I just turned 41, my wife is 38. Her lover is 49, married, and has children but I do not know how many or how old. We have 3 kids: twin 5-year-olds in our 7 years of marraige and a ten-year old from her previous marriage.

It has been 3 weeks since I found out about my wife's affair, which was only going on for a couple of weeks as far as I know. Two days after I found out, she decided she wanted to be separated and moved out of the house. She sees him a couple times a week and communicates with him multiple times daily via email and text messaging.

I am slowly starting to heal but there is still plenty of sadness. We see each other occasionally and I am getting better about not pressuring her but there is still plenty of tension. I have made it clear that I want to reconcile but she is not willing to put in any effort. She is taking things "one day at a time" and "wants to desire to come back" but will not do so under duress. She also does not want a divorce and has made it clear she wants to drag this out as long as possible. I feel like a safety net and that I am being taken advantage of.

I have exposed the affair to many of my coworkers (mutual friends), my parents (out of town), and her parents (where she sleeps). I have not contacted his wife because my therapist thinks it is a bad idea and will only create a bigger rift. I have heard multiple arguments on this issue and have not decided what to do.

It is clear to me that I did not fulfill all her emotional needs but I do not feel guilty; I am willing and have been working on changing my behavior (with counseling) yet she still does not want to come back. It is obvious to me she is infatuated with the other man and wants to keep that relationship going as long as possible. She tells me our relationship is different and one has nothing to do with the other but I have a hard time swallowing that; her emotional desires have obviously shifted from me to the other man.

I appreciate any feedback you have to offer. I want her back but as time goes on, I am starting to realize that I am too good of a man to deserve this sort of treatment. I have always supported her dreams emotionally and financially; the last 3 years we have been living off my salary so she could go back to school and start a new career. She graduates next month.

Sh0cked,
I'm very sorry that you are here and dealing with this. You will definitely find a lot of support on these forums.

The first thing you need to understand is that your situation is no different than almost every other story on here. Read as much as you can here in the infidelity forums and also read the basic concepts (link at the top of the page). They should give you a good intro into how affairs progress, and what you can do to end them (Plan A and Plan B).

It sounds like you have already started to Plan A your wife, which is a good thing. Plan A is designed to bring about positive changes in you to make you a more attractive option to your WW (wayward wife). This is not a plan to try and manipulate her behavior. Its a plan to make you a better person, regardless of the outcome of your marriage, and your wife will respond to that.

Your wife is acting right out of the wayward script. The stuff she is saying to you is not bound by reality and you need to take it all with a grain of salt. For instance, the whole "my affair isn't related to our marriage. The two are totally separate" is utter bullcrap. Its just her trying to justify behavior to herself that she knows deep down is reprehensible.

She is a classic cake-eater. She gets her emotional needs met by you and the other man. If you want to recover your marriage, you have to do whatever it takes to end the affair. And that entails telling the OM's wife. She can put pressure on him to end the affair from his end and help ensure no contact. You may get lucky and he will decide right away to salvage his marriage and cut your wife off cold turkey. Your wife will no doubt be furious, but thats because you took a wrecking ball to the secrecy and mystery, in which affairs thrive. Your therapist is wrong that you shouldn't expose to the OM's wife. Your marriage will NOT recover while she continues the affair. You need to weather her anger and bust the two of them up. Your wife will probably tell you "I was going to work on the marriage, but since you told his wife, I'm done. I'm getting a divorce." Thats what they all say. Your marriage can survive her anger. It can't survive her ongoing affair.


Are your wife and the OM coworkers? That gives you another outlet for exposure. Read up on it here before you expose, but the general idea is expose to help save your marriage. Not for retribution. Expose swiftly, completely, and without giving either your wife or the OM any warning.

Thats just a primer. More knowledgeable people than I should be along shortly to help out more. Also, you may want to repost this in the Infidelity -> General Questions II subforum. It gets a lot more traffic.

First, you must expose to OM's wife. She deserves to know that her husband is cheating on her. It will also help to break up the affair because then OM's W should be pressuring OM not to contact your WW. Do not tell your WW about this ahead of time because she will have a chance to warn OM and he can spin the story to his W. Your therapist is an idiot if he/she thinks you can somehow save your marriage without breaking up your WW's A.

You're right that WW's thought of the two relationships having nothing to do with another is bogus. This is a pretty common fallacy that Waywards (and OP) put forth ('My Affair had nothing to do with my Divorce!') You know better. This is why ending the affair with OM is 100 percent necessary.

It sounds to me like you're doing a good job of basically implementing Plan A even though WW has moved out. But you can only keep that up for so long before moving on to Plan B. Read "Surviving An Affair" by Dr. Harley.

