Dr Harley is rewriting His Needs, Her Needs to include his advocacy of exposure and recently posted a new article showing this chapter. It is to be released early next year. This is in addition to his awesome newsletter published a year ago:
When Should An Affair Be Exposed?
How to Survive an Affair
by Willard F. Harley, Jr.
A reprint of chapter 13 of His Needs, Her Needs (2011 Edition)
If your unfaithful spouse is unwilling to end an affair the right way, I know of a way to help speed up its demise:
Expose it. Your own family should know: Your parents, your siblings, and even your children. The family of your spouse's lover should also know, especially the lover's spouse. The pastor of your church should be informed as well. Exposure of an affair is like opening a moldy closet to the light of day. Affairs do well when they're conducted in secret, but when they're in full view for all to see, they appear as they are -- incredibly foolish and thoughtless.
Even if exposure were to be ineffective in ending an affair, I'd recommend it anyway. The betrayed spouse needs as much support as possible, and exposure helps friends and relatives understand what's going on. Keeping an affair secret is no real help to anyone. But I've been amazed at how well it dismantles the illusion that affairs rest upon. Instead of assuming that the relationship is made in heaven, an unfaithful spouse quickly senses that it's a one-way ticket to hell on earth.
How to Survive an Affair
I'm very glad he is doing that. I hope he also adds something on exposure to the new edition of SaA, which is arguably THE anti-affair handbook.
When I first read Dr Harley's articles on this web site about 4 years ago, there was nothing memorable said about exposure. When I later bought HNHN and SaA, again, there was nothing mentioned, much less urged. I struggled through many false recoveries to get my H to go NC. He, being a cake-eater, continued to have sex with OW as long as he thought he could get away with it. The affair was easy to carry out because it took place when my H worked abroad.
I don't like forums on the whole. I hate the way they are full of people having their say, even when what they say makes no sense (to me). For that reason, I never looked at this forum until about a year after I read the first of Dr Harley's writings. how wise and well-directed I found the advice to be, and how I regretted the time I had wasted by not looking here!
When I did finally read here, and found strongly-worded advice to expose to OPS, I was instantly persuaded of the need. The moral argument, as well as the common sense, jumped out at me. I contacted OWH, whose details I had held onto but not used for nearly two years. It was only the exposure argument on the forum that led me see that I had been enabling the affair by trying not to "hurt" the other spouse and children.
Good for Dr H.
I was so glad to see his newsletter of October 2009 reiterate what he has been saying for years on the radio and on the weekend forum. It always surprised me there was nothing about it in SAA.
He had stated a couple of years ago on the weekend forum that he is also rewriting Surviving an Affair:
I'm in the process of rewriting "Surviving an Affair" to add information about plan B. Some of the main points are as follows:
Whether in plan A or B, the world should know about your husband's affair. All of your relatives, your friends, your children, and the licensing board for your husband's lover. In some states a licensing board will revoke a license if a counselor is having an affair with a married person, client or not. This is because it's well known that affairs hurt families, especially children. And counselors know better than to have an affair.
The reason for the wide exposure is not to hurt the unfaithful spouse, but rather to end the fantasy. Your husband's secret second life made his affair possible, and the more you can to to make it public, the easier it is for him to see the damage he's doing. Keeping it secret does damage, but few know about it. Making it public helps everyone, including the unfaithful spouse and lover, see the affair for what it really is.
Exposure to the other man's wife killed the affair two weeks later in my case. It usually does so within 6 months, according to Dr. Harley... but a lot of us find it does so much earlier than that!
Exposure to the other man's wife killed the affair two weeks later in my case. It usually does so within 6 months, according to Dr. Harley... but a lot of us find it does so much earlier than that!
Exposure killed my H's affair the SAME DAY. While there are no guarantees, we have had affairs killed instantly due to exposure. Waiting to expose seems to make the affair harder to kill.
Mine weren't the same day, but it worked. My H was furious that he had to deal with the consequences of his behavior, but we BOTH now know it was vital to recovery and to a future without another A.
Exposure also killed my husband's affair the day I went NUCLEAR.
Understand that I mildly exposed 10 months earlier when I found out the first time (I didn't know about "exposure" but instinct told me that I needed to tell at least both of our families and close friends). That did nothing except force them to take it further underground. When I went nuclear is when the A ended for good.
In one of our first sessions with SH I told him how I exposed the second time (re-exposed to everyone whom I had exposed to the first time and also posted it on the running message board where they had met and emailed the staff at OW's school where she was a teacher), SH chuckled and said "Wow! Good job on exposure!".
