Help! Fully discovered A on 3/23. She wants to work on the marriage. We’ve been to 2 counseling sessions together – I’ve been to 3 on my own. We are both being sweet and loving to each other in a way that we haven’t been in as long as I can remember. I broke her heart – was mean to her, emotionally unavailable. I was self-absorbed with work and financial troubles.

At first she didn’t know if she wanted to work on the R together. After seeing me be nice to her, help with the kids and treat her well she’s agreed she wants to try. And she’s been trying. It’s wonderful to see. We’re treating each other better than we have in years.

Sounds great, right? Though she’s insisted that the A is over she refuses to completely break contact with him. She talks to him once a day for about 30 minutes on cell phone during drive home. She insists its all work related – they’re co-workers – and nothing romantic or inappropriate is taking place. I tell her that even if the conversations are harmless it still hurts me to know she’s having them. This is the point where she starts blaming me. She tells me I brought the pain on myself. She’s talking about having to change jobs because of me. I was the one that let someone else into her heart. You can’t help how you feel, she says.

I am very sympathetic to the pain I caused her. I feel terrible for the vows that I broke – “love, honor, cherish”. I would like for her to take ownership at some point. When does that happen? It makes it very difficult for me to keep my heart open and full of love. Which has the effect of pushing her away.

In our 2 sessions together the marriage counselor has not yet focused on the affair. Most conversation has been pre-affair and a little around how she’s feeling now. I feel like I’ve been squeezed in counseling but she has not.

All this is very confusing and painful. I feel ashamed, angry, weak and sad.

No contact is absolutely essential. You judge a person by their actions and not by their words. It is absolutely critical that she finds another job. Talking 30 minutes a day on a drive home from work and saying it is work related is bull. She can deal with work issues at work and discuss it the next day at work. She was having sex with this guy and they are in full communications on the phone. This is unacceptable. It is humiliating and disrespectful to you. If the roles were reversed do you think your wife would accept such contact from your lover? These are the consequences of having an affair. If she continues to have these private talks with the OM then she is sending a clear message to you that she is not willing to fully commit and is keeping the OM on the side in case something does not work out. This is UNACCEPTABLE. If the OM is married it is absolutely essential that you contact his wife or girlfriend immediately. I wish you luck.

SNOOP

Get a voice activated digital recorder from Radio Shack and hide it in her car. You'll get the proof you need and the facts about YOUR LIFE necessary to prove that OM is not just a friendship and that your requests ARE appropriate.

Friends can become lovers, but lovers can never become friends.

Her affair is an addiction. She must achieve and maintain NO CONTACT to really work on your relationship. She has changed strategies and is being nice to you as an attempt to manipulate you to allowing her to maintain this inappropriate relationship. It's classic addictive behavior.

BTW, it feels like NOTHING is being resolved in counseling cause nothing really is. Until she is separated from OM it's a waste of time to work on the "relationship". You can only "work" on yourself. Plan A herein.

Read up everything on the main site here. Get the Dr. Harley books. Post questions....And SNOOP your butt of to get the answers your WAYWARD wife will not give you (I cap WAYWARD because to emphasize that she IS NOT trustworthy right now don't look to her to tell you ANYTHING fully and honesty...it all has an agenda --- agenda being TO MAINTAIN HER ADDICTION). Don't feel bad about snooping. You do it for her and your family not "to her". The truth, however obtained, is the BEST, fastest and only way to move forward.

Good luck,
Mr. Wondering

p.s. - you will make it, regardless of what happens here (and chances are very good your marriage will be saved) but regardless....you will make it.

thank you. his wife knows. she threw him out.

Hi MDC, so sorry you are here, but you are in the right place.

As you have sensed, you have HUGE problems. The first being that your W is in an ACTIVE affair and has no intention of stopping it. Secondly, you have an unqualified counselor who is chattering about the peeling paint in the girl's bathroom on the sinking Titantic. You are sinking and your MC isnt even discussing it. Isn't that weird? Yes, it is. You would be better served to just flush the money down the toilet and spend your time doing something useful, like painting your toenails. Because MC is useless during an active affair and is more than useless when you have an unqualified, inexperienced MC who doesn't understand infidelity.

