Hi I'm totally new to this and hoping someone can help.

I discovered 3 mos ago that my husband was unfaithful with another woman who works in the same building (City Hall!). My story: I was not previously meeting his emotional needs (nor he mine) and he found the friendship, companionship that I wasn't giving him. We've pretty much been in a child-centered marriage since our only child was born 9 yrs ago. When I first confronted him with the other woman (found photos of her on our computer and asked "who's that???") he denied any involvement any deeper than "we're just friends." I then found pages and pages of phone calls/txt msging between them on the cell phone activity online and confronted him again. When I insisted that it was inappropriate and was infidelity, he dug his heels in defiantly and said he would not stop seeing/talking to her. Right after that, I went down to City Hall to confront her at her office. She refused to see me and immediately called my husband -- shaking in her little boots, thinking I was going to get violent. He then confronted me and yelled me for coming down there and jeopardizing hers and his jobs. (Woe is them!!!) Okay, so now I'm now not only totally devastated, I'm mad as hell! After that incident, he stopped talking to me and started sleeping on the couch. They spent 4 nights in Chicago together (I found this out through the credit card bank records online, and verifying at her work that she was "out of town on job training" which was exactly my husband's excuse.) When he finally returned home on the last night of his tryst, I took our son and left to spend the weekend with my parents out of town. He had sent me an email that morning before coming home that he had fallen out of love with me and wanted out of the marriage. The next day after my son and I had left I responded to that email with "you must leave and get out of the house now!" 30 min. later he called me begging us to come home, that he didn't mean what he said in the email and he wanted us to work things out. He was still reluctant to totally end things with her, saying he couldn't help not running into her in the building. After several evenings of trying to "discuss" him ending the relationship with her, I would leave and spend the night crying on the shoulders of a few of my best friends. He would call my cell phone incessantly, begging me to come home. His lover, BTW,is a very unstable person, has a history of trying to commit suicide, had left a threatening voicemail message on my work phone, and on another occasion when I intercepted a phone call from her to him, she completely went crazy, screaming and demanding that I put him on the phone --even threatened to come over to our house, to which I responded by saying "I'm calling 911." (Needless to say, she never showed. Darn!)

Where are we now? He still and always has sworn that they never at any point had sex (riiiiiiiight!). He swears he is not in contact with her now, although she has emailed him several times, and he says he hasn't responded. I don't believe him. He lied to me throughout this affair and I can't get over the feeling that he's still lying to me. Before, I could check his phone/texting activity online, but he has since changed all his passwords so that I cannot access anything. His reason was "because I'm sick of you always checking my @#%^* and I don't want you fixating on it." He always has been a control freak.

I want nothing more than to work things out, to be able to trust him, to have a real marriage and give my son a happy, stable environment with both parents who love each other. He apologizes profusely "for everything" and "for hurting me" but he will not apologize for getting involved with her.

He will not initiate intimacy with me and has yet to even say "I love you." He mopes around the house and every time I try to talk about it, he says I'm attacking him and he will talk when HE'S ready to talk.

Why does the betrayer get to be in control? If we're going to work things out, we need to address this. He saw a therapist one time 3 weeks ago, but has since not made another appt. I realize now that he is very much in withdrawal stages of the affair. Does he really mean it when he says he wants to work things out or is he just waiting for things to die down so he can go back to her? and still have me at home, taking care of his son, cooking, cleaning, etc? I cannot live with the confusion and pain any longer! We have to start talking, but how do I go about it? Should I take my son and leave again?
Thanks for listening...

I'm sorry you find yourself here.

You should ask a moderatoer to move your thread over to GQII. You will get more replies.

I would have your husband take a lie detector test so you get the truth.

There must be no contact between your H and OW. If necessary, one of them must quit. If they won't, you should report their affair to HR.

