jade, this is not manipulation, this is doing everything in your power to stop the destruction of your family. Your marriage is UNDER ATTACK. Stopping that attack is not "manipulation." Your H is destroying your marriage and your family. And you are ENABLING HIM. You are aiding and abetting this destruction by your refusal to act.

Your husband does not have yours or your children's best interest at heart right now, Jade. You are the ONLY sane adult who is available to do protect these kids from his affair and the demise of their family. There is no one else.

You don't have the luxury to be "comfortable," Jade, right now. And frankly, you won't be very comfortable when your H divorces you because you wouldn't lift a finger to save your marriage. You are in a fight for your marriage and your family, so you cannot expect to be comfortable, that is just unrealistic.

Please get to work, Jade. We will help you and guide you, but you simply cannot just sit there and let this happen to you, dear.

You're kidding right?

What if your WH and the OW decide they want to just keep committing adultery for another few years?!? I mean sometimes this sort of thing can go on for a LONG time!

Your WH has manipulated you into thinking that setting boundaries and protecting yourself from his abusive betrayal is somehow 'manipulation' on your part.

Exposure is NOT manipulation, or even love-busting.

Yes, it will most likely cause the affair to end sooner and force your WH to make a choice. But that is not manipulation. He is NOT entitled to have both you and the OW in his life. He is not entitled to expect you to just wait around as long as he wants to play around.

And most importantly, he is not entitled to expect you to help him keep his & OW's nasty little secret.

Listen, he and OW obviously feel they should be allowed to do whatever they want with each other, minus your approval or even knowledge, right?

WHY on earth would you care what either of them think about who YOU contact and what you talk about? If they complain about you butting in just tell them it's really none of their business who you decide to talk to about the adultery that's putting YOUR marriage at risk!
Why should they have that sort of control over you?

Your WH and the OW no doubt think of their affair as something special and private between the two of them. Do they want you to feel uncomfortable about exposing what they are up to? You bet! Do they care about how uncomfortable you are with their adultery? Nope!

Stop letting them intimidate you into silent endorsement of their sin. It is up to you to speak up in order to protect yourself and your children before your WH and the OW do even more damage.

The sooner you expose, the sooner the fun/fantasy part of the affair ends, the sooner your WH will come to his senses, the sooner the recovery can start. What are you waiting for? Your husband is like an addict right now. You can't depend on him to rescue your marriage.

jade, are you open to the possibility that you might not be able to see the best course of action right now, because of how closely you are involved in your sitch?

Dr. Harley made these processes to go through, for very good reasons. He has dealt with hundreds of cases of infidelity.

How do you think it is that I know how your WH will react, what he will say? Because it is all stuff MY FWH said when I exposed his affair with my former best friend. I got it from BOTH of them, though.

But I read here, and I realized that if it feels comfortable, it has a 99% of being the WRONG thing to do. BUT, I did it, and I my H and I have been in recovery for almost 1 year now.

My FWH told me he was going to destroy me, take the kids, the home, leave me with nothing, etc. I cried and dropped to my knees and BEGGED him to be the caring, kind man I knew, to try and understand where I was coming from. But it was no use. He was an addict faced with losing his "fix," a man lost in the fog.

NOW, my H tells me that exposure was the BEST thing I did. Because when the A was their little secret, it was OK. They honestly believed that as long as nobody found out, it was OK, it didn't hurt anybody.

As soon as I began exposing, the OW dumped my H like a hot potato. She is a single mom of 2, and didn't want her reputation ruined. Or something ~ I don't know why, because I don't talk to her. But the point is, the A ended.

This morning, you asked for my opinion on your sitch. You also have opinions from some very experienced posters, some very good MBers. Yet you choose to follow your own path; actually, your WH's path that HE wants you to follow.

As long as you do nothing, I can promise you that your WH will continue his A, and continue to string you along. It is the nature of the A beast. Your sitch is not unique, your WH is not unique ~ just like the rest of us here, you are gonna have to 1)trust the process, and 2)dig up some major courage and gumption and guts and make some stuff happen.

No matter which way this goes, in the end, you will want to know that you did every single thing you could to save your M, your family. If you sit idle, and the M dies, you will realize that you could have done more. And you will ask yourself, and wonder, why you didn't just listen to what all these people were telling you. That is regret. And it sucks.

Do not play the WS game any more. Stop right now, and start making some things happen. Doesn't the OW's H deserve to know the truth? What if he is being lied to still? Would you hope that if he had found out first, that he would have had the merit to call you up and tell you?

I know if you pray about this with an open heart, that you will be making that call soon. Because God helps those who help themselves. "God, give me the strength to do this thing, because I know I need to do it to save my M from the darkness that has crept upon it. I need to do this to shine YOUR light of truth in the darkness, to cast out all shadow, so that Your light can begin to heal our M."

The darkness in your WH wants to keep it dark. He will not encourage or support you in this. You must be a warrior for your M right now, a fighter for your family, your kids. You are the only hope your M has right now.

And also know that you are not the first/only to come here and NOT want to expose. It is one of the hardest things to get people to do. And I have not once heard someone say they regret doing it. I've only been here just over a year, but not once have I heard regret at exposure. What I HAVE heard, a lot of, is what Meremortal said: She wishes she would have done it sooner.

If I would have known about MB, I would have done it on D-day, knowing what I know now.

Spidey

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Exposure is NOT manipulation, or even love-busting.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I agree that exposure is not manipulation. Manipulation has an element of deception; trying to get someone to do something by way of distorting the facts. Certainly exposure has nothing to do with deception.

On the other hand, just for the sake of accuracy, my recollection is that Harley states that exposing the affair is a love-buster, but a calculated one. It is so critical that the affair ends that the benefits of exposure outweigh the consequences.

Let's not mislead Jade. Exposure can cause extreme anger in the short term; it will subside eventually. But Jade needs to be dealing with reality here and prepared for the consequences of exposure.

I have seen a few BSs here who regret exposure because they feel that it has driven the WS farther away. It may have been that they were not prepared for the anger which ensued short-term and think that they have driven their spouses away permanently. Eventually, the WS realizes that the BS has done the correct thing, has struck a blow to save their marriage, but that can take some time.

By the way, great post, Spidey.

legato, those are some good points, but I would only add that I have NEVER seen a BS regret exposure and I have been here for years. I have seen quite a few who did not enjoy the immediate fallout, but who does? Some may regret the immediate explosion, but that quickly passes and is exchanged for gratitude and relief. The anger of the WS quickly passes too.

Common sense would dictate that a WS will not reward us with a huge kiss and bough of roses for busting up their affair party so it goes without saying that the WS will not be happy. No one has tried to mislead anyone about that. It is simple common sense.

The bottom line is that exposure is almost always the best answer. Its benefits far outweigh any short term anger.

<small>[ February 22, 2005, 06:02 PM: Message edited by: MelodyLane ]</small>