No, expose now.your father is already spinning the story to make your Mom look like the bad guy. If she were my Mother, I would not allow such a thing.

Giving the books to your father is useless, he is an addict. This is not the father you knew, but an alien with your fathers appearance. Dr Harley once said in a radio show that you shouldn't give people advice they didn't ask for (context: wife asked if she should give cheating husband "Surviving an affair").

Your mom needs to read what Dr. Harley says. Worldlingo is a website to translate, if you copy the URL, it gives a rather OK translation of this site (ok in my language, hope it works just as well in yours). That way, you can let your mother read relevant pages of this website.

What about plan B for your mom? Her talking with your father and agreeing to a divorce, enables the affair. You want to kill the affair, plan B might help.

Normally, the betrayed spouse exposes and asks the people she exposes to, to help restore marriage or help stop the ongoing hurt caused by the affair. You can point out how the affair hurts your family. Yes, exposure will cause anger with your dad, but that is good. It causes trouble in paradise, he and his affair partner will have to deal with problems instead of pure romantic bliss. This will speed up the downfall of the affair. You want it to end before they get married. If your mother fights the affair, later in life she won't look back with regret, even if she and your father divorce. I hope your brother and mother will understand the positive effects of exposure outweigh the negative.

Dr. Harley's plan to survive an affair is the best way to recover from an affair, wether the marriage is restored or not. No contact between your father and mother will spare your mom from pain. Every time she is reminded of the affair, it hurts her. About exposure - the sooner the affair is killed, the beter. If your father marries this woman, it will last longer and hurt your family more. If noone supports the affair, it will crumble faster. Most other plans to overcome an affair don't take the amount of damage to the betrayed spouse into account. The more damage done, the longer it takes to recover.

It matters a great deal if you postpone exposure. You don't want to wait untill a babyhalf-brother or -sister is on the way. The longer you wait, the stronger the affair gets and the more damage will be done.

Read stories on this forum. I have never read of a betrayed spouse that wished they exposed later. I read a lot of betrayed spouses that regretted not having exposed the very minute they discovered the affair.

Exposing seems counter intuitive, because you don't want everybody to know your personal problems. Once your brain takes over, you know you've got to act.

Thank you very much! So, according to you it is better not to wait even for my mother and my brother to understand why I want to do the exposure, but just to do it, isn't it?

My problem now, right at this stage, is that if I do the exposure, right on this day or tomorrow, I will not only have an angry and furious at me father, but also an angry and furious at me mother and brother. I don't mind everybody being furious at me. Let them hate me, I will do it for good. But what I am afraid of is that they will never understand why I am doing this.Now they barely understand what I am trying to explain, and after that they will stop even talking to me. They think (and they are telling me right now) that I am crossing borders if I do it, that I behave like a child who has no idea about realism and life, that I mix up already too much, that I am basically crazy.

I can understand if this attitude comes from my father (becasue he is in a fog). But why does it come from my mother and my father as well?? They are not just advising me not to do it, they are really hostile towards me, they do not approve.. It is so hard... And with them now at least I talk. If I expose, I will not even be able to read to my mom some passages of Dr.Harley's books. They will all be mad at me and stop contact with me at least for a while, because they will think that I do not count their word, especially after they asked me not to expose. What should I do? Wait them to "wake up" or expose anyways? Is it worth if I lose them too?

I forgot to mention that my husband is also not very much supportive of what I am trying to do (exposing, etc.). He is also hurt by the situation, but he also thinks that I did everything, and it is time to just let it go. But he is not as negative as my mother and my brother. He is just nicely advising me to realx already..

OK, thank you. I think I will expose then as early as possible without waiting for them to read the book... I am just fighting with my feeling of justice on the one hand and my ununderstanding of why my mother, my brother and partly my husband do not approve of further actions and ask me to relax already...

For me it is so hard to accept that not only my father, but also they will be so ununderstanding and negative of my actions ...

I forgot also to say that my father is actually not talking bad words about my mother. He still feels sorry for her and he does not do it. In fact, if you see them together now talking, you cannot even imagine that they have a problem. Really..
My father told me that he still loves my mother, but as a sister... So, they are behaving like friends now.. And my mother does not talk bad of him now.. She disapproves of his affair, but she found somehow strenght in her to accept it..
If I make the expose now and make everyone furious, I will introduce lots of negativity and they will not talk like this anymore..
Or maybe this is exactly what they need..

Is it only me who is so sensitive? If it is OK for everyone on certain level to have the family broken, finding some philosophical reasons to move on, and actually moving on, maybe I should not fight so much? Maybe they will be OK? But my heart is telling me that they underestimate how they will feel after the divorce...

This is almost the absolute perfect scenario. If you expose, it will create great conflict in the affair. The OW will be squealing like a little pig while your mother sits there looking all calm and pretty. Your father won't be able to blame his wife, he will blame his daughter!

When you are done, you can contact your mother and brother and tell them where this advice comes from. Give them Dr Harley's article about exposure and just explain that this gives the marriage the best chance for survival. And even though your mother currently likes the path of enabling, I bet she will come to appreciate your exposure. Exposure will make her feel much better because she will get much more support from others.

