I'm new to this forum. I`ll try to be brief with my story. My wife and I have been married almost 3 1/2 years. Second marriage for both of us. She has 3 kids, I have 2. My 2 kids, ages 13 and 11 and her youngest son, age 14 lives with us. I was married 16 years to wife #1. My wife was married 18 years to her first husband. My first marriage ended because my wife had several affairs. We divorced, reconciled after the divorce, and she left me 2 months later for another man.

My current wife had an emotional affair that I found out about 8 months after we got married. It was an old boyfriend and had been going on the entire time my wife and I dated and into our marriage. I thought we had gotten past that. Last month I found out my wife was having a physical affair. It had been going on for 6 months. She met the guy on Facebook (a friend of a friend). I came home from a camping trip with a couple of friends and my wife was having lunch with her son. Her Kindle was out and I looked at it. Her AIM account was open and I saw tons of dirty messages back and forth between them. There was no denying that she had spent the night with him. She at first denied it, then confessed. She was teary eyed, remorseful, etc, etc. She was sorry more so that she'd been caught. My first instinct was to kick her out, since my first wife had done this and my wife knew how badly I had been hurt. I waited a day and I resolved to try and salvage our marriage. We talked to our pastor several times and have been meeting with a marriage counselor for the past 6 weeks. It was agreed between us for her to give full access to everything. Phone, Kindle, computer, everything. She agreed. She's very resentful, but does it. It has been a very painful 6 weeks, but I felt we were on the path to restoring our marriage. Things were getting better, I thought. Then yesterday I discovered an email account I didn't know about. I checked it. She wasn't using it alot, but she did use it to store the phone number of the guy she had had a physical affair with. Also, 1 1/2 weeks ago she sent a birthday greeting to her old boyfriend, the guy she had had an emotional affair with. I saw that the emotional affair with him never really ended, it just had been taken underground.

I don't really know what to do. I love my wife very much, but if she is given privacy, she doesn't know any boundries. Our marriage has been a struggle from the beginning. Typical problems with blended families, but a struggle. My wife kind of blames my 13 yo daughter for much of her unhappiness. My 13 yo is very strong willed and causes alot of tension in the house, but I refuse to blame her. My wife willingly strayed. I don't trust her at all. When she's not in my sight, I don't trust her. I check everyting, but I hate living like this. After I went through the same thing 6 years ago, I swore I would never let a woman do this to me again, yet here I am. If she wants to cheat or contact old boyfriends, she'll find a way. I know that. All the checking won't stop her.

Thank you for reading my ramblings here!

ClairsDad,

Yes it can survive.

You need to expose both of these affairs to the wives/girl friends of these OM.

You need to get a polygraph for your WW as she sounds like a serial cheater, and you need the entire truth.

I think your WWs previous marriage ended because of her cheating, and she may be lying about why it ended.

God Bless
Gamma

ClairesDad, I just want to say that I'm really sorry for what brings you here. I thought I had it bad - about two months ago I discovered my WW was having an affair and had been for the past year and a half. But your situation - to have been burned so badly by your first wife, only to be facing it again, seems so awful as to be almost unimaginable. I have the utmost sympathy for you. As others will say, you have come to the right place and this site has plenty of information for dealing with your situation.

Welcome to MB and I'm sorry for your pain.

Have you read this?
Start Here First-Welcome Aboard

Also is the OM married?

Have you been tested for STD/I ?

Welcome to Marriage Builders, CD. Tell us what you have done to make sure this affair is dead. Have you exposed the affair to OM's wife/SO? Did you read the 'Start Here First' thread at the top of this forum? Do you know about the importance of a No Contact letter?

Read the 'Start Here' thread and come back with your questions. Right now I would say that your WW is not interested in ending her affair, and will be figuring out a way to work around the restrictions that have been placed on her. Waywards are good at doing that. She'll figure out a way to stay in contact with her POSOM.

One thing: DON'T tell her about this website right now. Maybe later, during recovery, but NOT NOW. This is YOUR safe place.

Please answer this question: Was your wife married when you met her?

To answer some of the questions posed to me, the OM was married and I contacted the wife and told her about the affair. My wife was not married when I met her. She had been divorced 3 years when we met. She did have an emotional affair when she and her ex-husband separated, but that wasnt the cause of her first divorce.

I have a feeling that it was. Did she tell you that that wasn't what ended her marriage?

Sounds as she is a serial cheater. Contact her XH and ask him why their marriage ended. If you have no kids with her better to divorce her. Past behavior is a judge of future behavior. I doubt she will or can do the work to stop being a serial cheater.

Serial cheaters are tough to walk down the path of redemption, but not impossible. Dr Harley has done it successfully.

