I'm needing advice post affair. The background details are, we've been together for 10 years, married for 9. I'm 31 and she's 30. We have a 4 and 5 year old son. Have always had a solid marriage, though at times she was/is very needy. She was a virgin before meeting me, thus I was her only one ever. She's very successful in her career. Was a valedictorian of her high school, 4.0 at a major college, Professional engineer and military officer. I had a childhood built around my father being abusive towards my mother and having multiple affairs over a 20 year period. I've also experience severe loss of telling my father he only had 2 days to live when he contracted a bacterial infection and I watched him pass. My stepdad passed away this past October from a massive heart attack. And my wife and me lost a pregnancy that was 12 weeks this past January. She had to have a D&C surgery for that also. Basically this surgery emptied out the uterus and removed excess fetal tissue to avoid her getting an infection.

Fast forward to now. All summer long seemed great. No fighting, we would go on dates, we would play with the kids, she would tell me she loved me. There was also no indication of a loss of sex drive at all as we have always sex at least 3-5x's a week for our marriage and this summer was no different. The only thing that was off was she hardly wanted to talk on the phone on here way back from work as she commutes 80 minutes.

She goes out of town a lot for her job but always calls, face time's me, texts, etc. She told me in early July she had to go to Wisconsin for a conference in early August. No big deal, she's done this several times. She left at 8am on Sunday August 2nd and was gone until Thursday August 6th. While she was gone she always had an excuse why she couldn't talk. This threw up red flags for me. She claimed she was depressed when she got back, we schedule a doc appoint that following Friday for her. During this time we were not sexually intimate until she initiated that Sunday, 3 days after she got back. I went ahead and asked her what's going on and was direct if she was having an affair, she denied it at the time.

Fast forward to the following week. We had a great week after having what I thought was a heart to heart of what she needed out of me. It's the first time she's really opened up to me and I've always encouraged her to have conversation like this with me. It's Sunday August 16th at this point approx 10pm. I noticed her phone gets a KIK message. Very odd for the time of night. I check it. That's when I see everything. She was telling another man that she wasn't sure if she could stay in our marriage even though she still loved me. I scrolled up intending on reading it and not confronting yet, that's when I saw naked photos from both sent to each other over a several week period. Naturally I was very upset and I choose to confront then and there. She came clean that she was having a sexting affair and had met this guy at a bar in Atlanta during a previous business trip in May. But there's nothing more than that. I believed her and was calm about it, we talked for a few hours, we even ended up making love that night after reaffirming each other.

However, something was nagging me when my mind started un-clouding. I didn't read every message and I felt like how defensive she initially was that something else was being hidden. I checked our phone bill and sure enough, there's an Atlanta phone number that had called her an astonishing 80+ times from the beginning of June up until August 12th. She had called him a total of 6 times. These calls were usually always during the weekday mornings, afternoons, and on the way back home. Sometimes they were middle of the night, other times that were weekends when I was outside mowing or doing something with our children.

The following morning I asked to see her personal e-mail. At first she refused and that's when I knew something MAJOR had happened. She finally relented and said before I saw anything that she doesn't want to hurt me. That's when I saw correspondences dating back to the beginning of June. I saw that she said he's the most amazing man ever and that she loved him, but also loved me. I saw that he tried to get her to leave me and move to Atlanta to be with him. He even sent her e-books on how to successfully cheat on a spouse. I also saw he had bought her a plane ticket to Atlanta dated from August 2nd-6th. She had gone there for nearly a week to stay with him at a hotel. She confirmed she had sex 6 times, but felt guilty immediately and felt like she had to have sex with him because she was scared what he would do if she said no. That in itself is disturbing. I asked her if she used protection, she said yes or course.

I took a day or two to wrap my head around this and I immediately found this website, various e-books, workbooks, etc. The bottom line is I have unconditional love for this woman. I am hurt, but I can't leave her. And it's not because of money, companionship, or our children. I'm not scared of being alone. Without sounding cocky, I have taken care of my body over the years and would have no problems meeting other women. I simply feel that my love for her is so great that there's not a thing in the world she can do to break that. Which is tough to deal with, because obviously her love for me is not the same at the moment, possibly never.

