Okay, suppose I can have her to change her work email/phone. She can still create a fake email on her work computer. She works at a large IT firm and it is impossible to install spy software on her computer without her company finding out. Getting her fired is not going to help our marriage.

Perhaps you could tell us what you are willing to do to save your marriage.

Almost since you got here, you've been arguing that the steps that Dr Harley advises are impossible for you to take.

Well, fair enough, if that's your assessment, but Dr Harley's advice is all we've got. What do you intend to do now?

An update:

She agreed on changing mobile numbers (both work/private)
She is looking into changing her work email as well (I will follow up)

She made an appointment with a psychologist to work on her personal issues.

I send an exposure letter to her best (female) friends who know about the OM.
They didn�t reply to me, but set up a meeting with my wife.

I�m very reluctant about a polygraph. This is borderline psycho to me. (I hope I don�t offend anyone, I�m just ventilating how I feel) I�m even afraid to mention this. I feel like if I would need a polygraph to believe her, I�d better divorce her.
We�ve had major fights about this already, throwing around plates, we came very close to physical aggression,�, and still she told me every time that nothing happened besides everything I know. (And yes, I do realize that fighting is bad, we didn�t get hurt and we didn�t lay hands on each other)
There�s also an error margin, so knowing myself, even if she would pass the polygraph test, I still would have doubts. It�s true that I need to be able to control myself, put it behind me and focus on working on our self and our marriage instead of keep digging.

About exposing this to the OM wife. I really fail to understand what good could come out of it in our situation. Firstly my wife and the OM communicate in a language his wife doesn�t understand, so he could lie to her all he wants. I really don�t feel like translation every text. Secondly, it�s my wife who has a crush on him, (to my understanding after all the communication I read), not the other way around. Throughout the years, it was always my wife who initiated the contact. All the feelings she has for the OM were writing down in her journal. She never talk about it to him. (I conclude this from reading literally thousands of messages via email/text/social media.

I think I�m mainly worried that this would backfire on me and trigger the OM to contact my wife. I can assume some think I�m naive, feedback is welcome.

Thanks again for all the help. I never encountered so many helpful people on a forum.

Point taken. This is all very new to me.

I just want to make it extremely hard for her to contact him again (and the other way around). So if she would to contact him again she can't rub it off like it was a moment of weakness.

I want her to work on her personal issues (in progress: psychologist) so she feels like doesn't need him anymore.

And I want us to work on our marriage (in progress, learning about love bank/busters, emotional needs, POJA,...)
Of course I want to work on myself because I have been very selfish as well but I understand that I'm not solely to blame.

This is a huge wake up call for lingering issues that we've neglected for years. Our marriage was in a state of withdrawal. I just hope we dodged the bullet and we can continue to grow.

People say that when they really don't to press an issue. The people who really are that close to preferring divorce, will press the issue because they don't care one way or another (ask me how I know this). The fact still remains that unless you have the truth from your WW about the true nature of this relationship, it will be very hard to recover your M.


If your WW is that much against a poly, then I'm very sorry to tell you that she IS lying to you. That is classic gaslighting 101. People who refuse to get the poly are doing so because they are lying.

Keep in mind that the fact that they secretly met up several times behind your back while engaged in an EA basically means it was a PA.

Your W is still lying to you.

That's understandable. But we can tell when a posters really doesn't understand a principle and when a BS is dealing with a gaslighting WS and doesn't want to rock the boat and is in Plan Conflict Avoidance.

Our goal is to help you save your M. Not avoid your WW's anger and fury.

When you exposed to people, what EXACTLY did you tell them?

The only personal issues I see here with your WW is that she has horrible boundaries. MarriageBuilders can help her with that.

A psychologist is going to be a distraction and probably give your WW justifications for her IB and SSL. A psychologist doesn't care about your M.

Miscommunication.
We didn't fight about the polygraph. I haven't talked about it.
The fight was about the affair.

With all due respect, you don't have a clue about my wife's personal issues. With or without this affair, she experienced very traumatic events in her youth that she needs to overcome.

The psychologist that she's seeing also helps couples by the way.

The fight was about her continually lying to you about what really happened.

Dr Harley's recommendation for overcoming traumatic events in our youth is to put those events behind us, and focus on the future. He is a licensed clinical psychologist, and he knows that the way to resolve the traumas of the past is to stop looking at them, and to focus on the present and future. Talking about past traumas in therapy is in fact re-living them, and trying to overcome traumas in therapy is a way of ensuring that we remain ensnared in those problems for years to come, while spending a lot of money rehashing them. Talk therapy is a never-ending nightmare for clients, and a cash cow for therapists.

You're missing the point. I don't need to know about her issues to know that she has bad boundaries and that fixing the boundaries has nothing to do with her past.

That is in articles on this site and I talked to Dr Harley about this issue with regard to my exWH (who also has had a lot of traumatic incidents in his past). He didn't need to know what these specific issues were and told me that my exWH going to therapy to work on them would not help our M.

You realize that when we are posting to you, we are posting Dr Harley's advice, right?? I'm not saying that to be snarky but your response back to me reflects a misunderstanding of the source advice you are getting here.

It doesn't matter if the psychologist sees couples. Most marriage counselors and therapists have NO idea how to save a marriage, especially one trying to recover from an affair.

I experienced marriage-wrecking advice given by therapists (plural) outside of MB personally and we see it on these forums ALL THE TIME.

So your W is willing to take a poly??

??

With all due respect, what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Why would you bring the unhappiness of the past into the present? This is a needless and silly distraction at a time when your marriage is on life support.



here

here

here

The same story I posted here + asking them to support us to get our marriage back on track.

Here and listen to the many of radio clips in here.
Beware of Bad Counselors

I am concerned that you wrote about your problems with trust and you called it a friendship in your first post.

Did you use the word "affair" when you exposed?

Did you expose in writing?