You can start by stopping being such an enabler. I would love to see you act like you CARE and strenuously object to her toxic, marriage wrecking behavior.

Does her family endorse infidelity as you do?

if he's self employed can you let his customers know?



most reasonable people would be horrified by this on going contact with the AP. After an offer of forgiveness, it's all she needs to do! It doesn't need to be sexy to be stopped, it just needs to stop. Will anyone tell her she is being horrifically immoral by trying to keep him?



The real attraction of these friends is they support her alley cat choices. Run off the A and she will have little use for them.

Wifedivorcing did one of the best confrontations.

Regarding the comments about "not much contact recently":

You are probably being gaslighted by your wife and her enablers about this, so maybe you feel like there is a line they haven't crossed.

But for any reasonable person looking at this from the outside, the only proper response from your wife after you exposed their affair was to DROP THIS GUY like a bad habit. ANYTHING else is crossing a BIG line. ANY further contact is NOT OK. Anybody who tells you anything otherwise is an idiot and is NOT worth your time trying to convince.

You need to draw a line in the sand here. Your OM is extremely vulnerable because he is self employed. He has customers he cannot afford to lose and you can make the cost of pursuing your wife completely unaffordable for him if you want to fight this battle. If you spoil his credibility with his customers, you ruin the viability of his business.

You've asked a few times about what you can and cannot tell your wife to do, and you are missing the point to be focusing on what you can SAY to her. She's an adult, she can do what she wants and I doubt anything you say to her at this point is going to stop her from continuing her affair.

BUT you can take actions that will make the consequences of her choices greater than she is willing to accept. That is what exposure will do.

Don't worry about what to say to her. Focus on what you're going to do to make this affair completely intolerable for her. Expose and make her OM regret ever having anything to do with her.

Thank you for all the feedback on exposure. The main issue that I am facing right now is dealing with her constant abuse. It's tearing me up every day. I don't want to come home and see her because she is so unpleasant and miserable. She berates and disrespects me in front of the children often. I don't know how to survive this and how long to expect to live this way.

You need to get on antidepressants if you feel that way.

See your doctor, explain your situation and ask to be prescribed antidepressants. This is what Dr. Harley recommends.

Your reaction to this is pretty normal. This is a very hard circumstance to be in. I wasn't eating or sleeping very well when I was in your spot (close to Dday), it's very taxing.

I feel strongly that I need undeniable proof that this is still going on. I don't see it. I think that she is thinking about leaving and taking the kids.

No, you don't need undeniable prOof that it is going on today. That is not relevant. An affair that has ended should be exposed anyway so it doesn't resume. As long as you keep it a secret, they are free to carry on. And you would pRobably go with her!

Did you read about exposure? Did you read Dr Harley's article about exposure?

It is important that you have an strong case with good evidence before you expose, and to be honest I haven't read enough of this thread to know what you do and do not have already. I understand from an earlier post that you have text messages confirming their relationship, but they've slowed down, right?

Understand that for some, there is no convincing. People either connect the dots or they don't (usually because they are in denial).

I had phone communications between my WW and her AP as well as GPS data showing her at his location for days at a time after she moved out and some in her family STILL gave her the benefit of the doubt. I even had one person ask me "what if she's staying the night there but isn't sleeping with him?"

They desperately wanted anything they could find to believe it wasn't a physical affair because they were in denial. You are going to have people around you like that also.

Snoop with every opportunity you can get, do NOT tell your wife you are doing so, and show us your evidence. You already know what the truth is and we can give you an objective opinion of how solid your case is.

Once you have that, you have to run with it and let the cards fall where they may. You've entered very murky waters here and you are going to find out in short order who you can trust in your social circle and who you cannot. Every exposure is like this.

If you think your wife is seriously close to leaving, you need to focus on getting snooping set up before she's out the door, because that task gets much harder once she's out of the house.

Dr Bill Harley, clinical psychologist and author of Surviving an Affair

"What about exposure of an affair that took place years earlier and is now ended but recently revealed? I feel that the children, close relatives, close friends, and the lovers spouse should be informed. Granted, it's embarrassing to admit an affair, but publicly admitting failure is usually the first step toward redemption.

