Perhaps she cares enough about you to not want to hurt you, but not enough to fully commit to a M with you.

LostHusband did a good job of this, but I'll add my 2 cents:


When in an affair, the wayward spouse will not think nor act rationally. This is one of the things we are trying to get through to you. She is not your wife anymore, she's an alien. You are both educated and smart professionals, but a spouse in an affair will act like a child and be extremely selfish. Please let this sink in.


Because she doesn't have to. Why leave for 1 man when she can have 2? She's not 100% sure of what she wants, so she'll keep you both in her pocket. CakeEating 101.


Exactly why do you trust her? This is not rational. She lies to you and sleeps with another man and you find trust in this? To love and care for someone you don't have to trust them. If you are just saying this because you think it's important for recovering your marriage, please rethink. If you truly do trust her, then you are being naive and setting yourself up for more pain.


How so? Do you have a private detective working on this? Just wondering where your confidence originates.


You are letting the nonrational wife in an affair dictate the 'issues' before you. This is dangerous. Listen to a professional, Dr Harley. Work on plan A and exposure. Expose to your family and hers without warning her. The fantasy of her affair will be tarnished.


If you want to save your marriage, this is the last thing you want to consider. It will let her continue the affair and explore this other man even further. You instead need to be home and doing plan A and exposure.

Listen man, she's getting a Dopamine high every time she's with him. That's why we refer to affairs as addictions. There is alot of chemistry going on, not much reality. Don't do stuff that's going to continue her drug fix. If she stays out of contact with him for 2 months, she'll see things a whole lot differently. The problem is that she'll resist that.

If you really want to do this and need more convincing, call the man himself, call the Harleys. They do phone sessions and they can get you on a plan immediately. They are specialized in affairs.

Okay, this is to all that are helping me out on this one. I finally got some time to read the Plan A/Plan B.
We are on the path of Plan A, she has agreed to not contact or be contact by this guy. I trust her, but I will continue to monitor everything. She realizes that she can not make a sound judgement on me with him in her mind. I feel like I she her moving past him already. At first she was very depressed about, but now she seems to be focusing more on us and our issues. The problem is that she is focusing on our problems and doesn't see any resolution for those problems.

Now what do I do if she wants to seperate for all these other issues I bring up. This isn't a case where she wants me to be cleaner or spend more time with her, or we always fight too much.
We get along very well, we spend a lot of time together and we comminucate very well. (Well maybe)

She says that our relationship has always been saved by me and that she had tried to break it off with me before we even started to talk about marriage, but I talked her into staying with me. I truely believe that she cares about me and that she wants this to work, but keeps bring up these things that I can't change (No Mexican, etc.) I would think that if that truely mattered to her she would have not married me in the first place. She told me last night that we could work if we were never to have children. She has this idea that if I am the father of her children that they will not have the same respect for her culture as she does. She has an uncle that lives in California and has two kids with a Mexican-American woman. He always complains that the kids don't want to learn Spanish and are not interested in his culture. She also looks at her uncle and is worried that she will turn out like him. He has a issue of mixing English and Spanish which drives her crazy and is a joke among her family members.
Like I said, I am willing to move to Mexico with her. I know that I will fit in just fine there. She just doesn't seem to think that it would resolve the issue.

She would then say that she would want her family and my family to be able to hang out together. Her family only speaks Spanish and mine only English. But the thing is that our parents love being together, and they always have a great time.

Please if you can give me any comments on this that would be great. I want to move on from the affair issue and focus on us and the problems she puts in front of me. I will continue to monitor her, but she hasn't be communicating with him since she sent that e-mail to him that she let me read.

My question is more how to get her to trust in us to resolve these issues that bother her and have her ready to separate. I agree with the Doctor, that if we separate, I will never see her again. Not that she will run off with this other guy, but that she will grow apart from me.

I appreciate everyones suggestions and help. I will say again I am not ready to through in the towel on this one, but she is. How do I stop her from giving up on me.

