I am not sure. But the night he left I did feel that he was waiting for me to change my mind.

Ok, I'll do that in a bit. I did use that sample letter as a guide.

What you are doing gives you the BEST CHANCE at saving your marriage. I want you to understand that is the goal here. Your husband's "plan" of hanging around for the holidays while he keeps his options open would have hurt your marriage terribly becaues his wayward mentality [and affair] would have become more entrenched while he destroyed your mental and physical health. The strategy is to give him a cold splash of reality, raise the bar of admittance for you and protect your health. That gives you the best chance.

Dear WH,

This is a difficult letter for me to write, one that I have been mentally working on for a bit now. I have written this letter with the true love that only a wife can have for a husband. Please read every word I have written, for it is from the heart.

I would like to acknowledge and apologize for my part in the demise of our marriage. I neglected your needs, and failed to give you what you needed many times. I'm sure this helped create a voice in our marriage that allowed your affair to happen. I have said this before, and I want to say it again: I want to do whatever I can to put our marriage back together in a mutually satisfying way. I feel that I have been learning ways to be the type of woman that I hope you would be proud to call your wife, as I have so many times felt pride in calling you my husband. I so want to be able to put the past behind us, and build a better life together for us and our children.

The eight years that we have been married and the two years before that that we were together were filled with an endless number of hugs, smiles, tears and laughs. I have loved you every minute of every day that we have spent together. We really have had some amazing moments together. ....[mushy memories]..... We have brought into the world two amazing children who are two of the most adorable and well-rounded children ever and we have started giving them the world that we both have always wanted to give our children. We have shared so many ups and downs.

The past three/four weeks have been the most difficult of time for me, the most emotionally traumatic in my life. We seemed to start recovery in the beginning, only to be told the next day that it was a sham. I am still feeling the hurt and pain of the lack of commitment to our marriage vows, �for better or worse, till death do us part and forsaking all others� We have somehow misplaced our foundation of trust, respect and intimacy, I agree. All of which can be built again, it won�t be easy, more so for me, but it can be done.

Lately I have been given a strength that I never knew I possessed. I have grown and matured more as a person than I have in my entire lifetime. Whereas recently I have endured the hurt and pain, I now see that it is soon to drain my love for you. Until you can truthfully and honestly return home and work with me on rebuilding our marriage, I will be having no communication with you, and I will not be seeing you. This is not to punish you, it is to protect my feelings for you and our chances at reconciliation. If we continue as we are now, there would be nothing left.

I ask that you please respect my decision to separate. The pain is too great to be in contact with you while the lying and affair is continuing and because of that, I need to protect myself. I will be seeking counsel on how to best protect the kids financially, specifically child support and how to set that up. And I expect you to continue to support the kids while this is getting figured out.

I want us to be a team, and restore our marriage together. I want you to know that no matter how bad the past was, no matter how ugly, we CAN get past it. With help, our true healing can begin. Look inside yourself and find the strength we will need to do this. I want to grow old with you. I loved you more than life itself while we were together, and I continue to do so as I write this. When you find yourself ready and willing to truly and fully commit to our family, willing to work on a plan for our recovery, and go to counseling, I will be ready and willing to discuss our future. I am committed to our marriage. I believe that we can build a marriage that is stronger and more beautiful than we have experienced. Beginning today, I walk forward in life, and I want you to walk with me. I love you with all of my heart.

Forever and ever, your loving wife,

Here is the "addendum":

Until your affair ends, and you are willing to follow a plan of reconciliation with me, I will avoid seeing you or talking to you. There will be NO contact between us during this time. No text messages, emails or phone calls. XX and XX have agreed to be the intermediaries and help make arrangements for you to see our children on schedule that is mutually convenient. If you want to communicate about the children or any other mater, it will have to be through them.

Through them we will discuss all important information about child visitation, drop off points and financial obligations.
I have also packed up all your personal belongings and those things will be left in the storage unit. I have left a key with XX and XX.

Child visitation:
To make visitation easy you will need to buy DS a car seat for your car. I will leave DD's car seat at first drop off.
I will drop off the kids at XX and XX's house ~30 minutes before your scheduled pick up time. Please be on time as to not waste the XX's time. If for some reason the XX's are unavailable for drop off/pick up then it will be at another one of our friend�s house.

