Wonder if you guys have some advise. Sorry if it's long.

My husband of 20 years had an affair. This is the first time and of course I was shocked. We had been having issues for several years so even though I expected him to talk to me about a separation I did not expect lies and deceit.

When I found out of course I was devastated and we managed to talk it through and try and work it out. I told him that he had to end all contact with this OW. He told me he needed "time" to make up his mind. I was almost convinced that he was going to carry on with her and separate from me.

This went on for a couple of days. I think the reason he did not want to separate from me is because he is afraid that he will lose money (alimony and so on).

He then came to me several days ago saying that he wanted to save the marriage and it was over and he promised never to see her again. He came to the decision that he did not want to give up on 20 years for someone he hardly even knows.

I was happy and we vowed to really try hard.

Then I found the email - SHE broke up with him. She told him all or nothing and that he had to try and work out his issues and they could revisit at another time.

I was devastated all over again. He lied again.
Should I confront him with this?
He sat for hours telling me how much he loved me but I truly believe he is in love with her.
I think he is doing this so that when we do break up, he can say at least we tried and walk away clean (without the guilt of cheating).

Sorry full of emotion right now and rambling a bit.

Any other insight would be appreciated.

In "Surviving an Affair", Sue's affair ended when her lover dumped her, just like what happened with your husband. She was only willing to going back to Jon because she had no better option. Neither of them was in love any more. They followed the program, and today are enjoying a romantic marriage.

As to your husband, of course he was/is in love with the OW. That is a given. You need to take the initiative and make sure his affair stays dead. He needs to commit to a program of recovery. The blueprint is in "Surviving an Affair.

Never really thought of it like that. Thank you - that helps.

I'm sorry for the pain that brought you here. Where did your husband meet the other woman?

Since your husband has promised to never have contact with the OW again, he should be willing to send her a no contact letter. There is a template here on the site for that, and I will include it in my next post.

Dr. Harley has a proven plan for recovering from infidelity, but in order for it to work, it must be followed without skipping any steps (you will understand why as you read more...it is designed to affair-proof your marriage, and also to help you to heal from his betrayal).

Here are Dr. Harley's step, taken from the Book "Surviving 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.

Here is a template of the no contact letter that I mentioned above. It is recommended that your husband write it in his own handwriting, and then give it to YOU to view before sealing in the envelope. Then you should take it yourself to mail and/or take it to the post office and pay for signature receipt so that you will know that the OW has received it.

*****
(Other Woman's name)
I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk with you again.

My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that my wife did not deserve. While I cannot completely repay her for the pain that I have caused, I will do my best to become the husband that she has been missing.

I care a great deal for my family and I would not want to do anything to risk their happiness.

I will not make any further contact with you and I do not want you to make any contact with me. Please respect my desire to end our relationship.

Sincerely,
(your husband's name)

Do you have the book Surviving an Affair?

Has his affair been exposed? Do you have kids?

No I don't have the book yet.

Affair exposed only to me.

No kids.

She already wrote the "it over, don't contact me letter".

He told me that it was HIM who ended with her.

Then start working the check list. You expose the affair, without telling him. Use one of the templates in the Exposure 101 thread.

If he is committed to the marriage, he should write the NC letter and you should send it. All contact information should change asap (today).

Also, she was trying to force him to chose her in the email. She's hoping he will come around. You need to close off those avenues of contact.

Thank. He wants to separate to see which direction he's going in. He's very predictable so I know what he's going to do - I need to start to heal.

You need to expose his affair.

Have you read the Exposure thread?

Who is on you exposure list?

When will you be exposing?

fugly, he wants to separate to pursue his affair. He knows what direction he is "going in." If not, hand him a compass. Your marriage will not heal if he leaves to pursue his affair. You need to expose the affair and do your best to kill the affair. It is your only chance.

Yes, the affair has been exposed already.

I asked him to end contact with her and decide who he wanted to be with. He told me he wanted to give us a chance. Two days later he then changed his mind and said he wants to separate. We talked a lot during the week. He said he does not want to be reminded every time we talk that he had an affair and did not want to live like that. I told him it was only a week that this happened and still raw.

So he's going to pursue the affair - he infatuated with her.

Did you expose to all family and friends?