I am very thankful to everyone here who encouraged me to do this because we are in an almost fully recovered marriage now.
I'm so glad he included it. But I REALLY wish he had used 'affair partner' instead of lover. I hate that usage
Because Dr. H ministers to such a wide range of people, many of them still very wayward and fogged in, I understand his unwillingness to use more accurate - but inflammatory - terms to describe RLP.
Fortunately, he has all of us to say those things for him.
"RLP" - bet Mel can guess.
I'll give the other side of the coin here. I didn't say anything at all about my H's EA. I didn't want anyone to know, I was so embarrassed.
His A lasted for another 10 years after my initial discovery.
Yeah, exposure would have been a good thing to know about.
If Mel insists on using that term, she will find herself embroiled in legal action for porcine defamation.
If Mel insists on using that term, she will find herself embroiled in legal action for porcine defamation.
You people stop insulting pigs!!
Yup.
She won't get in too much legal trouble though, because she always apologizes to the pigs.
Just chiming in to add that my nuclear exposure ended my XWW's affair DEAD in its tracks, the same day. Exposing to OM's BW was an ESSENTIAL part of it.
Exposure did little for me other than earn me some letters from XWW's attorney. And I did a pretty scortched earth exposure.
I stopped short of a billboard.
But our child's pre-school teachers knew that my daughter was undergoing some stress because her mother had moved out and was having an affair, so please be watchful over her during this difficult time.
The OM's Alumni association, workplace, and of course his wife knew of the affair.
Ditto for my XW's family, etc.
I'm shocked you all didn't see it on CNN or Fox News in the crawl at the bottom of the screen
EE,
What was the basis of the lawyer's letters? What illegal act did it suggest you might be committing?
I know things are different in the US from here in England, but surely if you tell someone that your wife is having an affair and it is true, you haven't defamed her or broken any law?
Lawyers don't need an illegal act. She asked me to stop contacting her, her family, him and his family.
I said I would stop contacting her because she can ask, but unless others made requests, I would continue to contact others unless they made a specific request that I not make contact with them.
A lawyer can try to scare you, but there isn't always a law on their side for everything they request
I did almost no exposure. Looking back, I'm wishing I had done more, but that ship sailed a long time ago.
The only real exposure I did was to Pond Scum's wife -- and I did it with my then-WW's eager approval.
I had done research on Pond Scum's marital status. He'd been declaiming to all and sundry that he was D'd for about two years. When I found out that it wasn't so, then-WW wanted to find out what the truth was.
When I talked to Mrs. Pond Scum and heard what she had to say and I passed along what I'd been told, any WD then-WW was going through ended right there on the spot. It's hard to pine for someone who was in reality something you'd scrape off your shoe.
(Later, I found out that Mrs. PS lied to me about a number of things as well, but at least I'd gotten enough information to kill things off permanently, so I'm grateful for at least that much. Of course, I'm still angry that she also fed me a big helping of bushwah, but you get what you get. They deserve each other.)
Anyone reading this and wondering if they should expose...
EXPOSE! The sooner you do so, the more pain you will spare not only yourself, but your WS. A return to reality is the best thing they can experience.
When wheels exposed me it pretty much died instantly, although the OM was trying to contact me I wanted NO CONTACT EVER!
My only question to my DH is "Why didn't you expose EARLIER!!?"
Exposure was only partial with d-day1. WH's Human Resources VP and new superior (to expedite job transfer - still took 5.5 months, as it involved creating a new position - and, of course, because the A didn't end.) DS, DIL. Closest friends of BH and me.
I really regret not exposing to the Dolly's employer. WH and the Dolly vowed to keep it "just business as required" contact, until total NC could happen with job move. Though I had verification in place, it was way too weak, and waywards can always find ways around it if they want to. Anyway, d-day2 occurred 5.5 months later, and WH and the Dolly had had that much more emotionally invested, effectively doubling the length and depth of the A, but maintaining the secrecy, which is part of the high.
I knew we were not in recovery as long as WH had any contact, so I was holding my breath for this to happen. So it isn't so much a false recovery in my sitch, but just as devastating, when I realized all the outright lies in the past 5.5 months.
[color:#FF0000][/color][i][/i]BS's, EXPOSE FAR AND WIDE IMMEDIATELY. DO NOT LET YOUR FEAR, THOUGHTS, CONCERNS, ETC. PREVENT YOU FROM TAKING THIS AS YOUR FIRST STEP. Take a lesson from me and the other BS's on this thread. Your special situation (and who's isn't?) does not warrant AVOIDING EXPOSURE. The FIRST STEP in MB plan is to kill the affair. Exposure is your best weapon in the arsenal.