I've been reading sites like these for months now and have been to nervous to post anything until now, so here goes
DH and i together to 13 yrs,2 kids 9 and 3. i know we have been drifting lately but felt sure we were ok and it was just the stress of family life getting to us. Over the summer i started to suspect an affair due to weird absences and his constant use of internet and phone. he just said i was being crazy and trying to take focus off me for ignoring him. We've spents months flipping every week from trying to work on it, fighting, or ignoring eachother. Then the last week of January something changed and we began flirting via texts while at work and meeting for drinks or dinner while kids were at sitters. I hadn't felt so good in years, I felt like we were dating again and was so excited. i told myself i was being crazy and he was not cheating. Then last week i opend a cc bill i never saw before. There is over $10,000 on it and from what i saw there and on the card site for earlier statements it is all hotels, bars, tickets to events etc. Secret was out, I called and he yelled at me for snooping. He refuses to tell me anything about this woman and says it was not romantic. This doesn't sound true since all charges look like dates, dinner, a show, new clothes, hotel. I am crushed beyond belief and can hardly function. We are trying to work it out but i feel i need to know who so i can make sure they are not around eachother. It could be someone at work or at sports(he is on a team), it could be my neighbor. I am obsessed that she knows who i am and could be talking to me without my knowing. He says the time is not right to discuss this, why i have no idea. I feel like he is protecting her from any confrontation with me or hiding her from me as a fall back. Everytime i feel sad his response is "what happened now?" said with obvious annoyance. I do still love him and would like to work things out. i understand we got here because i was not attending to him as i should and before discovering affair i was confident i could do what it takes to make him happy, as i had done before but it seems impossible now. I told him i feel like he asked me to run 10 miles, as he knows i can, but then cut off one of my legs. If he did this because i wasn't flirty, fun or sexual enough how can i do that now when i feel sick to my stomach at the thought of being intimate with him? Sorry such a long post, any feedback would be much appricated.

The most likely reason your husband won't tell you is because he is a) still having the affair or b) is still in pursuit of this OW.

Either way, his withholding of the facts is cruel, manipulative and dangerous. This is pertinent information about your life to which you have a RIGHT TO KNOW. He is trying to keep you in a marriage based on a LIE. It is impossible to base a marriage on LIES and DECEIT. Your H is harming your mental health by compounding the crime of adultery with LIES. Every day he won't tell you is a new lie added to the mix.

Recovery is impossible under these cruel conditions and you will not recover until you know the truth. Nor will your marriage ever recover. It is impossible to recover. the solution to adultery is honesty, not more lies.

Here is what Dr Harley posted to another woman:


Print this out and hand it to him:

Joseph's Letter



This is a post by Joseph, a member of BAN Support Group. He wrote to this letter to his wife to explain why he asked for details of her affair.


To Whomever,
I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly.

No one wants to be forced to 'look' at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn’t mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn’t he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I’m going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.

You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge.

You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you’re carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the 'STUFF' to figure out OUR reality. There isn’t really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don’t have.

Now let’s enter my reality. Let’s both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is well affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down.

To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever 'feel' complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are.

When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don’t worry about it, it’s not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don’t worry about it, it’s not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what’s the difference, it’s not important.

Then later when I’m expected to understand the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it.

You wonder why I can’t just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it.

So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don’t you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart.

I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier.

So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together.

It doesn’t come from jealousy, it doesn’t come from spitefulness, and it doesn’t come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn’t it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can’t and the reason I can’t is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world.

Do you have access to cell phone bills or his email? Could you look at his phone at night while he is sleeping?

Keep a copy of the credit card bill. You may be able to call or go online to find out what previous charges exist and how long the account has been open.



Do not blame yourself irish. Your WH CHOOSE to cheat. The problem is him not you. {{{{irish}}}

blackraven is right, I would be SCOURING his old cell phone and CC bills. Look at everything! find out who the ho is.

Are the credit card charges clustered by a certain city? Do you have a list of suspects? Is there any woman you can think of that gives off a weird vibe or that WH has mentioned in some off remark?

Thankyou for quick responses. I cannot check much because he uses a company cell as well as laptop. He locks the blackberry with a password i don't know but usually hides it now anyway since i said i would smash it. The only reason i could get credit card info is because he generally uses the same password for everything and knew i was never a snooper. He used to get an e bill for this card but they changed policy and started sending a hard copy to house or i never would have seen that either. I am very shocked he would do this as he has always been responsible with money and we cannot afford to pay off this card. He put us in a lot of debt for his affair and that is why i think he really may have feelings for her. I can go through most of day ok but sometimes i let this get hold and then he get angry that i'm upset. This is so frustrating, the not knowing and i am so worried it is someone i know and talk to. He will only say it is someone i have met in passing and i think that is a total lie, a set up so i will be less mad when i realize it is someone known to me.

1. It is not your fault and has nothing to do with what you may or may not have done. Everyone of us has gone down the "what if" trail.

2. WS' can go through tens of thousands in a very short period of time. I know it doesn't help, but the spending you see is not unique. Protect yourself financially ASAP.