To WHOM was it exposed and what EXACTLY did you say? Don't give us names, but tell us the relationship of every person to whom you exposed.

Two days ago you said the affair was exposed only to you. Did you do a exposure to others since then? Did you read the exposure 101 thread and use the templates provided?

Your husband is an addict. He is not a rational adult and has any clue about his future. Who cares what he thinks? The question is, what do YOU want to do? Affair fighting is serious business. You can not leave the decision in the hands of a crazy wayward. If you had suddenly realized that your husband had gotten drunk while out to dinner, would you then expect him to drive you home?

If you want to recover, YOU need to decide. You start with an effective exposure. That is telling everybody, not just a few people who will keep the secret. So, please answer ML's question.

sorry for the delay in response - my cousin came to stay with me to help me through.

exposed only to me. my friends know. his don't.

I read so many things - I thought I had read it but I will do it now.

I'll report back with any news.

Please read this Exposure 101

You need to expose on OW's side and to yours and his family and friends.

When will you be doing this?

It is so painful and frustrating watching so many car wrecks happening before our very eyes when a traumatically wounded Betrayed Spouse is so hung up on explaining how they feel and how they procrastinate doing a thourough, immediate exposure, using the kindly worded templates that are readily available in the Exposure 101 topic thread provided by Melody Lane.

It's time to s**t or get off the pot.

Quit being tenuous and afraid of the reaction of your Wayward Wife. They usually are brutal for several days after exposure, then calm down, trying to pretend that they are no longer seeing or talking to the POSOM, but that is precisely what Spyware and Voice Activated Recorders are for.

Of course she will try to placate you with comments that she didn't mean for anything to happen, or say that he is Just A Friend.

Betrayal is defined by the party being hurt by their spouses actions.

Please, please start taking actions immediately instead of blogging about inconsequential details.

LTL

Wow. Really?! I come here in desperation and this is what you write?

Did you even READ the original post? What WIFE??? I am the freaking WIFE!

Actually - thank you for this. This is why my friends tell me to stay away from forums. Message received.

You need to Focus on exposure as has been stated so many times to you.

Because one of us (a long time poster on this forum by the way) gives an answer in error, you are going to leave?

How many of your friends have 35+ years of experience in restoring marriages after an affair? Not just one marriage, but thousands of them?

We understand your frustration...I remember well reading the replies that I got here, and at the time I often wondered if the posters had truly read my story. It seemed often like a canned response...

Now that I've been here for 2+ years, I understand that the reason for this is that ALL affair stories take the EXACT same path!

Each wayward spouse acts the same, speaks the same fog babble, and takes the same route towards destruction. And most (not all, but most) betrayed spouses come here with their own fog...having bought into the gaslighting for sometimes years prior to the affair.

So it becomes a bit difficult at times to respond with unique replies and posts to help someone to get started towards recovery.

MY experience, not speaking for Dr. Harley, is that unless and until the betrayed spouse will demand the MINIMUM necessary to even BEGIN recovery, there is no hope. That applies whether the betrayed spouse is male or female...it very truly does.

I have the feeling that maybe you're not (yet) realizing how serious this situation is. I do understand how that can happen, because I was in your boat just 2+ years ago...

Has anyone showed you this link about gaslighting yet? Please explain gaslighting

Please give it a read and see if anything jumps out at you. If so, then my wish for you is that you could understand that no one wants to be mean here...we just want you to SEE what is going on in your life...what is the reality that you are dealing with.

Your husband already SAID that he was willing to end all contact (once)...the window of opportunity to follow Dr. Harley's plan is very very small...You see, if you will expose, you will have LOTS of support for your marriage AND by bringing the affair to the light of day in front of everyone, your husband just may already be at the point where he can SEE the fantasy of the affair for what it is. It's not a real relationship. And what you and he have IS real...complete with warts and all (that you are willing to work on to fix, and after he comes out of the fog, I bet that he will be also).

I hope that you will read the link that Melodylane and Brainhurts provided for you. Exposure isn't to punish anyone. It is to garner support for yourself and your marriage.

I presume that my one word typo in the message I wrote is what set you off, so I apologize for not being clear headed enough while also making dinner for my Son-12 and supervising his homework.

