sfi...

Just been reading your thread, if you would like, I would be glad to email you a copy of an e-book that Mr. W and I purchased for another MB friend about fathers gaining custody...It once helped another MBer win custody of his children...FWIW, Mr. W is an attorney, albeit tax, and he thinks that it is a pretty viable resource...Anyway, we'd be glad to give it to you, we pray that you won't need it, of course, but it is important to be prepared...the more prepared you are, the more prepared your attorney will be...Anyway, just give us a shout at our shared email addy in my signature line and we'll shoot it your way...

Mrs. W

MrsWondering, thank you very much for that. If my ww and i get closer to that point I will definitely take you up on that offer.

It's amazing how supportive everyone here is. This would have been next to impossible to get through without all the sound advice and support that I have found here.

Well she finally spoke to me and it wasn't pretty. I heard every bad quality that i possess and every bad thing that i have done thrown at me in a 15 minute rampage.

I kept my composure and held my ground. I just kept saying that I love her and that I love this family, I am going to fight and do everything i can to keep us and this family together. She even threw in my face that i may have thought we had built some momentum over the last couple of days but i could kiss that goodbye. She said that this marriage was over. She was leaving and she was taking our son.

I put my foot down and told her that she couldn't do that. I told her she could say as many bad things about me as she liked but she couldn't take our son without working out some type of arrangement with me. She told me I knew where he would be if i wanted to see him. i told her that she was making a big mistake by making comments like that and to not do something that she would later regret. We spoke more, i stuck to my guns, and then finally it happened. She broke down and i saw her tear up. I got emotional when i saw that. we took the conversational upstairs so we could listen for our son and we spoke for about 30 minutes more.....mostly about us our son, etc. the topic of the A was avoided. i know it needs to not be overlooked but i felt like a later date was better to discuss. she cried the whole time we were upstairs.

i think there is hope and we may have gotten past the initial storm. she still isn't being honest with me about the A and is trying to tell me it is a lot less than it really is. i'm struggling because there is an inherint trust issue there, but for now I've got to get my wife back before we can get anywhere. i know i have to get her to agree to nc, but i am afraid i will push her back into wanting to leave.

i'm not sure what to do. i know that i can't ignore the A and the fact that she isn't being totally honest with me. maybe she will tomorrow, the next day, or next week...i don't know. i realize we have to talk about what's happened and we have to work out a plan that includes nc and her doing some things to help restore my trust. but, i feel like i've got to get her and i on better ground before we can survive that.

any thoughts?

You are very welcome...PLAN AHEAD, email us, take the e-booklet NOW, it's free to you and worthwhile...Please listen to me, I am a FWW, so I KNOW, firsthand, how crazy that active WW's are...I've read your thread, including the last post with her threats of taking your son...PROTECT YOURSELF AND YOUR SON...DO NOT WAIT ON THIS!!!

Mrs. W

Good!

True to form. She's soooooooooooooo typical.

See, WSs HAVE to villify the BS. The BS HAS to be an ogre. The WS HAS to dredge up every bad thing the BS ever did! Why? To justify whst she's doing!! Think about it!

Her tirade was a desperate attempt to convince HERSELF, not to convince you!

Make sense?

I strongly recommend you not mention things like "working out an arrangement" for your son. Just keep repeating your mantra that the preservation of the family and marriage is paramount. When she mentions taking your son, your response should be "separating me from my son is not an option." Don't do this angrily. Calm and matter of fact.

I think you ought to drop the strong "being honest" with you yearning. Of course you want her to be honest. But it's not reasonable to expect this all at once. You are 100% right that honesty is necessary, but you can't expect the "cure" of the marriage disease to happen in a poof!

Slow down guy and don't expect this to be resolved any time soon. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The marriage didn't get rotten overnight and it won't get fixed over night. Time is on your side.

Allow her Fairytopia to crumble - the only thing you can do to help it crumble is - guess what? Exposure and Plan A. Exposure to remove the fantasy and Plan A to establish a safe place for her to fall.

WAT

Look, you're going to think I am a jerk but you avoided this big , slob elephant sitting on her lap? You ignored the smell of crap??

Look....your WW is no different than any other WW has been on this board....



STANDARD script.....



STORM??? Buddy, you have only seen a squall.....talk about that smell, that big elephant and then there's a storm like none you have ever seen.....and you're not prepared for it....you're complacent....you have thought of every reason in the world to ignore this and it must stop....

Do something my friend, even if it is wrong....stop talking about it and take some action

I had to take a break yesterday and clear my head a little. Monday was a rough day.

I'm not sure what action you want me to take. I've exposed to her I know. We've discussed it and I've made it clear that NC is the only option. I am not going to expose to family at this point. I'm willing to do that soon if I can't confirm that she has maintained NC. I've also told her that she needs to write a letter ending the relationship that i get to read or her and i will call him together and end it.

Just because we spent 30 minutes talking about us and the A didn't come up doesn't mean that i avoided anything.

ww and I are going away for the weekend and i think that will answer a lot of questions for both of us.

mabye i'm being defensive and blind, but if I follow your advice i should have talked about the A all night until she confesses every little detail, writes the letter, and then turns over her cell phone bills, e-mail access, and every other means of hiding the affair she has used to this point or leaves the house. i'm not an expert on Plan A and that's why i'm on the board asking for help, but it seems like once you expose, you can only work on improving yourself. it's you WS that has to make the decision to end the A.