3. Your WH is still in the affair. One of the first things you figure out is they lie like maniacs. The second thing they do is project all the blame on you. There is standard pyscho-babble that almost everyone of them uses.

4. Your WH has little respect for you vis-a-vis not fessing up. He has no respect for himself.

5. Exposing the A is crucial. Read the Plan A and B stuff. You may not have a name right now. I'd trumpet the news to parents (both sides), siblings (both sides), friends, and if this is work related, the place where they work. Expose, expose, expose.

PUt a keylogger on his computer. They have a remote one that whill send e-mails to you with all the details, etc. I believe it's spectra soft.com

Blackberry...PERFECT! Check out flexispy.com. Caution, you must have his blackberry password to install this. And it wil take longer than the company says to install (they say 10 minutes, It's more like 30).

Software rocks. You can see all the incoming and outgoing texts, complete with messages! And it tells you who he is calling and for how long. Advanced versions of the software let you GPS track him and be third party in listening to selected phone calls.

Voice recorder in his car. GPS his car. Do what you must to snoop.

And sorry you are here. Take care, D.

Irish,
I just wanted to reiterate what the other posters are telling you here. His affair is NOT your fault. You hold a share of the blame for the condition of the marriage, just as he does, but the affair is 100% on him. Do not EVER let him place the blame of his actions on you. He is the one who chose to abandon his vows and get involved with another woman.

Secondly, under no circumstances should you tolerate his attitude that he doesn't have to tell you the truth. If he won't, your marriage is over. Its as simple as that. I'm not telling you to give him an ultimatum, but just simply stating that if you agree to stay with him in face of these lies, you are condemning yourself to a lifetime of unhappiness.

There is simply no way, with his current attitude, that this affair is over. If he uses his work cell and laptop, his work is a prime candidate for exposure. There is a great sample letter here that notifies a company that a person is using company assets to further an affair, maybe even with a client. I would also expose to his family and your family, playing up the part about him racking up $10k in cc debt.

In the meantime, to get info about the OW, try and plant a cheap gps pay as you go phone in his car so you can track him online. Also, a voice activated recorder would probably get you her name pretty quickly.

Just please realize that you have to be strong through this. If you capitulate to the demands or the gas-lighting, this will continue until it breaks you.

I've just read the new stuuf on here and believe that he may still be doing it. We had a few days off with the kids and i didn't get a chance to use computer since if we weren't doing things as a family, he was on it. Still keeps cell with him at all times and when i asked to look at it he said he never agreed to let me check it whenever i wanted to(not true, he did). He had a couple of absences that were over and hour and just explained as shopping. The key logger, gps, recorder are good ideas but since everything is company owned i am afraid i would get in trouble for this, even car is co owned. plus , if he ever found out he would be furious, everytime he catches me checking on him he is furious and stays out all night saying he needs time to think. i think he goes to her. I believe if he has stopped than he is just hoping i forget about it. I rarely get mad at him and if i do i am usually over it in a day or two at most. i think he's hoping i'll do that with this situation too. It's so hard to have good times together and just ignore this which is what he is hoping.

Irish76,
In this case, I would "call his bluff" so to speak. If you can't afford to hire a PI, find a friend with a video camera. Then get on his case about the affair until he needs time to think and leaves the house. Then your friend or the PI follow him and get photo or video evidence.

There is no "maybe" about it. His affair is still going strong. He is just taking it a bit further underground.

YOU should be the furious one!

Why are you not furious! You should be going after him with a frying pan!

Seriously, stop being the weak one here and TAKE ACTION. As suggested, ask your friends to start following him. Get an address.

Go to his company HR Director, tell them what he is doing with company equipment, and ask to be given access to his password so you can verify exactly what he's doing. Can't hurt to try.

STOP worrying about making him mad. YOU should be mad, he should be begging you for forgiveness!

Put the voice-activated recorder under the seat of his car so you can at least get her name.

Once you and your friends have followed him and found her out, set up a list of people to call to expose the affair to. You will NEVER get your husband back if you don't expose the affair. NEVER.

Get off your butt and get something done!

a bit more info,
cannot alert work since we both work for same company but in different locations. A situation like this would be sure to have us both fired. The person I think it is works with him and he feels safe since he knows I would never bring it to work since it is the sole source of income for our family. We did not meet at work, we were already together and started very close together with the understanding that we leave our private lives out of work. I have told one person of our problems and my suspicions and they have offered to spy on him for me, I just feel bad about putting someone out like that since most of his absences occur after midnight. I did purchase a digitial recorder over the weekend but have not had a chance to put in the car. I don't really care if he gets mad but I try to keep peace in house to not upset our kids. He tends to start yelling and I don't want them to hear it. I can't find a good way to deal with this since we are tied together more than the average couple. Everyone says expose to family, friends, work but what happens if recovery takes place? Do friends and family hold grudges against WS? My family is very close to and fond of my WH but I feel like once this comes out they will never be close with him again, even if we recovered and I forgave him. Anyone had this happen?