Thanks -

How can I tell if the OW is telling the truth about her friendship? Or, is there now way- so I have to tell her H?

Sorry- but I am just really struggling with the telling the Husband thing. Seems so dramatic and destructive. I don't think my H will let me "back in" if I do that. He is just starting to soften a bit and open up to me.

But, my gut tells me the OW likes her friendship and sees no reason to end it... but I have no "proof" of that- so I'll look like the hysterical wife, won't I?

"I heard a phone message she left him, and it was way too close for comfort (ending with I'm thinkin of you - and I love you.) The excuse was that she was calling to check about his father who is very ill. I know that whatever the situation, If I were a marrried person and someone's wife said what I said, I would back off - period. I know that she has called hiim at least once she we last spoke."

Read your own words. Think about it. If you were friend with a married man, would you continue to contact him if the wife asked you not to?

And your husband saying he never loved you is the proof that this is NOT an innocent friendship. There are red flags all over the place.

You will regret it if you don't tell the OW's H. In my situation, OWH saw a text message on Christmas Day of '04--my WH was telling OW "I miss you--I love you." She lied and said they were just friends and would end it. OWH did not say anything to me--probably for all the same reasons you don't want to say anything.

Almost a year later in Nov '05, I get the bombshell dropped on me that a full-blown PA has been going on since Oct. '04. I called OWH and all he could do was tell me how sorry he was, and how much he wished he would have told me back when he found out.

Of course you don't want to tell the OWH--who would? But your alternative is far worse. Tell him what you know--he has a right to know. Stop the A now or the devestation and hurt will only be worse for everyone involved.

God Bless

Thank you --all of you kind souls. I am so glad I found this message board.

Can I tell the OW - and my H that I don't want to go to her H- but will if she does not stop contacting my H?

No, you can't. When people try being nice and giving a warning, the OP usually puts spin on things to make you look crazy. She will talk about how JHLP has flipped out, and is paranoid, how she and your husband are "just friend", ha-ha-ha, what a nutcase.

JHLP, that is the worst thing you can do. You should go directly to the OWH NOW and tell him what you know. You know this is more than a mere "friendship." No matter what, their relationship has to end because of the damage it is causing your marriage. Call the OWH and tell him, JH, he needs to know what is going on in his own life.

Dont' go and threaten the OW and your H with contacting her H, that is a big mistake that will weaken your position.

By the way, I didn't want to tell OW's husband. He was in Iraq, fighting, when the A happened. I warned OW.

The next day, my HUSBAND, told me not to bother OW's husband, as she had already come clean. Well, since they are neighbors, and when he came home, OW's husband drove by our home every day, and he was always smiling and waving. I started wondering if he knew the truth.

Needless to say, when I talked to him, he had been told that it was only a friendship, and I was a looney.

JHLP, do they talk to each on the land line during the day?

A warning is bad for everybody. Don't give them time to make up a cover their respective butts, and you better believe that they will. During the my FWH's A, a co-worker's wife saw my WH and the OW together in public. To this day, I don't know exactly what incriminating behavior she observed, because she never contacted me and I got a very tailored cover story. My H saw this witness checking them out, and came home immediately to give me his version, which was a big fish story if there ever was one. He had me totally convinced this woman was a wacko. Had she called me, I'd have given her an earfull and told her to mind her own business.

Give NO warning--go straight to the OW's H. He needs to hear the truth, and you are the only person who will give it to him.

God Bless. You can do this.

Here's some food for thought... I have said and felt those things to my H for years; "I don't love you anymore", "I don't think I have ever really been 'in love' with you" "You're not the right person for me" "Not soul mate" Blah Blah. I truely feel that way and am not, nor have I ever had an EA or a PA.

It's possible I am in a fog and rewritting history (although I can think of specific red flags early on) but I'm sure it is from years of not having my emotional needs met and not being able to find a way to get them met.

Many of my feelings and actions lately are similar to what people have said are "text book" from the affair, but in my case they are from giving up on getting my needs met from this person. Maybe that is where your H is at and it has caused him to start looking elsewhere???