With Sincere Appreciation
Dan

Dan

She is not running to something she is running away from something.

You cannot make someone want to stay with you. If you don't find out what the real issue is there is not hope. You have offered to do anything she wants and she is unwilling to commit to you.

I do not believe it is about the OM here. I really believe she is trying to give you every reason to call it quits.

Maybe you can get her to see a counselor by herself. There are some underlying issues here that you do not know about. IMO.

At least my FWW said she wanted us to move back together telling me how great it will be. Yours is telling you it still won't be good.

There is also a cultural diffence at work here. Maybe you do not fit the mold for what she expects a husband to be based on the cultural differences.

Listen Dan,

When a person has an affair, they have to find a way to rationalize it, to make it okay in their own head. Humans just don't like to think of themselves as bad people, so we always find a way to explain what we do.

Sometimes we don't just believe something, and act according to that belief. Sometimes we actually do something, and then change our beliefs to accomodate what we did (or want to continue doing).

Your wife had an affair. Now she has to rationalize it and justify it. She's not doing this intentionally, its more of a subconscious thing that ALL WS's do.

My wife is hispanic and I grew up in the U.S. (although I'm offically considered Hispanic, but anyway) We are raising our son to know as much of his mothers culture than that of the US, it's not rocket science.

What's the deal with always talking about separation or moving out? You don't have to leave your family to think or see what you want.

Hello
I’m the cheater wife and I just read all the postings. As all of you know there is always two versions of the story and I would like to tell mine. Mostly I just want to clarify some things and say some important things that were not mentioned.

Clarification and answers to some questions.

Dan, is she still communicating with the OM (Other Man) by phone or through e-mail? What do you know about the OM, is he married?
I had stopped talking to him because I promise “HUSBAND” to do so but yesterday he told me I could talk to him if I wanted to so I did.
He is not married. He’s 26 years old. He is currently working on his PhD in physics. I’ve known him for over 8 years.

I strongly urge you to get tested for STD's. I will assume she had unprotected sex.
I did not have sex with him. There are different types of cheating. The emotional is probably the worst one. That’s the one I did.

Is the real issue that you are not Mexican?
Yes, that’s part of the issue but not all of it.

First, I don’t like to be seen as the devil. I know that’s probably what I deserve for what I did but I’m truly sorry. Second, our marriage did not start to have problems because I went to see the “OM.” The problems were there before. OM just happened to come in at the worst possible time. The fact that I want out is not to run to this other guy. It’s because I feel our marriage lacks some of the main ingredients. “HUSBAND” talked about admiration… You probably wonder what he means. Well I just feel like I’m the husband and he’s the wife. I feel like I have to take care of him and not the other way around. Before we got married and we were looking for jobs I started noticing that he wasn’t really driven to get something. So I felt like it fell on me to find something if I wanted to be able to support us. So I found the job and for almost 5 months he just sat at home and watched movies all day. But he cooked dinner so I had to be grateful. I would come home tired for working all day to find the house a mess and my husband watching TV. If I wanted my husband to sleep with me It had to be with the TV on otherwise he would just stay in the living room watching TV. That was not the entire issue his spending habits were not really great and I was the one that had to support them. He never did tell me the truth about his financial situation before we got married. I never knew how bad in debt he was but anyway that’s not the issue. After 5 months of frustration and feeling that I had made the worst mistake of my life he finally got a job. Immediately after he had to get a car that we could barely afore and not worry about bargaining at all. He started working and he would just tell me how much he didn’t like that job. Well if you don’t like it change it!!! I thought. But he is the type of person that just gets up goes to work, does what he is told, comes home and forget about it. Well I’m different than that and I want the person that I’m with to be different than that. I want to look at him and think that he’s so good at what he does and that he puts so much passion into it. And this is what OM offers. Anyway, later we got a house and I though that I had to accept that “HUSBAND” was the way he is and there was nothing I could do and I just had to work harder to get things I wanted. And I decided to start focusing in other things to no think on how my marriage was so different from what I had envisioned. So I decided to take control over our finances (“HUSBAND” was doing that before) just paying bills, seeing how much money we were spending and on what. I started making a plan. While doing it I just found how careless “HUSBAND” was with most of our finances. Utility bills were always paid late. He was going out to eat almost every day, etc. Then I started seeing more things…. In almost 6 year together he could still not say a sentence in Spanish. I learned English in 6 months. Then more things came to me. How are my children going to be? They are not going to get the example of a hard working father from “HUSBAND”…. Are they going to speak Spanish? even if I talked to them in Spanish I had to talk to “HUSBAND” in English so they would mostly hear English… what about all the things of the American culture that I don’t like? Is “HUSBAND” going to show that to my children? What about me? I hardly ever speak Spanish now… I feel like I forget words sometimes… I feel like I’m loosing who I really am. I want to eventually go back to Mexico but even though “HUSBAND” says he would I don’t see that happening. So all this things added up and when I was about to explode “OM” showed up. I know none of this is excuse to justify what I did but I just wanted to show that I’m not a bad person cheating on her husband I was in a bad situation and I let my frustrations get the best of me.

