Of course you tell her YOU KNOW!! You tell her you know EVERYTHING!! Tell her that you know she "abandoned her family to pursue this adulterous affair."

When she says "how do you know" you tell her you know quite a bit and will not give up your sources. You have a responsibility to protect yourself and your kids from her and will do what it takes to do that.

Tell her NOTHING< NOTHING<NOTHING more until you EXPOSE.

Don't warn or threaten exposure. Think Nike, JUST DO IT.

If you forwarn her in any way, she spin a story about a crazy, jealous husband and take away all the power from the exposure.

Please!

SD

Sorry, but gotta go!
SD

Look at what she is saying...that doing the logical thing in the past made her unhappy so now she is trying to find happiness by being destructive and rash. This has rationalization and justification written all over it my friend.

Let me ask you this...if I was unsuccessful at making the kind of living I wanted by working my job and caused me unhappiness, would it seem reasonable to you to try robbing a bank to support the lifestyle I realy wanted? That in essense is what your WW is saying. She is taking the easy way out my friend and justifying it through her ying-yang.

Remember the WW will try to justify the actions that they know are WRONG by re-writing history and fooling themselves into believing that everything else was horrible. If they didn't do this it would cause tremendous conflict in their minds. Your WW is no different here.

I agree with SD that you should not forewarn her about exposure, that would be a DISASTER, but I think you can tell her YOU KNOW who it is.

I was just making sure you guys know the circumstances behind all this at is unique

cooperation ended Thursday night when I drew the line although the reality in her mind is not set. I will spell it out today again. no more justification to this NOTHING. this is it. I will please here to be pathetically depressend and in fear but I WILL NOT justify her actions. yes I was not a good husband and yes she told me few times she was unhappy but that still does not justify this. and I CANNOT LET MYSELF get destroyed. I am working on me and while working on me if she comes long it will be great.

I just need to know my legal rights-talking to attorney monday to make sure. dont want to loose kids etc. becuase I am no saint. keeping a journal now. the game plan goes into excution and specially after I cover the legality of exposing with attorney on Monday (remember there is a technicality there so I was told by my attorney to wait-and she said we will discuss this further on Monday). anyway-I have the proof etc.
cant track his family etc.
PLAN A is in effect. I am already feeling the change in myself, my behaviour with kids and other people. I do feel good about that. paying attention to things I never paid attention to. taking care of house chores--fixing things that were left unattended becuase of this.

I will be a happy dusband for her this weekend as we go to these couple of activities together with kids. because as far as I am concerned I am still married to get so why show that there is a problem to others.

Trying,

I've not been giving you specific advice about how to handle this, because I never had to go thru Plan A. The other posters to your thread can help you with your plan. I do want to urge you to LISTEN to them, though. All of the experience on this board is hard-won. These folks, ML, Mortarman, BobPure, Larry, Owl, Shattered Dreams, HopeThisWorks - they learned this stuff by going through it. They've seen things that work and things that don't work.

On your specific plan, it's not for me to advise, but if it were I'd say you are well advised to follow their advice.

On your frame of mind, though... you need to realize your WW is manipulating you with her words. You may have contributed to her unhappiness, sure. But she is NOT ENTITLED to seek emotional fulfillment outside of the marriage, and that is what she has done and what she is doing. The deck has been stacked against you - no matter how much you may have been trying to work on your marriage, for as long as she has been infatuated with this OM, or even with the idea of looking outside the marriage, you had no chance.

DON'T let her manipulate you into taking all the blame for this. Unhappy or not, she had NO RIGHT to look outside the marriage. I'll wager I could have given you a run for your money in the rotten husband department, and my wife CHOSE to remain faithful to the marriage and to pull back from what was developing into an emotional affair. Your wife CHOSE differently, and you were not given a say in that choice.

DO NOT allow her to pass this responsibility on to you. If you accept her premise that you are to blame, than you have already lost.

This is like psychological wafare, really. One major component of any war is to undermine the enemy's will to fight. If you can convince your enemy that they are in the wrong, that they don't deserve to win or to survive, than you have won the war - the rest is just details.

Your war here is against the affair. Your Wayward Wife is trying to undermine your confidence in the rightness of your cause. She is trying to make you feel you do not deserve to win - and by "win", I mean achieve your objective, which is the preservation of your marriage and the preservation of your family.

