Mark, the only thing I really wonder about is :if your wife is truly a person with a conscience, a persojn of quality with empathy,compassion and morals etc, would she not have eventually come out of this on her own, even had you issued ultimatums early on?
Can you say for certain that had you gone the harsher route, your marriage would have ended? Wouldn't that mean your wife lacks the ability to act morally and honestly of her own accord.
You are relying on your wife's speculation as to what she would have done had you been harsher. But, really, she does not know how she would have reacted. She is speculating on what her response would have been and, very often, folks have no real idea how they would react to things. Think of all the BS's trying to reconcile who had previously claimed they would never consider it.

Zelmo - I know for sure I would have been divorced.

Then within 2 years, the affair would have ended and I would not have been interested in reconcilliation.

Doing it without ultimatums and doing Plan A got me my wife back QUICKLY and less painfully.

What do you think is the best route?

Oh yeah Mark - Nice work buddy.

I'd defer to Harely and the Plans. Apparently, he feels they work and has the stats to back that. But, I think you have to admit that even if the Plans increase one's odds, they don't work the majority of the time. ANd, depending on the types of people in these situations, a diffferent approach may work better in an individual case.
As I mentioned, I did a pretty decent Plan A, although I did not realize what it was I was doing. It did not work. Perahps if I'd gone ballistic, that might have. Who knows.
My therapist tells me that in dealing with someone like my wife, setting boundaries would have merely hastend the end of the marriage. That would have been a good thing, in retrospect as I truly feel she is personality disordered.

Nothing ALWAYS works.

But you still back the fastest horse.

Agreed. But, I think what bother some folks is the impression is sometimes given that using the plans work in the vast majority of cases.
Melody and I got into this discussion, once, Kahuna , and I think you may have been in on it. I saw info on this site where the likeliehood of Plan A working is 15%. So, folks go to Plan B. But, in an April 08 article, Harley says that being in Plan B makes it more likely that divorce will occur(more likely than in Plan A, apparently). So, best case scenario for Plan B working to avoid divorce is 14.9999...%. Total is less than a 30% reconciliation rate which corresponds to stats from a couple other sites I looked at. Those sites are not talking about MB adhering couples. So, if those stats are right, do the plans really increase success? Has anyone independently studied this, someone with no financial interest in the MB product? Or , are we relying strictly on results reported by Dr Harley(seems like a nice guy, don't get me wrong)?

Dr Harley also says most marriages don't recover.

I think the percentages are right or about right for ending affairs. Some affairs die a natural death.

The real beauty of the MB Plans is that if the affair does end, they give you the best chance of recovery - in fact Dr Harley says people who follow his plans ALWAYS recover.

Z,

Too many "ifs" for me there...

When I confronted her she denied. I had enough proof to hang the governor of Illinois. All circumstantial but a LOT of it.

Two days later she called me right after getting off the phone with OM and told me she wanted a divorce.

The next night she spent with me at our vacation property where I had confronted her and when she left for work in the morning called OM and talked to him the whole hour plus trip to work, then called me an hour later and told me I should just file and get it over with because she wasn't going to give up OM.

That night she called me to tell me she had enjoyed spending the night before with me and then added that she still wasn't going to work on the marriage because she wanted OM in her life and knew that I would not allow it.

The following day she refused to answer any of my calls while I was meeting with our pastor. The next day I went to church and she said she'd be there before church started. Friends were visiting that were missionaries in Romania that day and my wife had spent two weeks in Romania with them a couple years before. My wife did not show up at church and would not answer the phone calls from me, her twin, her older sister, our pastor's wife, our daughter nor our son. She came home at 6:30 that night and sat in silence in the living room while I fixed dinner and the rest of us ate. When our granddaughter tried to climb into her lap my wife pushed her away and went to bed.

The next morning she told me she was thinking about quitting her job and moving to Kentucky at the end of the week. We spent that next Saturday traveling to our niece's wedding and back home.