But, you have come to the right place.

First off, as you can sense, your W should end ALL contact with the OM NOW. Even if she has to leave that job. You can consider the affair ACTIVE as long as she is in touch with him. Calling her contact "professional" is a RUSE designed to trick you into accepting it.

That would be like a recovering alcoholic only having drinks at WORK and imagining that she would ever recover. Ain't gonna ever happen. A drink is a drink, whether you call it a "professional" drink or a hounddog. Same with contact, CONTACT IS CONTACT.

It is very important that you understand this principle going forth and do not settle for ANY contact. Because without complete and total NO CONTACT, there will be NO RECOVERY. NONE. So, unless you want to settle for a years long affair, you should stand very firm on that boundary.

Secondly, please get a qualified MC who understands infidelity, is pro-marriage and is not anti-male. I can recognize your C as one of those who view all women as hapless victims and all males as evil oppressors. Somehow your W's affair has all been blamed on you and now you are the bad guy!

Well, guess what? Nothing that you did CAUSED HER AFFAIR. She is 300% responsible for her affair. You are MINUS 300% responsible for her affair. And while there were likely problems in the marriage before the affair, THERE IS NO HOPE OF RESOLVING THEM UNTIL HER AFFAIR ENDS. There is NOTHING you have done that is as DAMAGING as her affair. NOTHING.

So, to ignore that is outrageous and bespeaks a counselor who is a waste of time. Instead, spend your money on someone who is pro-marriage, pro-male and who WILL address the real problem,ie: Steve Harley. He won't waste your time with nonsense and will be worth every penny. He will give you a PLAN to solve the problem. He has rescued untold marriages from affairs and knows exactly what he is doing.

And lastly, I would get 2 books ASAP, and read everything you can about infidelity on this website. It will be a real eye opener. The 2 books are Surviving an Affair and His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley.

My guess is that this OM is begging his wife to return. Please contact her and inform her of the ongoing communication between them after hours.

Dont' allow her to blame you for her affair. No one made that choice BUT HER. And she may not have control over her "feelings" but she DOES have control over her actions. And if she has an INAPPROPRIATE FEELING she NOT ENTITLED to act on it. Thank goodness she doesn't have a "feeling" to murder someone, huh? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

And Bryan is right, you should be in touch with the OM's wife. The affair should be exposed at work also. That way they could seperate the lovers there. This would also influence your W to leave her job, which she will HAVE TO DO if your marriage is to have a chance.

But your BEST WEAPON against the affair is exposure. It is simply the most POTENT weapon against an affair there is. Good exposure targets are her parents, siblings, Human Resources and the OM's wife. It would likely kill this affair or at the least hasten its death.

Question on exposure - Might not exposing them at work push them closer together in a fight against me?

I agree with everything all of you are saying. What I HOPE the MC is trying to do is establish the fact that I'm remorseful for my treatment of her so that she feels like I care and then he'll attack the A. As if to say "See, he's truly sorry, he can be a good husband - witness the last two weeks - so now let's talk about you and the A." I say I HOPE that's what he's doing.

We have a session tomorrow during which I'm going to ask him what his process for dealing with an A is. If we dance around the A for another session I'll see about finding another MC. And in the meantime start taking matters into my own hands with MB steps. Have been reading more on the website and I can see that this stuff is very good. Would like to do a session with the Dr but $185 is steep for us right now.

Other questions is around Plan A. So I set my boundries at NC - tell her to start looking for a job right away and cease all contact. What is my "or else"? What if she says OK and doesn't do it? Or refuses to do it using all the mumbo jumbo she's been throwing at me about how it's OK to be in contact with him? What is my leverage??

Interesting what was said about snooping - we would not be this far along if I hadn't snooped to reveal the A and continued to snoop to uncover the full depth of the A. So I agree snooping is key to getting movement. And the results of the snoop motivate me as well.

Does anyone know of any good, stealthy key logging software? The last program I tried wouldn't work properly on her corporate laptop.