Two days ago however, she dropped a bombshell that she only used protection for half of the time. Thus she continued to lie and deceive me on details that are vital even for my personal health. We are getting screened for STDs this Friday, she did text negative for pregnancy.

I did contact the other spouse. My wife's affair told her he's in an open marriage. This was confirmed to be untrue. It was also confirmed had had multiple affairs over a several year period and had even been abusive toward her and an absent father to their daughter. Thus my wife entered a classic "affair-down" situation with a womanizer and wife beater. The wife basically told me she doesn't even need details. This happens so much nothing surprises her anymore and she's filing for divorce. This also jelled with the whole "I was scared to say no" thought process my wife had once she was there.

After this she did finally come clean on everything. Why she did it, how she feels about. Basically she was lonely, depressed from losing the baby, felt I was cold to her, sought companionship at first since his marriage was terrible and it turned into something more. She said she wanted to tell me so many times but feared what would happen. Of course I asked, what was the endgame of her going there and having sex with him? In her words, she was so lost and gone, she thought our marriage was over. At that point she didn't consider the damage it would do and she felt she could hide this one event and be done with it. I do believe this because an e-mail after the fact to him was her ending it. She said nothing about this is my fault that she's a coward, sinner, and an evil human for doing this to me and the children. She swore on her life that this would never happen again. Said that she wants me to do what's best for me and that she is not worthy of my love or presence. She suggested separating for those reasons. I asked her what she really wanted. She said selfishly, she wants me and our family. But she doesn't understand how a rational person could willingly accept her back after what she has done.
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So we've been trying to work things out, some days are better than others. We are sexually active. If we have STDs, we have STDs, nothing I can do now. We are hanging out and communicating as much as we can. We unplugged for a weekend together had a great time. I will say she has gone through extraordinary measures for the most part on her own will. She said she has no desire to see or talk to him again. She wasn't physically attracted to him, just emotionally. She deleted the e-mail. Offered to change her phone number, but I told her to go ahead and keep it and just block the number. She also deleted KIK completely, shares her complete schedule, calls me to work, during lunch, and from work. Gave me access to every social media outlet and every password she has. I have told close family friends what we're going through. She however, refuses to tell her family at all, parents and 2 sisters. She didn't have the greatest relationship with them growing up and she feels that they will totally abandon her if she tells them. I agreed to go with that for her, though I want to tell them and I believe it's right to tell them. Thus is the quandary I'm in as she wants me to trust her completely, yet she has things she's still keeping a secret I don't feel it's healthy for us. I don't believe it to be a deal breaker, but I think it's a speed bump that's no necessary. When we saw our entire family a week ago for my father-in-law's birthday, I couldn't help but break down in tears a few times. I know they're aware something is up, but they don't know the extent. I have love for all of them as well, thus I hate being put in a position to compromise my moral integrity of having to knowingly hide this major hurt in our marriage.

I tried bringing this up a couple of times and I get stonewalled every time. She finally said if I want to tell them than tell them. I feel like it's not my place at this point to do so, that it is her who should come clean. Her view is, she doesn't owe them that because they weren't part of her life as much as she thinks they should be. This does still cause some riffs between us as my mom is aware of all this and in fact even said she still loves my wife and we have gone out a couple of times.

She wants to basically "forget and reset." Easier said than done imo. I am guilty of bringing it up a lot. It's not healthy for me to do, it's like peeling a scab over and over again. We did finally agree to only talk about it once per week for 15-20 minutes every Wednesday. It's just scary times for me. I was having regular panic attacks that have since subsided w/o medication, alcohol, etc. She says she can't handle it being brought up over and over again, my stance is because we keep secrets bottled, we have no choice but to have this linger. I also believe she had 2 months to prep for when this happens and I was blind sided. Thus our reactions to it will be slightly different intensity wise.