Dr. Harley is a clinical psychologist and leading expert on saving marriages from infidelity. He calls exposure the most effective first step in achieving that goal: Exposure

You are getting excellent advice regarding your father's affair. However, your own marriage must come first. Are you and your husband on board with Marriage Builders? Is your husband willing to POJA your exposing your father's affair?

If your mom is still talking to your father while he's in the affair, she probably will still talk to you after you exposed.

Please read the exposure thread again how to do it best with maximum effect and minimal damage to yourself. You don't want to just expose, you also want people who have influence to use it on your father and the OW. Church, work, ethics. OW's grandma wouldn't like her granddaughter to wreck a marriage of a man old enough to be her father, would she?

Also, if your father wants the best for this wonderful OW, why won't he cut her loose so she can find the perfect unattached 30-something year old single guy who won't be in a wheelchair and in need of diaper change in 20 years?

Thank you, MelodyLane. I also feel that it will create a conflict in their affair. And the more I read I realise that this is a good thing to do. Only, apart from creating a great conflict in the affair, I feel also that I will create a great conflict in my whole family - because of my mother and brother current disapproval of exposing. Is this a problem? Because my mother will not be calm, she will also be furious and disappointe with me. But you are right, at least they will all blame me, and my father will not blame my mother...

I think in the end she will appreciate the exposure because exposure makes betrayed spouses feel like GREAT. Your mom is as fogged out as your father right now. BS's feel horrible suffering in silence.

And I seriously doubt anyone will stay mad at you. Just think, they were all so willing to sweep your fathers adultery under the rug. They can do the same with your exposure.

I predict that exposure will push your mother and father closer together and cause conflict in the affair.

Thank you for reminding me this. Basically, I should be sure that before doing the exposure I have his support, right? Otherwise, he will not be happy of what I did, and this will vreate a problem for us... I think that I can talk to him much easier than with my mother about this. He also started reading the materials of Dr.Harley, and he told me he likes them.

Gemm, hopefully you have your husbands support to do this. As far as using the POJA, it took my husband and I about 1.5 years to become skilled at using the POJA even AFTER we went through the Marriage Builders course so its not very realistic to think you would have this skill.

This only leads people to believe that your mother is fine with the affair...while inside she is devastated and bleeding from her heart.



Your father loves having TWO loving women meet his needs. It is a wayward's dream.



Telling the truth is never wrong.

I'm sorry you are going through this.

So agree with this. Your mother is enduring the most traumatic event of her life right now. She is weakened to her core by this affair so she is susceptible to the bad influences of people who mean well, but who have no earthly idea what she is enduring. What your mother is enduring is as traumatic as rape or physical assault. Can you imagine telling a rape victim to "rise above it" and be "friends" with her rapist? Would those around her give her praise for befriending her rapist? Because that is what people are telling your mother IN HER WEAKEST MOMENTS.

It sounds like she is in an environment where folks think it is a VIRTUE to act like she is not affected while she is enduring the worst thing that could ever happen to her. It is easy for those bystanders to encourage such behavior because it is not their ox getting gored. Those folks who are encouraging her to go along with it won't be dealing with the fallout. YOUR MOTHER WILL DEAL WITH THE FALLOUT FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE. She probably thinks she is being virtuous, when actually she is enabling the affair. That is a tragic mistake that she will regret for many years.

When my H left me in 1999 for another woman, I was also encouraged to "rise above it." [by people whose ox was not getting gored] The RESENTMENT I felt for allowing the OW and my XH to tromp over me haunted me for years. Your mother should not go along with such horrible treatment and not allow herself to be encouraged by people who won't be affected in any way.

All of these people need to understand what your mother is enduring and STOP encouraging her to be "friends" with your father. They are hurting your mother and when she emerges from this nightmare, SHE WILL NOT REMEMBER THEM WELL. I was very angry at my mother and sister for not protecting me from my XH's affair in my weakest moment.

Hi pokerface!!!!

I know your mothers friends and family care about her and want the best thing for her. What they are doing is actually destructive to her and your father. If they want to help her, they should be encouraging her to fight against the affair and save her marriage. This can be saved, but not if she is going along with the affair and actually behaving as an enabler. These people can show their care for her by helping her bust up this affair.

If the marriage is sacrificed for the affair [unnecessarily!] your mothers life will be wrecked. Your fathers life will be wrecked too because affairs do not make people happy. It will be the greatest mistake of his life. [that is not my opinion, but the opinion of Dr. Bill Harley, clinical psychologist who has specialized in infidelity for 40 years] He has never met a person who was happy they left their marriage for an affair! Never!!

On the other hand, if your mother effectively killed this affair - with your family's help - she and your father could create a happy, romantic marriage that would erase all of the pain and trauma she is feeling today. <----that is what your family and friends should want for her.

If your family wants to support your mother they can help this way:

1. encourage your mother to stop going along with the affair and being "friends" with her adulterous husband

2. call up the OW and tell her that there is no future with your father because they will not allow her to ever darken their doorsteps

3. call your father and encourage him to end his affair because they will never accept his affair

4. encourage your mother to completely cut off contact with your father until he has ended his affair. Women have nervous breakdowns and suffer years of post traumatic stress disorder by hanging around a husband who is in an affair. Surely they do not want this for her??

Please tell your family that by encouraging your mother to "rise above it" they are putting her in grave danger.