If I had challenged her during that first couple of weeks like I did a few weeks later I have no doubt she would have been in OM's bedroom by morning.

Would the affair have ended?

I have no doubt that it would. OM is a loser, a serial cheater and a drunk. Oh, and still married though his wife moved out because of the above description.

Would she have wanted to come home and recover the marriage when it was over? I'm not sure but I would bet money on it.

Would we have gotten divorced instead of recovering our marriage?

Now I can't say "never" because that's too easy to prove not viable as an answer. But I can tell you that if she had moved to OM's house and left me with the mess of a house we had with DS and DD and DGD all living there and trashing the place all the time and letting me deal with the credit card debt that was the result of her spending, I would more than likely not wanted her back by then. I would not have come here, would not know the statistics on affairs, would not have spent time looking at myself and just blamed her for every problem in my life and certainly wouldn't have learned how to recover a marriage damaged by infidelity and would have no clue how to go about accomplishing it.

Am I 100% certain we would be divorced? Not really. I think it's more like 99 and 44 100ths % sure.

You see, if you play the "my way or the highway" card before you know what other cards are still in the deck, you might have to settle for the highway instead of the right way.

A lot comes up around here about boundaries. Some guy says "My wife wants to go to Aruba this weekend with OM." And someone says, "well, I'd make that a boundary..." DUH...

OK. And if the boundary is crossed what do you do? The ultimate boundary enforcement is death. But that will not save my marriage nor make me mister popular around the kid's school.

Now at some point I might even feel like that is my last resort, but it isn't where I start negotiations. But my first choice might be to cancel her credit cards and run her passport through the shredder.

And when she storms out and drives away because I ruined her weekend of fun, she comes home at three in the morning to locks her key no longer fits.

The problem with boundaries is that they define US and not other people. I can decide what I will do but not what other people will do. I can try to decide for them, but I really have no control over them at all.

But of course my reason for the boundary is to get the other person to act the way I want.

If my FIRST boundary enforcement is execution by firing squad I stand little chance of getting what I wanted but will be more likely to end up with the other person dead at my feet.

But if I have progressive enforcements I stand a chance of making things uncomfortable enough for them that they will eventually modify the behavior into what I want from them.

So in order to get my way, I need to be able to define what it is I want, explain the consequences and escalate the consequences until I either get what I want or hit the end of my tolerance and use my final enforcement.

For marriage, the ultimate enforcement of personal boundaries is divorce. Since that was what my wife said she wanted how would that be a way to make her want to end the affair and commit to recovery?

Are you all done reading now so I can go to bed pretty soon?

Mark


OK I just had to add this and then I'm done...For now anyway...

Z, one of the things you are missing in all of this is that anyone who knew my wife was disbelieving that she could even do such a thing. She was the LAST person anyone would think would do the stuff she did.

But that is why around here we say that the WS has been abducted by aliens. Nothing the WS is in character or rational. It isn't rational to knowingly hurt a person you professed to love as badly as an affair does it. Anything that follows from that can't possibly make any sense.

When my wife was actively in her affair she wasn't really my wife at all. There was NOTHING about her that was like my wife before or since. She was a wayward wife then and waywards are not the same folks we married. Nor are they the same folks who enter into recovery. The think with there glands instead of their brains. They can't see how foolish they are because it's too dark inside their anus and that is where their heads are up to the armpits.

That's NOT a boundary - that's manipulation.


Manipulation


Manipulation

Assumption #3, WS wants to save the marriage.

Without #3 I wouldn't give a crap about #1 or #2.

bigk,

I don't think that it's manipulation to change the locks for your home, or ruin a weekend for OM.

Those are consequences.

I applaud men who take such steps and make life difficult for a WW.

The WW brought these discomforts on herself.

