Sounds like a great plan. We will be here to help you through the fall out. You will do fine. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

FormerlyTY,

To quote a show that is probably older than you are "I love it when a plan comes together." <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> As the others have said, you are doing well. I particularly like the touch of suing the OM for knowingly transmiting an STD. In fact, I don't just like it, I LOVE IT. This should hit OM right where it hurts and you deserve compensation from him for giving you a life long disease, that is transmitable to other.

AS for your W, you now have enough proof don't you. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> You also now know what kind of woman she is. You will have decisions to make and they will be hard one, but take your time, and have patience.

My guess is that your gentle behavior toward her has lulled her into thinking she is safe and will be safe even if you find out, although how she could ever believe that you would NOT be incensed by being given an STD by her is beyond me. Perhaps now she will see the man she married with a backbone. I suspect it has been there all along but she forgot.

Good luck with your meeting, and remember keep your cool, and know you have to rely on time and patience.

God Bless,

JL

I was right.

She is still here and wanting to work on things.

Now what do we do?

Ask if she will consent to writing a no contact letter to the OM. It should say that she made a huge mistake, was not fair to you, and loves you, and will be working on her marriage, that she wants no contact with him ever again for any reason.

Hey, I remember that line.......guess I must be old 2! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

JL, is right, time to put a plan together. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

L.

Good job. Please read what we said about ending contact for life, even if it means leaving the job. If she will do that, then there is hope. But, first things first. Leave the job and send the OM a no contact letter as outlined in Surviving an Affair:


This letter should be written by her, approved by you and mailed by you.

This is the first step. Hope you are ok, my friend.

Four Rules for Recovery from an Affair: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5065_qa.html

She has agreed to NC and to leaving the job.

While I'm relieved to know the truth, and I want us to work things out, I look at the road ahead and part of me just thinks its just too hard.

What I can't really get my head around is how could she do that? I mean, she says she loves me, but she's made a career of lying. She says she loves me, but she deliberately hurt me over a long period of time. She says "it just happened" but it didn't "just" happen. It happened again and again for months. That just doesn't really correlate with any version of love I can comprehend.

And I am having a hard time controlling my thoughts. For so long I've wished that she would just come clean and fall into my arms sobbing and apologizing. That happened, and I just felt empty. I keep having thoughts of her with the OM, and I don't even know what he looks like! Do these thougths fade? Is there something I can do to make them stop?

Ty:

This will be a challenging time for you. Even though you both want to move on, the effects of the A will ripple through your lives for awhile, like a rock thrown into a pond makes waves.

If you haven't done so, read the four rules on the link ML sent you, and focus on that and your S. Try to be happy and encouraging, even when you don't feel like it.

Yes, your S loves you AND hurt you, in a way that broke your trust. Although she has to take responsibility for her actions, it may be helpful for you to remember that a WS behaves as if they are not in their right mind. Focus on the fact that when she came to her senses, she picked YOU.

Be patient, and hang in there!

Ty

There are very few people on these boards that havent felt what you are feeling right now. It is a long, hard road but if you choose to walk it you can , with much hard work - turn your marriage into something much better than you have ever hoped. Whether you are sucessful or not largely depends on the WS and their efforts to help you heal. You should also know that this is a marathon. There will be no quick fixes overnight.

Read as much as you possily can here, get your hands on "Surviving an Affair" and read that with your W. Some other excellent reads are: "Not just friends" by Shirley Glass. "After the Affair" and "How can I forgive you" by Janis A Spring. All of these capture the A dynamic and its aftermath pretty concisely. It is helpful to read these and know that you are NOT going crazy and everything you feel is completely normal.

If you can afford it, I would suggest calling the Harleys. My H and I stumbled through the first year of recovery with me doing all the reading, researching and heavy lifting. We didnt really make any significant progress until we started couseling with Steve Harley about 5 months ago and my H really stepped up to the plate. I wish we had started sooner.

Keep posting and reading. There are so many wonderful folks here who will help you, and understand what you are going through.

Just breathe. You can do this.

It will not be easy, I won't lie to you, Ty. But if you both work at this, you can have a GREAT marriage. You are looking at about 12-24 months of recovery from this affair. Adultery is as traumatic as the death of a child or a RAPE, so this will not just go away over night.

The most important first step is: NO CONTACT. That she leave that job and agree to never see, speak, email, text him ever again. She should open up every aspect of her life to you, her passwords, cell phone bills, credit card bills, etc. This would have never been possible if she had not had a secret second life.

She will go through withdrawal the same as a crack addict going through withdrawal from crack. So just be prepared for this step.

Another important step to estabish that will help your recovery is planning on spending 15 hours of quality time together each week meeting the others needs. This will help your marriage recover FASTER because as she withdraws, she will draw TO you if you are meeting her needs instead of the OM.

I just want to tell all of you that have taken your time to help me through this past week THANK YOU! I cannot tell you how much you have helped me, and how much difference it has made. Thank you to ALL of you that took the time to read my troubled and generic tale of marital strife.

Thanks especially to JustKim, MyRevelation, star*fish, MelodyLane and JustLearning, I owe you all so much. Your time and efforts have made a difference in our lives and it means alot to me and I want you to know that.

My wife and I will be moving on from this thread, trying to implement the MB strategy of recovery. It is going to be a long road I know, but I am hopeful.

