Love must be tough is a book by Dr. Dobson.

SAA - Surviving an Affair
HNN - His Needs/Her Needs both are by Dr. Harley.

Check 'em out.

Give up on your M when u r ready.

L.

Thanks Orchid. I'd be the worst kind of quitter if I gave up after 30 years. I don't intend to. And thanks to "believer" for the encouragemnt. I am crying for the first time in my adult life except for when my parents died as I type this.

I just spent an hour on the phone with WW reading from Dr. Harley's columns about intinacy and affection. She started crying. Although I know I will never be able to trust her again for a long time, I still love her the same as when we first met. I hope it will all work out but we'll see in the next week or so.

I've learned this week that nothing in life is "black and white" not even the engineering drawings that are my profession. Everything in life is like a series of X-rays, cast in shadows, with varying degrees of gray, which we spend our whole lives trying to comprehend.

there is much in life that is black and white, right and wrong, etc. Some things have NO gray area at all...is there a gray area to child porn...NO....is there a gray area to spousal abuse...NO...is there a gray area to adultery...NO. For a man that must be in or close to his 50's...I would think that you would have learned by now that many things in life are just flat out black/white.

I don't fault you for wanting to save your marriage..but like your friend...most likely have concerns over some of the "what ifs." Your friend won't think less of you for trying...he will only be concerned about the mental health of his friend who has expressed his deepest pain. And no, the worst kind of quitter is not someone that decides to protect themselves after being abused several times by adultery...the worst kind of quitter is the person that had the affair to begin with.

I know to most of you that my situation doesn't seem special. MKED, I don't know where you live or what your nationality is, but there are millions of Americans (and for that matter people of other nationalities from all over the world) who live constantly apart from their loved ones. What came apart in my relationship, was a lengthy separation which was nobody's fault. I hope both you and your spouse could stand months of stressful separation the way we did until my wife cheated.

I agree that that in the spectrum of human affirs, that many things are black and white, but many things are also not. Adultery has been around for awhile and will not end any time soon. Should we revert to the times when adulterers were painted with a scarlet "A" for their sins or stone them to death as was done here just a few years ago? For me, I intend to find out if my WW and I can be reunited. I don't know if that can occur but am willing to explore the possibilty.

I'd appreciate any help from others reading this post about how I can achieve this.

Certainly MEDC is correct in that serial cheaters are a whole other animal.

Dr Harley has said that he would not try and recover if his wife had an affair - but - IMO - just like many people here on this site "said" before their spouses affair it would be the end, when it actually happens to you, it's not quite so simple and most BS's want to try and recover at some point. Even Dr Harley most probably if her were faced with that situation - who knows.

But your wife is a serial cheater. Very difficult as with them, it's a character issue - cheating IS their character, not just a one-off-aberation.

Recovery is certainly possible for your marriage. This IS a MARRIAGE BUILDING site but it is NOT Marriage at all costs. You ARE in an incredibly abusive relationship.

I suspect you will have to radically change your work life so that you are not away from home 60% of the time and I also suspect you will have to relocate to the states and ake the pay cut that entails.

Thanks for the advice bigkahuna. I understand the part about my wife being a serial cheater and did immediately five days ago. I am not perfect in this situation. I was a verbally abusive spouse for a long time in years past, although I believe that is long behind us. The current affair and the previous attempt at one, may have been "payback" although certainly on the order of several times to one greater in terms of damage to our relationship. I am not an angel, she's a lesser one. So whwere do we go from here?

Just stay in Plan A and read as much as you can before she comes back. When/if she comes back we can deal with that then.

Certainly validating her issues with your marriage will give her some hope. But remember - her affair(s) were her choice.

There are only 2 affairs you know of. I would be surprised if there were not more.

Don't drive yourself insane at this point. Get educated (read) and don't sweat what you can't influence right now. Do what you can do.

Since you just talked to her about Dr harley does that mean you told her you know or are you still allowing them to have a few more days together??

No I didn't tell her. The goal for now is to get her away from the U.S. (and the OM) to be with me. My intention is to confront her a week from today. My source of information is that she is not with him anymore since the OM went on vacation.

I guess that I never mentioned that WW is the "other woman" in her relationship with OM. He has another lady who he is "committed" to. The thing with with my wife is just for plleasure. The issues of confronting her before she returned to me were something I dealt with in aother thread.

I agree with bigkahuna that there may have been other affairs. How will I know? She will either open up (she's a horrible liar which is how I discovered this most recent affair) or continue to attempt to conceal anything previous which may mean we are through.

I think I have my eyes open now as painful as it is.