I know this probably broke some sort of MB rule letting her post in my account, but I felt it was important for everyone to hear her side as well. She is a great person, and while she left out some good things about me, she is accurate on most of the things.

Everyday I am getting closer to excepting that she will be gone soon.

The peace I feel when I am next to her will be hard to replace. The feelings that I could have done so much more will be hard to erase.

Why do we fall in love if we know that it can't last forever. Why do we cry if we know it can't bring us back together.

Hopefully a great friend we can find in each other.

Again thanks to everyone for your words of encouragement and strength.

Dan & Mrs. dan,

Welcome to MB. 1st of all there is always more than 1 side to every event, experience and story. What we are trying to get is the true picture.

From what both of you have posted, here is my POV....remember IMHO, nothing more.

1. Mrs. Dan - WS (EA at the least)
2. Dan - BS

Your culture, work environment, housing location, financial sitch, location of relatives and even children are just factors but not the issue.

Don't cloud the picture with the real reason why she is pushing hard to have the A. The reasons are based on a very very selfish desire that has been allowed to grow. Who made it grow? Well you both did.

Dan, you have been too accomodating. Mrs. Dan, you are spoiled and need to meet your H's needs.

Mrs. Dan you probably realize your H is just as capable of having an A as you have been and if you think for one moment that's your ticket out of the M, you are wrong. Very wrong. I hope you are not as stupid as other WS' here who even tried to fix up their BS' with OPs. It has happened. Tell us u r smarter than that and that you realize your H is a gem vs the OM who has no scruples.

Mrs. Dan, if you think your M is worth throwing away for anyone, then D dan ASAP. Don't drag another body into this union and make it a triangle. Have enough character to be willing to give up all you have materially, spiritually, emotionally, etc.... for a nothing life with a dishonest person (OM). Don't try to pick on any faults of your H or your M, don't make issues where they don't exist or don't make mountains out of molehills.

Mrs. Dan, if you think I am picking on you...... I am. Your M would not be in this sitch if it were not for your EA. Now if you have any scruples, you will go and take the emotional needs questionnaire in the concepts section along with your H and both of you read His Needs/Her Needs....you both need to learn how to communicate with each other and Mrs. Dan....you need to STOP being selfish.

One thing you don't want to have is regrets. Dan won't have any if you leave....he will hurt but he will not feel guilty for being a bad H because he did not deserve t/b a BS. You made him a BS and you are the one who can help him become your H again as you earn back your right t/b his W.

After you have both read His Needs/Her Needs (by Dr. Harley), read Surviving an Affair (Harley), then call Jennifer C @ MB for some phone counseling. You can do it together or separately.....Jennifer will help both of you get a plan.

If you think that's too much work to save your M, then cut yourself from but do NOT cocerce the BS into doing your D dirty work. U want the D, u go get it.