So my real questions in all of this are as follows since you guys know the general info now.

Again she's OK with telling anyone else, just not her parents. She HAS NOT told any of her friends either. She fears ruining her reputation, which it will because she's from a small town.

Do I keep going along with her and hide this from her family, sisters, brother-in-laws? Do I compromise my moral integrity for her to continue doing the very things that led us down this road to begin with? Should I go ahead and tell them and let the chips fall where they may? I have no idea how to approach this situation.

Also what are things I can do to avoid triggers and help me deal with the internal anguish that I feel? It's unique, I can't help but think of things we did this summer that she was busy talking to him leading up to that. Such as our kids playing baseball, going to the airport, seeing the clothes she had in pictures sent to him, etc. All these things I feel like, as of right now, I can't do because they remind me of too much pain. How can one get over this?

Thank you in advanced.

I am going to condense that WAY down so that you hopefully get some more people to help you.

The most important points that need to be addressed are:
Your W had an affair and does a lot of traveling for work.

You have exposed to the OMW....your W has agreed to end the affair but this hasn't been exposed far and wide.

This is not why your W had an affair. She had an affair because Extraordinary Precautions were not put in place to prevent one. Affairs are so tempting and so common that without EPs, any M is at risk. One of the big EPs that Dr Harley talks about frequently is not having a travel job and not spending overnights apart.

Dr Harley would tell you not to keep this a secret and to let both of your families and friends and anybody of influence/support know. Exposure is a crucial step that should not be skipped - and it is not something that you need your W's agreement on.

Exposure helps in a few different ways, it will help defog your WW...it will help to keep her accountable which will help to prevent reflaring of this A and possible future affairs and it will give you the support that you need.

And....no, you don't leave it up to the WS to expose it. I would not discuss it with her anymore. Just get it over with so that you can move on to the next steps...EPs.

Thanks for the advice. I understand myself why she did it, but of course she's not going to label it as we didn't have precautions put in place. The best I feel I can do is understand what the mindset was at the time and build from there with future precautions, which is what we have done for the most part.

I don't fear her repeating this. She has told me to expose it to her parents. My biggest fear in this is what her parents will do.

When I was exposed to how my father's infidelity, we never really ever recovered our relationship. He didn't see my wedding, ended up not being a part of my life before he lost his, which is a deep regret I carry today.

I know them. They will abandon her for sure. They will abandon their grandkids. They have always held their love for my wife and children as conditional on their terms and not when extraordinary situations call for their love. That in itself is a whole other issue, but plays into the bigger overall issue we face today. I don't necessarily see them as a presence that will offer support and forgiveness, but as a source of hurt and pain. When she lost the baby earlier this year, they called one time. They did not attend my father's funeral. They only came to one baseball game for my kids this past summer out of dozens of opportunities. They flat out said no to a family vacation earlier this year, citing that it's not really a vacation with kids involved. They don't call on birthdays. And they constantly turn down opportunities to spend time with grandkids or us. Thus the relationship they have with my wife is incredibly volatile. I fear by exposing anything to them, their choice will be to turn and walk away from my wife and kids and not help, because based on the past 10 years, they have given no indication that they are the type of people capable of helping.

I don't know how much it's worth it to cause my children to lose that relationship, even though it is what it is. I know that's a choice I will have to make and a judgement call I will have to go with as it goes directly against what is recommended by experts and people who have experienced this on this very site.

I guess at the end of the day, the question is for my own peace of mind do I potentially sacrifice my children's and wife's already rocky relationship with her parents knowing from the factors we face that this isn't necessarily a spot that would prevent future affairs?

But anyone that reads this, know that I take the advice to heart and will deeply consider it. I appreciate all the input and it is being taken in and thoughtfully considered.

