Dazed,

This may be difficult to understand right now but good job on exposure. Your WW is in active conflict with you which sure beats withdrawal. I implore you to wait on any divorce filing. That would be an emotional decision. Let the exposure sink in an do its job.

She is angry. Just let her vent but remain confident you are attempting to save your family. She will give up trying to manipulate you if you remain confident you did the right thing. Flip it around on her..."Honey, what would you do if it were me having an inappropriate relationship with another woman". Deep down she knows your doing exactly what she would do and will admire you for it...EVENTUALLY.

The OM in your case is a loser. You will get your wife back if you stay the course. Just let the fog babble bounce right off you.

I think you should discuss the nature of affairs with your children and indicate your love for your wife. They should be assisting you in attracting your wife back to the family/marriage. By not talking to her they make the pleasures of escaping with OM seem that much more attractive. I would like other opinions on this but can nearly adult children living in the marital home be asked to Plan A as well (or merely have Dad's Plan explained to them so they can participate and support it). Perhaps just an explanation by Dad that you do not want them to choose sides...what their Mom did was a mistake but both Mom and Dad contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.

ACTdontreact

dazed- I agree with ACT on everything he said.
In my case WW's OM is a step down, a loser just like your WW's, money wise, education and also did 4 yrs in prison, but she says you don't know him like I do. FoG BABBLE....

Don't believe anyhting that comes out of her mouth, she is mad at you for exposing, beacuse it's more fun to be in a secret A. She is trying to shift blame to anyone except herself. But she is the one who chose to carry on.
Be strong for you and your kids.

Dazed~

I'm a little confused about your last post, did you expose the A at your W's office? To the HR director? What did you say?

If you didn't expose at work, who did you expose to? Again, what did you say?

Hope you don't mind clearing this up...you'll get better advice here if we are all clear about where you stand...

Mrs. Wondering

Wonderings: I have exposed the A by telling both sides of our families and several of our friends about the WW and the OM. The WW's mother, sisters, brother, my mother, brother, some of our friends, OM's soon to be EXW. I told them that we were having deficulties in our marriage because the WW has been seeing OM from her work place. They all suspected it, and several of them already new who he was because they had either seen them together or had been hearing rumors. I just really confirmed some of those rumors and offered my opinion about the guy manipulating her. I also told all of them that i really love my wife and want to try to save her from this loser and rebuild our marriage. I had ask each one of them to try and not judge her. Rather be there for her because she will need each one of them. I accepted blame for neglecting her and providing the grounds for her to be so vulnrable. Her mother and sisters was most upset and have confronted her now. They are upset about WW choosing OM over our kids and me. WW tells me that I should have never taken our problems to them. Espcially her family.I said you should have neve taken our problems to OM. She tells me to stay away from them all. WW says she will never face any of my family again now either.
Before I had said anything this past week end, the word had been slowing coming out any ways, because I first confronted the WW at my sister in laws house. The morning I watched the live up to date cell phone records showing she had spent all night talking to OM. After trying to get the WW to come out side for over a half hour, I lost it and accused her of seeing OM while she lay in the house. My daughter, sister in law and her husband all heard our argument. Yes, I know I should have sheltered my daughter better but, I was running on emotions. The day of realization that your wife is having an affair was to much for me to handle properly.
No, I have not worked up the currage to call her HR admin yet. I need help on how to present this to her. HELP? I don't want her to know that i called in and then blame me. Worst case is the HR admin, tells her and does nothing. Becaus I have been telling the wife to quit, she will most likely blame me for anything that happens out there..

Another update on WW work front. Yesterday the wife recieved another disiplinary action for tardiness. .50 per hour demotion. Of which she blamed me for this morning by saying I had caused her to be late for work in the morning. All just a bunch of crap. I think I did make her late twice by parking behind her car in the drive and I held her up maybe two minutes. She was already running late from talking with OM on cell phone will in the bath room instead of doing her hair and make up. Big deal. I believe the tardies that have got her busted is being late back from lunch while with OM.

HELP:::
It's nearly lunch break time. I know the WW will probaly hook up with OM. Do I intervine in any fashion. Do i ask her to lunch, of which she will probably say no. Just like yesterday. I ask to take her to lunch. she wrote me a sad email back turning me down. Then she meet OM at his apartment for an hour. This stuff is really tearing my guts out. HELP..

Dazed,

You've done great with exposure to your families...don't worry about what your WW says...FOG...your marriage can make it through any amount of her anger, but it can't survive an ongoing affair...

