There are MANY success stories.

Search for threads with that topic.

Go to the "In recovery" forum to read all the stories of those who are continuing their marriages with great success.

Help on Spying/technology/slim card reader/ GPS or whatever else will get me the info I need to confront this head-on assertively would be helpful before there is any more activity on the A. I don't know whether there was anything physical or not...but I have a lot of circumstantial toward it and even an affair of the heart is still an affair and if I can get NC with the OM before it does get physical I'd certainly want to.

Again, advice/wording/methods on how to address getting the NC w/ the OM and or asking their employer for to take action would help. HOW?

Zeph,

I can't offer you a positive story, unfortunately. But I can offer you one of personal recovery. I was unable to save my marriage because I did everything wrong. I did all the things you're not supposed to do.

I fell into a category of men on these boards who can't think straight and are appeasers and doormats. We're the ones who often get burned so all I can offer you is what NOT to do.

I root for men on this board to be able to save their marriages, but the advice I give is based on the lessons learned from the mistakes I made. I'm convinced I would either have walked away from my divorce with a more fair custody arrangement and division of assets if I had kept my emotions in check or I would have saved my marriage by just being stronger and following the advice on this board.

I thought I was unique and that my wife was unique and the fact was that she wasn't. I was missing the forest for the trees.

Keep all your sources of knowledge secret and don't, under any circumstances, let her gaslight you.

The best advice I got when I was going through things (which I wish I had followed) was to be cool. Be Fonzie.

Being strong doesn't mean be hostile. It means being calm. It means speaking in a low voice and very rationally. It means not getting angry or letting the anger show. Be cool like the Fonz. Cool like Bruce Lee. Cool like James Bond.

They are men of action who don't let emotions control them.

I can't tell you how important that is!

If you need to cry, which is totally understandable, do it in the bathroom or away from her.

Let her see nothing but a pillar of strength.

She will rationalize and say things like, "We can be friends if we divorce", "we need time apart to heal and I see us back together again", "the kids will be ok" and many other psycho babble BS they convince themselves of in order to rationalize destroying their families and justifying their affairs. They believe that children will accept OM just because she loves him.

She's in for a rude awekening, especially if you have daughters. Daughters are very protective of their dads and will react with hostility to OM as they get older.

So you must be the pillar of strength and be very secretive about your spying sources.

Does she use your home computer much? Put a keylogger on there and get passwords for her email accounts, or take a guess at what she would use.

I have helped men on this board who behaved just like I did and they have thanked me offline for preventing them from making the mistakes I made.

I would love to say a lot more but my ex monitors this board and my postings.

Want to talk offline by exchanging emails? Post your email and I'll write you there if you wish.

I have a good feeling you don't fall into the catefory of man that is a doormat, so that is very good.

Stay strong to your faith and convictions and moral beliefs. The worst is yet to come when D-day comes, but you must have irrefutable evidence to confront her with and start thinking of your Plan A.

Do things you've never done before. Have dinner ready for her when she comes home from work. Be nice. Follow the 180, which I will find and post for you.

Bake cookies.

Make the home comfortable for her to be in. Change YOUR behavior.

And prepare yourself to deal with a venemous woman. She will say things that will cut you deeply, but you can't let them affect you because your W is gone and you're dealing with a wayward. It's commonly said on this board that a wayward is like a person that has been kidnapped by aliens and had their brain scrambled.

It really helps to deal with the situation if you detatch your W from the equation and understand you're not dealing with your wife but with a stranger who merely looks like her.

You wouldn't let a stranger take your kids or disrespect you, would you?

The key to all of this is to chang YOU. YOU are all you can change. You cannot change her, but you can influence her by your behavior and by being strong and being a lighthouse to guide her out of the fog.

So no positive stories from me. I'm divorced, separated from my kids, and doing ok in terms of my own recovery. Single life isn't all it's cracked up to be, but I'm happy being alone and concentrating on my kids, but it would help if I got more time with them.

Be strong so you don't end up like I did. That's why I feel the need to help men like you.

Still waiting answers to these questions if anyone has them. Thanks!