On a side note, everything else in the list we have addressed, even some items not listed, and have an understanding / agreement. She can't prevent herself from going out of town and there's no chance of her changing jobs. Thus anytime she goes out of town again, I will go from now on, which truthfully she has always asked me to go and I have only chosen to go sparingly. We have also agreed to sell our house when the time is right early next year and move closer to her job to make the commute 15 minutes instead of 80 minutes.

Marv,
Sorry for all the pain you have gone through and are going through. Glad your here as its the best place to get the help your family needs.

I don't understand. If her parents are that u supportive what's the point of holding onto them? What exactly do your children and wife gain from this relationship?

In my experience a situation like an Affair often helps to highlight the people who are supportive to your family and marriage and those who are not and it has been of great benefit to my family to cut out the people who did not support us leaving me with less friends and family but more moral and true friends and family.

NB,

You're absolutely correct. It would highlight someone that's supportive for sure. Her logic is, she has worked hard over the past 12 years to build something with them, and doesn't want to lose that.

I can respect that on a level that I lost my relationship with my own father because of infidelity.

We have our weekly chat coming up next Wednesday, which is used to discuss all feelings about this situation etc. I will bring these points up that both you and Susie have mentioned. I'll report back here with the convo and get some input from everyone on how to proceed.

Me personally, I feel that it will be tough whenever we do see them because that will always be the elephant in the room. My wife wants to forget about it and move on, kinda hard to do though when there aren't steps being taken to foster that movement.

Hi Marv, welcome to Marriage Builders. A couple of points I would like to reiterate is that the affair should be exposed if you would like to recover. You should not forewarn your wife. Ask her family to contact her afterwards to offer their support. Your children, family and friends should be notified. Without telling your wife first.

Other red flags that will prevent you from saving your marriage are her a) traveling job and b) your inappropriate "unconditional love." You have already discovered the hard way what happens when one spouse has a traveling job. Affairs are epidemic. You are going to lose your marriage if you don't change that.

The other issue is the "unconditional love. " It is an unhealthy approach to marriage. Here are some comments and an article by Dr. Bill Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders:


Just ask yourself if you would still "love" your wife if she left you for another man and divorced you? That doesn't make much sense, does it?

What's Wrong with Unconditional Love? (Part 1)

We will take steps to foster that movement, however, you won't recover if you give into the temptation to sweep this under the rug. That will not help your wife and it surely won't help your marriage. See, our goal is to recover your marriage, not to pretend it did not happen.

The more people who know, the more people to hold her accountable and help her see the destructiveness of her behavior. I am sure she does want to pretend it all away, but that is not really in her best interest.

Susie is correct, your wife had an affair because she has poor boundaries around men and lives a single, independent lifestyle that affords her the opportunity to cheat. Traveling jobs are an invitation to affairs. So unless this changes, welcome to your future.

Yes, his infidelity and selfishness ruined your relationship. You are blaming the wrong thing. And why would you want him to be a part of your life? My father was a serial cheater and this was a big secret. When I found out the truth as an adult, I stayed as far away as possible. I regret my father was a morally corrupt man. I don't regret knowing truth. Lies and illusions do not make us happy or secure.

Marv - A few things that I would have done differently when I learned of my wife's infidelity.

1. I would have exposed what was happening to everyone including family, friends, co-workers on both sides as soon as possible. It is a tough conversation, but one that has to happen.

2. I would have taken the mind set that until extraordinary precautions are in place and my spouse agreed never to see the other person again, that her life is an open book (time, passwords...) I should expect that she is not acting on my behalf. Until those things are in place and the fog has lifted (several weeks if not months) she will more than likely keep looking for the other person to meet her emotional needs.

Hey guys,

Thanks for the comments and consideration. A little bit of an update, could be lengthy, cliff notes at bottom. I did talk things out with her a little more this weekend as we went on a camping trip with our 2 sons. A few takeaways from it. I will say before hand, we are in a GREAT place right now. We had a moment of clarity as a couple a few days ago. Is everything normal? Of course not, but I feel like the road to recovery will be a rapid one, though it naturally will take a life long effort to maintain.

