You should consult an attorney regardless of what you decide so you can make informed decisions. If you do end up filing for divorce (now or later), you should cite the adultery in your divorce petition or introduce it in some form should you not be able to cite it outright. It can make a difference even in no fault states or when a lawyer says otherwise. It is always better to put it in from the beginning. Your WH would also be less likely to fight you if he knows you will expose more in legal proceedings.

My serial cheater did it for the rush of the chase but after many years of a SSL, he got emotionally involved. She was 45, fat and desperate. Hey, accidents happen even to serial cheaters

But Indie may be right, worth investigating to see if this is a single long term relationship that he is hiding. Definitely easier to recover from that.

This sounds like a bad country song.

Oh she was also a felon, we need that in the song too. They deserved one another, pity he dumped her really.

"A mean, low-life felon, an overripe melon..."

Huh?

Nobody said that you can't. Besides your question was answered.

What we said is that from what we could see from your threads in 2010, proper exposure and proper EPs were not implemented.

Serial cheater or not, that will lead to more affairs. One affair already indicates a weakness in boundaries for the WS.

...nasty skanky smellin'...

What wasn't answered were the many questions I asked you. I spent some time posting to you yesterday, and you all but ignored my posts.

I read through the thread that was attached to the beginning of this thread (i.e., this whole thread, from the beginning in 2010) and I was stunned at the anger and belligerence with with you rebutted all the advice that was given to you in 2010. SusieQ tried especially hard to get you to close down this affair properly, and you called her and other posters rude, and you pretty much told them to bugger off, because you were going to do things your way.

And here you are, not quite so belligerent perhaps, but still ignoring advice and doing things your way. This affair could have been closed down in 2010, had you listened to posters then.

Agree Sugarcane, that is why I am reluctant to spend any time here. The advice we gave back in 2010 was rudely dismissed and ignored. And here we are again....

I just want to point out that my H was not a serial cheat; he had a long-term affair with the same woman.

Neither was I recommending early retirement for a serial cheat. I wasn't recommending any particular path. I was showing that when an affair has already re-started, or perhaps never died, as happened in both your case and mine, a couple needs to take extraordinary precautions that go over and above the normal EPs.

What those precautions are will depend on the nature of the affair, and the contact that the affair partners had. My husband's affair was facilitated by his working environment. OW was a client, and his email could not be accessed at home - which means that I could not log on to check it. He had a private office space from which he could make long phone calls unheard, and a mobile phone that he left at the office - so I could not monitor that, either.

OW lived in another country, so there was no need for us to take the usual steps of moving house, or changing church. My husband could have tried to find work with another company, but I was never convinced that this would stop them from communicating through the workplace. In the end, accepting the affair for the addiction it was, it was the workplace that was the issue for us, and so when the opportunity for early retirement came up, taking it was the solution - along with no mobile phone and my access to his PC history, at home.

Other people in serial cheating situations have been advised by Dr Harley to change professions, if the nature of the profession makes hook-ups inevitable. Examples include pilots and stewardesses, anyone who travels overnight for a job, and working in hospitals where the shifts and the environment enable hook-ups between doctors and nurses.

Some people have indeed been advised to give up working outside the home, but not necessarily to retire; Dr Harley suggests that couples start a business together.

The solution to serial cheating is first, for there to be a will to stop, on the part of the cheat. Your husband has walked out on you, and as far as we have heard, shows no desire to stop his affairs, so I don't think that anything else is relevant for you. Second, is drastically to change the environment, so that the unfaithful spouse cannot pick up other people in secret.

ain't no meetin' for them in heaven

And confessed to the SSL too? I don't like that it is only his word we have. I just wonder if it is to detract blame from the AP.

Protectiveness of the OW is common and this WH has tried many times to convince his wife that her exposing OW is unnecessary and pointless. First by doing it himself. Then by implying she's not the issue.

He may well be a serial cheat I just wouldn't take his word for it.

I don't know if I would say that. I would guess that LTA and serial cheating is equally more difficult to recovery from than a regular one time cheater. Or if there is a difference, it's not a huge difference. Just MHO.

It was pretty nice of you to take more time to write to this poster after having all your other posts ignored.

Just wanted to say...Great post!

It's stuff like this which worries me. The WH here is the one who exposed the affair five years ago to OWH. He did it in such a way that OWH was left with the impression that it was just a friendship - which left the gates wide open for him to call her whenever he liked, with OWH blessing. Which happened.





Why on earth would the word of the guy who's been sliming up to his wife have more weight with OWH than PMs?

You can see by PMs quote here that she genuinely believed this 'keep the gates open' ploy was her own idea. Gaslighting extraordinaire.

Now she isn't answering anyone's questions about follow-up exposure to OWH. She's only interested in the line she's been fed about serial cheats and how hopeless that all is...

But she wasn't gaslit, Indie.

We TOLD her again and again that she needed to expose and she didn't want to hear it.

She also didn't want to follow up on the EPs.

Some people for whatever reason (don't want to rock the boat with their WS, want to forget about the affair or believe it wasn't a big deal, etc) want to skim over the JC part of recovery. Sadly that is a common theme around here.

Many times we can convince them otherwise. Sometimes they don't want to hear it - I don't think you can entirely blame it on gaslighting in those cases. Personally I think it's either denial or thinking they know better or some combination of the two....

I think that's definitely true too but they aren't mutually exclusive ideas.

If you don't have that sense of wanting to believe the WS (who among us hasn't or didn't) or not wanting to rock the boat, it's not possible to be gaslit.

There is very little willingness to rock the boat here though I agree and that isn't entirely gaslighting.

I'm not sure what you mean. My ex did not confess to a SSL..he was caught. If a WS is dumb enough to add being a serial cheater to his resume and it is not true, I don't think it detracts blame from the AP since she is still an OW.



The word of any WS/OP should be taken with a grain of salt and the truth looked into further but I also wouldn't entirely dismiss it either.

Ditto and QFT

No, it doesn't.

But I think he knows what his wife will focus on.

Here we are hearing more about the serial cheater thing (which is unverified but of course shouldn't be dismissed) than about the OWH who is by far the more pressing matter.

All Qs about him being ignored.

This is something that is definitely true and something that should have been done years ago.

Independent verification of the other OW he's claimed should also be done so she can expose them...and we aren't hearing about that either.