You need to stash some money away to retain a lawyer. Protect your finances. Do you have a home equity line of credit with a checkbook? Make sure your WW does not have access to this. You need to start circling the wagons financially. WWs will blow through cash to finance their affair and get a divorce. Also, hire the PI and get more concrete proof. Then, hire an attorney and start working on an alienation of affection lawsuit. Once you get the proof from the PI, you can send a notification of an AOA suit if OM does not cease and decist all contact, and send a copy to her employer to notify them of the situation. They do not want to be involved in any legal matter. Start documenting your time with the children as well as time that your WW goes off on her own while you watch them, or document all the time your parents help out with the children. I don't care if you have to borrow from your parents (don't be too proud), but you need to get the PI and lawyer to get started on the AOA lawsuit. That could be the single biggest deterrent to scare away the OM.

As for proof, save all the phone records, but it would help to supplement them with proof that they were together after work and at least holding hands. Racy text messages or emails would be nice as well. You can accomplish this either by a keylogger, SIM card ready, GPS, and camera, or you could hire a PI to do it for you. The more proof, the better. Anything that would prove that they are together, have been intimate, or that she is leaving you for OM. If you can't get that, then you'll have to make due with just phone records, but I would see what I could get in the coming weeks first.

The texts can be obtained by a SIM card reader. There is a Spying 101 thread that goes into detail. You can probably just google it on the internet. As far as losing access to passwords, SpectorPro is a spy program that will give you access to all her password, her websites visited, and all her emails for about $40. It can be purchased online. This is a must have.

Exposing won't damage the kids/family, it's her affair that is damaging the family. Once you have your proof and she doesn't agree to NC, then you do your exposure (all at once). You sit down and tell your kids that mommy has a boyfried (which is wrong), she wants a divorce, but daddy will fight to keep the family together.

Oh, and go to your doctor and get on some antidepressants. You will need them to stay calm and rational during this complete sh!tstorm that you have found yourself it. It will help you plan A when your WW is sucking away your will to live.

I am a success story. It can be done. It took me about 3 months of knowing something was going and being too afraid to push her away more until I finally stood up and ended the affair. For me, my WW agreed to NC just 5 days after I exposed. Well, she was addicted, so she made several breaches of NC, but eventually it stuck.

Attornies are programmed toward divorce.
So that is the advice they are going to give you. To file and protect yourself and your assets.

It doesn't hurt to get a free consultation. And I would do that to get their advice on alienation of affection and false abuse charges. Or even just to interview them so you know who you want to use in the event it proceeds to divorce. The other upside of that is that anyone you consult with -- she can't hire.

Let her do ALL of the heavy lifting when it comes to filing or pursuing a divorce. Its HARD to make that call. Its HARD to give that order. Make her do it all. She will want your cooperation. She will want you to share the task. Even better if YOU file, because then she can point her finger at you.

As far as getting an attorney, I meant to get one to pursue that AOA lawsuit. However, if she does get an attorney and you know she is going to file, it may be in your interest to file first. That way, you are in control of the proceedings. If you are in the Chicagoland area, email Mr. Wondering (his email is on his profile) because another poster from the area who spoke with him did the exact same thing. He might be able to recommend that attorney.

Also, for right now, tell your WW that you will not divorce her, and that you still consider yourself together with her till death do you part. Do not take part in discussions with her about divorce at all. Just plan fun things to do and try and meet her ENs. What are her interests? Talk to her about them. It may be forced at first, but you need to work at it.

yes, but filing first gives you the chance to control the pace. You can tell your lawyer to drag things out and drag his feet and then drop things after a while, forcing her to start the process over again.

Filing first buys you time.

You can have a draft ready for filing in case she starts heading down that path or attempts to do it herself. You can have the attorney ready with the paperwork to file and just be on standby to do so if it looks like that's what she is going to do. You will be one step ahead of her.

So consult an attorney and have him draft up the divorce papers and simply have them on standby and ready just in case.

Get a keylogger on your computer.

Put a voice recorder in her car to record her conversations on her cell.