I'm not an advocate for filing for divorce when someone doesn't want it. I do advocate that a BH take aggressive steps to protect his rights as a father. These hardcore steps are usually enough to lift the fog of a wayward wife on their own because the vast majority of women believe that the kids will automatically be with them.

My exww told me several times that she was going to talk to people to find out what the typical visitation arrangement was and that that was she was going to give me. She was the self appointed authority.

She was that way for a little bit because I allowed her to be. The fact is that she never was, but she acted like she was because she was a self entitled woman who figured that she would have the kids because she was a woman. I had the mistaken assumptions that I would lose because I am a man.

We were both wrong.

So a BH has to fight what he has heard about custody and understand that the law truly is neutral in theory and that it will force it to be fair if the BH behaves in a smart way.

It is strong, aggressive, and assertive tactics in the legal system that work in the favor of the man. This doesn't mean you litigate till the cows come home. The objective is to protect your rights as a father and not buy a new Mercedes for the lawyers.

But Zambo, for example, just had a restraining order slapped on him for very flimsy reasons. Many men out there wouldn't contest it. Zambo has us in his corner to tell him otherwise.

What I'm realizing is that women more often than not win custody because men let them win by making very idiotic mistakes that are perfectly preventable.

So part of the WW fantasy is that life will go on with her and her children like normal and the BH will see the kids when she says so and he will like it, by God.

That's just not the truth.

So my aggressive approach with legal action is, in my opinion, part of Plan A for a man. It's part of the stick of Plan A.

Because the lawyer could be the bad guy and the BH can stick to his guns that none of this is necessary or wanted and that all a WW has to do to end it is commit to her marriage and have NC.

That's not manipulation. That's covering your bases.

She wants to keep her OM, by all means. Knock yourself out. But the kids and the BH will stay together and the BH isn't going to let her have her fantasy about pushing him out and replacing him with OM.

Just not going to happen.

Zelmo, you are still confusing ENDING THE AFFAIR with ending the marriage. So lets unpack this again because your statistics are not correct which make your conclusion wrong.

15% of AFFAIRS end in Plan A although 95% of affairs do end in under 2 years. So what does that tell you? It should tell you that 15% end in Plan A and that the other 80% end in Plan B. That tells us that it takes LONGER THAN 3 weeks to 6 months [the time of Plan A] to end the affair.

You are not taking into account the other EIGHTY PERCENT that end in Plan B. You are assuming that NONE end after plan A and that is where you going off the tracks.

NOW, Dr. Harley claims two different things:

1. that most marriages do not recover from adultery

2. most marriages do not end in divorce from adultery

What is he saying? He is saying that while most marriages stay together after adultery, they do not recover from the damage and remain crippled. He does not say that most marriages END from adultery, he says that most marriages do not recover. Big difference!

His conclusion dovetails perfectly with statistics on this subject.

Divorce Statistics from divorcepeers.com:


Percentage of couple who preserve their marriage after an affair

▪ 64%



Of those couples who remain married despite an affair, what percentage later describe the marriage as unhappy or empty?

▪ 78%


Footnote 3: "Looking for Love? Uh-Uh," O: The Oprah Magazine, October 2004, Alexa Joy Sherman, pages 266-268 — source: "Sex by the Numbers," citing "American Sexual Behavior: Trends, Socio-Demographic Differences and Risk Behavior" (National Opinion Research Center); The Social Organization of Sexuality; Journal of Sex Research (February 2001); American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy; Adult Video News; NIH; IMS Health; AARP / Modern Maturity Sexuality Study. here

Can you please show us your citation for 80% of affairs ending in Plan B?

It's called math, iam. 95% end within two years. 15% end during Plan A. 95-15=80...

you are a mathematical genius!

It would be interesting to see the numbers broken down by gender of the wayward.

I suspect the survival of the marriage is far lower when it's the wife who has the affair. As we've seen and Dr Harley as well as Steve Harley say, it's less likely the woman will return because her heart is closed to her husband.