My suggestions:

1. Get a new therapist, one that is familiar with MB concepts.

2. Inform the OMW. She's likely to be your BEST ally to bust up the A.

3. Don't take the fog-babble from your WW too seriously.

4. Read up on Plan A / Plan B on this site.

5. Stop appeasing your WW or supporting her wayward behaviour.

Thanks to the 3 of you for the quick response. I talked to my wife today. She insists that she would have left me anyway because she was uncomfortable in the marriage; I was nit-picking too much, didn't spend enough time with her, etc. There are certainly some truths here but again, isn't that what counseling is for? I fail to understand how leaving a marriage is supposed to generate more quality time together.

What is the best way to inform the OM's wife? All I have are caller-ID records (his cell phone) and their street address. He is researchable on the Internet whereas she is something of an enigma other than the name on the deed from the Assessor’s Office (in Arizona they are online).

Andrew3, my WW and the OM met at the YMCA. I don't know how long they had the friendly-flirting stage before the affair started but an email I intercepted showed my WW gave her cell phone number out on 9/27. Worst part about this is she often took the kids. No doubt they know who he is.

Perhaps you folks can help me out with Plan A. I have been making efforts to better myself but whenever I am around my WW I am a blubbering idiot. I find myself begging or threatening her to come back. Any advice to stay focused? I am a typical type "A" personality and have gone far in my career by wrestling the proverbial bull to the ground. Patience is not one of my better virtues.

Thanks again for all your support. Just out of curiosity, what is the success rate for MB’s methodology? Does anyone know how most turn out here in this forum?

I just showed up at OM's house on Christmas eve with a package filled with evidence.

Rang the doorbell, she answered, and said Merry Christmas.

Meet OMW in person, she will be your best ally.

Don't listen to the carp your wife will spew about her, it's all lies to keep you from exposing the affair to her.

Kill the affair with extreme prejudice.

As a Type "A" personality myself ... I understand what you are experiencing. Here's what finally worked for me and its corny as can be.

When I was where you are, I was doing the same thing ... searching everywhere I could to find the answers I needed to "FIX" what was wrong with my WW. Well, in my searching, I came across that old "Serenity Prayer" ... you know the one...

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

... and something hit me like a ton of bricks. I COULDN'T CHANGE HER ... I could only change those things in me that needed changing. I took a long hard look in the mirror and I was ashamed of the blubbering, begging, wienie that I had become. It sure wasn't the confident Type A guy that I thought of myself as ... and my guess is you feel the same way about yourself.

You see, there is a reason that your WW fell in love with you to begin with, and it probably wasn't the blubbering or the begging. It probably had more to do with the confidence of how a Type A carries himself.

I told myself that I was going to be ME no matter how the effects of the A played out. I had been on my own before and was happy, so if it played out that way, I was going to be proud of who I was rather than ashamed of how I had been acting. Stangely enough, almost immediately upon this revelation (hence my username) I reconnected with my old self, and my WW started to react like she used to towards me.

You're both still the same people underneath ... you've just let "stuff" get in the way. Since you can't change her ... if you'll just get back to how you used to be, then she will be attracted to you like she used to be.

I actually came home and declared to my wife ... "I realized something today ... I don't like the guy I've become and the old MyRevelation is back. Given where we are now, I don't know if we'll make it or not, but however it turns out, I intend to be proud of who I am, and if that means starting over ... Well, I've done it before and was happy and will do it again, if necessary. However, I'd prefer to work it out and for us to be happy together, but I can't make it happen by myself ... all I can do is get back to who I was when we were happy."

... and then I walked away WITHOUT asking her how she was? what she was thinking? would she give us another chance? etc.

... and the effects were almost immediate, as she started looking at me differently and started approaching me, rather than recoiling.

Reconnect with your old self ... ditch the blubbering, begging, weinie ... be proud of yourself ... and the rest will fall into place. At the very least, you will have regained your confidence and taken back YOUR life ... you will no longer be led around in circles trying to please SOMEONE ELSE, and the SATISFACTION is great.

As for the MB principles and success rates. I've found that these principles are excellent at breaking up affairs and giving the couple a shot at recovery. However, the recovery "success" seems to depend largely on the underlying strength of the M pre-A.

Good Luck to you as a fellow TYPE "A" personality.

It is absolutely essential that you contact the OM's wife. First if the roles were reversed, wouldn't you wish to be informed? Second, and more important is what is the message you are sending to the OM. You are implicitly telling him apparently it is acceptable for him to continue to have sex with your wife. No consequences to his actions equals no motivation to change. The same goes with your wife. They both are continuing to show absolute distain and disrespect toward you. One more time: No consequences to their actions equals no motiavtation to change. You must contact his wife NOW!

That certainly seems to be the consensus. I have been reading WAT's Guidelines and tried to click on the link "On informing OP's spouse of the affair" but it is broken.

