads to victory, and may not be transmitted beforehand.

Do not give away your plans.... do not show the WS your books. Do not invite the WS to this site. Stealth.

Before doing battle, in the temple one calculates and will win, because many calculations were made

Plan ... you must have a Plan or you will suffer & be defeated.

before doing battle, in the temple one calculates and will not win, because few calculations were made

Don't waste time flailing about .... get organized & recruit helpers.

many calculations, victory, few calculations, no victory, then how much less so when no calculations

Do not proceed by your feelings alone. Develop your plan.

By means of these, I can observe them, beholding victory or defeat!

The BS who refuse to develop & follow a plan, are most likely to fail.

Now for the WW, you talk about the Fog. Sorry, I don�t buy it. I believe this was her plan all along to move out as soon as her parents moved down here, but my son just happen to see what was happening and exposed it a bit sooner. You don�t just wake up one morning and say I�m not in love with you anymore. She claims she has been unhappy for a long time.

Floridaguysmom,

If you really would like to understand the dynamic in your son's marriage, get and read the book, "Surviving an Affair".

You are one great mom.

AM

Hello everyone, this is Floridaguys Mom. First let me say a huge THANK YOU to everyone with their words of wisdom and prayers. Keep them coming as it�s going to be a long and painful journey. It took us a while to get the jargon down and as we talk to our son, we are starting to actually understand it all. After reading and rereading the post about the Lighthouse, I knew it was time to chime in.

After almost 40 years of marriage, we understand that it has always been Love and Compromise or what you refer to as Love deposits and withdraws that has seen us through. Don�t get me wrong, we have our battles, but at the end of the day, in my husband�s smile I can always rest a while and oh by the way, he still makes my hands sweat.

Above everything else, this is what we had hoped for our son and daughter in law, so whatever happens he will be the Lighthouse.

We have seen a positive change in him. He is more attentive. The last several days while those waves were crashing (some of them by his own doing), he has been strong and has tried to win the WW back. He�s put himself out there. It�s painful to see him hurting, but I knew he�ll get through it.

Last night was just a small crack and it�s time for some repair. He needs to focus on being the Dad he always has been and getting himself healthy. Not just for those boys, but for himself.

Now for the WW, you talk about the Fog. Sorry, I don�t buy it.

I believe this was her plan all along to move out as soon as her parents moved down here, but my son just happen to see what was happening and exposed it a bit sooner. You don�t just wake up one morning and say I�m not in love with you anymore.

She claims she has been unhappy for a long time.

Really, not buying that either, as this past summer they were talking about having another child. If you were that unhappy, why bring another child into an unhappy household?

For us, we will continue to support whatever he does through love and comforting and he knows no matter what, we will always be there. That�s what Family is.

Now for the WW, you talk about the Fog. Sorry, I don�t buy it. I believe this was her plan all along to move out as soon as her parents moved down here, but my son just happen to see what was happening and exposed it a bit sooner. You don�t just wake up one morning and say I�m not in love with you anymore.

mirror,

Let's say you decide to divorce your wife. What can you expect to go through?

You will experience a rollercoaster of emotions. For the first few days and weeks after d-day (the day you discovered the affair), you will have moment-to-moment emotional swings the likes of which you have never before encountered in your life.

Your mood will go from crying, to melancholy, to zoned-out, to desperation, to panic, to hopeful, to elation, to anger, to resentment, to depression, to mania, to despair, and back again - and all in the course of an hour sometimes.

One day can seem like an eternity, and the next can fly by so fast you didn't realize it happened. You might feel like you are losing your mind, because your wayward spouse can say something that sounds almost logical, yet you know it is a lie - but you want to believe it. Inside your heart, you know that your WS is "in there" somewhere, and you might get glimpses of that person you once knew, and when you do you so desire to trust that glimpse, and then the rug is pulled out from under you again. You see what you believe is truth, you don't trust it, you forget things, you look back over your past and wonder "was that REAL, or was that fake?".

As the weeks go by, you find out enough information about the affair that you begin to piece your world back together, at least some of it. You wonder if what you know is true. You wonder if you should reconcile, or if you should walk away. You want to reconcile some of the time, and at other times you think you should throw in the towel and just be done with the whole darn mess. Maybe everyone would be better off if the marriage was over. Five minutes later, or the next day, you wonder what you were thinking, and you believe that the marriage should be recovered, and start thinking about ways to work on that.

After three months or so, you wonder about how the marriage ended up where it was. That initial shock is over, and you have figured out that the blame for the affair itself really isn't on the betrayed spouse - it belongs to the WS. Some of the pieces of the marital problems belong to the BS, others to the WS. You begin to pick up the pieces that belong to you.

As the months pass, you hit the six month mark, and around then you begin to be angry again. You get good and mad, because as a BS, you wonder why YOU have to deal with the fallout of the affair, you have to deal with the pain, and why the WAYWARD seems to go along, LA-LA-LA-LA-LA and seems to just skate away unscathed?????? How does this happen, after the nuclear bomb that WS dropped in the marriage?????

And the rollercoaster of emotions seems to have hills and valleys still, but they are not moment-to-moment, but more like you have up days and down days, or perhaps weekly. Maybe certain things trigger you, perhaps that restaurant you know the affair couple went to, or that shirt you know the WS wore on the movie date that one night when they said they were going to work late.

