PS.... Had the exact same thing and no she didn't hold to it especially when she found out how much she stood to make in child support.

If there’s tons of info on him, I'll assume he holds a relatively prominent role in society or his field. Companies do not like scandal! This may be something to explore if telling the wife yields no results. It can be done effectively and without malice by letting the recipient know you are simply trying to save your family and are looking for support in encouraging the HW to end the affair.

He's not that important - there is info on everybody on the net, just little pieces add up. Told my wife to expect to see my smiling face when she gets home - not very happy!! She called my sister to illicet support - mistake for her. I think I may send flowers to each of their places of work from each other - just to start the rumour mill going.

Don't do that.... not yet....probably not ever. There are better ways of slicing the A.

Do expose to his W. Then let her deal with how she chooses to handle it. You could do it via a 3rd party if it makes you feel safer.

Now go get yourself some legal counsel ASAP. Get a good one. Don't make agreements regarding finances with the WS. She wants to take you to the cleaners. Your W may not but the WS will. In many states the WS who is a W can get away with a lot even if they are the ones in the A.

Get prepared.

take care,
L.

Feel free to contact his command if he is in the reserves. The military frowns on adultery.

Other than that, you are getting great advice here.

I spoke with wife last nite. She says she is not prepared to end her "friendship" w/ OM because that would mean she would be doing it for me and not herself and she is not prepared to do that. She says that her desire to end the marriage came despite OM not because of it - I beleive that part. She still expects me to move on and that I would find someone else. If that is true - then calling OM's wife is jst being vindictive with an angry ex to deal with.

spin, they all say the affair has nothing to do with the OP. That is hogwash designed to shift the blame to YOU and away from them. Only a nut would think that an affair is not detrimental to a marriage. Your w is about as rational as a falling down drunk and I would advise you not to take her seriously.

Your only hope of squashing the affair is exposure and the only hope of saving your marriage is to end this affair. Your marriage can survive exposure, it cannot survive the affair.

You should think of your W as a crack addict. [an affair is an addiction] Exposing her is tantamount to taking away her crack pipe. Sure, the crack addict gets mad initially, but giving up the crack saves her life [read:marriage]. Do you take the crack pipe away or do you dither around in fear that the crack addict will be "mad" when you take away the crack allowing herself to kill herself a little more each day?

If you want to save your marriage, spin, you have to expose the affair. It's really that simple. You are helping them keep their secret and enabling the affair by NOT doing it. In other words, you are contributing to the demise of your marriage.

Spinmaker, Welcome. I am another Canuck. West Coast. You are getting great advice. I don't post often but do lurk. This place saved my sanity and got me through the worst of times. Thanks to Orchid, FIM, beleiver, FF, Jelly and LINY and AW and a slew of other folks. Thanks, Guys.

Orchid knows her stuff. And listen to what they say. Don't bother listening to your wife's excuses. It is all garbage. She is in that alien fog. She will say and do ANYTHING to justify her A. She will say and do anything to put the blame on you. She will say and do such horrible things, I guarantee you will not recognize her.

This is a time where you need to act fast and HARD!

No warnings. Believe me. I am the poster child for warning and then having my WH and his OW sidestep the exposure.

There are 2 things you need to do immediately. Call the OM's BW. AND at the same time draft a letter to the Commanding Officer of the OM. Then post it here and get some feedback to get the right tone. Faithinme is a good resource. Her XH was military.

Hi FIM! Congrats!!!

Send that letter by courier at the same time! Or as close as possible. Seriously! AND DO NOT MOVE OUT!. That step will make your chances of recvering your M almost impossible. Or at least 1000 times more difficult. (Voice of experience speaking)

You have an advantage that the OM is in the US Military. If he was a Canuck, you could expect them to help cover and condone the affair. (My STBXH is Canadian Navy) <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />
THe US Military is more likely to do something. And expecially since your W is a foreigner visiting a base!

Good Luck.