Otherwise, be glad you have an H willing to work with you and forgive you....next time you may not be soo fortunate.

OM sounds like a loser.

JMHO,
L.

Interesting posts. I am gringo and my WW is Mexican. I can see how a Mexican woman would miss her culture and language is a very special part of it. We raised out two DDs on Spanish so that they would always have that. It was very important to me. To hear the other side of it (from dan's wife), sounds like there are a lot more issues than just culture. I am just wondering which of dan's EN's he will miss being filled the most if they split? Sorry but I cannot draw too many parallels between my sitch and yours. Tough one.

Dan, you said -

I believe she "cares" about you, she just doesn't want to be married to you. You had to talk her into it. She was reluctant from the git go. Now she's starting to be her own person a bit.

Mrs. Dan said -
This is usually how affairs start. The OP is simply the drug of choice - any port in a storm.

Finally, Mrs. dan said -
This is also typical of people in an affair. They are not "bad." So why do they act bad? You don't get to have "no excuse" and not be acting bad at the same time. So, Mrs. Dan - you were a "good" person cheating on your husband?

Here's the sanest resolution:

Mrs. Dan - NOW do the right thing - you seek a divorce and walk away from the marriage with nothing. That would be "good" versus "bad." You're breaking the promise, so you leave all accumulated assets with Dan.

Dan - you allow the divorce to happen, working on the lessons learned here and seek a personal recovery and eventually finding a woman who you don't have to talk into marrying you.

JMHO

WAT

Worthatry,
I wish it were that easy. You hear the angry that she wrote in response to everyone saying what a bad person she is. We talked about that. What she wrote is not as bad as she makes it out.
I know that I will be the man she needs and I know I will be that man with or without her. I just hope that she can see all the positive changes that I have made in my life with her.
To date many of the issues she stated have been resolved. She makes me out to be lazy but, since we have been together I have recieved both a Bachelors and a Master is Engineering and am currently working for a NASA contractor. She did take hold of our finances, which is great, we talked about what we needed to do to reach our finacial goals and I have been holding to that to a T.
Yes, I have some student loan debt, yes I replaced my 10 yr old car.

I can't believe that I forced her into marriage, that is simply not the case. Yes, I made it hard for her to leave so many years ago, but that should not be the reasoning now. I feel like I am just starting my life with her. Just starting to mold myself into the man and husband that I want to be.

Worthatry, I know you think this is hopeless, but I can not walk away from this, not yet. I feel that we haven't really tried to make this work yet!

Please only words of encouragement and strength. Please only positive words that can rise us up.

Thanks again,

I think you misunderstand me.

I'm not saying it's hopeless - I'm saying it's got low likelihood of success, all things considered. It's admirable for you to try and I sincerely wish you well.

It's the engineer in me that drives my view - making rational judgements based on the information available while applying lessons learned from experience and accumulation of observations. I really hope you prove me wrong.

WAT

I hope so as well. I too am an engineer, but I know there are solutions to every problem, and that pushing one problem to the side for a new one does solve the issue. If you fall in love with the problem and hit set backs you can't give up and think there are other problems out there that are easier to solve. Just the opposite, you sharpen your focus and your pencil, break the problem down to it's fundamentals and chip away at it until it is solved. Only then can you truely appreciate the work, commitment and love that brought you to the solution.

I just hope she, as an engineer, can see it the same way.

Life is not a puzzle, where if a piece doesn't fit you look for another one. Life and relationships are more like a peice of clay that needs to be molded by hand with much care to attention. If you don't mold your clay it will start to harden, but once you see that, you know that you need to really start working with it to make it your masterpiece.

Mrs. Dan- don't give up on me! Challenge me, I know that this can bring us up to greatness!

Hi Dan,

You're an engineer with masters degree. You're working for a NASA contractor. I think almost everyone would agree that you have done much with you life. You are successful.