As you probably already know, I'm a strong advocate of honesty and openness in marriage. I call it transparency -- letting your spouse know everything about you, especially your faults. But should that level of openness carry into the public arena? I believe that it should in cases of extreme irresponsibility, and that certainly includes infidelity. When you have done something very hurtful to someone else, others should know about it. Such exposure helps prevent a recurrence of the offense. Your closest friends and relatives will be keeping an eye on you -- holding you accountable."

He has prooF of the affair. His pRoof is not RECENT, which is irrelevant.

Here is your evidence:

:

". and all I do have is a couple weeks worth of texts with an "I love you", "I'm always there for you", "I miss you".. that sort of thing.. after that, the communications were all just normal.. Hi.. how are ya.. kind of stuff."

MelodyLane is the most experienced poster here regarding exposure, she has helped literally thousands of other posters through this part of the process.

Without exposure you have nothing keeping your wife and her affair partner from getting back together. And since she knows you are snooping, the affair may simply be happening via other avenues of communication.

I saw an earlier comment about her friends. You probably have it backwards. It's likely that she is friends with these people because THEY SUPPORT the affair, not vice-versa. This is not uncommon either.

You need to kill the affair before she will ditch those friends. I'm willing to bet she has people close to her (like her family!) who she cares more about than her trashy friends who are encouraging her to cheat on her husband. You need to focus like a laser on the people around her who support your marriage, and anyone who supports the affair needs to be OUT of the picture. They cannot stay.

I'm going to bet these probably are relatively new friends, right? That's usually how that works. Your wife has probably just recruited cheerleaders to help her ease her conscience.

There is no evidence that it is ongoing.. .I have looked pretty hard. Exposure will help long term... but for the short term she is so terribly abusive that I'm completely miserable. I'm afraid every day that she is going to take the kids and move away.. I know she is looking for apartments and houses in this town 1000's of miles away, but logic tells me that it is a fantasy and not reality that she could leave with no financial support. How can I survive this abuse... if I could figure that out, I could probably focus on other things. It's getting so bad that I can't even think straight.

[
That is good. You should expose the affair NOW and make sure he is run off and the affair is killed. Part of her bitterness comes from lingering feelings about the OM.

Exposure will help wake her up and may motivate her to try and change. I would also let her know that you won't put up with her abuse for long. I would certainly never reward her or go along with her destructive ideas.

Does she have access to your money or large lines of credit? If so, I would move your money.

On the texts:

Married adults don't text ANY of these phrases to people of the opposite sex, outside of their immediate family:

"I love you", "I'm always there for you", "I miss you"

None of this is OK. This and your gut feeling is enough to convince any reasonable person as to what is happening. You are her husband and this PLUS the texts are plenty enough to ask other people for help with getting your wife to abandon this relationship and focus on your marriage. Your wife's reaction is incredibly damning as to what her intentions are, and most people will instinctively understand that.

Just imagine your wife going to your father in law with texts like the ones you are describing between you and another woman and the same types of concerns about the relationship, meanwhile you are distancing yourself and asking for a divorce. Do you have any doubt as to what conclusions people would draw about that?

Sounds like you've got a good handle on how feasible it would be for her to leave.

When can you get into a Dr. to talk about getting ADs?

I can go get the AD's in the next week I think. Any advice as to what to say or do about the abuse if anything? When I ask her to stop she keeps "gaslighting" me; saying it's not her being disrespectful, it's me.

Its possible that they talked this way before we were married because she has had this friend since they were little kids. Not that it's right to continue once you are married. I hear her talk similarly to her female friends. Under no circumstances do I think this is OK... but her mind is not right either. Something is wrong with her... or, her "taker" is so much control she can do whatever she wants without regard for me.

What have you done to look pretty hard? Have you put a VAR in her vehicle? Have you put spyware on her phone or computer?

It is clear that once she found out that you were snooping she took this affair underground. You are only finding a few phone records because the rest are on a different phone, or under a different number. Are you SURE the number that is in her phone for the old high school girlfriend is REALLY the high school girlfriend and not actually the OM under a girl's name??? That is a very classic and easy wayward workaround to hide phone calls. If not under a different name, then a different phone. Purchasing a burner phone is very very easy. You have mentioned many times that he is long distance so therefore easy to track. Maybe that was the case in the era of landlines, but in today's world, not really.

You need to take this more seriously and stop underestimating the power of the addiction and the many MANY avenues to hide that addiction when the need arises, and it has.