Your H MUST quit his job if OW is in the same building. The affair will NEVER end if there is still contact. Expose the affair to family members, starting with those that may have the greatest influence on your H. Do not leave your house. If you decide to plan B or D eventually, have your WH leave. You may want to sit your son down sooner rather than later and give him the PG version of what is going on.

Get yourself tested for STDs. Your H is still in the affair and is lying. I hope you kept that crazy b&tch's threatening voicemail. Is OW married?

DragonFly,
The betrayer only gets to call the shots in recovery if you let him. If you are too timid to stand up for what you know needs to happen for recovery, you will only have yourself to blame when you find yourself in a wholly unfulfilling and 1-sided marriage.

Please read this thread by CV55:
To BSs: Raise the Bar

Hopefully that will help you to realize that you don't have to accept the scraps that he is offering you. You are not in recovery. Your WH is not even in withdrawal. It is obvious to those of us that have been there that he is still an active wayward husband. He has blocked your snooping and told you that he is protecting himself from your craziness. There is a term for that. It is Gaslighting.

What you do now will set the stage for your recovery. You have to decide what worth you assign to yourself and act in accordance with what a woman of that worth deserves. Do you deserve a husband that is honest, loving, remorseful, and committed? Or do you deserve a husband who keeps you in a position of docile servitude, while he cheats on you? It sounds like a clear choice in theory right? It can be hard to push your WH, when you feel like he will leave you. You think its better to accept scraps of love and emotional abuse, than to lose him entirely. Well its not. Living in that sort of fear and limbo is soul-killing.

Take it from someone who gave his wife 17 months after her first affair to "woman-up" and get on the Marriage Builders recovery program. She never did. She would be good when I was silent about the affair. Whenever I would try to talk about it though to process some of the anger and pain that I felt, she would withdraw. She apparently expected to be able to lie to my face (and obviously so) and have me sweep it under the rug. I thought I was making slow progress with her, right up until I discovered her 2nd affair. In that instant, I knew that I had not set the bar high enough, and realistically even if the bar was on the ground, she probably couldn't have stepped over it. But had I raised the bar to begin with, I would not have wasted nearly 2 years of my life on a woman who is not worth another moment of my time or consideration.

You need to break the precedent that it is ok for him to abuse you like this. To gaslight you like this. Its hard and its scary, but you MUST realize that if you don't do it, you're marriage is dead anyways. Recovery from infidelity is a very narrow road. Even when you do everything right, its hard to work through the emotions and recover your love for each other.

I would recommend buying Harley's book "Surviving an Affair" and Shirley Glass' book "Not Just Friends". Read them and ask him to read them. Do an intense, but relatively short Plan A, and then raise the bar. Clearly lay out all of YOUR requirements to accept him back into the marriage and then do not waiver under any circumstances. Also, you will quickly find out that recovering your marriage while they work together is impossible. Not hard. Impossible. Something must be done about that.

As far as snooping goes, install a keylogger on your home computer. They run totally hidden and will capture everything your husband does. You will get his passwords to everything and you will even get screenshots of everything he does, so that if he deletes an email, you can still read it. He is not trustworthy and you need to know the truth. If you find he is still in contact with her, expose immediately to their work among others. Make sure you give no warning of exposure. Let it hit him like an atom bomb.

Keep us updated.

I would suggest exposing to HR at his office anyway. Don't let yourself be part of this "conspiracy of silence" to keep his A hidden, particularly as the OW is so unstable - she may prove to be a significant danger to you, your child or even you WH. I was told all sorts of stories why I shouldn't expose my FWW's A at her office - and had to endure 7 more months of her working with the OM as a result. If I had to do it again (I hope not!), I would expose immediately and let the chips fall where they may.

If exposure results in him losing his job, well, that's too bad - next time he might keep it in his pants and not cr*p where he eats! In any case, recovering your M will simply not be possible if they continue working together.

I endorse this absolutely.

Do avail yourself of the sample letters above. These will show you how to do this so that you do not look like a crazy person.

Once you have done that, continue to read the MB articles.