Should I be posting on the Plan A board??

Thanks everyone for your help.

This board is where you want to be. It is the most active and will suit your needs in your situation.

Plan A is not a tool for manipulation. You are not trying to "leverage" no contact. There are no ultimatums in Plan A. You can state your boundaries but you can't MAKE her respect them. Plan A is about you.

For example, there is a difference between saying "you must quit your job or else" and "I refuse to live in a loveless relationship...your continued contact with a man you had an affair with is hurtful to me...I do not feel loved nor respested."

If you are snooping then do you KNOW that the affair is mostly inactive, other than "friendly" calls and contact at work. If so it's not completely want you want but you are in a better spot than many here. Your marriage is trended towards recovery and a good Plan A should get you there. Many a WS won't just hop up and quit their job, but stating your boundary, not as an ultimatum, but as a respect and obvious consequence of her actions she should come to realize that she must separate. But you state that boundary occasionally as most of the time you are attempting to meet her needs, become a better individual, father and husband...and ATTRACT HER BACK TO THE MARRIAGE.

Kinda going in circles...too much Easter chocolate today.

Good luck,

Mr. Wondering

Don't mess with her corp laptop. That's now yours to do with as you please. Instead learn other tools which can help you uncover info.

L.

You are lucky, you have some great tools available to you in order to finally bust this affair up. Unfortunately you aren't doing it, though. The affair is beat up, lying on the floor, near death, but if you let up now it will regain strength. What would Chuck Norris do?

Well, this is what sundog would do anyway:

1. Tell the OM's wife that they are continuing contact. Odd's are that she is being lied to, even if she did kick him out. He's probably trying to get back home (if your wife won't leave with him). Tell her everything and talk to each other occasionally to compare notes.

2. Expose to your wife's family if you haven't already.

3. Check the cell phone records. If she is so addicted to him that she has to call him right after work, odds are she can't last the weekend without talking to him either. See how often she calls him for 'work related' discussion (hah).

4. Quit wasting money on the MC for now. As long as she is involved in the affair, it's pointless. And she is still involved in the affair. You realize that right?

5. Voice activated recorder in the car. Buy one at Radioshack for 30 bucks. Hide it somewhere near her in the car. Turns itself on and records when she is talking. We'll see just how 'work related' her conversation is.

Well, they ARE pushed together NOW, they are in an affair. Ya can't get much closer together than that. The expsosure will ruin all that, though. Exposure inflicts a death blow that is usually unrecoverable. Sometimes the death is fast, sometimes slow.



Except all that will fall on deaf ears until the affair is ended. Your W is a fogged out alien until that happens, I wonder if he knows that? I hope he does have a strategy, but I don't see any sign of it yet. What usually happens is that the unqualified MC, not understanding the FOG, will take something very seriously said by the WS, such as "I want a divorce," and HELP the WS destroy the marriage.

Remember, you will get your moneys worth with Harley, if you decide to go that route, because he can do in 1 session, what others NEVER do or need 10 sessions to do. He doesn't mess around.


Good idea.


Email me at my email address below and I might be able to help you out.

Agree with everything MrW said about setting boundaries. Absolute no contact must be a boundary if you want to EVER save your marriage. There is no hope if she still works with him.

Print this up and take it to your MC. Show it to your wife when you tell her this is your LINE IN THE SAND. Tell the MC this was written by one of the TOP specialists in adultery in the US, Dr. Willard Harley:

Never see or communicate with a former lover

Once an affair is first revealed, whether it's discovered or admitted, the victimized spouse is usually in a state of shock. The first reaction is usually panic, but it's quickly followed by anger. Divorce and sometimes even murder are contemplated. But after some time passes (usually about three weeks), most couples decide that they will try to pull together and save their marriage.

The one having an affair is in no position to bargain, but he or she usually tries anyway. The bargaining effort usually boils down to somehow keeping the lover in the loop. You'd think that the unfaithful spouse would be so aware of his or her weaknesses, and so aware of the pain inflicted, that every effort would be made to avoid further contact with the lover as an act of thoughtfulness to the stunned spouse. But instead, the unfaithful spouse argues that the relationship was "only sexual" or was "emotional but not sexual" or some other peculiar description to prove that continued contact with the lover would be okay.

