I posted in "Just Found Out" but looks like more people read this one:

I have been happily married to my wife for 15 years. 3 children. My wife works in a hospital assisting doctors in surgery. Last week, while looking up the History in my Internet browser to locate a web page I had visited before, I discovered that she has been using the computer in the middle of the night, typing into Google things like "How to Attract a Married Man," "The Art of Seduction," "We're Both Married, What Should I Do?" and looking at articles on workplace romances. She also visited a site that had a love compatibility test that she took; in the test, she used the birthdate and initials of one of the doctors she works for. I do not think she has had a sexual encounter with him yet nor do I have any reason to believe she has ever strayed before. I am also not sure if he has similar feelings for her. She has also Googled searches like "How to Tell if He is Attracted to Me?" and "Guide to Flirting," etc. Since finding this info, I have not been able to sleep; I have no appetite; my stomach feels constantly like you feel when you are just about to give a speech in public.

Her doctor/boss is out of town at a conference this week. I have purchased and installed stealthy SpyWare to help me capture any emails, web page visits, etc.

I want to confront her. I have read all of the introductory articles on this wonderful site about Love Banks and Love Busters, etc. But I do not see an article that tells me exactly what to say. I have written out a long letter that I would like to read to her face to face tonight after the kids go to bed. In the letter I (1) express my love for her very specifically, telling her all the things I think are wonderful about her as a person, (2) describe the horrible feelings I have experienced this past week, (3) explain that I understand how she could develop these feelings for him and that I understand it has to do with needs she is not having fulfilled at home, (4) explain that it is her choice to either continue to let the affair develop or to cut it off and focus exclusively on building our marriage, and explain the consequences of each choice, (5) reiterate my love for her and my desire to do whatever it takes--to move mountains if necessary--to rekindle our romance, repair the cracks in our relationship, and fortify our marriage.

My question is this:

Is this a good plan? Am I screwing anything up with this plan? Is there a better way? Is there anything specific I should NOT say (other than obviously, no accusations, angry outbursts, etc--that's why I am writing it all down). Please help. I am beside myself with anxiety

Dude - slow down a bit.

Your "plan" isn't quite right, but what about your Plan A?

What have you identified about yourself that could have contributed to the poor marital environment that made her decision to wander easier? Fix these things right away.

The letter you describe reading to her sounds mostly what some call a Plan A letter. Same as a Plan B letter, but without the punch line. Have you read Surviving An Affair? If not, get a copy and Plan A/B is described in there, as well as a sample Plan B letter after which you can model a Plan A letter.

Perhaps you've identified this threat early. Good. Is the suspected OM a quack at the hospital? If so, so some sleuth work and find out if he's married. He may be completely innocent at this point - maybe not.

Save the correspondence/evidence from the computer. But when you confront her, you may not want to reveal your source. Be on the lookout for evidence of actual contact/correspondence with another guy.

An excellent thing for you to do is to counsel right off the bat with Steve Harley while this thing is small. Please consider this.

In the meantime, read the link in my sig line below and all the embedded links. Get SAA and Plan A your butt off. Hold off any "speach" until you have evidence you can reveal.

FGinally, listen to other opinions.

Thanks, WAT.

I took your advice and put the letter away (for now). It was not evident from my post, but there was a whole section in it where I accept responsibility for contributing to the conditions that made it possible for her to develop feelings for the OM.

We are going out tonight and I want to talk to her. I am getting the Harley books and have read a lot on this site. What I don't know is this:

If I start making lots of deposits in the Love Bank but she has feelings for this guy and still has contact with him, will it do any good? Don't I have to let her know first that I know about her feelings for him? Or do I just concentrate on making deposits in the Love Bank, continue to monitor their activities, and hope that by rebuilding our R and taking steps to improve our M that her attraction to him will fizzle.

I really do not believe her A (if it is that) has progressed very far (and I don't think this is just wishful thinking or naivete). The evidence, and my long history with her, suggest that she has feelings for him, thinks he may have feelings for her, but neither has yet made a move to ratchet things up. I realize it's a volatile situation that could change very quickly--hence, my anxiety and desire to do something quickly.

