You don't have to be honest right now. I think I gave the analogy earlier...but I'll say it again. She's a crackhead, if she were on drugs would you feel it completely necessary to be completely open and honest with her?

Eventually, say 6 months to a year into recovery is the time to be completely open and honest. My wife understood and even thanked me for my covert actions the spring of 2005.

Boundaries. I was just as confused as you are today. Actually, I'm still confused about them. As you can see others that have been here for some time are also. In the Spring of 2005 I kept my boundary pretty simple. It was: "I will not remain forever in a loveless marriage".
To me...such boundary summarized it all. Until the affair ends your WW will not respect a single boundary you state and if stated wrong (or even if stated correctly) she'll utilize it to feed her addiction. She infer you are trying to control and manipulate her no matter how you state it.

Eventually, after exposure and you've done some good Plan A'ing you will come to a point for Plan B. At that point in time you will be firmly stating a boundary "I will no longer participate in this relationship until you have ended your affair". I don't think you are there yet so don't sweat it to much today.

Your "strength" will come from within you and how you handle yourself as a individual, husband and father. Your strength is not to be measured by what your wife does or says. Consequences will naturall befall your WW. You don't control them, inflict them or protect her from them as YOU personally recover and gain your own inner strength regardless of your WW.

Mr. Wondering

Post deleted by Jayban

Think of it this way

Would you allow any crackhead to come into your home, insult you, berate you, immasculate you, etc??

Would a crackhead be able to hurt you with words??

Now, WW is not some crackhead off the street. She is the woman you took a vow to "love in sickness and in health, in good times and bad, etc.". Thus you are SELF-obligated to live up to your marital vows for now. Sure you have a biblical out based upon adultery that you may consider later but TODAY, FOR NOW...I think you live up to your words to God and see this through. However, you rise above the addict....you hear her, you listen to her, but you DON'T internalize anything she says in an attempt to hurt you. (Hint - it's likely to get worse when you bust her and then she is free to flaunt her affair in your face, she MAY very well go on a all out offensive on your self esteem. In fact, when my actually starting referring to ME as "toxic" is the point I was able to realize she was no longer thinking rationally.

There is a phrase for this: It's called Loving Detachment (thank you Bob Pure).

Mr. Wondering

p.s. - I didn't take overt "time outs: on conversations. Keeping her talking to ME was more important than what she said. Also, sometimes if you give indications of what hurts you she'll just come back to it. Change the subject. Reverse Babble. Move away slowly. Don't put yourself down. Etc.

Jay, if the things she says or does to you are hurtful, you can tell her that. If you just walk away she might not know that she has hurt you. It might not have an effect on her initially, but over time it may break through her fog somewhat.

I would really stay away from R-talk right now because it will just degrade to the blame game and her revising history. You will not will that battle. Just work on the things that were draining your WW $LB.

My WW said some awful things to me as well...things that I will never forget. I try to remind myself that during that time she was like an abducted alien.

Look...you really need to find out who the OM is and once you have that information you can start to ruin her little fantasy. That should be your #1 priority right now...find out who the OM is.

Has she talked about her friends at work? Check her cell phone. Check her purse. Listen to her calls. I guarantee you will find something as she will get sloppy.

Keep digging!!!

I wanted to add one more things after reading the quote below...


This is the hard part about Plan A. In Plan A you eliminate all of your LB'ers and work on meeting your WW's most important EN's. While you are working on these items, she is most likely treating you like crap and disrespecting you.

Although you will feel like a doormat in Plan A, it is perfectly fine to let her know what you will not accept (i.e. OM in her life, disrespect from her). She will most likely continue to break your boundaries and that is when Plan B comes into play. That is where your regain your STRENGTH. However, you are a long way from that right now so try to concentrate on Plan A.

Once you find out who the OM is you can then impliment a very powerful tool of Plan A. It involves exposing her A to those who can have the greatest influence on it (i.e her work or family). This will kill the fantasy for her as it exposes the sleaziness of her R to the light of day. This will help return that strength back to you as it sends a clear message to your WW and OM.

HTW

Post deleted by Jayban

Post deleted by Jayban

Absent abuse or substance addiction

I have never seen a spouse of any gender just up and leave the marriage almost on a whim all the while requesting privacy, secrecy and "space" to figure out a relationship problem.