You'd basically have to treat her as an addict her whole life, someone not to be trusted to have any kind of privacy, she'd probably have to either work with you or give up work. She would have to willingly and voluntarily be transparent with her wheareabouts and communications. she would have to willingly give you full knowledge of her movements as accountability for her.

It's harder than the average recovery, which is hard enough. Are you up for that?

You don't have any children together and your heart would heal in time. She's defaulted any right to expect the marriage to continue. Why do you want to save this? Is it for any logical reason?

You can install spy tools to measure if she has in fact produced everything. Such as a keylogger on the computer. Do not let her know you're spying on her, just do it to verify what you are being told. I'd also suggest she passes a polygraph to make sure you know everything in the past/present.

There's really no logical reason to stay in the marriage. Love maybe? I do love her, even though she wounded me deeply. That and I guess I don't want to put my kids and my stepson who lives with us through another divorce. I know my wife should have thought of this before everything happened.

As for what happened in her previous marriage, I really don't want to talk to xh about this. I'm pretty confident that my wife is telling the truth here. There was a serious lack of intimacy on the part of her husband for almost their entire marriage. My wife has shown me the journals she kept. The fact that she even has 3 children with her xh is amazing. Funny thing is about all this is that our intimate relationship, by far, is the strongest part of our marriage.

As far as installing key loggers,GPS on her phone, all this other stuff I won't do that. If it comes to that, and it probably has, I won't stay. I hate living like this, the constant checking up on my wife.

If your looking for an"OK" to leave, you got it my friend. Serial cheating is a hard habit to break.

Some of us would would accept nothing less than 100% remorse, regret, sorrow, shame, and any other act of contrition from a cheating spouse.

You can't even get warm fuzzies from your wife that she'll change.

Bad deal dude but as always the optimist if can be done.

No kids together makes your options pretty easy.

I think you have this belief that there should be "trust" in a marriage. I used to think the same thing and look where it got us. If you familiarize yourself with MB principles you'll learn that there should not be "blind trust" but instead, transparency, radical honesty and the conditions for an affair to be possible should be non-existent. If the conditions allow for an Affair to happen it more than likely will because its human nature. Having the keylogger, gps and constantly KNOWING (not checking) your WW's actions eliminates the possibility of an A. (This also goes the same for you. Believe it or not, you are probably at a higher risk of having the next A in your marriage, that is something I'm actually battling right now. I'm desperately trying to keep myself from doing that.)

You have serious denial issues. She is a practiced liar. Not to bash your WW but this skill is how they are able to WW's and have affairs. Yet you blindly still want to believe and trust her which is so unbelievable.

You are afraid to hear the truth so you will not ask WW's XH to find out if she cheated before. Same for refusing to use key logger, DVR, check phone bills.

ClairesDad,

My wife kind of blames my 13 yo daughter for much of her unhappiness. My 13 yo is very strong willed and causes alot of tension in the house, but I refuse to blame her.

If your WW is scapegoating your daughter it is time to move on, blood is thicker than water.

God Bless
Gamma

I disagree. If that were the case, we'd be advising BH's to divorce because their in-laws don't understand exposure.

Dr. Harley says we should "trust but verify".

Have you exposed yet? To whom?

I agree blood is not necessarily thicker than water. The spouse is the priority over parents. But in the case of this child, there will be logistical problems with recovery. Children can't be Plan B'd like unsupportive parents and the girl has done nothing wrong and her exposure to a wayward stepmother should be considered.

Dr Harley says all marriages can be saved but some should not be. He asks that we find the logical reasons for staying together. Owen has some logical reasons, like the disruption of his household. And in any case its his choice.

In his shoes I'd email Dr Harley on the radio show, because there are a few complex issues coming together. The blended family thing plus the serial nature of the cheating. (I'd be willing to believe though that she was targeted by a predatory vulture during a vulnerable time in her separation as Owen has seen her journals. That may not have involved deception even though it is still adultery).

There are people who know in our family that I've told. I've told my brother, who is a pastor, and his wife. I've told my best friend, who was there for me during the troubles of my first maariage. Also the pastor of our church and of course the marriage counselor.
The kids know that there is serious trouble because we've told them we might break up. didnt say why, though. I'm hesitant to tell my 13 yo why because it would get back to my exwife. Anyway, until it's decided one way or the other if we stay together or not, I dont want to broadcast my business to the whole family. This weekend all 3 kids are at the ex's houses and my wife and I were able to sit down and talk for almost 3 straight hours. it was probably the most heart wrenching, honest conversation we'd ever had. both of us still feel the marriage probably wont survive, though.
As far as using devices like GPS, key loggers, etc, I've done that before. I used a VAR to catch my first wife. It sucked to hear what she said about me. I already know my current wife cheated. I don't want to go down that road again.

Sorry CD, I've gotten your name mixed up with another poster in the reply above!