Should have openly cc'ed you.

Well, shouldn't have done it, but at least she told you.

kind of like one step back, then 1/2 step forward i guess.

Was it polite to OM's wife or to you? Weird is screwing someone else's husband at work when you yourself are married. Your WW needs a perception shift.

There are no steps forward while she is still in contact w/ OM (i.e. works with him).

Better answer than mine.

It doesn't matter what the "excuse" is. My WW was quite convinced it was alright to call OM after d-day to "see if he was okay."

Agree 100%. I can't stress this enough! Without NC for LIFE you as well be playing snooker with a rope

Hope everyone had a Happy Holiday and New Years celebration.

It has been a while since I have posted, so here is my update.


There was no contact between WW and OM over the Holiday Break, but now they are back at work together. Their jobs only bring them to the same building once or twice a week for meetings, but as you all know, that is not acceptable. There have been a few emails in the last few days, all of them work related, but not entirely necessary for their jobs. And example would be OM sending out a status email to a group of people including WW. WW will then reply to OM asking a clarification question when she could have easily asked one of 7 or 8 other people the same question. The really suspicious part is that she will delete the email she sent from her email since she knows I am watching her account.

Today she had to ask him a few questions about some of the facilities he is in charge of at work, and he replied with short, terse and answers. It seems that he is trying to not contact her any more the necessary. Her replies back to him where more wordy, and the email exchange ended with her joking asking OM what he thought of her getting this particular work done early instead of procrastinating like usual. There was no response from him. This is so frustrating that she continues to think that she can continue to be friendly with OM.


Yesterday, she surprised me by bringing up our relationship and wanting to talk. She usually never wants to discuss the affair. she said that she thought things were going better. I brought up counseling and she said she still isn't ready to talk to a stranger. She also said that she wishes that I would stop calling her family every time something happens because it is destroying her relationship with her mother and sisters. I didn't think much of it at the time, but why would she be concerned that I would call them again? The times I called them before was when the affair was still in full swing, so unless she is expecting me to find something to get angry about again, I should have no reason to call them.

Anyway, that is my update.

Next time she brings that up, I would say that it is her actions that are destroying her relationship with her family, and if she doesn't want you to call them everytime she has contact w/ OM, then she should leave her job and not have contact w/ OM. You are going to continue to live in limbo land and her emotions are going to swing continuously as long as there is contact. The way things are going, you will be divorced by this time next year. There will be no improvement while they work together, you will continue to grow frustrated, and eventually you will file for divorce. I hope things improve in your relationship with your WW, but I don't know how they will given your current situation. I wish you the best of luck.

I plan on bringing this up tonight.





The strange part of all of this is that the time we spend together lately has been better that the last few years of our relationship. I do get the feeling that she is truly trying and that my improvements in plan A are having an effect. But, at the same time, when I am not with her, all I do is worry. It prevents me from getting anything done at work. I think she has realized that she does love me and want to spend her life with me, but doesn't realize the impact the affair has had on me, and doesn't see a problem with continuing a friendly relationship with OM. I just don't see any way of getting her to realize that she has to end all contact. She will never leave her job voluntarily, and exposure at work will not get her or OM fired. The only thing I can think of to do is go to plan B and file for a separation, but SH has advised against that because it makes it easy for WS's without children to walk away. SH's plan is to try to get her on board with MB basic concepts so she can see for herself that contact must end, but that is proving to ber very difficult. Every time I bring it up, she says she will read the material, but says she doesn't want to do it "right now." So, as you might suspect, it hasn't been touched yet.

So why subject yourself to the torture if you don't have kids with this woman?

Why put up with it when you can walk away for perfectly understandable reasons and start over with someone who hasn't betrayed you so deeply?

There are TONS of good women out there.

Everyday that passes that she stays in this job is a day that your wounds fester.

It's time for the stick of Plan A.

Leave the job and have zero contact for life or else.

Plan B does sound like it's in the cards.

But you may realize after a few weeks in Plan B that there is no way in he77 that YOU want that woman back after what she did to you.

is it typical for a wayward's family to start to distance themselves from the situation?

the reason I ask is that yesterday my MIL sent me an email asking how WW was doing. I sent a long response back detailing all my frustrations with WW. I got a response today asking me not to talk to any of WW family members about the A because it is too hard because they are too emotionally involved. Many of my frustrations were about WW's unwillingness to go to counseling or even read any of the material I have printed form the MB website. MIL's recommendation was to stop pushing that stuff, and just "spend more time together and communicate." Like mother, like daughter I guess, because that is exactly what WW wants to do. If just feels like we are drifting without any direction whatsoever.

Is this type of response from a MIL typical?

Yes.

It can be an uncomfortable situation with divided loyalties and most people just don't want to get involved or be bothered with it.

TC,


You MIL cannot not educate your W any more than you can. So getting all of this information is very frustrating because no matter how much they want to help, they cannot.

If you need something from MIL, I would recommend asking: for advice, help whatever. However, she cannot help you with your W.

Stop trying to educate your W it won't work. Educate yourself, and then make your own decisions. This is really your call, not hers.

God Bless,

JL

It's been a little while since I have posted, but her is an update. Not sure if there is anything I could or should do differently at this point, I just need to get some of these things off my chest, and MB is the only place I can do this anymore.


I've been monitoring WW's email since my last exposure to OM's W (1 month ago) and found a disturbing email last night.