This is a response to MEDC from a couple of posts back. When I said "she has always kept me guessing" I wasn't referring to her fidelity which was never in doubt for decades, it was that she always held something in reserve that she wouldn't open up about. In effect, I was never sure if she was being totally honest with me about everything and anything. That was always part of her mystery.

I just got off the phone with WW. I called at a much earlier time than normal because of course my sleep patterns are all screwed-up, and she asked, "You're not calling just to check-up on me?" to which I dishonestly replied no, do I need to? to which she responded, no, without a lot of conviction.

So I believe she is beginning to feel guilty about her activities. Is that good? I think she is wavering about returning as well. I think if she doesn't return I'll try to see her in the U.S. and then begin divorce if I can't get her back.

OK, I was already going to give you basically the same advice as MEDC before I even read the following, so I'll just quote what MEDC said and then add info about my own experience:

"But when you leave your home, your job, your life and come back to the states....and find your wife won't stop cheating and most likely has had more affairs than you were aware of you will wonder why you wasted that effort on a known bad risk."

I was married to a serial adulterer for 25 years, together (counting before marriage and after separation) 30 years. He had 7 affairs that I know of, he never confessed to any of them - he got caught. So most likely there were many, many more. For four years I had a job requireing me to travel a lot. My WH not only did not object to that but preferred it that way. I almost didn't take the promotion and he got angry at me and even made fun of me for being nervous about the job. At one point I quit that job for a job requiring no travel and he talked me into going back to the job with travel. He used my traveling as an excuse for affairs... the trips he insisted I go on... Do you see where I'm going here?

Is there any possibility that your wife doesn't really resent your job involving you being apart?

Serial adulterers are going to cheat pretty much no matter what. They will ALWAYS find a way and an excuse to blame you if you find out.

After I quit that job to be a stay-at-home wife, then mother, my WH had jobs that required that he travel a lot. And he had some one-night-stands on business trips. We went to mc, he swore it wouldn't happen again, etc. I had a home-based business and was about to expand that business and start another one when he took a consulting job in the next state over. It was just a one month contract but got renewed eahc month and lasted ten months. At first he came home every other weekend... and I took the kids to go visit him a fewtimes. I found out he was living with an OW the last 6 months of that job and was just paying rent on the apartment we visited him at as a cover-up. More mc and a separation...

Then he claimed that if I put all the furniture in storage, shut down my home based business, and me and the kids traveled with him, he could behave. For the next 6 years we traveled all over, 2 months here, 10 months there, living in tiny apartments part of the time, an even tinier RV the rest. Then he got a really long contract, paying $55 per hour and we stayed in one place for 4 years. We rented a house and eventually had all the furniture (that was in storage on the other coast) brought to us. Shortly after that he started acting really strangely, withdrew from the family, developed an anger problem, and eventually even became violent. He started moving out, then back in, then out again... There was an OW of course. And this time he 'fell in love' with her and dumped me for her. She was 15 years younger than me, 16 years younger than him. I tried everything to save my marriage but he insisted on divorcing me. (OW ended up dumping him for an OM)

Before you make any drastic changes like I did, in an attempt to remove the things that supposedly enabled the adultery, carefully consider if the changes really can stop a serial adulterer from straying. Sometimes a serial adulterer will actually prefer for things to be set up in a way to enable their adultery (like wanting their spouse to have a job that involves travel); sometimes the serial adultery may be trying to behave and will want the betrayed spouse to make changes to prevent adultery (like packing everything up and traveling with them). IMHO based on my own experience, the serial adulterer's problem needs to be addressed and the serial adulterer will have to make some drastic changes. Other drastic changes may also have to be made by the betrayed spouse but they will be in vain if the serial adulterer doesn't change.

Plan A, Plan B, and mc still apply, PLUS a whole lot more. It's a very big gamble.

I guess I wasn't clear about going to the States to attempt to bring her back. If I did that, I would only be gone from the Middle East for no more than a week. I wasn't talking about leaving my job to traipse after my WW on the bet that reconciliation would work. For now, her affair is ended because the OM has left her. When she went into this, she knew she would have to return to me at some time and that time is now unless she gets skittish. Our life is here as she well knows. If she choses to stay in the States, I am not going to plead or berate her into returning. She'll either come or she won't. If she doesn't, I'll immediately move into Plan B. If that desn't work then I guess its curtains after 36 years together.

So r u done with your plan A improvements?

You keep asking what to do. You realize you can't teach, preach or tell a WS what t/d? So how does one reach through the fog?

Plan A, pray for a clear mind, calm heart, lots of patience, identify you personal and M boundaries, secure your finances, create your personal support group, g/t MC as needed, expose, if you have children - reassure them of your love, loyalty and support and if she is still a WS, then go to plan B.

