There is nothing more important for you to understand than this, IMO. You can't *fix* your marriage as long as the affair is going on. You can't save it by fixing it and you can only fix it if you save it.

Your wife is not your enemy.

OM is not your enemy.

The AFFAIR is your enemy.

You have believed, like most of us when we got here, that your goal should be to prevent or avoid having conflict with your wife. But that isn't going to stop her from having an affair. You need her to be involved in conflict continuously as it relates to the affair. All conflict must center around the affair until it ends.

Your goal is to make the affair harder than working on the marriage. She will be mad about that. She's been mad before and will be again, but unless the affair is dead, your marriage will die.

Exposure works like chemotherapy or radiation therapy does for cancer. While the treatment itself might be poisonous and make things difficult for a time, unless they are used you die a slow and agonizing death as you succumb to the disease.

Waywards believe that what they are doing is not wrong only as long as no one knows about what they are doing. IF they truly believed the garbage they tell themselves about the affair being pure, wholesome, righteous, right (even just for them) and all the rest, they should be shouting the praises of the affair from the rooftops. But instead they hide what they do, from their spouses and from other people, some they don't even know. They thereby prove that even they believe that what they do is wrong.

Exposure works to pressure the affair better than any other thing you can do. You also need to remember that even when the affair is over for real, you will have to be patient as she suffers from withdrawal from the effects of the affair and OM. She might never fall at your feet and beg you to take her back. If you want to save your marriage, you need to be willing to accept that and work on making it a better marriage anyway.

Mark