First, some back story. Before D-day, WW, OM and some of their other colleagues were attending a post conference party that they hosted with other colleagues in their field from across the country. OM's boss, who has been through 3 marriages, and has been both a OM and a BS, was pretty drunk and told WW and OM that he could tell what was going on, but that "everything will be ok." WW told me this after the first D-day.

Now to the email...

yesterday, OM's boss sent WW an email about work, but added "you doing ok?" to the end of the email. Last night, while I was at class, WW responded, "Some days...the other days I fake it. It's honestly been pretty hard, it's exhausting to act normal all the time. But it's got to get better right?"

Since D-day 2, it has been easier to get WW to talk about "us", but she always just says that she thinks" things are going better" and that is it. Clearly, from the emails, she is not doing well. It disturbs me that she would open up to OM's boss, who she barely knows, and has shown that he has no idea about marriage, and is clearly enabling this affair, but not to be at all.

The strange thing is that she knows I have access to her email. I would think that she would not want me to see such communications.

The past few weeks have been pretty good over all, but the last few days, she has been acting more down in the dumps. I know withdrawal can't really start until NC, but it seems as if it may be starting for her.

She needs to communicate with OM occasionally for work via email and the emails since exposure 2 to OM's W have been pretty one sided. She'll send him an email about work stuff, but add a little smiley face ( or :P ) to the end of the email, or she will add some other unnecessary comment about how she is really tired that day to the end of the email. Her comments are not affair type talk, they appear to be an attempt to re-establish communication. His responses are always short and to the point. He even has deleted her unnecessary comments from her messages in his replies. It appears that he has chosen to end things with WW, so maybe that could be the reason she could be entering withdrawal without NC.

The last time I talked with Steve H was about a month ago, and his advice was to try to continue trying to get her to read the MB material. So far that has failed, so I should probably schedule another session.

Hi TC,

First off, it is a slow death for everyone invloved while there is contact, no matter how terse and emoticon-free the emails may be.

That said, I think your MIL stumbled into a point there. Your WW has to feel a possibility that going back with you will be something other than constant marriage counseling and guilt about her A. Have fun, relax, talk with her, don't be needy.

You are in my thoughts,

Mike

We haven't discussed the affair or how our marriage is doing in 2 weeks, and the last time we did, she was the one who brought it up. Even when we do discuss it, I don't bring up the past much, if at all, discussion is more focussed on how each of us think the marriage is going, what we think is making it better, and what we could do to improve.

After d-day, she said that she wants to be more intimate, and for a while, she was initiating SF, when she never used to before. But now, it has been almost 2 weeks since last SF, and she has been much more withdrawn.

I am trying my best to meet her EN's and do a good plan A, but it is tough when I don't know her top EN's. From discussions, she has said she wants to feel excited about me again, and that she wishes I would flirt with her more. So, I have been trying ti flirt with her more, but she hardly responds. I have also been trying to plan events for the weekends, or nights to go out during the week, but there is always some excuse. Either she is too tired, or she has too much work to do, and she just stalls all day my laying in the couch watching TV until it ends up being too late to do what I had tried to plan. I guess she isn't in a position for me to fulfill her EN's right now, it is very frustrating.

For the past week, I have been trying to plan a ski trip for feb, but when I ask her if she wants to go, she says "sure", but doesn't know if she can for work, but I can't even get her to ask her boss for the time off. It just seems like she is just stalling until I drop the whole idea.

Something her sister told me last month has been in the back of my mind for a while and is starting to worry me. After d-day, WW's mother suggested that she put herself fully into the marriage and try her hardest for a year and then evaluate if she still wanted to be married to me. WW responded by saying that she would try for 2 years. The reason this has me concerned is that WW has a little under 2 years left on her residency. Right now all she earns is a stipend from the university, so living on her own would force her significantly change her lifestyle. Also, if she moved out during her residency, all of her colleagues would know. I am afraid she is just trying to coast for the remainder of her residency and then drop me once she gets her high-paying job and doesn't need me anymore. One side of me says that if this is truly the case, I would be better off dropping her now, but the other side says that this is common wayward fog-speak and should he given much thought. so confused...

At least you could petition for support if that's the case.

Seriously, your marriage will just die a slow death as long as there is contact. You have to decide if this is how you want to live for the next 2 years.

do you mean, financial support? If we end up divorced, i don't want a dime from her, but she is free to take her huge amount of school debt.


I don't want to live the next 2 years like this, but if I give her the choice of me or her residency, she will choose the residency because she isn't in love with me right now. I've asked Steve Harley about going to plan B, but he did not recommend it since it just makes it easier for her to walk away since we don't have kids. His recommendation was to subtly try to educate her on the MB principles and see if she would be willing to talk to him. So far she hasn't agreed to read anything or talk to a counselor. I guess I need to call Steve and see what his next idea is.

One, your WW must leave this job. Your marriage will not recover without NC.

Second, your WW is still fishing to reconnect with the OM by what you have shown in her emails.

Third, your WW's boss appears to be condoning her affair. Her boss, with his past as an OM and not being bothered with an employee having a work place affair under is a bad sign. Then the boss's emails appear to be going in the direction of to personal in nature.

As if the boss is reacting as a shark to blood into the water.

His past as an OM. Knowing your WW sleeps around. The boss is showing signs of anting to be OM#2.

I've never met him, so I can't say what his intentions might be, but he is in his upper 50's, and WW is 27, so I don't think she would go for him. She has never shown a preference for older men, but stranger things have happened....