ok. i think i am seeing that this site is very different then other "how to survive an affair" web sites.

a specific set of steps to follow....a plan.

requesting her to change her phone number and create a brand new email account, and delete all other ones is a reasonable request

installing spyware on her smart phone is reasonable. installing spyware to the computers in the house is reasonable. having access to her work email account is most likely illegal and would violate Federal HIPAA regulations as she works in the health field.

my children are 6 years old. the idea of telling them about their mothers infidelity is pretty off of my radar. what is that going to do other then wreck them. they are children. they are innocent.

im not sure i understand what good would come from me informing the wives of the OM of their husbands infidelity w my wife. had i thought about that earlier? yes...but it was revenge that was behind that thought...not closure.... it was more of "since my life has been ruined, i might as well ruin those men's lives as well by telling their wives".

i realize i am naive by the standards of this board....but i honestly don't understand what that is going to achieve.

the people and family in OUR closest circle all know the truth at this point.
her parents, her brothers, my sister, her closest friend, my closest friends, my closest cousins. how many people have to know about this? i already think too many people know our business now.

and, although i may be accused of being selfish for saying this... i don't really care about the other mens relationships w their wives. I'm trying to save my life and save my marriage. i truly don't give a &*^( about the other people. the OM's spouses aren't my problem.

of the men...two live within an 8 min drive of our home.
one of them had an affair w WS's (EX)best friend as well

pre disclosure, some of those "girls nights out" were legit, and her getting together w her friends.... I am a musicain so I have scheduled nights out for performance or rehearsal. I have always limited them to no more then once per week since our kids were born in 08. I don't believe that ever married couple has to spend all their leisure time together. i think its healthy that she has a night here and there to be w her friends ...... not NOW though..... her "nights out" are off the calendar at this point, and i have further reduced my evenings away from the house as much as possible.

i do feel like I'm doing just everything wrong according to the feedback from this site though.

I've read lots of the articles on this site, but i have not implemented the checklist or plan a or b (and I'm not even sure i understand those plans).

I'm going to go back to the check list and see how many more I can take off as my next step/s

-Naive Dude

Your children are old enough that they need to go know what is going on in their lives. They likely know something is wrong, they just don't know what.

Don't those wives have the same right to know what is going on in their lives as you do?

If she can't do this, then she needs to find a job where you will have access. She can't have this loophole and have a safe marriage.


Affairs and lies are what poison little children. Not telling them leaves them vulnerable to your wife's destructive behavior. Telling them lies about the source of tension in their home just confuses them and teaches them that dishonesty is acceptable.


What good would come is that they have been wronged by your wife and their husbands and they have a right and a need to know. It is indecent to help the affairees hide their secret from their victims.

These women and their children are innocent victims whose lives are being ruined by your wife and their husbands. They need the truth so they can protect themselves and keep your wife out of their lives.


Hiding the truth from innocent victims achieves nothing.


The more people who know, the more people to hold your wife accountable and support your marriage.

My main concern, though, are the innocent wives that your wife has victimized. They must know the truth so they can protect themselves and their children frm your wife and their husbands.


If you need a selfish reason to do the right and decent thing, I will give you one: telling the wives benefits you because there will be TWO people watching the cheaters instead of one.


That is great. Living close by makes it easier for her to hook up. Is that what you want?


Your unhealthy views about marriage have led your marriage to a terrible state. If you don't rethink those views, you are headed to more affairs. Couples who lead separate social lives very often end having affairs. BUT YOU ALREADY KNOW THIS.

When you get hit by a car while playing chicken, the solution is to get out of the road, not to become a better chicken player. If you don't get out of the road, you WILL get hit again.


You are doing a lot of things right and I applaud you for your methodical, thoughtful approach!!

If your neighbors bookkeeper is stealing his money would you use this excuse to not tell him?

"im not sure i understand what good would come from me informing my neighbor of this embezzlement. had i thought about that earlier? yes...but it was revenge that was behind that thought...not closure.... it was more of "since my life has been ruined, i might as well ruin my neighbors life by telling him his bookkeeper is robbing him blind".

Does that make any sense? Because that is what you are telling us about your wife's other victims.