This is what I propose:
Wednesdays: 5pm � 8pm
Sundays: 3pm � 7:30pm

Christmas:
Presents for the kids needs to be discussed before being bought.
The kids will be spending Christmas day at their home.


As soon as you are willing to permanently end your relationship, follow precautions to avoid absolutely any contact with the other person, and join me in a plan to restore our relationship, I will be willing to discuss our future together with you.

you did good!! I tightened it up a bit and removed some lovebusters:

This is a difficult letter for me to write, one that I have been mentally working on for a bit now. I have written this letter with the true love that only a wife can have for a husband. Please read every word I have written, for it is from the heart.

I would like to acknowledge and apologize for my part in the demise of our marriage. I neglected your needs, and failed to give you what you needed many times. I'm sure this helped create a void in our marriage. I want us to have a happy, passionate, romantic marriage and am willing to do what it takes to create this. I want to be able to put the past behind us, and build a great marriage for us.

The eight years that we have been married and the two years before that that we were together were filled with an endless number of hugs, smiles, tears and laughs. I have loved you every minute of every day that we have spent together. We really have had some amazing moments together. ....[mushy memories]..... We have brought into the world two amazing children who are two of the most adorable and well-rounded children ever and we have started giving them the world that we both have always wanted to give our children.

The past three/four weeks have been the most difficult of time for me, the most emotionally traumatic in my life. Whereas recently I have endured the hurt and pain, I now see that it is soon to drain my love for you. It is because of this that I must stop communicating with you. It is just too painful.

Until your affair ends, and you are willing to follow a plan of reconciliation with me, I will avoid seeing you or talking to you. This is not to punish you, it is to protect my feelings for you and our chances at reconciliation. If we continue as we are now, there would be nothing left. As such, any contact regarding the children and finances needs to be facilitated through my friend, XXXX. They will facilitate pertinent information about child visitation, drop off points and financial information. I have also packed up all your personal belongings and those things will be left in the storage unit. I have left a key with XX and XX.

I ask that you please respect my decision to separate and not contact me directly. The pain is too great to be in contact with you under these circumstance; I need to protect myself. I will be seeking counsel on how to best protect the ourselves financially, specifically child support and how to set that up. I expect you to continue to support us while this is getting figured out.

I want us to be a team, and I want us to have a better marriage than what we had before. I want to grow old with you. I loved you more than life itself while we were together, and I continue to do so as I write this. When you find yourself ready and willing to truly and fully commit to our family, willing to work on a plan for our recovery, and go to counseling, I will be ready and willing to discuss our future. I am committed to our marriage. I believe that we can build a marriage that is stronger and more beautiful than we have experienced. Beginning today, I walk forward in life, and I want you to walk with me. I love you with all of my heart.

Forever and ever, your loving wife,

Here is the "addendum�:


Child visitation:
To make visitation easy please buy DS a car seat for your car. I will leave DD's car seat at first drop off.
I will drop off the kids at XX and XX's house ~30 minutes before your scheduled pick up time. If for some reason the XX's are unavailable for drop off/pick up then it will be at another one of our friend�s house.

This is what I propose:
Wednesdays: 5pm � 8pm
Sundays: 3pm � 7:30pm

Christmas:

I will make the kids available for you to pick up on Christmas Eve from 5 to 8.

Thank you Melody!

NOW, when you go into Plan B, you need to avoid sending him messages. It is ok for the IM to send him a message about the visitation arrangements, but do not send him a bunch of messages. Try to avoid this at ALL COST. The visitation should be at the same time on the same day of the week to avoid a bunch of contact.

Don't make the mistake of sending him a bunch of messages after you have already told him no contact.

And secondly, please ask your IM to ONLY send absolutely pertinent information regarding the kids or finances IN HER OWN WORDS.

She should not send you wayward fogbabble messages, because they will come!! She will get a long winded email about how you made him miserable for years and you caused the affair and that if you want any chance of reconciliation you need to be in touch with him. That is STANDARD wayward fogbabble from a WS who is angry he lost control.

He will also tell her you are being "immature." And he will probably REFUSE to use your IM at first. When taht happens, it is CRITICAL that you hold firm and do not allow him to contact you. If he refuses, the IM should send him an email just saying that if he wants to get a message to you, it will have to come through her.