As far as her HR administrator goes, You simply state that your WW is having an A with XYZ, who is her superior at the company. Then you ask her what her course of action will be taken regarding this matter? Then you shut up and let her do the talking...you've already told us that both of them have used up vacation time, sick time and logged loads of hours through company email...you probably won't have to use this info, but if you need it, you've got it.

As far as you taking the "blame" goes...take out the word blame, and replace it with credit. When your W confronts you about it, tell her that you love her and will continue to use any means necessary to save your marriage from being destroyed by her affair...

Mrs. Wondering

Let her go to OM. She can vent her anger at you to him. Let him deal with her venom. Reality is setting in for both of them. It will not be a cozey secret lover's rendevous. You should call the work while she is gone. Get exposure done in one swoop. Do not sweat how to do it the most important thing is getting it done. Hopefully, OM will get a reprimand and/or fired also. Make sure to ask HR woman what she intends to do about it. Do not make it sound like you are just informing her...you intend or hope for her to take action against both of them.

You can deal with her anger. She will threaten to leave, divorce whatever...just stay the course. Busting up the affair is your primary objective. What she says/does to you is irrelevant and should be internally ignored by you. She will settle down.

Good job, ACT OUT

Dazed, do the same thing that you did yesterday...anything that you can do to keep them apart, and/or make the A more difficult...shine as much reality as possible on the A...NO MORE FANTASYLAND!!!

Mrs. Wondering

Dazed,

I base the "do what you did yesterday" advice on a couple of things...

1. Yesterday when you did this, you got to comfort your visibly shaken wife...OM ran when the going got tough, who was still there for her?

2. In my A, much of the communication was done on the phone in the evening...my H was constantly at the office then...when my H found out about the A, he was home every single night around 6:30-7:00...the OM and I were able to communicate less and less...One of my ENs (like a lot of women) is conversation...guess who got to meet that need now? My Husband of course...

I wish the advice I had to give was not based on the result of my poor life choices, but maybe now some good can come from the biggest mistake of my life...hope this helps some...

Mrs. Wondering

Let me just echo Act and Wonder, finish exposure and when your wife talks to you think before you speak. Do not love bust. She's pi$$ed because you are ruining her FANTASY and that's exactly what it is, a fantasy not based in reality. Your exposure is the reality and allows reality to set in.

UPDATE: Taking the intervention advice, I probably made a pretty big love buster. I called and asked WW to lunch shortly before the hour. Of course she declinded and was still hostile about our daughter being mad at her. While getting into my car for lunch, I thought I would take a path to go eat that would most likely run across them if on there way to OM's apartment. (Now thinking bad idea).
I seen no sign of them and precedded to get a greese bomb from wendys. On my way back to work I seen WW car parked just off the road at a nearby park. Just happens to be street side of the road that leads to OM apartment. I pulled in to see whats up only to find her setting there in the car. Oops. My take is she was waiting on him and I got there first. However, now I look like a stalker. Of which she accused me of. Which I guess is true. Man I really suck at this. So, we talked over lunch. At this point I pretty much had to set and let her rip on me for all the things I have done wrong over the last 13 years. Which she has memory for bad things like and elephant. So after her walk down bad memories lane, she tells me this is why she can't trust that i have really changed my ways and will make her happy again. She says that my mistakes and neglect have with drawn all her love for me. She is scared that i will break her heart again. She asked me if I thought she loved me when she would call and ask me to come home early and be with her and I did not do it that broke her heart. She ask that if I thought she loved me, when she would make request for me to stop doing things that made her feel sad or hurt her and I did not. She ask, I thought she was happy while I gone and she was just a house wife. I knew and know the answer to her points. (YES) I told her Yes to all of them. Then she ask, because of all this time you choose to make our lives this unhappy, do you think I should give you another chance to break my heart all over again? I said no.
She is wrong for being with OM, but she is write I broke her heart with selfishness and neglect. She says my promise to not make the same mistakes again don't mean anything because all the times she reached out to me and I was not there. U know she is right about all that. I have been a bad husband in a lot of ways. The only thing I could say, is I just want you to be happy. I will never make the same mistake again not matter what. Because of that I think we can be happy together again. However, if u are not willing to open your back up to me. Then I have to let you go in your own pursuit of happiness with out me. She says, she could never go back to being my houe wife. My reply was, I never want to back to that life where neither of us was happy. She said she dont think she can feel the same for me any longer. The history of bad memories that haunt her about me. The scare that i will regress back to my work and leave her all alone again is just to much. She is just so bruised by our problems that a fresh start with another looks so appealing. She is really hurt over her daughter thinking mom is a bad person. She don't know how to repair that or even deal with it either. At this point our time was up and we went back to work. Very sad. I just don't know how I got so lost over the years. I will carry this guilt for rest of my life. The girl i have know sense we were 11 years old. The single most important thing in my life i lost track of. I know there is no excuss for her affair, however my actions left the doors wide open for someone to come take her heart away and thats just what happened. Considering the toll that i have taken on her, how can i ever win her back and get a chance to love her the way I should have for the entire 13 years? I feel like she don't really owe me anything. It's just so hard knowing that I failed my wife and kids and allowed her to become so lost that OM looked like a good way out. What can I do??????????

