Add to this that they've already concocted the "Erica" cover story... all they have to do is tell the company that he's not having an affair with "Liz", he's having the affair with Liz's cousin "Erica."

I could possibly circumnavigate that in the letter by mentioning the 'cover story' and stating that even if it were true, it does not excuse their behavior with the text messages, FB PM's, and threatening of his promotion... but people have a tendency to 'ignore' what they don't want to hear, and this is a pretty shady company to begin with.

FL2 I am working today also. So are many who post on this forum. I hear you about trying to keep normal routines for the children, but your priority needs to be getting the exposure done and getting into Plan B.

Exposure does seem to reveal who is and who is not a friend of marriage (our circle of friends diminished by at least 80% after we made it to recovery, because neither of us want to be around any of the people who condoned or did not fight against the affair).

Yes, I did give clarification about the 30 day notice regarding his job. I believe that what Dr. Harley has said about the 30 day notice is that it is for people who END their affair and wish to recover the marriage. I applaud you for wishing to stick exactly to Dr. Harley's plan. Hopefully others will respond here so that you will feel more confident that this is what Dr. Harley would say.

You don't know what he is going to do. None of us know what he is going to do. What we do know is that with Dr. Harley's 40+ years of helping people recover from affairs, he has found that exposure is the best weapon for killing an affair.

Have you read this? Exposure 101: Your Most Powerful Weapon

Again, you do not know what will happen.

How much time have you spent following Dr. Harley's plan though?

Of all of these people telling you to let it go, how many of them have successfully recovered from an affair?

This ^^^

Living like this is very destructive for women physically and mentally. Dr. Harley usually recommends that women try to Plan A for three weeks TOTAL...and then go to Plan B. You have already been at this for months and months.

Thank you all. Very much. This has gone on for so long, and I wish Dr. Harley could pick up his phone, call my husband and tell my husband that many of ours (and my) problems stemmed from the very beginning of the EA, and because it was a wrong that had never been righted, and that I now must do this exposure... I just don't want to be seen as being vindictive. I want to save my marriage. And Plan B seems to be all about filing for divorce. I've not put any of Dr. Harley's advice into practice. I just found the site two days ago. And I'm still reeling from all the emotional turmoil.

If you keep waiting to expose you are wasting valuable time.

You are feeling vulnerable and this has led to damaging delays in taking action. You need to collect child support from the father of your children immediately. These payments can be deducted from his pay check. Do that today along with exposure. The combination will be magic for empowering you.

You will get spousal support to get you onto your feet if you need to file for divorce. If you get in touch with a local women's shelter, they can help you navigate this.

You're welcome FL2.

There are many MANY stories on here where the woman went to Plan B and months later their husband showed up at the door on bended knee. Some of those women didn't want their husband back any more. But some did, and if you read the threads here you will find even some of those same (formerly) wayward husbands now posting to help other couples!

It all starts with exposure. The affair just may end with proper exposure (and it may not). But if you continue on paralyzed as a deer in the headlights, your marriage WILL end for certain.

Also, exposure setsthe record straight. People may choose to believe the lies, but at least the facts are out there - he has abused you for years to carry on an affair, putting you through extreme menatl anguish.

I'm not sure if I put this in my OP,

But during one fight last year, just before he told me he wanted to separate, he had tried to grab the key to the car out of my pocket, but I held on and he wound up ripping my shorts. (*A week or so before that he'd also poked me really hard in the forehead) And both times I said "That's a domestic violence charge right there."

When he first told me he wanted to leave, he had said he was afraid of himself with me and that 'everyone' was telling him, "If the person you are with is making you want to raise your hands to them, then you shouldn't be with that person."

I tried telling him that there were many occasions when I wanted to slap him, punch him in the face and just drop kick him, but I never did. I also told him that I can't 'make' him 'want' to raise his hands to me.

But then, one night on our way to marriage counseling, I used it against him when he was attempting to refuse to go and told him, "Well I need to go. I need to talk to her about your violence." That got him to go.

A few weeks ago, he called me on a Friday night telling me he needed to borrow the truck because the car he was borrowing broke down...

I said "What do I get?" And he said "I'll give you the W-2" I'd been needing that to file the taxes because he stopped paying the bills and wasn't giving me any money. I was in no frame of mind to do any freelance work at the time either.

I told him that I was willing to share the truck, but I had the weekend and two kids home for it, and had job interviews Monday and Tuesday, though I could borrow a friend's car for Monday.

But then I asked him something, I don't remember what, and he got pissed off and said "Nevermind, I'll just figure it out."

Then he called my mother and told her he was shutting everything off and taking HIS tag off the truck. I took it off myself and hid it in the house.

That Sunday morning, he showed up here with no phone call, no warning, demanding the truck and hollering "Where the F*** is my tag?"