JH

Welcome to MB. I am sorry about your sitch and unfortunately you are in for a tough ride. We call it the roller coaster. You are getting very good advice from many experiance vets. Heck I am become some sort of a vet myself.

The 1st thing you have to do is kill the affair. And they probably are more involved than emotionally. Record the voice message and keep it if you have not already done so.

Go to the OW's H and expose to him. He needs to know and can be some help on killing the affair.

BigK has been through almost exactly what you are going through. Listen to his advice.

After you have exposed you will have a shot, but until you do, no progress is going to be made. Your husband will be hot and furious at first but there is no gentle way of doing this.

Trust me. It doesn't work being gentle. Your spouse is a liar and an alien at the moment. Don't believe what he says for awhile. I hate to tell you this but it is the truth.

Now the other truth is that your marriage can be saved and it was not as bad as he is making it out to be at the moment.

I am sure you can think about many happy times for both of you. That is normal. You may also find out about multiple A's or this one lasting longer than you presently know. Hence the problems the last 3 yrs.

JH, I will be praying for you. Please don't take these comments as harse, but reality. Please follow the advice of Owl, Mel, Big K, Believer and others that are pro marriage.

Warning though, we will tell you what we think you need to hear and not what you want to hear.

Love in Christ

WOL

NO, do not give the OW warning you are going to spoil their fun...they will try harder at trying to convince everyoe it is OK to be "just friends" so they can continue with their A.

This has been going on for quite awhile. I'd be willing to bet the problems in your M started about the time this OW was introduced into the mix...

Expose in one fell swoop...talk with OWH and talk with the kids and any other friends or family this will affect..anyone who would question, "Where is OW? Haven't seen her for awhile?"

What you can tell the kids is..."Kids, your dad and I love each other very much, but we have had a hard time showing that to each other, partly because we have not been spending so much time and thought on each other. There is a problem with the amount of time dad spends with OW, and this is harmful to our M. I'm asking dad to not spend any time with OW, and that will mean no time with the OC." They may give you a hard time, but my suspicion is, they will sacrifice these R's in order to keep the M intact. They have probably been seeing things for quite a while.

So, the plan...fulfill those EN's, cut out the LB's, and expose, expose, expose...expose all at once. WH will be absolutely full of rage...haven't heard of a WS that wasn't. The angrier they are, the more intense their A is...a good way to tell.

A's thrive in secrecy and skulking darkness. By exposing you are shedding light on this love vampire, and it will eventually fade away...

My husband just started to work from home again after working in the office everyday, so I don't know how they communicated - other than the cell phone message on his phone I found. She called from her home.

I have a log on my land line that tells me incoming calls - but they can be easily deleted. And -also, to make matters more complicated, the OW's daugther often calls my daughter to chat.

I can't find an cell phone details- so I have no way of knowing how frequently they communicated during the day. She rarely calls our home when I'm home in the evening.

You can get the details of the cell phone bill on line from sites that specialize in that for around $75.00, or from your carrier.

For the home phone, you can get a recorder from Radio Shack for about $40.00. You just plug it into an unused phone jack and records both sides of any calls.

Very easily > do not believe a thing she says.

You're waffling on spilling the beans to her husband.

Will this help? > Don't for a second believe this is only an emotional affair.

My XW's affair was with a neighbor - her best friend's husband and my friend. Our families were so close the kids gave Mother's and Father's Day gifts to the other parents! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> Little did they know! XW and OM are now married.

If this doesn't motivate you to blow this outta the water, nothing will I guess.

So, after you tell her husband, who else can you tell?

No. Don't pussyfoot around here. You need to expose the affair and hit him with a tsunami of truth.

If your marriage is to have a chance you have to end the affair. It's that simple.

This whole thing is out of the WS text book.

Isn't it funny how he started saying he di=dn't love you about the time he started the affair with OW. It's all classic stuff.