No doubt about it. This is an active, ongoing affair. As such, you will not be able to reason with this man. Don't bother trying to talk about the "relationship" with him now. His brain wiring is jammed for that kind of information. Can't hear ya.

The advice you have been given here is spot-on. Do NOT let your WH know beforehand, just EXPOSE the affair to your WH's Human Resource department and let them know you are trying to save your 29-year marriage, and would they please apply official policy for these situations. If OW is married, let her H know what's going on. Produce any proof you have. Odds are real good HE will do his part to shake things up on his end.

Will your WH be mad? Oh yeah. But he's mad and treating you badly at the moment anyway. They're always mad, but they can get over it. Your marriage cannot get over many more months of lying, betrayal and bad treatment. What have you got to lose that you haven't lost already?

Thought all that was hard? Trip on this: You'll have to muzzle your own angry statements and accusations. No pleading, begging or crying. All they do is give him justification for treating you badly and choosing OW. Do everything in your power to be the wife he had way back when he fell in love with you. Realize you will mostly be faking it, because it's the last thing you FEEL like doing, but because you are deciding to live out your commitment to the marriage. Better to base your actions on your convictions than to those roller coaster feelings that come and go and make mush of your brain (and his!)

Don't you want to show him WHY you're the obvious better choice? And if you still love him and want the marriage to continue, it's what you're gonna have to do. Once the A is over, and it WILL be eventually, he will remember the "best" you and be more willing to meet you on your terms (and you MUST have terms, when the time comes). Hard? Excruciatingly. But part of the program, and your best shot. Besides, it gives you back control. Control of YOU and what you do. You're the only one you can control, anyway.

Once you've done those things (It's called Plan A) for a while (a few weeks, at least, or longer if you can stand it), you can move to Plan B if you have to. Read about both on this site. They have worked successfully for so many of us here, even when we thought there was no hope at all. Really.

We'll be here to help, and to offer support and encouragement as you take on the fight of your life. Remember, we've fought on that battleground too, and we know the tactics!

RHW

Hi all,

I really needed to hear that I need to be my own person, to go back to who I was before this whole pile of @#$% began with WH and his girlfriend. BTW, on Nov. 18 he will be leaving City Hall to another building (close by) for a different job. I know it's still too close. She's only a block away. But this new job will require a LOT more of his undivided attention. His current one allows him way too much free time.

I confronted him again last week about how I still suspect his being in contact with the OW (he now has a laptop that's password protected, of course, and that he never leaves home without -- and even at home it's like an umbilical cord. He's CLEARLY still involved with her). Anyway, he became very defensive and started yelling at me about how I'm attacking him. I did my best to remain calm and keep a low voice while he proceeded to stomp around and yell about how unfair I'm treating him -- in front of our 9 year old son.

That moment changed me. I am determined to never allow my son to be abused like that. I am also determined to stop showing my feelings of sadness and despair over this, no matter how hard it will be to "fake it." Believe it or not, WH says he wants to work things out and is doing all he can to fix things (whatever -- he has seen a therapist once, three weeks ago and hasn't been back since). He's been on his best behavior around the house, bought me flowers, makes dinner, even cutting the grass without complaining!

But what is he up to? Why is he doing this? I've told him several times to leave and go be with her and get out of the house because I will not share ANYTHING with another woman. Why won't he just go? Why does he stay here and lie to me about wanting to work on our marriage when he has no intent of it? Are these cheaters really that f-ed up?

I've grown tired of obsessing about this and I want to move on and be myself again. I want to concentrate on what's best for my son. Obviously, yes, he is incapable of talking about his A and I see the point in not wasting time doing that. But if I stop talking about it, won't he win? Isn't this what he wants? For me to be quiet & pleasant at home so he can feel better about himself and continuing with OW?

I know it's time to start getting back to work being me and moving on, but being in the same house with him makes me feel like a caged tiger. I still feel like he deserves to be burned. I want him to hurt like I did. I'm still trapped...
~ dragonflygal