You are PARTIALLY responsible for the state of the marriage. NOT fully responsible. A lot of what you are hearing is her rewriting history to justify her affair. Do not take blame for her choices. Listen to her. Take responsibility for your shortcomings (don't argue). But do not take responsibility for the affair or agree that it was justified. In time, she will come around. I speak from experience.

Exactly engineer bob- do not take responsibility for the A. Hey I may be broke, but I don't rob banks. She had a choice!
Yes you may have not met some needs here and there, but it was her choice to participate in an extramarital affair. She will tryo to blame everyone for this to shift the blame off of her.

Thanks to everyone for your support. It is great to see how many people are willing to help on this forum. Really impressive to me.
UPDATE:
WW was still very very mad about my stalking tact from lunch. For the first couple of hours she would only talk to me by throughing hate punches of our past short comings. Phrasing most of her statements with (when I'm gone) crap. I did not argue at all, just calmly tried to talk. Again I asked if she was so sure that she is leaving just how do you want to do it. 1) Full devorce, both of us set down and decide in a civil manor how to end it, or get a lawyer that both of us can work with, or each of us get lawyers and not ever talk again until the closing court date. 2) A legal Separation of both us and work out kids and assets. 3) A non-legal separation where one of agrees to leave the house and kids. All I got was silence. No more talk. After about an hour went by she asked me for her rings back. Not to wear, just to put back in our bed room on the dresser. I had hid them a week ago and that really pissed her off too. So, I gave them to her. Another hour goes by. We sat and watched tv, neither of us speaking. Finally she moved from the chair to the couch beside me. I ignored her for another half hour. From the corner of my eye I noticed she was looking at me off and on. Finally I reached over and put my arms around her and held her. The tears errupted from both us. We both agreed it was suppose to be us forever. She again asked why I just did not come home to her for so long. She says she is so scared that she will make the wrong descion and to tell her what to do. We spent a couple of hours talking about our special memories together. She is worried for me. That I will never be happy again with out her. She is worried that she will feel guilty for ruining my life. Also, worried that she wont be happy after breaking up our family. Worried that i wont ever be there for her again to care, comfort, and protect. Our tear filled evening eventually ended by us watching a movie and me comforting her and holding her until she drifted off to sleep. Then this morning she did make the phone call to Steve Harley and they visited for an hour. However, her mind set did harden back up by the morning. She told me before picking up the phone. Just because I'm calling this guy, don't think that things are okay with us or ever will be, and don't get all exicited thinking you have a chance. She said that she just got emotional last night while tring to talk to me about us not being together. However, she did spend just over an hour with Steve. I did give her complete privacy so I don't know just what was said. I think she most likely left little hope for us. Steve talked breifly to me after there talk and said pretty much what I already new. She does not trust that i will not hurt her again. The only thing i can do is to back off her and let time prove that I will become the person that I'm promising. Because of my poor track record, she will just have to see your improvements to believe in you. So on with the next day.

This is all standard "script".

She's only allowing herself to see the negative things in your marriage right now...it's her mind's way of 'justifying' her affair. Almost all WS's do this. It's a mental defense mechanism to allow themselves to deal with what they're doing. You'll see it called 're-writing history' here.

Here's what YOU need to do.

1. Accept that you did make mistakes, acknowledge what those were, and identify how you're going to avoid them in the future.

2. Do NOT allow her to convince you that you ruined the marriage. Remind both yourself and her of all the GOOD that has taken place too. When she starts down that road of bringing up all the negatives...start bringing up all the positives. Make it clear to her that you'll accept that things weren't always perfect...BUT it's NOT all your fault. And that there was a LOT of good in your marriage...or she would have left you LONG ago.