A GPS tracker will tell you where she's been. I know a friend of mine who used this on her husband and discovered he was going to another woman's home that way.

Keep track of the cell phone calls, but don't reveal that you do.

Have a friend spy on her or follow. I had a friend of mine who was willing to go to the dance clubs my ex was going to and keep an eye on her for me (she was super cool).

Find everything you can about OM. Pay a PI and he can give you a full background check on him. Background checks are cheap, about $100.

But gathering your evidence makes D-day undeniable and limits her ability to gaslight you.

So when she starts with the denials, you can chime in with everything you know about him, such as his name, address, employer, place of birth, date of birth, record (if there is one) places he's lived, parent's names, etc.

This will make her know that lying to you isn't going to be very useful.

You can then say that "I know you went to x place or x address on x day and that you were there for x amount of time."

She'll then get hostile, like you're having her followed or something or she'll try to blameshift or yell at you for spying.

Expect it. But be cool, like you're interrogating the enemy and letting the enemy know that they can try to fool you, but it is futile.

It doesn't hurt you to talk to an attorney. Filing first gives you a huge advantage because you will be able to control the pace of the divorce. You can instruct your lawyer to drag things out as long as possible. You can then, if you wish, drop it and put her in a position where she has to file and the whole process starts over again.

The wayward doesn't want you to make things difficult. They will tell you that making things difficult will make things bitter and ruin your chances of being friends.

Let her know that if there is a divorce there will be no friendship and she's fooling herself if she thinks that she can walk away amicably after destroying the family and cheating.

If she believes in God at all then appeal to that. Sometimes waywards fool themselves into thinking that this new love in their life is God sent and that you are not who she should be with.

She forgets or doesn't care that 1. God hates divorce and 2. you made an eternal sacrament.

So yes, talk to an attorny and have a separation agreement prepared just in case.

Have the attorney ready with an alienation of affection suit. This will send the OM running away when he realizes he will have to fork out money to defend himself.

I told her that I thought we needed to go to marriage counseling, but I and the marriage counselor agreed in front of her that I didn't want to be in a marriage where I wasn't loved and if she couldn't love me than I would have to let her go. This was when I was accepting the blame for my part,yet suspicious, but before I'm finding the mounting evidence of her contact with the OM.

Do you suggest taking a strong stance that I would not divorce her and we're together to death do us part now? soon? Or wait until we see what comes out of the counseling? Or wait until d-day?

I'm trying to make home nice and peaceful and as the counselor suggested be patient and kind while we continue working on individual and joint counseling. In the meantime, I'll continue to dig, document and be protective of the family unit.

Let her know that you won't talk about divorce that you will only talk about marriage. Divorce is not in the equation for you.

She'll say that it is contradictory for you to file if you ever do, but let her know that it is simply a legal protection and that you want to withdraw it if she agrees to work with you on rebuilding your marriage.

Be wary of counseling. Statements such as "if you don't love me I'll let you go" aren't constructive. Marriages go through those stages where love comes and goes. Marriage is a commitment and if love disappears, then the work needs to be put into it to make it come back.

So defend marriage and don't let her rationalize divorce with statements like, "lots of people divorce", etc.

Lots of people do drugs too. Lots of people commit suicide. Lots of people drink too much. Lots of people abuse children. Lots of people are prejudiced. Lots of people don't believe in God.

This doesn't make it right to do or a reason to accept it without resistance.

Don't bring it up, but when the subject comes up (and it will, she'll be pushing it), you just say that you've changed your stance and that you were mistaken before. You've done some research and come to the conclusion that love can be rebuilt and that as a Christian, a husband, and a father of 3 children, you are going to work to rebuild it for better or for worse. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Well, she'll just be furious when you say it. Oh well, just stay calm and drop it. Don't get baited into any arguments on the subject.

The biggest thing is that you need to expect her to be furious. She will rant and rave and say that you can't make her stay in a loveless marriage, that you're only going to make her resent you, that it will be ugly and you can't be friends, and other hateful things.

Expect it. Don't be surprised by it.