When I discovered my wife's affair, she left home & he left home so I didn't need to expose to OM's W - she knew. But I did expose everywhere else that I thought could influence her. I killed the affair in 4 days. We are now very happy in recovery.

We moved out of our house for 4 months to ensure NC with OM. It cost us a lot of money financially but a lot less than a divorce and far less emotional impact on the family. OM has now gone permanently and we are back in our home.

I wouldn't swap what we have now for anything. We have a lot of love for each other. MB principles have helped (and still are helpin) us re-construct our marriage. We are working our way through the Audio CD Course.

Contact with our kids was the last big remaining issue. We in the end have decided to discourage the friendship but not prevent it. It will die a natural death.

There is a way through this but you have to end the affair for there to be a hope.

JHLP,
Lets maybe give you a little more background.

You have brought up a couple of times that you wondered if it might be good to tell OW, and H that you will tell her H if they don't stop.

We ask you not to forwarn them.
What usually happens when they know in advance, is that they get together and talk, and they go to OW's H, and they say something like this:
"JHLP's H thinks she's going crazy. She has been going mad with Jealosy and she has been acusing him of having an affair with about 10 different ladies. Now she is saying he is having an A with me. He is trying to get help for her, but so far she refuses to acknowledge she has a problem. If she calls you, be nice to her, and humor her, but don't encourage her rantings. Just wanted you to know what was happening as we are all worried about her."

That's the kind of story her H will hear if you warn them you are going to talk to him. Then it will be almost impossible for you to get him to listen.

It is far better for you to collect information and write out an outline of what you are going to say. I sense you are a little unshure of how to go about this.

One sure proof that it is an EA is if they refuse to do NC based on your feelings. What I mean is, What would happen If my W came to me and said "I have a problem with your friendship with (insert any womans name here) and I I would feel better if you would have no contact with her for a while."

What would happen is that I would think about it, and I would tell her "Well, I want you to know that nothing is happening, and I am completely faithful to you, but your feelings are important to me, and you come first, so I'll tell her I was out of line to talk to her so much, and I'll let her find another friend to talk to."

When nothing is going on, there is no reason NOT to honor a spouses feelings.

When there is something going on, you get an answer more like this: "What? You have to be crazy. This is all in your head, I think you are nuts. THERE IS NOTHING GOING ON, NOTHING I TELL YOU. HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO SAY IT!!
When are you going to quit being so stupid. When are you going to learn to leave me alone. A simple little friendship between two adults, and you have to go and blow it all out of proportion. You are sick, sick, sick."

That's........... how you tell if there is something going on, and you can explain it to her H like that when you talk to him.

As I said, make an outline. What you know for sure, and what you suspect and why you suspect it. If you are calm, and lay it all out for him like I am doing for you, he will get the idea. You can tell him about how you came to suspect something, how you did the research to find out about emotional A's and why you think one is going on. Give him references to the material so he can read it for himself. If you want, print out information on EA's from the web, and give it tohim too. Then tell him what will happen both ways - realizing it could be one sided. If there is nothing in hear heart, she will have no problem breaking off contact with your H while you work on your marriage. If there is an EA going on, she will find a way to maintain contact. That's how both of you can know for sure.

Probably they believe their stories. They may not know about EA's and they may really believe they are innocent. The proof is in their reaction - your H has already refused to quit, and that tells me all I need to know.

Remember the addiction of an EA is partly emotional, partly chemical. If they are in the addiction, they will try to make you appear to be crazy, and they will find any excuse to maintain contact. Explain all this to her H, tell him to ask her to have no contact with your H, so you two can work on your marriage, and then see what happens. If it is one sided (meaning your H is chasing her only) then his W Will agree to help. Also, sometimes they play dead - and go deeper into hiding. They find secret ways to be together, and to talk to each other. If you are careful, and if you watch, you can usually get proof of what is going on.

When you warn her H, tell him what may happen, and what to watch for. With both of you watching, it will be much easier to break up the A.

I hope this helps, I know it is difficult. Dont' let it get to you. You are trying to make the most of a very difficult situation, but you are not crazy.