BTW: the Doc is a surgeon; she assists him in surgery; they work together almost every day (there are three docs on the surgical team) for hours at a stretch. He is married and 13 years older than she.

X,

Part of plan A is exposure. The other part is making changes/improvements to yourself and making yourself attractive to the WS. You should tell her that her actions are hurting you but done in a gentle, non LB'ing way.

Did you read the link in WATS sig line?

Oh and I would also insist she go work at another hospital.

FF, thanks for the reply.

On "insisting she go work in another hospital" that is exactly what I would like to do. Much of what I read here, though, seems to suggest that making such demands is counterproductive. I would like to find a way to get HER to come to the realization that that is what she will need to do. I don't want to come right out and say--quit your job or else. Know what I mean?

Yes, I read WAT's post and PureBob's and many others. They are all helpful but I am still trying to figure things out. I thank you all for your opinions and I promise to weigh them carefully.

Update:

Well, we went out to dinner that night and had a great talk. No LB's. Very calm, open, and intimate. I told her I loved her and gave her alist of reasons why. Then I told her that I felt like I had not been spending the kind of time or expending the kind of energy that is necessary to keep the flame burning brightly in our relationship and marriage. I told her I was worried that she was falling out of love with me and I wanted to work on meeting her needs. She told me she loves me and after I told her I thought I had the need for admiration she told me she thinks I am the greatest guy in the world, etc. She asked what brought all this on. I told her of my suspicions and of the Internet traffic I had discovered. She had rational explanations for everything and I was left wondering if I had leaped to conclusions based on circumstantial evidence that, in hindsight, has more than one reasonable interpretation. She insisted that I had nothing to worry about and that my suspicions were wasy off base--she loves me, wants to be with me, and has no feelings for anyone else. I told her I wanted her to read His Needs/Her Needs with me and work with me to build the R and the M regardless--that the week I spent thinking she had developed feelings for another man was the worst week of my life and made me realize how important our M is to me and how important she is to me and that even if this was a false alarm, we could use it to build and strengthen our R. She agreed. We kissed, hugged, etc.

Since then, I have worked hard to meet her need for Aff. and we have continued to enjoy SF with one another. Everything seems rosy. I do believe her, but I have still been vigilant these last few weeks. I continue to monitor the computer, her Yahoo account, and her cell phone. I have found no trace of any contact between her and the suspected OM. However, last Thursday she worked late. When I checked her cell phone the next day, she had erased all outgoing messages. She has NEVER done that before. My cell carrier is Sprint. I have been waiting for the invoice period to end to see who she called. It ended yesterday but they still have not posted the invoice with the details of the calls. It's killing me. I still have a nagging suspicion but nothing new on which to base it.

Here is my question for you experts:

My wife is acting like she loves me. We don't argue; we have had a number of good talks in the last couple weeks; we get along great; good SF as I said. This seems to be the way an innocent person would act. But reading this board, it seems like there are many WSes who act just this way. How to tell an innocent from a WS skilled at deception?

Welcome to marriagebuilders. I'm just curious - what was her perfectly reasonable explanation for being on the computer in the middle of the night reading about flirting with a man, in love and both married, etc?

I've seen a lot of fogspeak here, and would like to know how your wife justified this. Call me cynical.

believer:

My original post had some facts wrong. The Google searches she had run were for IS HE ATTRACTED TO ME, DOES HE LOVE ME, and BODY LANGUAGE CLUES. The other titles were from articles that she read on websites visited after running the searches, so she did not actually search under WE'RE BOTH MARRIED, WHAT SHOULD I DO--that was the name of an article she read. As for why she was looking up the topic of flirting and body language generally, she told me that a man in a position of authority at our church was kind of touchy-feely with her, putting his arm around her, touching her shoulder, etc. He also made some comments that she was not sure were appropriate. So she was on the Internet looking up sites that talk about signs of flirting, body language, and so forth. She says the articles on the subject generally deal with the workplace where there is a boss and an employee and she didn't know the best way to search for this specific topic. The explanation is reasonable to me, knowing the person she is talking about and when I went back and reviewed the Internet history, the facts did seem to fit her story about as well as my imagined one. She also had a decent explanation for the love compatibility test. This was done at the office one afternoon and emailed to her Yahoo account. She says everyone was just trying different combinations of people and she pointed out that she put me in as well (and it said we were compatible whereas she and her boss were not, FWIW). Incidentally, I went to the site and put me and her into it, and she was telling the truth about that.