1. She's on board with telling her parents when the time is right. I agree with her on this solely because her sister and brother-in-law are having a baby shower next weekend for their first child. The last thing I want to do is ruin something for them, when they're an innocent party in all of this. That seems to me it would be a selfish move on my behalf at this point. Thus I'm willing to wait until the following week to reveal together in a sit down with the in laws. My wife has agreed to this and agrees it's the right thing to do.

2. She confirmed the reason for the affair was indeed feeling lonely. She felt that I was not there for her from an emotional standpoint (emotional needs / affair proof) and I fully agree with her. I wasn't the best husband. We've taken a stance that we were both 50/50 at fault for the failings of our marriage that lead to an affair, but she's 100% at fault for the actual affair.

3. It was also confirmed that when she came back from her affair she had chosen me and actually had ended it literally the same day I found out. I confirmed this through the other spouse. Her original plan, she had decided she wanted a divorce before planning the trip. Why she didn't wait until asking for a divorce, I'll never understand. She said she was a coward and though she was pushed to the brink of wanting a divorce, she felt obligated to maintain the family. Bizarrely enough, looking back, all my love bank needs were fully met and I totally missed the boat on 3 out of 5 of them for her, including her top 2. Thus I do understand why this happened.

Like I was saying, she did call off the affair when she got back to town and showed me an e-mail that did match the dates she specified that detailed her true passion and love for me. In this she realized the guilt, selfishness, and shame with everything. Second, she said she did not love him at all, was not physically attracted to him, and stated the physical part they shared was awful due to a variety of factors. A situation of thinking you know what you want and when it's happening you realize what a massive mistake it is. All of this is actually apparent on how quickly she dropped him without missing a step, having no emotional breakdowns on it, talking excitedly about our future, and showing all her love and affection towards me. She has gone above and beyond on measures of ensuring no contact is made. Is this the honeymoon phase? Most likely, but we have both acknowledge that and said we will keep this phase going for as long as possible.

The stark reality of our lives is she's far and away the bread winner. She would leave me and she would be just fine from a financial standpoint. I told her this past weekend, if she wants to separate / divorce than I will do as she wishes, because I feel this marriage needs to be 100% on board for both of us. She agreed and said she felt that way after the past couple of weeks. So she's not staying because of financial security as she clears $100k per year on her own and has a mutli-million pension growing up until 50. Needless to say, I would be the one up the creek if we divorced.

I understand people's viewpoints on unconditional love. But that's simply something I can't turn off. I wish it were that easy, but I've never required someone to have to do certain things for me to love them, though obviously when love bank needs are met it makes it so much better. If I didn't feel that type of love for her, I honestly would've just canned the marriage and not tried to save it at all. Thus I kinda believe anyone that chooses to save a marriage with an unfaithful spouse most likely has some sort of version of unconditional love. After all, if love is conditional and someone can do by far the worst thing ever in a marriage, yet we still choose that person and want to make it work, wouldn't that underscore the very value of that love not having full on conditions? Can this be taken advantage of? Of course. Was it taken advantage of? Absolutely. Did I properly show my love? No I did not. Will this all happen again? I believe it won't. But in the off chance is does, we are both crystal clear that will equal the end of us. My unconditional love does not mean I will stay and be a punching bag and that there is even 2nd chances. I truly believe there are always exceptions to every rule and the shoe doesn't always fit for everyone. I believe our situation is just that.

We talked at length about the love bank and how recovering from an affair is recommended to go. We went the route of radical honesty with each other. She stated to me that my understanding, love, and support was all she ever wanted and has been more than enough to snap this out of her and change any feelings she had at all. She said her feelings of unhappiness with how things weren't going with us far outweighed the emotional feelings she had with her affair. She was honest in that if I would've held back from telling her about it first and instead went to everyone else, it would've damaged things beyond repair. I believe this since she had her mind made up she wanted a divorce, but was scared to initiate one. So as I said, every situation is different. And honestly, if I would've followed the idea of exposing it to everyone immediately, I would've stuck a knife straight into the heart of our marriage and it would be done.