Most victimized spouses intuitively understand that all contact with a lover must end for life. Permanent separation not only helps prevent a renewal of the affair, but it is also a crucial gesture of consideration to someone who has been through ******. What victimized spouse would ever want to know that his or her spouse is seeing or communicating with a former lover at work or in some other activity?

In spite of career sacrifices, friendships, and issues relating to children's schooling, I am adamant in recommending that there be no contact with a former lover for life. For many, that means a move to another state. But to do otherwise fails to recognize the nature of addiction and its cure.

<snip>

We don't know if R.J. still sees his lover, but he says he has broken off all contact. In many cases where a person is still in town, that's hard to prove. But one thing's for sure, if he ever does see his lover, it will put him in a state of perpetual withdrawal from his addiction, and make the resolution of his marriage essentially impossible. In fact, one of the reasons he is not recovering after three months of separation may be that he is not being truthful about the separation.

Entire article: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

Thanks everyone for the advice.

Question re: Plan A. I'm a bit confused as what exactly it means - meeting ENs and setting a NC boundry? Or are you holding back somewhat in Plan A? I seem to have read both.

And what is the 180? I found this list on another post. It would seeme the 180 goes against attracting the WS back into the marriage? I'm confused about excatly how much to give.

Conceivably Plan A means living with the affair for 3-6 months, right? While meeting ENs and drawing boundries?

I think she's going to keep it going - even in a diminished form - as long as she can.

180 List
1. Do not pursue, reason, chase, beg, plead or
implore.
2. No frequent phone calls.
3. Do not point out good points in marriage.
4. Do not follow her around the house.
5. Do not encourage talk about the future.
6. Do not ask for help from family members.
7. Do not ask for reassurances.
8. Do not buy gifts.
9. Do not schedule dates together.
10. Do not spy on spouse.
11. Do not say "I Love You".
12. Act as if you are moving on with your life.
13. Be cheerful, strong, outgoing and attractive.
14. Don't sit around waiting on your spouse - get busy, do things, go to church, go out with friends, etc.
15. When home with your spouse, (if you usually start the conversation) be scarce or short on words.
16. If you are in the habit of asking your spouse her whereabouts, ASK NOTHING.
17. You need to make your partner think that you have had an awakening and, as far as you are concerned, you are going to move on with your life, with or without your spouse.
18. Do not be nasty, angry or even cold - just pull back and wait to see if spouse notices and, more important, realize what she will be missing
19. No matter what you are feeling TODAY, only show your spouse happiness and contentment. Show her someone she would want to be around.
20. All questions about marriage should be put on
hold, until your spouse wants to talk about it (which may be a while).
21. Never lose your cool.
22. Don't be overly enthusiiastic.
23. Do not argue about how she feels (it only makes their feelings stronger).
24. Be patient
25. Listen carefully to what your spouse is really saying to you.
26. Learn to back off, shut up and walk away when you want to speak out.
27. Take care of yourself (exercise, sleep, laugh & focus on all the other parts of your life that are not in turmoil).
28. Be strong and confident and learn to speak softly.
29. Know that if you can do 180, your smallest
CONSISTENT actions will be noticed much more than any words you can say or write.
30. Do not be openly desperate or needy even when you are hurting more than ever and are desperate and needy.
31. Do not focus on yourself when communicating with your spouse.
32. Do not believe any of what you hear and less than 50% of what you see. Your spouse will speak in absolute negatives because she is hurting and scared.
33. Do not give up no matter how dark it is or how bad you feel.
34. Do not backslide from your hardearned changes.

How do you know this?

Re: the 180

The way I understand it, this is simply doing a complete reversal of BAD THINGS you were doing in the marriage. It's consistent with Plan A and is essentially the same as stopping love busters - disrespectful judgements, demands, and angry outbursts - and ending negative contributions. Plan A takes this one step further by seeking out and making more POSITIVE contributions to the relationship.