Think of it like a child throwing a tantrum and saying, "I don't like you anymore. I won't be your friend anymore!"

You're raining on their fantasy of how lovely divorced life is and how she can't just run off with OM to live in fantasy land.

Expect the venom and it won't catch you off guard when it comes.

You'll feel terrible if you don't expect it and she'll make you feel guilty.

Don't let her.

I'm not ignoring you, just so you know.

I'm trying to figure out SEARCH again.

Gosh...you sleep, and knowldge seeps out your ear onto your pillow.

Will try to get you Bob's stuff as soon as I can.

Venom and contempt I expect. Is there a risk that she could go over that edge and either become suicidal or homicidal? Through the grief of the past 6 weeks those thoughts creep in now and then, and I'm healthy enough and have a good support system to suppress them and get help. Isn't there a chance she could get desparate/despondent and/or plot something dastardly if I take such a resistant position? Or is it more likely to just make her take steps toward getting the divorce that she says she wants. (Again, not knowing the intentions or morals of the OM I'm worried about what I may be dealing with. Just curious to know from someone who's been there.

I can't tell you how she's going to act. Again, she is in this position BECAUSE OF HER AFFAIR, not because of anything you did. These are her consequences and she must deal with them. You can't protect her from them. I can't tell you how things will turn out, but I can tell you this - your marriage is much more likely to survive if you take these steps than if you don't. It's not a science, but you are playing the odds. Alot of it depends on how good a person she really is. You'll find out her true character in the upcoming months. I am a little concerned though because she has SO much baggage, she might just run away. Regardless of what you do, she would have run away anyway, so don't second-guess yourself.

However, the most important thing I can tell you is this: DO NOT LET HER FIND MB OR FIND YOUR POSTS! IT WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU. COVER YOUR TRACKS.

Your plan will implode if she finds out about it.

There's a lot of bluffing and huffing and puffing by waywards. She wants YOU to make it easy for her and just lay down and give her the divorce without a fight.

It is ironic that doing what they DON'T want you to do increases your chances of saving your marriage than doing what they wish.

That's the irony you must keep in mind at all times. You don't teach a child anything by giving in every time they cry.

Same with a wayward.

Stick to your guns. Waywards are lazy as well and she is unlikely to go running off to get lawyers right off the bat or she'll make some half as*ed attempt to do the paperwork herself and try to convince you about how fair it is to you.

I don't know if there is a chance for suicide. Odds are she'll be angry and hate you, but I doubt she'll get suicidal.

Waywards do what is called "cake eating" where they get their emotional needs met by keeping the affair and keeping the marriage. Plan B cuts this and puts the burden on the OM to fill all her EN's and not just the fantasy ones that are easy to deal with.

Suddenly the need to be taken care of and be secure and bills and cleaning toilets and take care of crying kids and everything else comes into play and the fantasy starts to crumble. It may hold up for a little bit, but it eventually breaks.

I noticed yesterday that she is not wearing her wedding ring. OW! That hurts. She's parading around the work and market place as a single person. Her words and actions are deeply, deeply painful. She had said weeks ago she is no longer married to me in her heart and no priest or judge could tell her otherwise. (Incidently, this was just around the time (I think right before) she stayed in a hotel one night and I noted phone calls to the OM just before and after her stay). She is contemptuous. How do you deal with such a person in fantasy/selfishland? Where is the beautiful woman that I've known and loved for over 15 years? Do I just get used to the fact that she's gone? Can she ever snap out of this 'fog'? Is she gone? Can she come back?

Does riding this out as a midlife phase have a silver lining for us? Or are we just in for years of pain and suffering until the inevitable legal parting?

This is maddening on a daily, moment-to-moment basis...let alone years.

Is there nothing I can do, but wait it out and take care of me and the kids in the meantime?

Would confronting her with what I know about the OM and negotiating Plan A work at this point? Or do I need more proof or to virtually catch her in the act? Is the tsunami of truth and following storm the only thing that can bring her back? Does she need more time in marriage counseling before she could be open to it?

Dear Lord, why us?