We do have a plan of action for how to recover our marriage and so far we are following it to a T. It's not exactly the advice from this website word for word, but it is strongly slanted that way and built upon mutual understanding together on how we want to recover. The benefit of this is she felt like she had a voice. I am a dominating person at times and to dominate this recovery would not be beneficial for us, thus minor adjustments needed to be made. We have dates set up with close friends and family members to tell them face to face together about the situation. So we are indeed exposing it, and she is right there front and center to expose it herself with me providing support. We have already done this with my best-friend and his wife, my mother, and our 5 year old son, obviously with our son it was describe in a very tactful manner.

I do truly thank everyone for their input and I will continue to take in any advice and use it to the best of my ability to work on my marriage.

Cliff Notes:
- We're in a great place.
- She confessed her love.
- Have a mutual understanding and plan of action to heal.
- Have dates lined up for exposing affair together.
- We are working as a team to overcome this obstacle, thus focusing more on us than fixing damage of the affair. By focusing on us, the damage is getting fixed regardless.

Has she changed all her contact information?

Have all the avenues that she used to facilitate her affair been closed?
Who on OM's side have you exposed to?

Once again, you should not discuss exposure with your wife. It should just be done. You are making this unnecessarily difficult. There is no such thing as "perfect time," there will always be "reasons" to delay, so don't allow this to delay your exposure.

AGAIN, this is not done with your wife. This is something that is done by the betrayed spouse without your wife's input.


The reason for the affair was because she has poor boundaries around men. Unless that is addressed and resolved, you will experience more affairs in the future. Sure, conditions in the marriage might have made the affair more tempting, but it would have never happened if she had appropriate boundaries around men.


None of this is relevant to issues at hand.


None of this is relevant. What matters to recovery is her ACTIONS. Writing out long posts about her fogged out feelings is distracting from the issues at hand. I don't think you understand the foggy mentality of your wife right now.


The meaning of unconditional love is that you will love her unconditionally regardless of what she does. So, if you say you would not stay and be her punching bag, then your love is very conditional. You are using the wrong term to describe it. I think it sounds romantic to say you feel unconditional love, but it is is not true in reality. We need to deal with reality here, wouldn't you agree? This is not the time for romantic ideas.



Again, this is irrelevant to the situation at hand.

Please put aside your own inexperienced notions about fixing your marriage and follow the program. I know you want to believe that your situation is "different," but trust us, it is not. But you don't know that because you have no experience. You and your wife do not know how to save marriages. We truly want to help you, but we cannot help you if you won't follow the advice.

Just rip off the bandaid and get it done.

All contact information has changed except for phone number, which was a main source of how they talked. She offered to change the number no questions asked, I told her to leave it as long as she blocked all numbers and did not answer the area code of where the a affair originated in case he tries to call again. This is mainly because she literately has over 100 contacts from around the nation with her career built over a several year period. I also have full access to daily phone records, texts, etc, via AT&T website. So if there was ever contact I would immediately know and we would be effectively done no questions asked. But I will say, he's well aware that it would be in his best interest not to attempt contact.

Other than that, e-mail is deleted, KIK is deleted, Facebook is deleted, all other social media deleted. This was on her own accord and not me asking.

On his side, I exposed to wife, sister-in-law, parents, parent-in-laws. I did all of that prior to reading the information here. By doing this, his wife contacted me back and basically confirmed obvious suspicions he wasn't who my wife initially thought he was. Which has made my wife completely shut him off and she honestly has given no indication of still thinking about him or wanting anything to do with him. It was revealed he beats his wife, has had multiple affairs, and is not present in his daughter's life. Exact opposite of me. Essentially he was living an obvious double life as was my wife and she had no idea his past history or current reality.

