Pete,
Go back home, and don't leave again. That is a big mistake. Do you want the other man in your home? Do you want a judge to side with your wife because you abandoned your family?

How did you expose the affair? Who did you expose to? What did you say in your exposure letters?

GO HOME.

Exactly.

Never do anything to make the affair easier for the WW and OM. Also never weaken your legal standing. Your are at war.

Please read.
Men, Do Not Leave Your Home!!

All, thank you for the quick response. Quite frankly I thought a temporary separation was the only way - we need space. She knows how I feel - I desperately want to save the marriage and have expressed this endlessly in verbal and written words. All I get from her is comments about how expensive a divorce, how it would ruin her credit, how we have a beautiful home and kids, but nothing about really wanting to rebuild the marriage. I was so tired of having her put on a happy face while being lied to daily and having her put salt in my gaping wound. She needs to tell me she wants me back, I can't do all the work here. Pride took over and I physically could not be around her while that was going on behind my back. I need her to feel a little emotional jolt here - that I really may be gone for a while.

Confusing times. Headed home today to watch the kids while she is at therapy. Then who knows.

Who did you expose the affair to?

Welcome to MB

Did you talk to OMW?

We're you interested in saving your marriage? Just so you know, many judges view it as abandonment when a man leaves his family. And of course, you can't save a marriage if you are not there. Not sure what you mean by "getting space?" What does that mean exactly?

Did you expose the affair to the OMW?

Sir,
There is no hope for your marriage unless you FIRST move back home and THEN Expose the affair.

FYI: Adulterous women need "space" to have an affair so its convenient if they can talk their husband into leaving.
Sir, my wife also went to "therapy"...and you know what? It turned out the "therapy" was her meeting her affair partner while I was home with the kids!!

Pete, could you find some "space" in the garage or back yard? Why not just step outside if you feel a need for "space" and avoid moving out. Do you have room for yourself in the yard?

My wife had similar "therapy" appointments.

When I wouldn't move out she got angry with me. It was very difficult for her to see or talk to her boyfriend if I was home whenever she was.

Stay in the house. If you think that she would never accuse you of "abandonment" you are likely giving her too much credit. If you stand in the way of her drug(the other man), she may do many things that you never thought she was capable of.

My wife filed a ridiculous restraining order(RO) against me and tried to convince anyone who would listen that I was crazy and violent. Just to get me out of the house so she could more easily get her "fix".

The RO was a short term problem for me but abandonment will be very damaging to you in the long run.

I am going home tomorrow. She made it clear she wants me to come back. We had individual counseling sessions this week where the therapist presented a worksheet meant to help us set basic rules for living in the same house while we work on the marriage. I think we are in for a lengthy reconciliation process but am willing to try. It's incredibly strange to have to start over with the person I married - like a second bomb being dropped.

Is she still contacting OM?

It's possible that she, like anyone else, could delete all evidence before I see it. Knowing that, as long as she'll telling me there's no contact, how do I know for sure?

You would want to snoop. Does your "therapist" have a plan to save your marriage? I ask this because most therapists are not experienced or qualified to save marriages. If you want a step by step program to save your marriage, I would get the book Surviving an Affair along with the workbook, Five Steps to Romantic Love. You can also listen to the radio show every day for free.

Here is the checklist for recovery from an affair:

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.

This OM was a neighbor of yours who lives close, right? You and your wife need to get out of there. There must be no further contact EVER between the OM and your wife. Plus living there in the same neighborhood is going to be an everlasting trigger.

Transparency in marriage is essential, so you and your wife should share your passwords to everything.

Most therapists have no idea how to restore a marriage after infidelity, so most give very unhelpful, even destructive advice. Dr. Harley has forty years of experience helping couples recover a marriage after an affair. Recovery is a very narrow path with no margin for error. Dr. Harley always advises moving away from affair partners who live in the same vicinity.

OM's wife kicked him out and they're divorcing. OM's wife still lives in neighborhood but rumors are she's moving. If she does not, we'll have to consider moving.

Update - I am home and we have put down ground rules on how we can coexist and try to rebuild. Affair is over - I will monitor, but until I uncover something I believe that is it really over. Now on to us (me and my wife).

She admits she goes back on forth - one day she really wants to make it work, some days she does not. All goes back to the disconnect we experienced prior to the affair. I will work on meeting emotional needs, but I'm asking for advice as it's an incredibly strange position to be in to have to win over my own wife.

Without pressuring and maintaining a safe environment, how can I get her to really embrace rebuilding and stop having doubts?

Dr. Harley says that both betrayed husbands AND wayward husbands are in the position of having to win their wives back, if they want the marriage to recover.

Your wife will be in withdrawal and vacillate between wishing she had the romance of the affair and the logic of the marriage. You will need to reassure her that the recovery plan you plan to use will include BOTH logic AND romance.

Your wife will stop having doubts about the marriage once recovery has happened. Withdrawal often takes a few weeks, and Dr. Harley recommends antidepressants if one or both spouses become very depressed during this period of time. It need only be temporary.

Make sure that you have full transparency in your marriage. You and she should always be an open book.

Eliminate all your love busters and meet her ENs. What did she complain about in you before her affair? What did she want you to change? Work on those things.

You are getting really good advise from the vets here!

My 2 cents:

It sounds like its hard for you to directly experience your wife's ambivalence towards you and the marriage. Therefore go to your doctor and have him put you on an antidepressant for a short period of time.

Its very normal for a wayward to vasilate regarding the marriage. Its fog babble.

Its very normal for your wife to point fingers at betrayed husband as far as the reason she was compelled to have an affair. More fog babble. But since this is hard for you anyway that's why you'll need antidepressant to hold on during recovery. Of course the reason she had the affair was due to poor boundaries around opposite sex. Whether she owns it now or never does, this is the truth.

And its true, you are going to need to start over. The marriage you both had is over. There was a beginning, a middle and now an end. The affair ended what you once had. To go forward you will need to transform the relationship w/new habits and extraordinary precautions and more. In your prior marriage you and your wife likely leaned more heavily on certain roles and trusts and so on. Now your going to need to thoughtfully re-examine it all and see what to throw out and what to keep. And you likely will move out of your existing home. You'll figure out there will be too many triggers for both of you.

And don't be surprised if you find your in a false recovery at some point. You've already learned your wife has turned into an alien and has found herself addicted to scumbag.