Be careful, think things through. Don't let your H know what you are doing until after it is all over with.

Believe in yourself, you can do this.

SS

First off- I should make clear that - now that I have 20-20 hindsight - I know my H was unhappy and unfulfilled emotionally before the EA began. Although the friendship has been going on for a while, I felt when it was going deeper - and it was just this past summer when I noticed how much more time he wanted to spend with the OW. So- this whole dillemma i'm in is not all about the EA...

Anyway, I had a talk with my H last night. He is very closed and is not ready to deal with his feelings, so talking and listening is hard for him- which is excruciating for me.

I told him I just needed to know if he understood why he must end all contact with the OW - so that we can deal with all of the rest of our issues. I also expressed my need for some peace of mind. It was killing me imagining all sorts of things about them together.

He said he did understand what i was saying and said many times how he hates how I am hurting and that is very very wrong. However, he got angry that I "went too deep, to fast" by probing on this topic. He said he could not answer questions about her (whether she agreed not to contact him.) He hated the thought of not being able to have her as a friend, but he knew that that was his fault - not mine. He was just all together not ready to have a conversation - but understood my needs for clarity on this topic.

I feel that he has not admitted to himself the depth of his feelings for her - or understands them. He just knows he feels something he does not feel for me.

It is also clear that he does not believe that his muted feelings for me are are all directly related to the OW - but he knows they have something to do with it. He is simply unable to give me the answers (what he is feeling/why), because he is struggling to understand them himself.

Sooo - unless there is clear evidence to the contrary, I am going to believe that contact has ceased with the OW. I will continue to do what I can to check on that. (For you doubters out there...he said that they have not spoken in the last 2 weeks and he did not know that I had spoken to her. God help me- but I do believe him. There were opportunities this week to see her -with kids as an easy excuse- and no contact has been made - and I have pretty good sources of info to know that is true.)

He has asked me now to wait for him process his feelings.

I could really use some advice on how to do this (should I leave him alone - indefinitely- and wait for him to come to me to talk; wait a few weeks and then approach him; occasionally send him info -like from this site to think about...)

He is very hard to communicate with and I can easily shut him down and make him resentful (like last night - he got angry at what I thought were innocent, non confrontational questions. He can't process anything right now.)

One last note - a reply from JWoman brought up the idea that he indeed could be having these feelings of - well - no intimate feelings for me anymore-- for reasons that are not soley connected to the EA. His feelings of alienation and dissatisfaction actully grew over time due to all our love busting and then the EA presented itself - and that made everything worse -- feelings of alienation towards me more intense.. and here we are.

If that is the case - which in my heart - I believe it is - I need some help on next steps...

Step #1 - inform OW's husband.

No other steps before this may be effective.

Again - why do you think this is only an emotional affair?

WAT

You really have nothing to loose and everything to gain by talking to the OW's H. I gave a summary of my situation before, but to reiterate . . . My FWH was having a full-blown PA for a year. The OW's husband found a text message (that was almost IDENTICAL to the message you intercepted) early on in the A. He confronted his W and she gave him a nearly IDENTICAL excuse to what your H gave you: "We're just friends . . . it's nothing." She pacified him and told him she would stop contact with my WH.

SHE LIED. Their PA continued for almost a year at that point and I had no idea. It makes me sick to think about it--that, had the OW's H told me what he knew when he knew it, we could have nipped things at the beginning and saved us all so much heartache. Nothing good came from keeping the truth from me. Hearing the truth, when I finally did, was EXTREMELY difficult, and the family member who ultimately told me was very brave, I think. He did the right thing. Even as I was hearing the awful news of my H's affair, the words came to my mind: "AND YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH, AND THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE."

The OW's H DESERVES to hear the truth. He is entitled to protect his marriage, and so are you. Take the steps you need to. Whatever underlying problems exist between you and your H can never be addressed if this OW is lurking in the shadows. And remember--I tell you this not to be hurtful, but just to alert you if the dangers. I will carry my battle scars forever. I only hope to help you avoid them.

God Bless.