Your concerns about "revenge" are irrelevant and are superseded by their right to know they have been harmed behind their backs.

Dr. Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders on telling the children:

here



here

here

im confused at this as well, because from my point of view, these discussions are allowing us to realize that the MB basic concepts were not being satisfied for one another, by one another.

ideas like the Love Bank, Emotional Needs, Instincts and Habits, Policy of UA,...that is stuff we never really thought about...never defined....never devoted anytime to , especially after the kids came along, so for me, recognizing that there was a deficit of all those concepts in the marriage, is a first step in acknowledging the problems existed pre-affairs, and for me, allows me to work towards implementing a new approach....a new awareness.

but, i'm "just wasting time" ? i really don't understand.

before you try to fix a problem, you have to become aware of the problem. the problem, wasn't the affairs...the problem was the state of our relationship prior to the affairs....

not devoting some serious brain power to recognizing the state the relationship was in prior to the affairs, to me, would seem to be time wasted.

i can't apply a solution if I dont recognize the problem.

these discussions focused on emotional needs that were not being met, they focused on how each of our instincts and behaviors affected our view of the marriage. someone posted "we don't care about your perceptions". i think that is ludicrous. Perception IS reality for each of us. what we perceive to be true IS true for each of us, regardless of it not being objective reality.

we didn't perceive the PROBLEMS, but we certainly felt a disconnect, and yet never did anything to address the disconnect, as we didn't know how and where we were disconnecting...

we both realize that we didn't have much if any UA for one another. work-kids-sleep-work-kids-sleep...became the routine. we quit focusing on our relationship...and we let it die out. how we coped was drastically different. she obviously found a way to have emotional needs met, to have some UA from other men, etc.... I choose to just live w the situation and figured , "i guess this happens to all marriages...." and planned to sleep walk thru the next decade/s until the kids headed for college.

so addressing the deficit of "the MB basic concepts" , even though we weren't using that terminology, seems to me, to be a vitally important step in trying to see if rebuilding and recovery is an option.

so once again..explain to me, how this is just "more time wasting"

i don't think i understand this site at all. i feel like an atheist who accidentally walked into a born again revival tent

just because people aren't using the MB terminology, doesn't mean they are wasting their time, and doing things wrong.

the basic concepts pages, and love bank..et al..that stuff makes a ton of sense. the concept of articulating here is WHY the affairs happened, because the following ingredients weren't part of the recipe, is huge.... the terminology and distinct definitions here certainly help articulate what was missing....but i still don't get how its wasting time, recognizing what was missing.... its like baking a cake and the cake sucks...because you forget to add something important. how are you going to make a better cake if you dont figure out what you skipped the first time?

are cake analogies ok here? certainly don't want to break anymore rules.

gettingintune, thanks for your clarification. This makes perfect sense and I understand what you mean. Recognition of the issues that led you here is great. What I hope you avoid at all cost is endless discussion of the past, which is a waste of time. But what you describe above is actually an enlightened attitude, which is helpful.

Right now, your main problem IS the affairs. The primary issue is that she has poor boundaries around men. It doesn't help to psychoanalyze why, but try to fix the issue.

Many people go through low points in their relationships. Many people have less than stellar marriages and/or circumstances that make it difficult to meet emotional needs (sickness, military deployment, whatever), but not all have affairs. If that were true, YOU would be having an affair right now because the state of your marriage is bad. People who have affairs have poor boundaries and are often impulsive. Those behaviors need to be corrected, no matter the cause.

The first step in trying to correct those behaviors is to bring them to light through exposure and then try to prevent them with extraordinary precautions.

