No. She said she was going to the mall and took the kids. While gone, I left a note saying I was out and for her to text me when she got home. Before I got home I got a text saying she was in a hotel with the kids.

This is why you hire a lawyer.

I agree, get an attorney. Regardless of what happens next, no disrespectful judgements or angry outbursts or love busters.
You need to be calm and cool in this storm that you are going through. It will take all your strength.
Stay in the house, she will have a lot of explaining to do if it goes to court.
She is testing you and acting like a 5 year old petulant child.

Have you been documenting everything?

DOCUMENT DOCUMENT DOCUMENT

Monitoring and finding little inconsistencies here in her stories and there but nothing huge yet, and nothing to suggest the affair is ongoing. She gets extremely defensive when she knows I look at her stuff.

Fighting the fog is wearing me out. A few positive signs here and there but mostly just hurtful comments coming from her. We're both in the house with the kids (separate bedrooms) and I've made it clear I'm not leaving. She took off Friday night with the kids and did not return until Sat morning, saying she was coming home to stay and loves me more than anything in the world. I made it clear that leaving under false pretenses, then staying away all night is unacceptable and CAN'T happen again (without threatening legal measures).

Seeing a lawyer would be a big step financially and I'm not ready to do that yet. WW and I talked this morning and tried to hit the reset button (again) and work on the marriage slowly, but she's got an AWFUL long way to go to buy into the marriage again I'm afraid.

I've made it clear I'm all-in but I can't put up with her nonsense forever. Also made it clear she needs to see a counselor one-on-one but I can't physically make her do it. When I'm away from the house for short periods (not overnight, just around town stuff) - she says she misses me but only the IDEA of us - the way we were but our marriage had issues which led to the affair. Then when I'm home, she doesn't want me around.

She should not KNOW that you are snooping. Otherwise, it will be easier for her to hide. The fact that she is hiding something tells me she has something to HIDE. But you need to be more strategic about your snooping.


OMG. Going to a "counselor" will very likely spell the end for you. The goal of a counselor is to help the client achieve personal desires. And what does your WW want?? She wants you gone so she can replace you. The counselor will help her do that. Please stop talking about a "counselor" and focus on saving your marriage.

It doesn't sound like you are a very pleasant person to be around. I see a lot of lecturing and disrespectful judgments in your posts. Are you more or LESS pleasant than the OM? Do you think the OM lectures her?

I come on this board to vent primarily but have been doing my best around the house to create a calm environment. It's been 5 weeks since D-Day, so I'm dealing with a lot of emotions around the affair, her disconnect with me (that I only recently found out), and trying to rebuild. I think I have come a long way but have a ways to go.

Your counselor comment - she has experienced a lot of infidelity in her life through her parents and her first marriage. If she doesn't get that sorted out in her head, our marriage is done and she will likely move on to the next marriage (with partial custody of my kids) and destroy that one too. If she refuses to talk to ME about it, who WILL she talk to about it?

A counselor will not help her get that "sorted out" as you imagine. The counselor will help her achieve her goals, which is to pursue her affair and replace you. She is very foggy so her desires are based on a temporary fog. A counselor has no earthly idea of this dynamic and will only serve to validate the fog.

She does not need to "talk about it." She needs to end her affair and come back to the marriage. That is what we are trying to help you with.

I am not sure where you got the idea that a counselor could help in a situation like this?

I have often seen it said that happy marriage do not experience infidelity. If you and her can follow Dr.Harley's plan and create a romantic, loving marriage by meeting each other's most important emotional needs and utilizing extraordinary precautions, her past issues with infidelity should not be a problem.

Focus on creating a happy future. Don't dwell on the past.

Incorrect. Maybe at the time that the Cheating Spouse makes the decusion to move further forward, at THAT time, the marriage will for certain be rewritten as unhappy and even emotionally abusive, blah, blah, blah.....

But, what causes the potential for infidelity is allowing a person besides your spouse to meet and fulfill some of your emotional needs.

It all comes down to boundaries.

LTL

The MB forums are not here for "venting". We are about helping you in applying Dr. Harley's proven techniques to save your marriage. What would you rather have? A feel-good audience that leaves you with your problems, or an audience of experienced individuals who have *solved* these problems in their own marriages? If you are serious about recovering your marriage, then you are going to have to put your instinctive reactions aside and start working hard to be attractive to your WW.

LTL is right. My marriage was quite happy right up to my wife's affair. She didn't guard her love bank. Her boss at work was able to make enough love bank deposits. That's all it took. Happy marriages can have affairs if either spouse fails to guard their love bank from outside threats.

I apologize. I misspoke (mis-typed?). My wording is indeed incorrect. I know that I have read something to that effect from one of Dr.Harley's books but now that it is pointed out I am sure he did not say "happy". I can't recall the exact phrase but I think it was something more along the lines of a "loving" or "romantic" marriage. I also feel dumb for not mentioning the poor boundaries issue specifically. I guess I consider it covered by EPs.

I am all too familiar with having a wife who has poor boundaries around the opposite sex.

Thank you for pointing out my error.

Been there and can tell you Melody is spot on with what she is telling you. You see your wife's thinking as "broken" and assume a counselor can "fix" her. It sounds good in theory, but not in practice. The counselor will work with her as an individual but in terms of the marriage, the counselor will only help her work towards the goals she lays out(and hopefully not influence her choices with subjective bias). You assume the counselor will talk sense to her, tell her how bad the affair was, and how she needs to repair her marriage. Individual counseling does not work that way and saving your marriage will be the last thing on the counselor's agenda. Heck, most marriage counselors don't work that way. Difficult to comprehend initially, I know. Was hard for me to grasp at first also.

Have you listened to the clips in here?
Beware of Bad Counselors

Three things need to happen here:

1) Your wife needs to send a no contact letter to the other man. You will find samples here: http://bit.ly/1D3CLHA

2) You must next begin the process of recovery and rebuilding your marriage. She must agree to extraordinary precautions. See the checklist on the first page of this thread posted by LongWayFromHome. This will make you feel safe and help you to move forward with confidence.

3) You and your wife need to spend quality time together. Dr. Harley suggests a long vacation with only the two of you. I don't know if that's possible, but if it is it will help her to move past the withdrawal phase more quickly.

3A) In addition to the vacation, it is critical that you spend at least 20 hours of time together giving each other your undivided attention, and meeting each other's emotional needs. When couples do this THEY FALL BACK IN LOVE.

If you can your wife on board with this, you have a great chance of fixing this.

Update. Been in the house together for a while and I have no plans to leave. Still separate bedrooms which I can't do much about. If I march in and lay next to her, she'll just got to the couch.

Eliminating LBs and focusing on EMs. Affair is over so please don't ask me about that - just trust me. Now the agonizing process of rebuilding begins. When she does look at me it's with a cold stare. She feels lonely and completely disconnected. All I can do at this point is follow the advice from this site and hope the ice melts soon.

Has she written a no contact letter to OM?

Has she agreed to extraordinary precautions?

How much UA time are you getting?