I was listening to Focus on the Family this morning returning from my men's Bible study group and I believe it was Gary Smalley and his wife on the program. They were talking about how disconnected they became, and how she began building an emotional wall to keep him out of her life.

He asked the question if he could come home, as he wasn't really a part of the family with everything he was doing, and she slowly let him back into her heart, after about two years.

However, I think her response is rare. Most hang on to those resentments, never trusting again. Some of those wives become waywards, jumping to the first man to meet those needs. Others just walk away, often never really telling their husbands what the problem is.

She said she didn't tell him about it, she just built her wall. He had no clue and it was only a picture his daughter drew of the family and he wasn't in it that got his attention.

This is the side of Why Women Leave that is not addressed. Dr H does a great job of saying all the things the man has done wrong, and I don't disagree.

Where I think he falls short is that he doesn't address the other half of the problem, where the woman doesn't effectively communicate what is going on in her heart in a way that is without LB's.

That silence of Mrs Smalley is just as destructive to the marriage as him spending most if not all of this time, talent and treasure on things like career, education, etc.

I believe most of the time when the wife walks away, or has an affair, she has already emotionally divorced her husband, and is just making that a physical reality with those actions.

So I suspect if you look at the recovery stats when it's the wife who cheated, the numbers of marriages that end is higher than the number that do not end in divorce.

Those are good questions, EE, and I have wondered the same things. There are major differences in the emotional dynamics of men versus women. For example, Dr. H notes that women love ONE MAN at a time, while men are able to love TWO.

While statistics are fun to discuss, I worry about discouraging people and I will tell you why. I am a recovering alcoholic with 23 years of sobriety. Only 10% of alcoholics ever recover. Only 10% die sober. Some might look at that and not even try even though there is hope.

On the other hand, the odds of recovering a marriage after an affair is much, much higher and there most certainly IS HOPE. We see many recovered marriages right here on this forum.

I hope folks focus on that and realize there is hope. Sure, some cases are hopeless and in those, the definition of success is divorce. But many are hopeful.

Yes, but Mark, some of the remaining 80% that end are not situations where Plan B is being used. For example in my situation, after about 5 months of trying Plan A(well, I did not know about plan A, but I was sort of doing one), my XW moved out to be with the OM and insisted I file for divorce or she would. So, I filed and she was gone.
18 months or so later, when I was completely out of the picture , just dealing with her about the kids and seeing the kids, the affair dissolved. I suppose the situation was like a Plan B, in that I was having no contact and they got a chance to see what one another was really like, in the light of day.
It's funny. At that point, when her fantasy was falling apart, and I was still hanging out with her folks and brothers socially, she called me to complain about the fact that I had told the kids about the affair(the guy was living with them and they had been told that he came on the scene just recently, after the divorce). She also complained that I had "trashed " her to all the folks I had told about her affair. I had not, just told them the truth.
In any case, after berating me for all the exposure, she , out of the blue, said "maybe I should have gone to the counseling you were suggesting". This was what I had asked her to do, get IC and go to MC for us, during the 5 months between D-day and her moving out.
But, it was too late. We were divorced and I had moved on.
OSmetimes, there is nothing one can do tostop this runaway train, the affair. I exposed to everyone, except the kids, initially. I paid all our household bills and took good care of the kids. I tried to get us into counseling. Nothing worked. I was calm the entire time.

Nice going on the recovery, Melody. My dad was an alcoholic. He stopped drinking later in life and was a different person.
I think folks should try to recover their marriages if possible. But, with some WS's, you just get nowhere.

Zelmo, but we are talking about those that ARE in Plan B. Of those that ARE in Plan B, 80% of the affairs end at that stage. If 95% end in under 2 years, 15% end in Plan A, then that means that 80% end in plan B.

Plan B or not, 95% end in under 2 years. 80% of affairs end in Plan B, 15% end in Plan A.


So this falls right into the "95% of affairs die in under 2 years."