You deserve a wife who is proud of you. A wife who makes you feel that she is proud of you. A wife who lovingly encourages you when you need encouragement. A wife who understands that having a successful career is not all there is to true success.

Dan, you're also a successful human being. You're kind, loving, forgiving and faithful. You see the good in people.

However, I think you may be a little blind to the nature of your wife's character.

You have a masters degree and a good job but she makes you feel like a failure. She takes over the finances making you feel incompetent. She tells you she doesn't admire and apparently respect you. She uses the word husband in quotes meaning she has no respect for you as a husband--she is challenging your manhood. She compares you negatively to an old boyfriend with whom she had an emotional affair (so she claims).

What your wife is giving you is not love. It's criticisms, selfish demands, and put downs. It's more like poison. You are being emotionally abused and manipulated. You think you can make her love you if you meet all her selfish demands. You're going to move to Mexico, maybe get a PhD like her old flame, and transform your personality into an ambitious work-a-holic just to get your wife to love you? Does that sound like a good plan?

I don't want to encourage you to end your marriage. But I will say this: your fear of losing her will destroy your marriage. You can't be so afraid of losing her that you allow her to abuse you like this. Stand up for yourself. Tell her, "I am successful! I'm a good man! If the OM is so great then go!"

If standing up for yourself and demanding that you be treated with respect means that your wife will leave you then so be it. You'll be better off.

She on the other hand will have to face the harsh reality that sincerely loving men like you are hard to come by.

By the way, Dan, telling her it's okay to contact the OM is not a good idea in the least. You are being even less of the admirable man she is looking for when you let her walk on your like this.

Who cares if she wants to talk to her boyfriend? You are her husband and this hurts you. A wife should want to protect her family and a husband should feel the same way. She's not protecting you, not caring for your feelings, so you need to protect yourself.

It is evident to me that this affair is having much more effect on her than either of you are willing to see. When a normal married couple has problems, the spouse doesn't throw in the towel and say they are done (especially engineers I imagine). They agree changes need to occur and they make those changes.

This is about the OM, quit helping her affair. Stand up and enforce some boundaries. Your wife knows this guy is a worthless waste of skin somewhere in her mind. The man cheats with married women. He may be approaching a PHD in Physics, but he would have been expelled from the University of Human Decency. The University of Basic Morals wouldn't even accept his application. She knows this, and in the back of her mind she knows he would never make a good husband. Their relationship would be based on the lies and deceit they created. They would never trust each other alone.

Have you exposed this to anyone? Answer this question.

No I haven't told anyone, not even my parents. I'm not sure what good it would bring to the situation for that info. to come out. That is what ultimately brought me to MB. I think that is something that she should do to clear her consious.

She wants out and I am thinking it is time to open the door and let her free. If she discovers that she does love me, then we can think of repairing this marriage.

I will just go on being the best I can and hope that the best comes or comes back to me.

This will either make our marriage very solid or send us our separate ways with huge life lessons.

She is a great person, but she is very confused right now. My trying to save our marriage is just clouding her mind. She will find the right path and so will I. I'm not giving up on her and what we could have in the future, but I have to let her come to me if it is going to happen.

MowTin and Sundog, I appreciate your words and encouragement, while I feel they are harsh on her, there is a lot of truth to it. And I feel she would agree.

Thanks again everyone and keep the suggestions and comments coming, they are helping more than you can know!

Cheers,
Dan

One thing about OM. I found out that his Father left his Mother for another woman when he was much younger.

Just FYI, may not have any relevance, but it may show why he does not respect our marriage?

Dan,

We are not intentionally harsh. We've seen this a thousand times, we are trying to inject some reality in you.

I am getting the feeling that you are not really looking for advice to follow, but instead looking for advice that agrees with what you already plan to do. I cannot provide this to you.

Exposure is essential to killing an affair.

Staying together and not separating is essential to surviving an affair.

Setting boundaries and not agreeing to contact with OM is essential to ending an affair.