You hate movies, or you are more careful about choosing them, because you now realize just how many of them have affair themes, affairs included in the plots, or have jokes about affair sex or casual affair scenes in them.

You lose many friends, because you just do not want to deal with people who are cheating on their spouses, or in affair marriages (affairages). You can't hang out with them anymore, because it makes you hurt to the very core of your soul. From your own lips, you hear yourself cursing movie stars and others who openly and cavalierly betray their marriages.

There is a pain you carry, deep inside your body. The pain does not leave you. When you awaken in the morning, it is there before you open your eyes, and greets you as your first thought: "Your spouse betrayed you. You still feel this hurt, and it is embedded in your soul. Some of the pain has been shaved away overnight, but not so much that you might feel the difference." When you close your eyes at night, you know that thought will be your last: "Try to sleep, your love has killed your heart, it hurts........."

And in your dreams, you know that the pain will also echo there.


Know that this will be the scenario, for about two years. The pain and the mood swings and the triggers - they fade over time. They do. It takes time, and work, to get yourself to the point where you can go to sleep and wake up and it NOT be your last thought and your first thought. It does change over time.


About two years, if you decide to divorce your wife.
That means, she will not be there to help you get through this. You are on your own.



Now, if you decide to recover your marriage?????


Same scenario as above. Because the emotional deal is the SAME, either way. You will still hurt. There is no getting around that. You will still have to go through the recovery cycle.

The difference is that if you divorce, you deal with the court issues, separating "stuff", legal paperwork, attorneys, money/finances, all of that. And you do it alone.

My advice is for you NOT to decide on divorce for at least six months. Mainly because you will change your mind so many times between now and then - just because of the rollercoaster ride. And if you do decide to divorce six months from now, there would be a more thoroughly though-out decision made at that point. At least that works in your favor, and allows things to cool off.


If you remain married, you work on your issues as a couple. Your wife and you focus on what went wrong, fulfilling your emotional needs together, she works on making restitution to you, you rebuild the marriage as a new one with the rules you jointly create to protect it from affairs in a better way. MB gives you the plans.



But either way, it is a long, hard road to recover from what has happened. You have a difficult choice to make.

My husband has had five affairs (of varied types), and I had a one-night stand (over 35 years ago). We are recovered. It IS possible to repair a marriage, to fall in love again, and to make your relationship work. Start with the foundation of love, and rebuild from there. I am not saying it is EASY. Worthwhile things are seldom easy.

But they are worthwhile.


Schoolbus

Here is a link to the original thread !

I just sent this to IL's

Dear Mom and Dad,

First, I want to thank you for your unconditional support and love these past 15 or so years. You both have never felt like In Law�s but rather a real Mom and Dad. You welcomed me into your family with open arms and I will be forever grateful for this. I clearly remember the night that I walked up your front steps and into the living room to ask for Dad�s permission for his only daughter�s hand in marriage. Trembling and holding back the tears of emotion because I not only loved your daughter but loved you both so much.

I also remember watching Dad, walking down the aisle, so proud with [sic] by his side and giving me his daughter�s hand in marriage. Our vows have meant everything to me. I am trying to be the man that you expected that day, and to do the best for his daughter and our family. And to set an example for our two young men who must know how a MAN, how a HUSBAND, must do whatever he can to protect his family.

Yesterday, I found that [sic] is still carrying on her affair with [sic]. She will tell you �NO� this is not true but I am happy to provide you the proof for YOUR OWN eyes to see. She continues to listen to [sic], who only wants [sic] to break from her family, so they can go out all night together like in the past without any consequences of their actions. I would hope that you would not enable [sic] by allowing her reckless behavior to affect our children or family.

[I'd suggest respectfully asking/telling them exactly what you want/expect them to do. They, too, aren't experienced in how to handle this situation properly and absent you telling them what to do (as her husband) they can't fully be held accountable for disrespecting you or enabling the affair. They'll just be like, "Sorry...but we didn't know what to do?". YOU...as her husband has to take charge. Then they can choose as adults to respect you in the role they FREELY GAVE YOU or not.]


No matter what happens please know that I intend to always maintain a friendly relationship with you as well as allowing and promoting a relationship with our children and their Nonna and Pop Pop. [sic] is still a married woman, and has retreated to your home with the intentions to carry on her affair with another man. When she is a single woman I will have no say or reason to think these actions are wrong. But she is still a married woman. I hope that you will offer her the guidance that she needs to make the proper decisions for her and her family�s future.

I think you are being far too diplomatic. Reality is...divorce is acrimonious. It DOES split up families. Your wife (and inlaws) need to know you most likely won't be hanging around them anymore, at least, not when your ex-wife is hanging around (they COULD certainly choose to not include her in things). They (ww and inlaws) should be aware that you subscribe to the notion of parallel parenting which is appropriate in high conflict divorce situations. Parallel Parenting in Plan B This means you most likely won't actually be seeing your inlaws all that often. Sure they will still see the grandkids when your wife has custody but every other holiday they'll be with you and your family. Separate birthday parties, etc. It's going to suck and their daughter is causing this.

Looking back just now before submitting you may have accomplished what I said if you'd just said you "HOPE" for a continued familial friendship going forward as if that relationship TRULY is at risk based upon their choices. They are adults and responsible for their choices. She's your wife...they shouldn't be protecting her or enabling her whatsoever. I understand and sympathize (who wouldn't want to help their children) but it's not right.



Love,

[sic]