3. Stop apologizing for ANY action you've taken to end the affair and re-build your marriage. Yes...you checked up on her. What's wrong with that?!?!! Not one thing...she's your wife, and there is not a single thing wrong with you wanting to do whatever you can to get her to end her ILLICIT relationship with another man so that you can fix your marriage!!! So you 'snooped'...big deal. Again...she's trying to shift the blame on you...when SHE's the one who's doing the immoral, illegal behavior. Don't accept that...calmly tell her that you've done nothing wrong, and that you'll continue to take whatever actions you think are needed to get her to end her affair with this guy.

4. DO continue to show her that you love her, care for her, and worry about her. DO keep making your house a place for her to feel safe in...and try to make sure that she can TALK to you about any of this...as long as it's talk and not just bashing you. When she does start attacking you...ignore her. Walk away...tell her that you will gladly talk with her when she stops attacking and starts talking reasonably.

This is NOT hopeless...but it takes a balance of love and strength to get through this...I know...I was in the same boat a year and a half ago...but we made it, and so can you.

Owl-thanks for your help. I want nothing more that her affair to end. Each minute that I know he is still in her thoughts as a possibly option to me, it just destroy's me.
Because I have caught them together twice now she is scared of me. I found her at his apartment two weeks saturday and was so very close to earning some jail time. I did threaten OM with bodily harm. At the same time I have re-inforced the fact that I have never physically abused my wife and never will. All I have is love for her. Well, Steve tells me that i can not violate her levels of saftey. Because of all this she is scared of me. I also know that I can not ever physically harm the OM. The things I need to do are: Convence her that she can be cared for by me, safe with me, protected by me, and attracted to me. These four points are tough to achieve while running around stalking and intervining in her life just to split up the affair. I do see both sides of the coin. If I'm constantly smoothering her now, I will not look attractive and will most likely be playing into OM's hand. I need to make OM act stupid and desprite and make her run from him to me. Not the other way around. The exposing thing at her work still scares me real bad. Yes, she has to get away from the OM, but I get the blame for her or his job loss she will use that against me like a nuclear bomb. I have to prove to her that I will no longer use my time away from the family and doing things to make me a better person. Either with or with out her that will help me. I just need her to buy into my promises. While the OM exposing himself as the loser we all can see he is.
Owl- here is a stupid question. what is (D-Day) that everyone on this site refers to and how long did it take to get your wife agree to come back and save your marriage?

"D-day" usually means discovery day...the day you found out about the affair. Or confirmed it, or she admitted it...whatever applies.

In my case, I suspected something for about a month, but couldn't prove anything until I finally hacked her IM account and setup logging. D-day was the day I read the logs and confronted her with the evidence.

Take a look for my story over on the recovery board. In our case, it took about a month or so after d-day and after OM started to break it off because she couldn't make up her mind before she began to honestly work on reconciling our marriage.

To her credit, once she DID make the choice, she did it wholeheartedly. The only issue we had after that was her desire to keep a "friendship" with OM...which of course I was totally opposed to.

Owl-Thanks, I'll look at your post. My D-day was 9/06/05. I learned that WW fell for OM in early March. WW has spent six months getting lost in OM's fog. Because of the lenght of time and the OM's divorce paper was served to him in May, WW is so far gone now there is such little hope. At this point she will not stop seeing him. She only talks about saving our marriage during the darkest hours when we speak of divorce. I will never give up hope on my wife and I will love her forever. I still believe she was suppose to my sole mate. However, I need a miracle and i know it. I'm just about to the realization that she is going to have to go and either crash and burn or be happy with another. Of which will be so very painful to me, but if she really could be happy then i would feel like I atleast gave her that one way or another. Really hard to stay positive my shoes. Pray for me....

Dazed- hang in there. I'm in the same boat as you or worse. WW affair been ongoing for 2 yrs dday was 7/4/05, and only partially conffessed that night. She moved in with OM for 4 weeks then came back and left 3 days later. Now moving in a trailer, and everything that used to be important to her is not any more. Pets,nice house, family etc... She says she finally found something that makes her happy. right, she thinks shes happy, but shes still in fantasyland. Me I'm at home with DD (16) and all the dogs etc...One day she will wake up and maybe she won't, but hang in there!!!

bigwave-thanks for the kind words. Good luch with your WW! Have you taken any legal action yet. If I take a plan A or B with my WW, I'm worried about the kids and what I could do to protect them and myself incase she drops the "D" bomb. The risk is leaving myself wide open for the bomb to hit and then loose my kids and assets. I think I got until 11/7/05 when OM's divorce is final. Then he gets his bonus check from his EX. I bet loser OM has already offered to finance WW divorce. She told me he has offered to give her money, a place to live, cell phone, and who knows what else.