You are going against the MB principles on all of these points, and for that reason you are even more likely to fail. Not trying to be harsh, but this is what I see.

You are right! She has agreed to stop communications with him.

The only reason why she contacted him again is because I gave up one night and told her to do what she wanted. I have since rethought that and she has agreed to stop comm. with OM.

She knows it is in the best interest of our relationship and any future relationship she may have with OM.

"I am getting the feeling that you are not really looking for advice to follow, but instead looking for advice that agrees with what you already plan to do. I cannot provide this to you."

I am still trying to sort it all out myself. Of course there are a lot of things that we talk about that I don't put here, just out of conservation of MB server space. Last night I really got the feeling that she just simply isn't happy with me, and that if she wants me she will return. Hopefully by requesting that she not speak with OM, she will see clearer. Maybe that doesn't mean we resolve our marriage, but at least our friendship will be saved.

Many other posters told me to cut my loses and chalk it up to experience. I don't want to take that route 100%, but I am trying to take everyones advice, put it together along with what the wife and I talk about and come up with the best solution.

I am trying to come to terms with the fact that she has to want to save this marriage before I can do anything. I have been convincing her of that for too long it appears.

Again thanks for everyones help and please don't think that I am filtering out the things I don't want to hear. Everyone suggestion mean a lot to me and none are going unread!

Cheers,
Dan

Well I am back! It has been some time and things seemed to be working out slowly, however, the past few days have been a roller coaster. She contacted OM through Chat the other day and I found out. She denied it at first, and then came clean. She has come to the point that she doesn't want to promise me that she won't contact him, because she doesn't know if she can do it. With some force, she deleted all the e-mails and communications she has had with him. She read me there last chat after some pressure (it was in Spanish). She was telling him that she knows it could never work with them and that he should try to get back with his ex-girlfriend. It just seems strange. I don't understand why she has started this conflict with him, speaking of his ex-girfriends. She also tells him quit frequently that he only wants what he can't have. Of course, he slipped his usual I love you and I want to be with you, in the chat.... Not sure what to make of it.

I really think he is losing his importance in the issue all together, more that he was just a complication in the whole mess. I have slowly come to the realization that she needs some help. I have come to terms with the fact that our marriage may not work, but I feel she has gotten into a depression and I love her too much to leave her to deal with it on her own.

She says hurtful things to me sometimes. Things that I never expect her to say. I am trying very hard to improve myself and become a more positive and compassionate person, for her and myself. I truely believe this is the only way to be happy in my life and to bring happiness to those I care for and interact with. I was reading a posting on another MB forum of a lady who came to the realization one day that her WH may have been a car wreck and died. This really touched me and made me saddened by the possiblity that she or I may go at any moment and things between us are not corrected.

Most of all I am sincerely scared for her soul! I know that sounds crazy, but I see so much negativity coming from her, I don't know how to help. I know she is suffering, I know that this suffering drove her to cheat on me, and I know the cheating has caused her more suffering.

The hope I carry with me is from those moments when her love and happiness peaks through. It brings back all my feeling in an instant and replentishes me hope for her.

I am no longer scared of losing her. I know that we don't need each other to continue living and I know I can make the best of the situation. With that said, I also know that I need to help her. She is the love of my life and my best friend. She hurts me because she is hurting. I am strong enough to carry that burden for the both of us, but I am not sure how to focus my energy in the right way to bring her from this depression. I am feeling now that I am pushing to hard for her to think more positively about things in general. I don't want her to close off to me, which I feel she is starting to do.

I need her to find peace before I can let her go. When I took me marriage vows, "for better of for worse," I never want to give up on my promise. She slipped into a very bad place, and she needs someone to help.

Well as always, I really appreciate everyone's help here. Everyone has always been there as a crutch for me, but now I need everyone to help bring her back to happiness. I know she is willing to do some counselling, but I really don't believe in medicating suffering. We can't turely recover from suffering if we don't experience it.

Thanks again everyone,

Dan