I hope you soon get this far, but no phone call.

Paper letter or e-mail. No direct contact - voice or face to face.

WAT

Is this affair that you don't discuss at the forefront of your every moment? Is it not what you think about within a nano second of you waking up? Does it not consume you until your guts hurt and you want to scream? Well...then allow me to speak for myself then because my friend I have been there. I am certain that you think I am an A S S H O L E for constantly badgering you about this. However, FACE IT!! Yes, you will talk about it until you get all the information you need....and that need will not be static...it will change...and the more information you get the more information you will want....

Look....only you can take charge of this....I can't....




You have exposed to her and no one else...PERFECT....now she can devise the perfect plan...and bring it deeper underground....get anyone else that you planned to expose to convinced "you're crazy, jealous and well, we're just friends".....that's right.....you're now abetting her affair! You have helped it....you need to read up on this site on exposure....of the nuclear type....

Hopefully someday you'll thank me for my candor.....

I don't think you are an ******, just being honest and probably giving good advice. it's like anything else in life. It's a lot easier to coach than play.

When you say we don't discuss it....how do you know it's still going on? I can't say for sure that it isn't but my wife and i did talk about it. she did admit some things to me. she did tell me she would not contact him again. i realize she has been lying to me all this time and i can't just start trusting her but i don't know that acting paranoid all the time is the way to go either.

maybe she did take it deeper underground. if she did and i have no way of knowing then how can i prove that it is still going on. right now i just feel that exposing to her family is a risk in case she really did end it and has been adhering to NC.

Send has a very good point about not delaying further exposure. Remember, many folks recommend carpet bombing right off the bat and we've seen it work very well. It also makes sense to limit exposure to that which is actually needed for the desired effect. No one knows what approach will work best in any given sitch and it's hard to identify when the desired effect has been achieved.

JMHO

WAT

I agree. i was planning to expose to her one day and then her family the next.

what i haven't told you guys is that the same day i exposed, there was a medical incident with our son. everything is okay but we spent a lot of time at a hospital and that seemed to make us become a happy family again in a hurry.

i realize that i can't allow myself to have the wool pulled over my eyes but i have seen a big change in my WW since then. this still may be going on and they may have taken it further underground.

i held off exposing to family because of what happened to son. i'm going to give it a week, see how our trip together goes and then either go back into exposing and breaking this thing up mode or getting the closure we both need to move forward mode.

sfi....all I can say is I wish you luck....you're not listening.....

You want to trust someone who is untrustworthy. You want to believe someone who is an infidel. What has she done to earn her trust back? Took care of a family matter??

Until such time that your WW is transparent, POJA, and many other items you're acting quite foolishly believing anything the woman says. JMHO and that is all.

I firmly believe that you're in what we call the BS "fog" , where denial and complacency are your friends....All I am trying to do is expose them as your enemy....

I will continue lurking through your thread, sir...I wish you luck...I will add when there's something new to say....

I wanted to update everyone on the my current status and to offer out some well deserved thanks.

My wife and i went out of town a few weeks back (after i had exposed to her that i new about her A). going into the trip i still had a lot of questions about the A she had, was it an EA, a PA or both. We had a great time while away and it has gone a long way to saving our marriage. Since returning i confronted her again and let her know how much i really knew about the A. Over the course of several days she has come clean about the A and has shown a lot of remorse for what she has done. She doesn't know how I knew about the communications between her and OM and I have still been monitoring and have not seen one sign of contact. she did send om a no contact letter and it seems to have worked. he did respond to the letter but only to say that he understood. not that it makes it any easier but i am convinced that the A was just an EA and nothing physical ever happened. my wife even went so far as to acknowledge that om was not someone she would normally be attracted to, but it was more the idea of someone paying attention to her and making her feel good about herself.

I wanted to thank everyone who helped me with advice along the way. I can honestly say that if i hadn't found this forum and received the advice i got here, my wife and i would not be together today. I would handled things all wrong and probably would have left the relationship myself.

WAT, a special thanks to you for somewhat adopting me and helping me throughout the course of my situation. each time i posted i knew i could count on you to respond. when you are going through a betrayal it seems like any feedback and advice from others can be a source of comfort and I thank you for that.

Send her on my way, I hope that you have a chance to read this. You were pretty "in your face" with your advice. You came across as the guy who tells someone to do something, but could never do what they were telling that other person to do themselves. I don't know your situation and could be completely wrong. I can say that if i had followed your advice, my wife and i would not be together today. I just want to caution you about how you give advice in the future. I realize that i probably seem unappreciative, but that's not my intention.

At the end of the day i had to take the advice given here and trust my gut to do what was right for me and my ww. Even though my wife turned into someone i didn't know for a while, i still know my wife better than anyone and know what she will and won't respond to.

Thanks again to everyone!

It's always nice to hear good endings. Thanks for posting it.

sfi,

Never posted, but needed to chime in on SendMe's advice....READ HIS STORY!!! On these boards...IN YOUR FACE ADVICE is often warrented.....your path is your path.....may work or not....but I have seen countless people, (including myself) that NEEDED that kind of advice. If he didn't CARE to try and help.....he just wouldn't have posted.

Good luck, my friend.

MWIL