I am a lawyer by profession, and I deal daily with many people well practiced in the art of deception. I am also a naturally skeptical person (and visiting this site has made me even more so). I don't think I am being a Pollyanna and I don't think I am naive to give my W the benefit of the doubt here. My concern is that, in reading many of the posts on this board, it seems that many BSes were completely blindsided--their spouses had never lied to them before, never cheated, and their Ms seemed to be going just fine. That is my situation. We have had a great M for 15 years. The last couple we have not had as much time together because of work and kids but we rarely argue, we communicate effectively, have SF, go to church every week, have regular dates, etc.

What really concerns me, though, are the posts that say something to the effect that "if the spouse suspects an A, something is probably up. Trust your instincts." I have never been the jealous type and I have never before had even the slightest hint that my W was interested in someone else. Now, I just can't shake this feeling, even though I believe her explanation and have found no other evidence of anything out of the ordinary.

Were these visits to the internet in the middle of the night?

Yes. But this alone is not unusual. My wife is a very light sleeper and rarely sleeps all the way through the night. She will often get up and watch TV, read a book, or go online for an hour or two in the middle of the night. Our computer is in an open area. She also knows about the Internet history (we use Netscape and it is very easy to just go to the history, right-click on a visited site and delete it). She pointed out that if she wanted to hide her Internet activity she could have deleted it but she didn't think she had anything to hide.

I sense you are still cynical. I guess you are ironically named. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Dude - I bet I'm about the most cynical person who regularly participates on this forum - just so you know where I'm coming from. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

For starters, what's up with that lech from the church??? If your wife has concerns with his touchy feely - why hasn't she she exercised her "the meek shall inherit the earth" options? Completely separate from the potential affair, one or both of you take care of that issue. You may, in fact, be taking care of a for-real adulterer, in addition to a hypocrit, in the process. Understand what I'm saying?

Now, about the potential affair with the quack. You are absolutely spot on with your readings here on this forum that the conventional wisdom is that if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and sounds like a duck - it's probably a duck. This is because affairees act surprisingly similar. Dern near identical.

Your wife has displayed some of this, but not all or most of it - in my opinion based on your descriptions.

Key here is that you have not described re-written marital history. You have not mentioned the "I love you but I'm not in-love with you" speech.

So I recommend you investigate the cell phone record as you mentioned and report back what you discover. Hopefully nothing. In the meantime, keep you eyes and ears open. Better safe than sorry.

Even if this is all a false alarm, look what you've learned! Your marriage can only get better!

Now tend to the real issue you ARE sure off - that creep at church. Ignore it and you could be enabling someone else's bigger problem.

WAT

I agree with WAT.

You are right - I'm cynical. I had absolutely no clue about my WH's affair until it had been going on for over 6 months. We didn't argue, had SF regularly - there were no red flags at all. We even went on vacation to celebrate our anniversary.

When he was thoroughly "in love" with OW, he started becoming a tiny bit withdrawn. When I asked him about it he still said he loved me, I was a good wife, blah, blah, blah. He told me not to worry so much about nothing, and promised things would get better.

All of this time, he was firming up his relationship with OW. He had a secret cell phone that I didn't know anything about. He took off from work in the day, and met her at hotels.

I hope your wife is not involved in any kind of relationship. But I would keep checking.

Also it is very important to spend 15 hours a week doing fun things together.

Thanks, WAT and believer.

I think you are both right. I have not heard any real "fogspeak" that people have talked about so much here. At the same time, I know there are a lot of people who have gone through what believer describes and I am at least a little concerned that such could be the case with me and my W. Only time will tell. I will continue to be vigilant while working on meeting her ENs. As an old Russian proverb says, "Trust, but verify."

The funny thing is, my WH has been living with the OW for 2 years. He still calls me and says he loves me, blah, blah, blah. He cannot stand to be alone, so always makes sure he has someone.