I will tell you that absolute best thing you can do for your children is to keep your family intact, by going out and defeating this affair, and winning back the love and respect of your wife.

thanks CC,
she accepts blame also. she tells me it is not all my fault, it is her too but now she needs to go and explore and find happiness somewhere else. again this is not a justifaction from me but what she said.

so I am confused SD said dont tell and ML you are saying do tell who the OM this. I am thining if I tell her that she will immediately tell OM and then they will suspect exposure-maybe I should just tell her nothing about who he is and just keep the talk to the adulterous affiar. what do you think? ML I dont want the OM or her scheming any more than what it is

trying, I am confused here. You said earlier that she said she was afraid of exposure so how is it that she said this and did not tell you WHO? I would tell her you know who it is, but just not give her any idea that you will expose or make idle threats.

Also, there is no legal reason you cannot expose an affair. In all the years I have been there, we have had many who did this and never a legal ramification. Brits Brat is an attorney who specializes in workplace issues like this and she advocates workplace exposure. But many attorneys counsel their clients to make NO WAVES, which is very bad advice when it comes to affair busting. You need to expose this at work, trying, and simply TELL your attorney to protect you, if needed.

And secondly, why CAN'T you track the OM's family?

That is so precious. I just love how a WW romanticizes a filthy affair and the abandonment of her husband and family. In reality, that is about as romantic as 2 pigs rutting in the pig pen.

by the way I am also reading The divorce remedy and divorce busting by Michele Weiner Davis. Any comments on those books

I hear ya ML. will see what my attorney says on Monday. since she is a family lawyer she might tell me not to expose--anyway we will see. I am going to tell her that I want to save this marraige and you need to preotect me legally cover my rights and my kids and my assets.

also have an appointment with Steve on Monday.

trying, it would be bad advice if she did tell you not to expose. We have never seen a single legal ramification from exposing, but we have seen several marriages LOST because they DIDN'T expose. Your chances of losing your marriage because you didn't use this potent weapon are much greater than any legal fallout.

That is your best weapon against this affair and there is no legal reason NOT TO. Your marriage will not be saved unless you can kill this affair.

But I have a feeling here that you are HOPING the attorney tells you not to so you can avoid that conflict. I hope I am reading you wrong in this regard.

Glad to hear you are going to speak to SH.

ML-I just need to reassure myself that exposure is OK. I beleive it is. When I went out last night with my friends-one good friend of mine is all for it but he is for it in a vengence way-he said so "she screwed your life--fine you were bad too and she was unhappy but this is no way to do things so she screwed everything and she thinks it is going to be OK--no way, he said he is working on an evil plan for me to getg back. we laughed about it but his point was sure you want her back but on your terms as long as you know your faults and working on them--he said be nice and stop giving concessions and implement a sabotage plan"

remember I talked to Steve twice before and even convinced her to talk to him. I think she is/was doing it to just do it. Steve has yet to tell me about exposure--we were taking baby steps.
but when I told her few days ago by my boundaries she said, no more counciling this is it.

You do understand that in order to save your marriage that your mission is to SABOTAGE the affair? The AFFAIR is your enemy and you are under assault. Sabotaging the AFFAIR is how you get your wife back. Enabling and appeasing her bad behavior is NOT PART of Plan A.

That is not "revenge" that is called defending your marriage from an ASSAULT.

LOL ... what you do not see....

WW knows how to defend her boundaries that keep her in her adulterous state ~~~> refusing to do what would keep her marriage safe

YOU do not know how to defend your boundaries ~~~> "Oops.... she will not do what I ask." <~~~ then just stand there in awe of her boundary

she wins
you lose

a boundary is NOT what you SAY

a boundary is what you DO to protect yourself

Pep

My wife filed twice in 4 years. Left three times. We went to court both times, and I won.

We are together and happy today thanks to the principles you find here.

So, what exactly is YOUR hurry??

I am in a hurry emotionally but not practically. I am building a trench to hunker down and then start gorilla warfare--small battles not an all out war. I am getting there not as fast as you all would like to see but I am slowly getting there.

All concepts are clear to me but weak moments, self doubt are so strong sometimes that I cannot think straight. expecting the worst now but working for the best.

Setting the boundaries-started few days ago. waiting for more explosions today and tomorrow but I will (somehow) face it. we are also supposed to go tonight as a couple to a party--I doubt it she will go

MOrtman-was your wife in an affair?