If your IM needs any help, just send the mods an email and get my email address. I would be HAPPY to help her navigate the minefields.

And if your IM tries to manage and control the situation, for GODS SAKE, dump them immediately. That is a disaster when a well-meaning IM tries to interfere with your plan. Your plan comes from Dr Bill Harley, a clinical psychologist and it was not carelessly or ignorantly devised.

This is good advice! I will make sure the IM knows!

Alright, I have moved almost all of WH's personal belongings in our storage unit. I have a bday party to attend with my DD and then I am going to take the PB letter to the IM.

I just opened my email and find an email from him:

"I�m ready to move forward with the process of starting the divorce. From my perspective, it seems from the actions that you�ve taken, asking to move out, and not telling me it�s confusing to the kids for them to see me in the house � that you�ve also started the process of accepting that a divorce is going to be our next step. Is that true?"

He then outlines what the process will be like. Then he says "I believe that you and I can work through all of the above information. I�m going to make sure that you and the kids are taken care of as an outcome of this. This is going to be the biggest change for you, out of everybody. Throughout this process, there are some tactical things that you need to figure out. "

He then goes into talking about me finding a job and how child support will most likely work.

He finishes it with:
"I still need to find somewhere to stay, but I�m trying to wait until things are more final so that I know what I can afford.



I would like to come back to the house while we work through it. But, I�ll leave that up to you. I know you�re trying to heal from what I did to you. The lies, the cheating, all of it. For what it�s worth, I am very sorry for lying to you, and for cheating on you. There are no excuses and there is no justification. I know you�re trying to care of yourself, and I want to respect that and help as much as possible. But, it�s also got to be hard to be dealing with the kids by yourself and trying to spend time on you. I think it could be helpful for you if I came back home while we work through the divorce, and you can have more time to yourself. I can�t comprehend what you�re going through and what having me in the house means for you, so I just want to throw this out there and let you decide.

I�m around all day if you want to talk. "

Insert big huge eye roll from me. =/

I could CRY WITH RELIEF that you are smart enough to see through this ploy. Do you see how he is trying to weasel his way back? This is what I expected. He wants to come home and enjoy all the luxuries of home and family while he carries on his affair or "while we work our way through it." This is an example of how cruel a wayward can be and is why we are so adamant that a woman protect herself.

Stick to your plan, my dear. You can see how he is having second thoughts. He is hoping to come home under HIS OWN CONDITIONS and has not quite accepted that it will only be on your conditions. It is your way or NO WAY, period.

If you just stick to this plan, I predict he will come around when he sees you are dead serious. I also predict he will REBEL against Plan B so just be prepared to stand your ground. Have your IM email me if she needs help.

you are doing great, and I am so proud of you!!! You are a very strong woman.

Give your IM my email address if she has any quesitons. I am sure your H will give her hell initially, and I can help her navigate without involving you. Let me know when you have read this, and I will remove my email address.

You need to also find a way to block him frmo sending you emails. Even if it means shutting down that account.

Thank you Melody. I will admit after I read that email from him I second guessed myself about everything. But I know I need to continue with this Plan.

Ok I most definitely will.

Love the threats..." This will likely effect you the most." In his dreams. He hasnt calculated what CS will really be.

ETA: you should check how your state calculates child support. Do you have copies of all your financial statements?

Cooperating with someone who wants to destroy your marriage will result in a destroyed marriage. He has made it very clear that is his goal. Your husband wants to have you around on his terms, which is to destroy your marriage - and bring you down - for his own selfish purposes. Keep that in mind when you read his message. His goal is to destroy your marriage today, but that won't be his goal when his fog dissipates.

His fog will dissipate when reality intrudes. That is what you are doing right now. While there are no guarantees, you are guaranteed to end up divorced if you cooperate with him. You have a CHANCE to save your marriage if you follow your plan.

You've been as sharp as a new suit, while being as graceful and purposeful as the tide during this crisis from start to finish!

He's essentially saying yeah I'm reeeally sorry, but I'm still going to stick it to you financially and you'll get a job to support my affair. Talk to me instead of a lawyer OK?




I am sure he is now super glad that you reached out for help through exposure, if he understands he has abandoned you all, right?

Man I really hope that fog dissipates!

I'm sure he's thinking that since I am still his best friend he can hold my hand through this real painful ordeal.... insert another huge eye roll.