The same analogy can apply for why you expose to the BSs, tell your children, and put EPs in place (and an EP is not a negotiable request BTW)...your cake will suck if you skip these ingredients.

the affairs stopped day before disclosure. oddly, the morning that i found the pics, and later confronted her, that morning she had sent an email to her now-ex-best friend, who was part of the social network that condoned that behavior, saying that she reached a point that she realized she needed to stop doing she was doing. not that , that makes much difference, but from that email, which ive seen, and the time it was sent, to the person it was sent to, shows that some part of her finally came to its senses and realized this behavior need to stop

confronting her, having her disclose, exposing the behavior to friends and family 4 months ago, has (from my perception) stopped the affairs. she is not having an affair now and hasn't had any contact with any of the OPs as of Jan 2nd...

we both went thru the "check list on how to affairs should end" last evening, and believe that all of those items have been fulfilled.

so i don't believe the affairs are the problem. the affairs were a behavior which resulted from a relationship that wasn't fullfilling for either partner. the first step is to recognize what was missing, that allowed that behavior to be an option, and to insure that the relationship is rebuilt into a new relationship. my goal isnt to have things be the way they were pre-affair. that WAS the problem. my goal is to have things be drastically and radically different now that we are post disclosure, exposure, ending of affairs.

if i keep thinking "the affairs are the problem" im not going to do anything to change the behavior for myself or for my spouse

if i recognize and realize my behavior and my spouses behavior pre-affair WAS the problem, then we both can take steps to insure we don't repeat those patterns, and carve out a new relationship

yes, i realize that if everyone reacted the way my wife did to a problem marriage, i would have affairs myself...but i didnt. i coped in a different manner.

thats exactly what we DONT want to do. we DONT want to spend time discussing the past, but we need to know what to work on in the present. thats the goal right now. we need to focus on the PRESENT, which again, is part of why i say , right now that affairs ARENT the problem, the problem is what allowed the affairs to happen..... so focusing on the present situation, and know what was missing, and insuring things are different now, seems to me, to be making progress forward

What was missing was boundaries. Unmet ENs are not the reason your WW cheating. What EN did these men meet other than sex? Craigslist and AshleyMadison are for sexual hookups...not to have conversations, recreational companionship, go to dinner, or a movie. You seem to be missing that.

Your WW was trolling for sex with random strangers. There was no "emotion" in that.

With the glaring exception of exposure to these men's wives and your children. That is a critical exposure that should not be skipped. Your wife will agree if she is sincere about change. Not that you should obtain her agreement to expose to these women. It should just be done without forewarning her.

There is also the issue of two of her OM living so close by. That will always be a threat to your marriage because her feelings will be triggered on a regular basis. Dr. Harley recommends moving in such a situation and I would strongly recommend you do that. You really can't afford to take risks like that with your life. You have been through hell and this is a needless risk.


Missing elements of your relationship certainly made the affairs more tempting, but she had the affairs because she was seeking them out. While she does have poor boundaries with men, that is not the main reason she had the affairs. She felt entitled to them and actively pursued them, versus the typical affair that is somewhat accidental. In the typical affair, someone with poor boundaries sort of falls into it and before they know it, they are in deep water. Much like the analogy of the frog in boiling water.

The point I am trying to make is that you can meet her needs 1000% but she will still have affairs if she is out looking for them as she has in the past. Meeting her needs will not protect you from that. Below is a discussion between Steve Harley [the therapist son of Dr Harley and another board member about this point]

Let me put this another way. No spouse meets their spouses needs 100% at all times. What happens if you flounder again? What happens if you get sick and are hospitalized for a lengthy period time? Does she therefore feel an entitlement to seek out other men again?

from the articles Ive read on this site, it seemed that unmet EN are EXACTLY the reason for affairs.

Yeah, no. Affairs are less tempting when your needs are met, but that doesn't prevent them. Think about it. I have not seen or talked to my husband in 7 months. None of my needs are met. That means I should be having an affair. I'm not because I have good boundaries.

Listen to Dr. Harley on the radio. He says this time and time again.

I have also read every article, read every book, gone through the MB course with Dr. Harley, met Dr Harley, and listened to almost every MB radio show going back to 2006. Unmet needs make affairs more tempting, but the basic reason in your case is that your wife was trolling for action. If she had not done that, there would have been no affairs. Even if needs are met 100%, she will still have an affair if she continues to troll and if she has poor boundaries around men.

We have many betrayed spouses on this forum who met their spouses needs perfectly. The WS had an affair because his/her love banks were open for business. In your case, it is much more than that: she was trolling for action. That did not happen by accident, but by design.