Hey, this is my first post. It's related, but I wasn't sure whether to add it to this thread or start another. Here's why: My wife had a relatively short (2+ month) affair over 16 years ago, in another city 1000's of mile from here. It ended when I found out, then he (who was/is also married) found out I knew, and then he basically stopped talking to my wife for the most part. Miraculously, we recovered and have had a great marriage since then. Despite my once-certain belief that I'd never completely "get over it," I actually recovered completely after about 2 years, to the point where thinking about any aspect of that episode produced no more emotion than staring at a cardboard box. I could still feel a pinch of pain if the right combination of reminder cues piled up all at once, but even then it was fleeing. That recovery occurred even before we moved 1000's of miles away. After we moved, the whole episode was truly ancient history, in part due to the miles, but also because my wife had also been so thoroughly traumatized by the entire episode that I always thought she' d never go anywhere near it again. I also thought that I'd always know if she ever did go down that road again because I'd see the same bizarre change in her personality and way of treating me that blew the whole thing open in the first place. Well, I saw nothing like it for 16+ years. Not really. But every now and then I'd see something odd in her behavior, some minor component of that bizarre behavior, and I'd ask her straight out: is something going on, etc. etc. She always denied it, and I'm sure many times this was true. HOWEVER, 4 months ago, after I thought I'd stumbled upon something truly suspicious, and which seemed to involve her past OP, I confronted her rather forcefully. Because I literally had not mentioned this guys name in 16 years, she suspected I truly had something, but she did not know what. Not wanting to be caught lying, when I asked whether she had had any communication with this individual since we left the other city, she said "there IS no communication." How Clintonesque, huh? When I asked, "WAS there??? She said, "yes." Prefacing it all with how much she'd wanted to tell me all these years, but was afraid, didn't want to hurt me, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah, she said he had called her 8 years earlier at work, sent flowers, wanted to "talk". Saying (to me) that she was still haunted and pained by the whole episode, and seeing this as a opportunity to finally "get some answers" - at a safe distance - she agreed to talk to him, but only via e-mail. So, she obtained a hotmail account, and over a two year period (this time is what really gets me now) communicated with him. She claimed that at first it was frequent, as she demanded explanations for his "cruel" behavior back then. Supposedly, he told her some previously unmentioned details about his abusive childhood and this info helped her understand why he acted as he did, and allowed her to "finally forgive him." Well, after the forgiveness, she says they e-mailed about once a month of so - standard "what's going on with you now" stuff - until she started getting irritated by it all. She claims that our solid marriage had given her the courage to seek her answers through the e-mail route (from him of course) and that she never had any intention of doing anything more. Said she had solid ground rules. Near end of 2nd year, he supposedly crossed her line by asking where their "relationship" now stood. She says she told him they had no "relationship." Shortly after, he asked if she ever traveled on business, and that maybe they could "get together" during one of those trips. She says at that point she'd decided that enough was enough, and read him the riot act. Says she told him: THAT (us seeing each other) is NEVER going to happen! I love my husband; he's my best friend. And I would never do that to him again. And this e-mail affair (my word) is over! Next morning, she claim, she felt bad after laying it on so harshly, and worried about him (he used to claim depression and suicidal thoughts) so she sent a quick follow up to adjust the tone of her last e-mail, but still intending to end it. She says that note bounced back with "no valid address." Apparently, he had closed HIS secret webmail account, either in anger or fear - that I would now learn, again, something about his behavior, and could tell his wife - and she never heard from him again. And now for my dilemma (and why it's on this thread). Should I contact his wife?

Originally, I did not contact his wife. I actually called him though, and he tearfully (I think, one never knows over the phone) apologized profusely. I called him because they had been starting to talk again, 6 months after the end of the affair, and I knew it by the change I saw again in her behavior. He said it was true, about the talking, but that he was VERY uncomfortable with it (I suspect he was too tempted that it would progress, again). After I told him the toll that even THAT was taking on our marriage, he agreed to shut her off again - and did. With much pain and trauma, again, on her part, she told me everything, again, and that was about the end of it. Even though he eventually did talk to her again, even telling her of our conversation, by then she'd had enough, and he was history. Back then I did NOT tell his wife, but he eventually did (when he feared that enough fellow employees knew all about it, and that one would tell her).

I now believe by not telling, back then, I prolonged the entire episode (and comments on this site back that belief up). I "enabled it," if I can borrow a term from the addiction playbook. He, and his wife, were family friends through my wife's place of employment, and I did not want to see her go through what I had gone through. But by not telling, I gave him the courage to try it again, across all the miles. Here are my reasons for thinking I should now tell, even 7 years after it supposedly happened (ended):

1) I don't know for certain if my wife if being straight with me. I cannot prove that it [the e-mailing] is not still going on (although I'm pretty sure she's never actually seen him), and this really eats away at me. I have lots of reasons for thinking she is being honest (see below), but I crave certainty (don't we all?).

2) Telling will reinforce the idea that "I will always find out about this stuff" (I did then, I did now), AND that I will never again hesitate to blow his cover. As has been written many times on this site, cheaters will almost never step out of line when they know their behavior will be quickly discovered.

3) I will probably feel a net plus for taking some positive action. The phone call years ago was oddly enough, quite a positive experience, and it achieved it's purpose, but it didn't put enough fear in him to keep him from contacting her again. And trying to push thing forward again. [I frankly don't understand the mindset of someone who would, again, after all the horror of the original episode, move in that direction again). As in foreign affairs, sometime you have to stop negotiating and simply show some force.

Now for the reasons against telling, as I see them.

1) This knowledge will cause his wife a lot of pain (I highly doubt she knows, he's quite secretive), maybe even more than it's caused me (again). This is because he was the initiator (I'm certain of that), and he was the one to try to push it to the next level.

2) It could result in him calling my wife again, after all these years (to find out "what the ******'s going on," "why did you tell him, etc. etc."), and opening up that "can of worms" again, as my wife refers to it. ******, she could divorce him; I have no idea what's going on in their life (other than that they now have 3 kids). It may indeed be better to let sleeping dogs lie.

3) My wife has treated me extremely well, both before and after the latest revelation. Once she realized that this "betrayal" was, in fact, just that, and that regardless of how harmless it seemed from HER perspective, it blew away my ability to trust her, forced me to relive the original trauma, etc. etc., and that the inbalance between my current pain and her benefit (of the continued e-mailing) was so lopsided, she's done everything I've asked her to in helping me get back to the surface.

So, I'd greatly appreciate any thoughts any of you very thoughtful people have on whether I should now tell the OPs spouse. I have her phone number at home, at work and her e-mail at work.

yearslater

Best if you start your own thread yearslater. It'll get noticed.