Mark, you've just given your addict the perfect set up to carry on.

She will wring her hands and 'try hard' with your pastor. I am sure he will try hard too.

I'm sure he is a terrific pastor with those who genuinely need him but he has no power over free will.

Then she has a more face saving reason to leave because she 'tried'. This is a gift to an addict. They don't have to stop and their conscience is appeased too.

She is also well aware that you have no clue how strongly she feels and how lost she is. She despises your casual, minimilist reaction.

There are many people who don't move. They either divorce or move and recover properly after the second Dday.

The resentment caused by a second Dday adds years to the recovery process.

This is like saying 'I get why the Jews didn't leave Nazi Germany. I mean they had small children and jobs'.

Please read, False Recovery-Need Voices of Experience

Hi Melody

I'm sorry to say; I'm not finding your comments at all helpful. If I shut down the business I will break contracts, be sued, lose my house, dump my children in poverty, reduce a business that generates me a decent income to nothing. With no income, and all the litigation, I won't have a wife, now will I!?!?

I could try to sell the business but that would take many months, assuming I could get a buyer.

I'm surely not unique here, so unless you are, in fact, a past business owner, who broke contracts, got sued, lost everything, then please refrain from making comments that are not solutions.

Kind regards,
Mark

Thanks for the suggestion. With initial outlay upwards of $320,000, it's not really an option, no.

Thanks Indiegirl. I hear you, but please read my posts above.

Thank you. Very useful post. Much appreciated.

Mark, first off, no one told you to "shut down" your business. We are just telling you that your marriage will never recover as long as there is continued contact between your wife and the OM. You are not unique. We have had many, many people sell their businesses, quit their jobs, change professions in order to save their marriage.

As long as you understand you are sacrificing your marriage for your business, you should not be surprised when the affair continues and your marriage fails.

Do you want to save your marriage? If you do, then you need to find a way to MOVE out of that town. If you choose the business over your marriage, that is your prerogative.

There are always options. You just have to look for them.

This morning, we both went to our respective sporting events.
My wife told me after that she asked the OM again to please refrain from contact. (He was at her sporting event.)

Facebook, etc now has him unfriended and blocked. With phone monitoring, contact from her to the OM will be quite hard to arrange. Not impossible, but hard.

Other than that, surveillance shows no contact, so I'm hopeful we're seeing some honesty coming through.

Thanks Melody. If you'd like to send me a cheque, I'll be happy to cash it in no time.

This is continued contact. Like we told you, recovery will be impossible this way. Every time she sees him or his car, she will go back to Day 1, in a perpetual state of withdrawal.

This is like the alcoholic who pretends he "recovers" by going into the bar every day and having occasional drink.

I hope you don't imagine you can ever recover like this?

It's ok with me if you ignore the advice here. It is your marriage to lose. It is really all the same to me. I have saved my marriage.

You don't appear to be interested in Dr Harley's approach to marriage at all. You don't appear to know what his approach to recovery from an affair involves. You don't appear to be taking this affair seriously.

Recreational activities are things that we enjoy very much. When we do those things in the company of other people, it is easy for us to form emotional bonds with those people. When we are single, we could end up dating and marrying those people. If we continue to spend our favourite recreational time with our spouse, we stay in love with each other and there isn't room to fall for somebody else. However if, when we are married, we spend our favourite recreational time with someone other than our spouse, we can easily have an affair.

Your wife had an affair under precisely those conditions - by training with someone in the sport for which she has a passion, and forming a bond with him. She had an affair for over a year with him, and fell deeply in love with him. Your marriage is shattered. And now here you are, having only a few days ago discovered continued contact - as was only to be expected when affair partners fall in love - going back to your respective sporting events, when you know OM is likely to be at her event and you know she is in love with him.

What is wrong with you?

You don't sound devastated about this affair.

I think you're just here to have fun.

Again; Thanks Melody. We have commitments go to our sporting events. As noted prior - small town - can't avoid this, unless we stop doing sport. Is that your suggestion?

As a positive - The mobile phone is back in the dining room per normal, not on the bedside table. Little steps!

For the life of me I cannot understand why you are being so cocky.

Where are the positives in your situation?

If your wife really was in love and enjoying a full sexual affair with someone else for about a year, and if only a few days ago she was contemplating leaving you, and if you really cannot leave this small, small town and OM won't leave either, and if you are bound to run into each other in town, and if you won't give up the separate sporting events and she sees him at hers, then you are screwed, my man. Seriously screwed. I don't see anything in your situation that warrants sarcasm towards us for our advice, or that warrants cockiness, or smily faces.

You're screwed. Good luck.

Is the sporting event more important than your marriage? Apparently so!


That is like saying you fixed the door to the mens room on the sinking Titanic. Good grief. It matters not at all that her mobile phone is on the dining room table when she just saw her LOVER today!!

Mark, is there is something you needed from us? Since you have rejected the Marriage Builders program, is there a reason to continue posting here and wasting our time?

Hi Melody

I am here because I hope to find solutions to our marriage's current issue. I need to implement the program in such a way that I ensure we:

(a) Do not lose our house;
(b) Do not lose our business;
(c) Are not sued by disgruntled clients;
(d) Can live a normal and healthy life, taking part in community or sporting activities, which is healthy for both body and mind.

If any of these things happen, I won't have a marriage.

I have found the website very useful, thanks. I have found the posts by some users here, quite useful, thanks. I have found Will Harley's books very useful, thanks. (I own a few) I regret to say, you're suggestions are not practical in our situation, so I'd invite you to waste your time with someone else, and refrain from reading my posts or commenting on my posts, please.

For myself, I won't comment further on your posts, in my thread, so please take your vitriol somewhere else. I find your comments mildly abusive and not in keeping with the forum rules. If you are the owner of this website, then I will remove myself forthwith, but until that fact is proven, I need not do so.

Kind regards,
Mark