Back Story: My wife of 10 years had a PA that started about 2 years ago and ended 1.5 years ago. The OM moved far away after I finally got the balls to expose and that ended the affair. My W still had the wayward mindset for close to a year after the affair ended and was constantly going back and forth between wanting to be with me or divorcing. About 6 months ago, she decided to recommit to the marriage and said she was "falling back in love with me."

She is now pregnant with our third child (we have 2 boys, 6&7) and things are going well. I mentioned redoing our vows and she liked the idea.

2 questions:

1. Any suggestions on what we should include in our vows?
2. What are some things I should be doing right now to ensure we are at or headed towards full recovery?

Who all did you expose to? Who on OM's side did you expose to?

Hi RedFish. Welcome back.

Have you gone over this checklist with your wife?

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.

Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

They were coworkers. I exposed to their work (which is why he got a new job 1000 miles away). He is single, so I exposed to his mom/sister. I also exposed to both our families and friends.

Not formally, but looking at it we have covered those items. She still has social media for work, but they are no longer connected on any of the platforms. I still monitor her phone/texts...nothing in 1.5 years. Fortunately, for him it was just a piece of [censored] and he has moved on. I think the "feelings" were all my wife's.

Ok, that's good.

Has your W agreed to end OS friendships?

My ex H had a work affair and ended it and we rebuilt our M but he did not end OS friendships and he was also in a work environment that encouraged and fostered OS relationships and four years later he went on to have another affair.

Sorry to hear about your situation.

She works closely with a few OS friends that are more friends of the marriage. We do couples things together with them and their spouses/girlfriends and she openly talks about them in stories about work. So they don't concern me (but you may think they should).

The thing that originally made me suspicious about her affair was that she started leaving OM out of stories about work. As if he didn't exist anymore. This is not the case with them.

I also am a frequent visitor to her office and talk to her coworkers regularly, which was not the case before/during her affair.

Basically if she hasn't agreed to end OS friendships - that means talking to these folks about personal issues and engaging in personal conversation with them one on one, you should be worried. I don't say that because I am projecting my personal situation on to you but from what I have seen on these forums over the years. The WSs who won't give up OS friendships, are the ones who end up crossing the line again. Sorry

Well, there may be no affair right now but it could happen down the road. That's good that you have that sign to look for...but just a warning that I thought the same thing about my ex, that I knew some of the behaviors the first time around and he intentionally avoided some of those same behaviors in order to avoid me getting suspicious. I wrote about this in the False Recovery thread.

Very good!

SusieQ brings up very excellent points.

Read this False Recovery-need voices of experience

Red Fish,


As a recovering BH I understand your feelings exactly. It has been 5 years since D-day for me and for the most part our marriage is better than it was prior to the A.

I believe I will always be recovering I don't think anyone ever fully recovers from affair.

My wife and essentially renewed our vows on our 10 year anniversary, which was a little over 1 year after D day. We originally were not married in a church. When we renewed we got officially married in a church. I think it was more of a symbolic thing for me and us. She quickly agreed to it when I suggested it. Im not sure there are necessary vows that need to be renewed. Both of you know what marriage means. I think the ceremony is what is important. It symbolizes a fresh start and commitment to each other. That is what it meant to us.

The best advice I can give you more important than anything MB suggests, advises, recommends, what ever you want to call it is "BE COMITTED". An Affair is a learning experience for both sides. Its a horribly traumatic experience. Use it to learn about your failures as spouses before the affair, and recommit to working through the challenges that lay ahead. That is what the vows really mean. We will work together to get through the arguments and the unhappy days, and remember why we fell in love in the first place.

I just wanted to make a couple of comments about this, because the marriage program and the affair recovery program that Dr. Harley describes goes to an even higher standard than this.

Dr. Harley's original counseling approach was to try to encourage couples to be committed, and it simply didn't work. So while you're correct that couples need to give each other the good will of finding solutions to conflicts, describing commitment per se as being "more important than anything Marriage Builders teaches" is a disturbing comment.

Now I noticed that you comment that in your opinion no one ever truly recovers from an affair, and I wanted to mention that people who follow Dr. Harley's recovery program do actually fully recover from affairs! But adding "commitment" in as an ingredient in the recipe when Dr. Harley has specifically excluded it from the concepts of his program, for a specific reason, is probably enough to run the risk of not recovering.

I also noticed you talk about getting through arguments, and it's important to note Dr. Harley's insistence that not all couples argue and that couples should not argue if they want to have a good marriage. Dr. Harley has a lot of great information on how to resolve a conflict without having an argument, and a couple needs to use that approach if they are going to have a good marriage, and especially if they are going to recover from an affair.

If you have made it far enough in recovery to be considering redoing your vows, then that is commitment. Commitment to each other may not be the best inital approach, however with out commitment to each other farther on, then you have just become "roomates". Thats what vows are for is commitment to each other.


I will also stand by my opinion, having been through it. I dont think anyone every fully recovers from their spouse having an affair. My interpretation of "fully recover" may differ from yours, but I don't think anyone ever does.

Peace be with all of you.

This is from my experience and what has worked for me. MB doesn't work for everyone. What has worked for my wife and I may not follow what MB gospel says. However it has worked for us. Everyone heals differently. The OP should follow what he feels will work best for him based on advice he gets from others that have experience living through and recovering from something like this.

With all due respect, the people who follow this program do fully recover. I don't say that lightly, but as someone who has been through the program and has seen many people achieve the same thing. My H and I did more than "fully recover;" we have created a happy, passionate marriage.

The program works when you work it.

If you haven't fully recovered, then your own recovery is not complete. People who don't truly recover typically skip steps along the way and, as a result, become resentful as time goes on. That doesn't have to happen if you create a romantic, passionate marriage.

Be assured it does work. What you describe is not what we would consider a full recovery.

Also, people don't stay married because they are "committed" to each other. If that were true, no one would ever get divorced. People stay married when they are in love.

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As someone who has been through the MB program, my H and I don't argue and we don't have "unhappy days." The program teaches you not to argue by using the POJA and eliminating lovebusters. Arguing is a result of not using the policy of joint agreement and trying to force win/lose decisions on your spouse.

So I can understand why you believe people don't ever truly recover. You think this because you didn't. Like Dr Harley says, when you are happy in the present, the mind does not go to the tragic past. This is why it is so critical to create a happy, passionate marriage in the present.

That is fine if you are happy with your status quo, it is no sweat to me, but please don't try to tell others this program doesn't work when you are not working it yourself.

You just told a BH and a BW that they can never recover. But both are in romantic marriages and in love with their spouses, with the past a distant memory.

You CAN recover. If you do the work. Looking through your posting history, I see that you've bucked doing the program. It is no surprise that you have not recovered.

But it hasn't. You haven't recovered. You don't believe it's possible. What you are doing doesn't work.

A reminder that the purpose of this forum is to teach Marriage Builders principles. It is not a free-for-all board, where any opinion is welcomed.

Please help this poster using Marriage Builders principles in his marriage, or refrain from posting. Thank you.