CCM, the Marriage Builders Radio show is free and is probably better than any paid marriage counseling you could find. Plus as others have said, marriage counseling is pretty much useless in the face of an active affair. Get the book Surviving an Affair and start working through the steps - you will first need to expose the affair far and wide as described here. Then you will need to start preparing immediately for a Plan B.

Here is some extensive help on setting up a Plan B:
How to Plan B correctly

If I am looking at the dates correctly, you have been dealing with this for at least a year! I am so sorry we did not get you listening to the Marriage Builders Radio show in that time - you would be an expert by now.

Dr. Harley recommends that a wife go into Plan B after at most 3-4 weeks, and you have been dealing with this since at least last June, apparently. We need to get you into a Plan B to protect you very quickly.

Think about it a minute - didn't his infidelity already shatter that bond? What he has done destroyed your marriage - to possibly create a new one with him, you have to start by burying this one.

Dr. Harley says that in his experience, exposure is usually the single most important first step to recovery. Without exposure, wayward spouses typically want to just sweep the affair under the rug and change nothing. They do not reestablish a romantic relationship with their betrayed spouse (to whom they owe it, frankly speaking), and they do not take steps to prevent an affair, so usually one happens.

I just got posting in another thread to a woman who was here TEN YEARS AGO. They did not follow the plan for recovery, and her husband is unfaithful again today. He is 50 and his affair partner is 25.

We do not want to see you back here in another ten years with a story of a long string of affairs. That kind of horrendous treatment puts women into the hospital. The best way to prevent it is for him to discover through experience that if he is unfaithful, it is going to be told to the world each and every time he does it.

CCM, please reword this. Your husband did not have an affair because of anything you did. Many, many people have been in marriages where their emotional needs have not been met, and still they have not chosen to handle it by having an affair. In fact, many of those people are here on this board - typically while a wayward is out philandering, they are not meeting their spouse's emotional needs, so back home there is usually a betrayed spouse who ALSO is not getting the attention they need and yet somehow is faithful.

Affairs do not happen because of lack of attention or unmet emotional needs. An affair is one possible choice a person can make in such a situation. In fact it is the worst possible choice they can make. It is like saying I burned my house down because my wife was neglecting me - how did that make anything better? I chose to develop a heroin addiction because my wife was neglecting me - how did that help? I turned to drinking, drugs, gambling, other women - it's all the same: if I did this, it's because it's MY STINKING CHOICE to go destroy myself and then blame my wife.

So hold your chin up high and realize that the responsibility for your husband's affair rests FULLY AND SOLELY WITH HIM. That was his choice. If he had a brain, he would've handled the neglect by actually TALKING ABOUT IT WITH HIS WIFE like a normal person. Even a separation or a divorce would have been kinder to you and better for himself than an affair.


Affairs are almost always addictions. And guess what - Dr. Harley was also an addiction counselor. His primary recommendation to start breaking the hold of addiction over your husband is EXPOSURE of the affair.

Thank you all. I sincerely appreciate the advise and support. I truly believe that my husband did not "choose" to have the affair. It came to him (at a troubled time in our own relationship), and as a human, he didn't resist it. The OW is very very persistent and uses her way to manipulate him to feel that he would be much happier with her. I love my husband so so much and this has hurt me so much for the past 2 years.

My husband is open to the idea of moving to another state to get away from this (he doesn't seem to be able to stay away from her while they can still see each other easily) and start a new life with me together. Is this (moving) something that I should act on? What if they still stay in touch? Do you have any advice on this? We both have very successful careers here, but our marriage is most important and I'm willing to do anything. Please advise on whether this would be helpful. Thank you so much.

Thank you, SugarCane. We have been married for 7 years. We have no kids, and the OW is divorced, no kids, and she does live near me. They used to work together but she has moved to another company (still very close by geographically). I believe they meet up at her place during work hours. She is not an old girlfriend, just someone from work. They work in a predominantly male environment (Engineers) and she seems to love getting the attention from everyone. My husband is very gentle and caring and probably an easy target for her.

We already know this. While he did "choose" to have the affair, he wasn't out looking for it. The temptation overwhelmed him. That describes 99% of affairs. This is a textbook affair.


Please read our posts and follow the advice. We can't help you if you persist in enabling this affair. You must first expose the affair and kill it or moving won't be an option because you will be divorced.

Our advice is to expose the affair. We can't help you if you wont' do that because nothing we advise will over come your enabling. It would be like a chain smoker asking for inhalers to help him breathe because he refuses to quit smoking.

Expose the affair and kill it dead. THEN you can move. But if he won't end the affair immediately, you should separate.

As previously mentioned, you need to expose the affair. In Dr. Harley's experience, this is the single most important step in getting recovery started.