By the way, sometimes a minor fog creeps into my perception, because yesterday was my 1st day discharged from the hospital and rehab physical therapy since July 17th, after having both of my knees replaced with new implant replacements, alongvwith 3 additional, more intrusive surgeries to attempt to rid each knee of MSSA (?) Staff Infections and i spent the prvious 11 hours finally getting my Son back to Middle School after he had missed the 1st 2 weeks due to my hospitalization. Oh, and with no current outside help, I also spent 6 of those hours going back to the hospital, 1 hour+ away, to have the dressings on my PICC Line changed, which is a permanently installed IV Line for me to self administer my antibiotics for the next 6 weeks.

I will bow out since I was so ill informed and made 1 error in my post.

LTL

With all due respect, the people taking their own personal time to help you on this "forum" have solved their problems. They don't have to help you. WE are all volunteers who are just paying it forward. After all, yu came here asking us for help, we didn't seek you out. Seems like you would be a little more gracious to those who take their own time to post to you.

To a large extent your friends are very wise. Forums are generally a terrible place to get marriage advice. You have no idea of the agendas of the people posting to you (wiccans, atheists, angry divorced persons) nor their personal experience(s) other than what they tell you (fake stories, trolls, other woman). This place is different. Here at MB there is an expert with 40 or so years of experience and who has counseled thousands of couples, trained thousands of marriage counselors, written a dozen books, sold thousands of books who gives away his advice on his forum (and on his radio show) and has a this forum where hundreds of volunteers who have utilized Dr. Harley's programs and methods to not only save their marriages but restore romantic love in their marriages participate sharing their experiences using MB.

This forum is not a sales pitch to sell you coaching or a $500 ebook. This forum is not a bunch of psuedo-intellectual peer counselors who will try to help you with your marriage using their own personal opinions when those opinions brought them no happiness or love in their own marriages whatsoever.

What this forum is ....is HOPE. Free Hope. Your marriage might not be saveable. We can only help you to the extent you are willing to listen, learn and implement the advice. The rest is up to your spouse who unfortunately isn't here listening and applying the concepts as well and obviously has a (self destructive) mind of his own.


As far as your husband not telling you about OW dumping him. In the grand scheme it matters not a lick. After I exposed my wife, her OM dumped her. Some people get caught up in the thought that they want their spouse to "choose them" over the other person but that just doesn't matter. All that matters is that the affair is truly over.

Consider this too...your husband DID kind of break up with her. She demanded all or nothing. It sounds like your husband wanted both. He wasn't willing to give you up to be with her exclusively so she ended it. From your husband's standpoint ...he probably doesn't think he's lying. Waywards are notorious truth shifters so from his point of view...OW wanted more, he denied her so he ended it.

Anyway....ending the affair once and for all is step one to any possible recovery. It is impossible to recover with a third party lingering in the wings. How it ended is irrelevant. What you do from here IS relevant.

You really must strike while the iron is hot. Meaning...you need to insist that just merely staying married and continuing on as though nothing happened isn't acceptable to you. That rebuilding a marriage of extra-ordinary care where both of you love and feel loved and respected by the other spouse is required in order for you to give him another chance. That you are willing to hopefully love and trust him again but only if he is willing to work a marital recovery program designed to rebuild love and trust.

My wife and I both posted here. I actually sent her a link to something here and she registered and started posting. I actually registered and posted after her. When your husband asks you what he is supposed to do to make things better (which every frustrated wayward spouse seems to do as they are still in it's all about me fog), you need to tell him to post here, tell us who he is and what he's done and ask us for help and how he can go about making things better. For example, here is a link to the poster HerPapaBear's first post on this forum in Nov. 2007. ( HerPapaBear's First MB Thread asking for help as a Wayward Husband His wife, sexymamabear, posted here first, use MB and then when she confirmed PapaBear was still in contact with OW she went into Plan B and insisted he come to MB. He (and his wife) posted here on MB for years, first for their marriage and then to help others. HerPapaBear at some point changed his name to TST, I think, so there may be more posts than just what you see under HerPapaBear. You will see PapaBear indicates they have 5 children....well, since recovering their marriage they have adopted 4 more. They live close enough to me that my wife and I have visited them a couple times over the years. HerPapaBear is a close respected friend of mine now. It's so hard to believe he was at one time a wayward monster.

Hope you stick around and/or send your husband here.

Godspeed.