WW agreed to see a PHD but earliest appointment is 12/4. Not sure if it will do any good since her own kids aren't motivation enough but it is worth a try.

While there may be some truth to that, you are only 50% responsible for the state of your M. I notice that she was quick to point out the problems that YOU brought to the M, but apparently ignored the problems she introduced, including deciding to get involved with someone else while still M'd to you. And that "would have left anyway"? Fog-babble! Why didn't she ask for a D before having the A then? See - she needs to justify her extremely poor decision to have an A, and the only way to do that is to shift the blame to you and the state of the M.

MC is useless until the A is over and your WS is no longer subject to that foggy thinking. And to bring an end to the A - that's where plan A and plan B come in.

You have the OM's street address. Which means, you also have the OMW's street address, unless they've separated. Show up one day, and ask to speak to her. Send a letter to the address, addressed to "Mrs. xxxxxx". Have someone call the OM asking to get in contact with her. There are number of possible ways open to you.

The MB approach is supposedly very successful, particularly if both spouses fully buy into it, but I must admit that I haven't seen any hard figures quoted on the subject.

I think almost all of us go through the "blubbering idiot" phase on initial disclosure of our spouse's infidelity, and what makes it worse, it's likely at at time when our spouse seems to be totally oblivious to the pain that they've caused us. This stage will pass as you get more attuned to plan A'ing, in preparation for plan B'ing (because that's what plan A usually is - the prelude to plan B).

I felt like an idiot for far too long. I had no idea what to do, I'd reached the the end of my rope when I got here.

When I did, they helped me find the courage to expose my W's A to the OM's GF. It was the most effective thing I did.

The A is your marriage's mortal enemy. There will be no recovery while the A is going on, and the longer it goes on, the worse it will get and the harder recovery will be. Make no apologies for doing whatever you can to end the A. If she's angry, make no excuses, don't apologize.

Study exposure, get a plan together, and DO IT!

This is a letter I wrote two weeks ago. I never had the cahones to deliver it. What do y'all think?

Dear Mrs. xxxxxxx,

It is with profound sorrow that I must tell you that your husband, xxxx, and my wife, xxxx, are having an affair. I found out about their relationship on October 16th and despite pleas to my wife to end it, it still continues today. The affair started late September, was consummated on October 13th, and still continues to this very day.

I first noticed peculiar behavior from my wife mid-October; she started spending more time at the YMCA, started arriving home later than normal, and seemed preoccupied. My suspicions were validated when I saw several romantic emails from ‘xxxxxxxx@comcast.net’ and her phone records showed literally hundreds of text messages from xxxxxxx. I was able to get a hold of my wife’s cell phone and verified the contents of the messages were both romantic and sexual in nature.

My wife and I are now separated and she has made it clear that she has no intent of ending the affair. We have three young children that will undoubtedly be scarred from this awful tragedy. I hope that your husband’s actions have not damaged as many lives as those hurt by my wife’s illicit behavior.

If you would like to contact me, or require more concrete evidence, you can email me at xxxxxxx. I have a couple of print-outs of their emails if you would like additional proof but I am confident that if you check your husband’s cell phone records, you will have all the proof you need.

Best of luck to you. I wrote this letter because I want to meet life head-on rather than wait and wonder what may be. If your gut is as keen as mine, you probably already knew something was wrong. I desperately want to work on my marriage but as long as the affair continues, little can be done.

GOOD GOD MAN, GROW A SET!!!!!

Contact her PERSONALLY!!!

I know nothing about her other than the home address.

Talk to her, figure it out. Go see her, find her phone #, you can find whatever you need with very little work once you put your mind to it.

You are likely to learn alot talking to her, I know I did when I talked to OM's GF.

Shocked,

Got to her house, ring the door bell and ask for her. Tell her who you are, ask if **** is her husband, and state what is in your letter. Then hand her the letter as well, so that she has something concrete to work with.

Time to fight fire with fire, and exposure is as much fire as you have. Your W will be mad, she will threaten divorce, she will curse you, but you will help accelerate the demise of the affair. Also keep records of all of the time she misses with the kids while she is out running around.

You may lose this, but don't make it because you stood there while you could have done something. Further, his W needs and deserves to know what is about to happen to her, and perhaps is already destroying her life.

God Bless,

JL

Yes, get busy and contact the OM's wife. That is usually enough to start ending the affair. Don't wait while they cement the relationship. The sooner the better.

Well, you folks are pretty persuasive. Next time I know they are at the YMCA together, I will ring the doorbell. It may take a couple of attempts as I am not sure when she works and I think he works out of his home most of the time (trader).

I'm glad that you have made the decision to expose. And remember...give no warning prior to the exposure!

And don't forget, she will be FURIOUS. They all are, but they get over it quickly. And your marriage can survive her anger better than her affair.