When I told him I had to call the boys to find it (they'd spent the night at a friend's house)he told me, "Get your A** in there and do it." I went to the garage to get my phone, and he'd BARGED in to the house and into the bedroom and the bedroom closet and started taking tools.

I asked what he was doing and he said "I need my tools to fix my car." No way in Hell was I letting valuable tools go to the trailer park trash where I'd never see them again! I said "No, you're not." He started stomping his feet at me, screaming "I NEED MY TOOLS!" I said "Well when will you bring them back?" I didn't get an 'answer', I got "I need my tools." That was not an answer.

Anyway, I asked if he had the W-2 and he pulled it out of his back pocket. I was still trying to get hold of the kids, and went outside to walk over to their friend's house to get them, and he was still carrying the tools and followed me out to put them in the back of the truck. I refused to leave, and called my neighbor to come over and witness... she and her daughter came right over.

He started getting very abusive, telling me "Get your fat a** in there and file the taxes" and when I went to go inside, he tried to make a move for the truck. I got between him and it, and he pushed me and spit in my face.

He then left on foot, without giving me the W-2 of course.

I got the kids, they came home and found the tag, I drove down the road, found him, showed him the tag, but he just ignored me and was a rude, and mean and nasty...

Then, my neighbors told me to file a domestic violence injunction against him. And one of her daughters called him on his phone and told him I was going to file a DVI if he didn't give me that W-2.

Twenty minutes later, I got a call from my mother that he'd just dropped the W-2 off at her house.

So you see... he feels that I 'threaten' and 'emotionally blackmail' him into 'getting my way.' He's always felt that way before, when I threatened to expose them to their jobs in the beginning, the middle and the end,... and now he feels he is justified in doing whatever he wants, being as abusive as he wants to be, because of how many times I've let him off the hook on it, and now he is convinced, as are many, that the problem is that I 'make' him want to be violent.

I want to clarify, that I have NEVER been 'afraid' of him.

This is not the man I married. The man I married was a kind, gentle, caring and loving man, and doting husband and father.

But the constant stress in this house, drove him first to start bullying the kids, then me to calling him a bully then me telling him, "Don't you dare bully MY kids"... and now he says they're not his kids, because I 'broke him of that that thought" even though for 6 years he always said "Those are MY kids, they're MY sons. I love them."

I really don't think there's any hope left for this marriage. I don't even want to expose him now. I just want to let it go and try to pick up the pieces of my life.

I feel like I'm the abusive one and his affair was the result of it.

I'm not sure how you are the abusive one in that particular scenario. You should have called the police.

Thank you for your honesty FL2.

What you have detailed here is an extremely horrible case of one of you making a selfish demand, the other responding with a disrespectful judgment, and then both of you resorting to uncontrolled angry outbursts.

This is extremely dangerous and I am not making light of it. When he pushed you and spit in your face, yes you sure should have called the police. Dr. Harley states that when we have an angry outburst, we are "insane" during that time. It is not to be permitted EVER.

Both of you are resorting to lovebusters to attempt to solve marital conflicts. Many of us did similar.

Marriage Builders teaches us how to end all of that. We learn to resolve all of our conflicts through enthusiastic agreement. We learn to give each other extraordinary care. But that is for later.

You BOTH are being abusive. However this is still not the "reason" for his affair. His affair is on him.

You just told us in your previous post that you want to save your marriage. When it comes time to tell your husband that you are willing to work on your marriage, THEN you can apologize for your part in the problems, and express your willingness to make changes.

Right now, though, here it comes...you need to focus on exposure.

Your emotions are all over the place. Don't act on your emotions. And no, you are not responsible for his affair.

In this place, you get the best advice for your situation. Following the advice gives you the best opportunity to recover from the affair personally. At some moment, you choose wether or not this marriage is wordt fighting for. If you want to restore your marriage, you get the best plan right here. If not, you also get the best advice here.

Exposure is good for you and bad for the affair. The best way to pick up the pieces of your life is exposure. You don't need to decide yet wether or not to recover your marriage.

This is not the husband you knew, but an alien inside your husbands body. Exposure is like exorcism, your best chance to get the alien out as fast and effective as possible.

Read the exposure link in Mel's sig, study it, expose.

The alternative is suffer longer, regret you didn't expose today and expose in a few weeks.

There are radio shows that speak to the escalation of the LoveBusters like this, FL2. I'm on my way out, but maybe someone else can link a good one for you. Otherwise, I will check later.

Thank you all, again. I really need to think about this. I know I want to save this marriage, but I don't know if I want the heartache of failing...

He said, straight out, "I don't want to try." Back in November. I know that all his bs with working late, going out, staying out all night, was 'pushing' me for the reactions he knew he would get, and did, so that he could use those reactions to justify leaving me.

I told him already that I would go to counseling to change my behavior, but he said "You are 41 years old, you're set in your ways, you're never going to change."