Also I think most people have missed this tidbit, that she did confirm she felted forced into being intimate while there. She's still at fault completely for being in that situation as there was numerous times it should've stopped. But knowing that he is violent, I fear for what would've happened if she completely resisted instead of having that fear of saying no. It's obviously incredibly weird to say that, but the facts of his life indicate it could've been a potential dangerous situation as no one knew where she was except for him.

I had no intentions of ever contacting him, but once I learned of these facts I did confront him about this via phone / text. I don't know if that was the right thing to do. But he of course denied denied denied and went so much to say he has an attorney and won't hesitate to file a lawsuit for slander and threatened to get a restraining order on me. Honestly, that's laughable at best and almost is turning this situation into an SNL skit.

That being said, I made no physical threats, but made him aware of the fact that he barked up the wrong tree. He didn't know, I had already exposed to his whole family and talked to his wife and was well aware of his history. Needless to say, after the conversation I had with him, I'm not worried at all about him calling back. I don't think he's ever had someone directly confront him before and that shook him up enough.

Are you listening to the Marriage Builders Radio show, daily? Because you are about to run into some serious, serious trouble. For starters you talk a lot more than you listen. Second you are discussing exposure with your wife??

Most people do not recover from infidelity. Dr. Harley says that the road to recovery is very narrow. Please don't pick and choose and shoot yourself in the foot, and please don't believe it when your WW rolls over says she loves you offers to capitulate everything, etc., because you will soon discover that if you don't actually follow the recovery steps life is going to become worse than it was before.

Knowing about contact misses the point entirely. Having the ability to reach her means the risk of affair resumption always exists. Your knowing does not negate the damage that is done by the triggers his contact will cause. If you know he called, then so what? That does not stop her from contacting him another way when her feelings are triggered. And it doesn't stop him from using another phone to contact her.

As long as he has her phone #, he is free to contact her and affair resumption will be high risk. Why take that risk?

You are making strategic mistakes all along the way, I am sorry to say.

BIG MISTAKE.

All it will take is one phone call, and every bit of progress you have made will be trashed. Affairs have resumed because of such simple contact ... it's happened again and again.

Your wife is like a drug addict, and the OM is her drug of choice. She may have every desire in the world to get away from him, but she still will not be able to resist him if he contacts her. And the temptation to contact him will be too great for her.

You are playing with fire.

I'm sorry to say that you are not going to make it unless you start taking these steps seriously:

I promise you, Marv, you are talking way too much and listening way too little. It sounds like you want to quickly sweep this under the rug and get back to business as usual for your marriage.

THAT'S NOT GOING TO WORK.

Nothing less than a complete change in outlook and lifestyle will fix this.

The life you led before led your marriage to this disaster, and unless you become much, MUCH more educated than you are now about how to have a good marriage you are going to be right back here within a week with more wounds more hurt and more disaster.

Please, PLEASE start listening to Dr. Harley's radio show - it's like a class and you will learn what you need to know. Get the book Surviving an Affair and actually read it.

You have a long way to go before you are out of the woods. You are not "in a good place." You are whistling in the dark (and you are in the middle of the street about to get mowed down by a truck).

And what is being done about her traveling job? I hate to say it, but it seems you are going to have to go through the School of Hard Knocks because of the mistakes you are making. You have a small window of opportunity to turn this around and seem hell bent on forfeiting all of your opportunities. Most people are not that fortunate. They don't even HAVE opportunities to forfeit. YOU DO.

I would implore you to put aside your own foggy inexperience and follow a program that does work. Your plan will not work, I assure you. You are playing chicken with your own marriage........FOR NO GOOD REASON.

While that SOUNDS nice, the reality is that what you are experiencing is the "honeymoon" phase of feeling relief and happiness that you two have decided ot stick it out....

My ex H proudly exclaimed to everyone who would listen after we decided to recover and were doing a GREAT job of meeting each other's ENs: I am more in love with Susie than ever before!! That didn't stop him from having another affair a couple years down the line. Because appropriate EPs had not been implemented.