Exactly who works on a withdrawn marriage by withdrawing furhter? It's irrational.

This is my best example:

Look at you...you are not having an affair, your wife walked out on you, took your daughter and most of the household items and went into hiding, she's 99.9% likely to be having an affair and YET, you still want to work on it. The biggest point of this example that I don't want you to miss is that YOU were in the precisely same withdrawn and imperfect marriage that your wife was.

Mr. Wondering

It's called a mid-life crisis. I was having one right as my WW's A was developing. She hadn't met my ENs in a LONG time (I was 25 and having SF with my WW twice a month), and the grass was definitely looking greener on the other side of the fence. On D-Day in August, my first reaction was one of anger and relief. I was angry that she started having an A when I wanted to as well, but didn't, and I was relieved because I had a definite reason to divorce her. It took me a couple of days of thinking, reading, and reflecting to snap myself out of my own fog and start trying to save my M.

I am a FWW. I believe it's extremely hard for a woman to just up and leave her spouse without someone waiting in the wings.

And I don't think it happens very often. In fact in being on this board and another for a while- I've never seen it.

I think you are absolutely correct on this!

Post deleted by Jayban

"You know I always said that once a woman falls out of love with a man they can never love them again. I fell out of love with you".

Sure my loving wife told me this too. ALL CRAP AND IS FOG TALK. Now I'm not yelling at you, I'm yelling to you. I know you are thinking something like "Sure -it's easy to say, but it may not be true with me. Who are these people on the other end of my post and how do they know what my dear wife thinks or will think one day?"

I heard these words and more just this past fall. My wife would drill it into my head about how it's over and that I would just have to live with it. Man I would run right back to my post and cry to everyone that would listen. They all told me the same thing - FOG TALK -DON'T LISTEN TO HER. They begged me not to listen.

I can tell you that her words are all part of what each and every WS says at one time or another.


Keep your eyes on your goal not matter how hard it is to see it.

They say that crap so they can rationalize cheating on you in their own mind.

"Well, even if I wasn't f*cking OM, that wouldn't change the fact that me and BH can't work out our problems. Our marriage was already over, so my actions can't destroy something that didn't exist."

Poppycock!

I think that is the first time I have read poppycock here on this site. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Jay,

You getting this???

Oh, wow this sounds so much like my WW. As I started puttng the pieces together I see that:

1. She was getting attention/affection from guys via the internet around September.
2. She wants out of M on 10/15/06.
3. Her 30th b-day was 10/29/06
4. Still in contact with OM#1 after 3 years

I think coacheswife is 100% correct.

Post deleted by Jayban

I think I said this once before but the stuff your WW says is likely to get worse, not better, after you discover, bust and expose her affair. I'm only telling you this to prepare you for the attack. Once the affair is in the open, WW's will often go after your very manhood, "discussing" in an effort to manipulate you to stop interferring with their conduct and/or to get you to give up...everything about the affair. You may get sexual details and comparisons which will HURT if you internalize them. I'm telling you now...they too are fogtalk. NOTHING sexual can compare to marital sexual relations but a wayward spouse in the throws of addiction and with a new sexual partner feeling all those teenage butterfly's in their stomache and the thrill of the degredation of the sex WILL see it as extraordinary. In hindsight, they don't feel that way at all. My wife, looking back, see's OM's performance as different but nothing spectacular and certainly not US. It's really tough to grasp that at the time though.

Some keyloggers have remote internet access. Those would be the best for your situation. I'm sure you've read spying 101 about installing them, running the anti-virus/anti-spyware and approving the program so that it's ignored if virus/spyware applications are run again. Also, wouldn't hurt to journal that you and your wife decided to put it on the home computer...to monitor your 15 year old daughter. Thus, you'd have some semblance of a consent defense.

Mr. W

p.s.- I don't buy the mid-life crisis stuff for a 30 year old woman. In this situations, the symptoms of such merely follow the waywardness...whereas, a actually mid-life crisis precedes the inappropriate behavior.

I got a lot of music on my recorder too, but, eventually they turn down the music to take a cell phone call or when OM gets into the car. Just keep trying.

The PI, though expensive, will likely be worth it in this situation where you have limited access. He can follow her into the bar and maybe even interact with her. He can get really close.

Mr. Wondering

http://www.specter-software.com/index.html

Very highly rated stuff. Completely hidden, and will forward everything to your remote site.