He has said "He's done" to everyone that has tried to talk to him.

I don't see any point in exposing the affair if there is no hope for the marriage, and I really don't see any point in doing it if there is even a glimmer of hope for the marriage (which he swears there isn't).

He thinks my suicidal tendencies are emotional blackmail and doesn't comprehend that a lot of people feel this way at the end of a marriage (because little Miss Psych Student says so).

Honestly, I want to expose that tramp, but not him. And that's not even possible.

If I love him, shouldn't I want him to be happy and if she's what makes him happy, shouldn't I let him have her?

Yes, my emotions are all over the place. Almost NO ONE, friends, counselors, other forums, etc... advocate this kind of 'nuclear exposure'... and I have no 'insight' right now as to whether or not it's going to completely kill any shred of hope, or if it's going to get him home.

What I do know, is that I want him home and if I do this, and it does completely destroy the chance of that happening, if he calls me and says "I was considering it, but now you blew it completely", I will never be able to live with myself.

If most affairs end within 6 months - 2 years on their own, why not just wait it out and see what happens?

I am friends with a couple who survived an affair. He said that he said all the same things my husband is saying. When I asked him why he never left, he said it was because he had all his friends in his ear telling him, "Don't leave. Don't get divorced. Just wait. Wait and see what happens."

But none of our mutual friends will talk to him at all and of those who tried, like I said, they botched it, letting him 'lead' the conversation and then just reported back to me "I think you need to accept that your marriage is over."

They'll tell me that nothing justifies his affair or his behavior. They'll tell ME that he should have told me "I think our marriage is in trouble, and I think we should get some counseling"... but they won't tell HIM that...

He's surrounded by people who think it's perfectly ok to skip over the 'work' part of marriage, and perfectly ok to say "I don't want the respsonsibility" and there is no one looking at him like he's insane and asking him if he hears himself... no one telling him what this is doing to me and the kids.

What Dr. Harley is suggesting with exposure certainly does rely on 'peer pressure,' and I know that peer pressure can be very powerful, but I don't have any peers willing to put the pressure on, and even counselors don't do that. So what do I do?

I manipulate him out of a job and where he lives, and MAYBE he comes home, but most likely not, and then I pay $275 for a coaching session with another counselor who is going to say, "Well, he doesn't want to try and I can't make him,"...

I am exhausted from all this thinking.

How do you know no peers will help you? If you expose the affair, you will find allies from those you would not have expected. You will also find that some you thought would support you will turn out to be Enablers. That's what happened in my case.

Also, the pressure is not immediate. It could take weeks or months for it to sink into the WS. But if you put the truth out there they cannot argue against it.

I also want to add that part of my 'abusiveness' has to do with me calling him at work too much.

When we first met, I called him a lot. I was in a new strange city, had no friends there and no car and was bored at home with the kids.

It wasn't mean or anything at that time.

Then, when he was driving a cab, I called him a lot, and often screamed at him because again, I was stuck home all alone.

When he got THIS job... well... that is when the calling exploded. I called him all the time, screaming at him about one thing or another that was driving me crazy at home, usually the kids, sometimes about a bill that I had no idea how we were going to pay (like the electric) and how the kids wouldn't settle down so I could find some work... * he was working 60-90 hours a week until at least 10 pm every night... I never got a break.

Well, when he got the better, regular schedule, right before the affair started, the phone calls pretty much stopped. I started making more money and he was home by 5pm.

But when he took the promotion, the phone calls started again because I was insecure about him being there so much, with HER...

And... to add some insult to injury here, a friend of ours had gotten him a job that paid $4.00 more per hour than the promotion paid and it was a county job. All he had to do was put a name on the application and the job was his. He never would go down and fill it out, and there were what seemed to be valid reasons at the time...

For one thing, we didn't have a dependable car, so of course, you don't want to take a job like that, and your car breaks down and you can't get to work... actually that was the main reason. I busted my a** on freelance work to come up with the money to buy a car, and a month after we bought it, he still hadn't gone down there, and then we lost it in the floods here. (Last August).

It was September when he brought up the promotion, October when he got it, and November when he told me that the marriage was over for him 2.5 years ago...

And you know most of the rest of the story since then...

I guess I'm not ready to expose until I've talked out my own part in the demise of our marriage and determined whether or not it's even salvageable based on my abusive behavior... because if isn't, I should probably just let him go and be happy. As I said, he's not the man I married at all, and I'm struggling with thinking that my 'abusiveness' is what drove him to this and that if that's true, I need to just STOP.

The peers I've asked to help, haven't. And I cant' help but feel like I'm going to get attacked for sending FB PM's to their friends and family, telling me things like "No wonder he left you. You're a crazy psycho to be sending this to me, you don't even know me." And stuff like that. I don't want to open myself up to anymore of that.