Are you able to get those books? You need a plan, so you need to read.

L.

I ordered the books two days ago but it is likely they won't be here until sometime next week at which time I won't be able to read them before WW arrives. Right now, I'm just trying to survive from day to day and it is very hard. I have read all the articles on this site.

What does securing my finances entail? I make all the money, I can open a new account just for me if need be and I control all the retirement funds myself. The only thing left is real estate which I can pay the bills for.

I am going to try to get a counseling session with the Harley's from over here on the phone ASAP.

Finish your plan A. Read the concepts section above. It will give you a head start. As for securing your finances, what about other savings or pension accounts? Even life insurance policies?

One thing consistent with a WS is their selfish streak. Protect your finances and your children.

L.

We have no other savings but we are what as known as "high net worth" folks. We have no life insurance other than the term life the Company offers (no cash value) for which I can change the benficiaries. I guess the only thing that is left undone is our wills but I'll wait untill WW arrives to tackle that after I see how it goes.

I think you are right about WW's selfish streak. or maybe more acurately self-absorbed streak, which we have discussed many times. She worries way too much about monetary matters but that is not because she is avaricious, just becuase she is a worrier. Although, we just went thru $15K at an amazingly rapid pace so I guess I need to check on that.

She has never wanted for anything monetary or materially since we were married but that is mostly thanks to me and working here in the Middle East. You could say she is spoiled. She hasn't contributed much to our income in the last sixteen years.

Our children are okay for now. They are both adults one with an exciting rewarding job and one a student in therapy but recovering. I think our daughter will be okay whatever happens and I spoke to my son's therapist about what a breakup could do to him and he said he would probably deal with it better than most kids that were reared in the U.S. Both of our children left here at the ages of 14 and 15 respectively, to attend boarding school for the high school years. This was successful for our daughter but a disaster for our son but he may have had the same problems where ever he was.

I guess I need to concentrate on Plan A for now and take it from there. There are so many crooked turns in the road we are on now.

I appreciate everyone's advice and comments.

Since I recieved no replies to my last post, I thought I'd ask, "How should I confront her?". She will be here in six days. I haven't seen her in more than two months. She will expect me to be overjoyed that she is back which under normal circumstances. I would be.

My thoughts are that after I pick her up at the airport, I'll bring her home, and try to sleep together for the night as she will be exhausted after traveling ofr 24 hours. I thought that sometime the next day, I'll break the fact that I know what she was doing and see if she will begin to open up honestly. If she doesn't, then I'll expose part of my evidence.

Any suggestions? Predictions?

Do you have evidence she can't refute? If you do, just ask her point blank what's been going on. Expect her to lie and deny, once you tell her you have proof, expect her to sugar coat it and act like a victim. She will be a bit shocky and will need time to regroup. She will most likely rewrite your marital history.

She probably will babble on and on about how bad she's had it. Don't take any of it to heart. My H doesn't even remember half of what he said on D-Day

Let her know that you won't be taken for granted. Be firm, not mean. If she gets upset and wants to return to the states, don't finance it for her.

Then, do what Orchid said. Plan A. Good Luck GF

Going_Forward, thanks for the advice. This is all theorical now assuming she does actually show-up. Yes, I do have irrefutable evidence. I think I will start by setting the stage, that we have the opportunity to make our marriage a really geat one and then just tell her that I have a "source" for information that is irrefuatable without revealing what the source is for now. I'n sure she will breakdown at some point and admit what was going on to some extent, operating under the assumption that she will be able to go the U.S. next year and continue the A. As long as she admits the A, I'll let it go until everything needs to come out at some point in the process. Sometime in the future, I may reveal the source of my information but only if necessary.

I can't prevent her from leaving again since she has credit cards that will cover the cost of a ticket home and access to all of our available money. If I restrict that she will not trust me which runs counter to what we will be trying to accomplish.

I just don't know what to say to that. She has no reason not to trust you. You have every reason not to trust her.
separating your finances means fixing it til WW can't obscond with large amounts of your money.

No one on this site will tell you to finance her affair.
It's enabling her and it's just wrong. Maybe you can look at the co-dependent, cheerleader, enabler thread that Ace started.

Waywards come into a sense of entitlement. You have to protect yourself from that. It's almost like they are temporarily insane. I stood with my jaw gaped on more than one occasion. Just some of their skewed thinking!!

I know how you feel, I was also hurt after 30 yrs.
Please don't let fear dictate your actions. You have to be strong and confident, not a whining little girly man. Don't be her doormat
Confident, Confident, Confident