I hope to sometime be able to repay the debt owed to this community by helping others get through thier own problems.

Im happy for you Ty. That is great news. The hard work begins now, but I have every faith in you.

I would suggest you start a new thread - either here or in the recovery forum. This site is a godsend and will help you through many dark times.

Dont let your guard down. Your W is still very vulnerable to OM as she begins the withdrawal process. If you are meeting her EN's the OM will lose his appeal faster. Try to avoid LB's. If you need to vent, come here.

Just remember it does get easier with time.

Hi Tky,

Most of us here have already been where you are....and the help we got from this board was invaluable. So we are just "paying it forward" and we are happy to be here for you. Honesty is the first step towards recovery. I know how much this truth hurts, but the real damage is often unseen and insidious. You can win the battle to save your marriage when you are armed with the truth.

If your wife is really willing to end contact, change jobs, show remorse, completely open her life...cell phone, email, accountability for time and money....as well has make compensation.....there is every reason to believe you can reach recovery.

Be prepared for some tough times. When the exhilaration of knowing your wife is willing to work on the marriage wears off....the pain can come rushing back. It's hard to avoid lovebusting and punishing. Come here and talk about instead okay?

Why not give the Harley's a call? They would be a fantastic recovery source.

(((((((((((((((((((((tky)))))))))))))))))))))

Ty,

You are very welcome, and your new found confidence and successes are a true joy to read about. Its funny how those on this site can get so wrapped up in the lives of other completely annonymous people who we now share a common bond/pain with.

Its funny ... I wish I had NEVER had to find this place, but its sure great to know that there are people who are here to help when I found that I NEEDED them.

We are just a little ahead of you in this process, so feel free to read the threads that my wife (FogFree) and I have started to get a glimpse of what may lie ahead. One bit of advice that I've learned the hard way, look for your wife to possibly break NC early on as the withdrawal hits and she feels abandoned by the OM. My W made two attempts to contact the OM ... once to tell him off for how easy it was for him to throw her away when I confronted him, and the other to seek some kind of "closure". Luckily, he never responded to either contact. She is now very remorseful and embarrassed by her actions just after D-Day, but, in retrospect, she may have been at her "craziest" in the first few days post D-Day.

Just a "heads-up" to be looking for the signs.

Otherwise ... GREAT JOB ... you most definately "MANNED UP" !!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

TY,

Those thoughts are going to be with you for some time. They're hard to shake. It helped me to have SF with the WW, but they still come back. It's worse when she doesn't come fully clean on something and you then discover something new. This will take a good while for you to shake and there will be triggers now and then. I learned some details about the night my ex cheated on me that became triggers for later. She rented the movie "The Fog" that she went to his place to watch.

Trailers for that movie or seeing it on the shelf in the store were triggers for me once and brought back the memories. Same thing with movies about infidelity. They were triggers for a little while.

You'll go through this to.

I never experienced withdrawl. My ex still behaved as a wayward and still has the mentaility of one when dealing with me. She has never apologized or showed any regret for her actions. I hung on for a long time hoping that I would get one, but have finally accepted that it will never come. She still calls and tries to talk to me as if I were her husband, chewing me out for trivial things. I've had to start drawing boundaries.

You're in a different situation.

I recommend you stay on this board and come back here and even have your wife start her own thread. She might get beat up a little, but she'll also get a lot of understanding people who have been in her shoes. They can guide her through the withdrawl.

This is a dark time for you. It's been a little over a year for me and I'm just now emerging from the darkness and feeling normal again. It was very tough for a long time and there are still some hard days, usually involving my limited time with the kids.

Good luck to you.

Thank you for the clues on what is to come.

The OM was in the parking lot at my wife's work this morning. (apparently his flight leaves today, not yest. as was thought). Wife said he was very agitated and angry and kept asking her "what's wrong? what's going on?". She said she told him that she is not talking to him ever again and if he wants to know what's going on he needs to ask his girlfriend.

I took her work cell phone out of her car last night figuring that he would be trying to call her on it. We sent a NC letter to his email and I appended a message on it from me telling him that if he doesn't arrange to get himself tranferred to a different location within thier company that I am going to expose the affair to his boss and the HR department. WS says she doesn't think he's checked his email yet. After this contact this morning I called his cell phone and left him a message telling him that if he contacts my wife again that the timer on this threat to expose to his job runs out.

The OM's GF has not contacted me all weekend which I find strange.

I have yet to inform him about the pending herpes lawsuit. I have spoken at length to an attorney though and he is very confident that we can win this suit and possibly drive the OM into bankruptcy.

My wife was very friendly and nice all weekend, I do really think she is committed to repairing our marriage. We've gone through the EN survey and I gave her the basics of the MB philosophy to read today.

Tyk, I just want to prepare you for a few possibilities so you won't be surprised IF it happens. Your W is friendly TODAY because she is relieved that this is out and that you have not kicked her to the curb. But when she goes into withdrawal, it won't be this pleasant. You should also watch her like a hawk, because it is not uncommon for the affairees to try to contact each other.

This is a very fragile, critical time, so be careful and cautious, and whatever you do, don't lovebust your W and don't trash talk the OM. [you can come trash talk him HERE!]

Good job on giving the OM HE11!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

withdrawal: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...rue#Post2686313

If any of you are willing I would welcome your advice here:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...e=0#Post3306692