Once the honeymoon wears off, the reality remains that you have not changed the conditions that led to your WW's affair, you have not properly exposed it and you are focused on distractions that will not lead you through to recovery.

We know because we have seen this time and again. The plan is all here for you to follow and really recover your M, but the path is narrow. Cherry picking does NOT work when it comes to recovery after an A.

I agree, he's not going to make it....

Another one to add to the list who think they know better and can deviate from the plan.

Sigh.

EXACTLY!!

Do you ever Plan on following the MB plan to kill her affair?

You might want to read this thread.
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2219392

A few things that helped me:

1. The book Surviving an Affair. Checklist extremely beneficial.
2. Listening to Marriage Builders Radio.
3. The insights from the volunteers on Marriage Builders Forum

My wayward wife promised she wasn't trying to contact the other guy. Once I exposed the infidelity I found out she had continued pursuing him. Yesterday Dr Harley compared the fog experienced by wayward spouses to a Heroine addict. I experienced it first hand. It is so true.

Good luck.

There is a narrow path to recovery.

Just an update. I have read through what everyone has said. Honestly, the nay-saying hurts my personal recovery more than it helps, but oh well, people will always have an opinion/belief on what the best option is, thus this website does have a central core belief to it. Nothing wrong with that. And there is certainly nothing wrong with the methods as I'm sure it has helped out numerous amounts of people. I've discovered the methods overall are not for me on a personal level. But I do enjoy getting things off my chest and at least processing my thoughts whether people agree or don't agree.

We are on the path to recovery and we are blazing our own path. We've used numerous re-sources to finalize our path. We call it the "Path to Recovery and Prosperity." We don't simply want to recover, we want to thrive.

All money, all phone records, all e-mails are all accounted for both sides. No contact has been made or will be made. This is due to her already breaking it off with him before I discovered the affair (I saw the e-mail and the date). And also after the fact it came to light that he has physically abused his wife in the past. Though not surprising as an affair is a form of emotional abuse imo. He has had over a dozen affairs according to his wife. It also came to light from the wife via a PI that he was also seeing another woman during the same week my wife met with him. He literally would see other woman during the morning/day, and my wife at night at the hotel, while telling my wife he was going to work. That's a day time talk show level mind bend. Funny how the world turns.

She has faced her actions head on with humility and realizes what a dangerous environment it really was with a violent person and what might have happened if she said "No" while she was there.

Some of her family knows what is going on now and they have been encouraging. We've shown a unified front on all sides, which is helping greatly. We do have our reasons for exposing together, which run much deeper on a psychological level for what we have experienced with each other for 10 years that simple typed sentences won't convey. But we know it's the right choice and so far it has made every day better and better.

My spouse has also initiated getting numerous e-books, audio books, etc on how to deal with the aftermath of infidelity. We listen to them on a daily basis together, take notes, and discuss afterwards.

We have also used the emotional needs questionnaire. We fill it out again each week with simple adjustments after taking notes all week long on how we feel. Each night we tell each other what we loved about the day or what could be better. Thus we formulate a plan that night and put it into action the very next day.

We have scheduled literally 40 hours per week of alone time together and we follow that to the T. We have times scheduled out, as she wanted full days accounted for in a complete fashion.

We also have a list of triggers for both of us to avoid. This has helped immensely.

In the end, I would venture to say our hands on recovery is probably more in depth than majority of recoveries are. Is it perfect? No. Will it work? That remains to be seen. I have yet to find any process that is 100% guaranteed to work.

I do want to thank everyone for their thoughts, comments, suggestions. Know that I do read them, I do think about them, good or bad, and it does actively help shape my decisions. I will continue to update bi-weekly on here as long as I feel the need to.

Has your wife given up travelling for work?

Marv, the purpose of this forum is to help posters learn and implement Marriage Builders steps. Since you have decided not to use this program, we will be locking this thread. If you change your mind and decide to use the program, let me know and I will unlock this thread so you can receive assistance. We wish you the best.