Me and my wife have been married for almost 15 years..about a month ago the daughter that she had when we got together real father shows up telling her he still loves her. He has not had anything to do with either of them in almost 20 years and has been with his wife that he left my wife to stay with all this time. The daughter told my wife that I am her dad and aways will be and know my wife is telling me she still has feelings for him and does not know if she wants me or him. She hide that they were talking till I found out then said that she did not want to hurt me with it. Now it has progressed to I need to meet him face to face to see if my feeling for him are real or just memorys.. I am so lost and hurt that I have almost left three times just to get away from the pain. We have had a good marrage on the most part is what she has told him. She has told me thru this whole thing that she has no intention of leaving and in an email to him and me that (she could not walk away from something she knows works and could not abandon our daughter) who is 13. We have had our struggles and in the last week we have been doing alot of talking about our past and the pains that we inflickted on each other. I found this site and she has read some of the information on it. After she read about the love bank we talked and she said that hers was in the red. I have been working very hard at meeting her emotional needs and trying to find the ones that she feels are most important. i just don't know what to believe or think. She is meeting him on friday for dinner and is suppose to come home and let me know if she is staying or going.

Welcome.

Sounds like your WW has hidden alot from you recently. He didn't pop out of nowhere. This has been going on for some time. She's been having an A with him and it probably is physical as well. Read up on this site. Learn about the concepts and learn what her ENs are.

Who knows about this? It needs to be exposed to the world.

Isn't love grand!! A man from her past is coming back to her life to rescue her. Her knight on a white horse. And on the other side is well you. You know the guy who has stood buy her all these years and treated her daughter as his own. You know the boring guy.

Now her love bank is in the red. Every woman who is having an affair sees life this way. I can tell you that is text book. So what are you doing to stop her affair. You might want to go into General Questions area of the infidelity section on how to expose the affair and stop it.

If it were my wife I would let her know if she is dating I am going to assume she no longer wants to be married to me. Actually I did tell my wife that when I filed for divorced. I always thought that if my wife wanted to date then I did not want to stand in her way. My ex was sleeping with another guy and I filed and she freaked out and came around fast. In my opinion no woman is worth it who does this but that is up to you.

The first step is to expose the affair to your wifes family and the other man's family and wife or ex-wife. Sorry for what you are going thru I know how horrible that is.

I agree with I had enough. I would tell her this. If you meet him for dinner you have already decided. So I will save you the trouble of choosing. I'll file in the morning if you go to dinner with him. That's it. I'm not even going to put myself in a place to be chosen. So make your decision now. I have the lawyer on speed dial.

First off, the first respondent was right that your wife has most likely already been physical with him. If you have read the materials here, you can probably see that when your wife started talking to her exHusband, she started an emotional affair. Now that she is deep in it, she has re-written your marital history making you out to be a monster. While there are certainly areas you can improve on in meeting her needs, her view is definitely an exaggeration to some degree. She is in an affair fog in which she views him through rose colored glasses and you through mud covered ones.

I completely agree with IHadEnough. I would tell her that you are want to have honest communication between you, go to counseling, whatever it takes to fix the issues in your marriage, but you will not sit idly by while she tries out other guys to see if you are worth keeping. Is she close with her parents? Can you expose this to them? Is the ex-husband still with his girlfriend/wife? I would expose to her as well.

You need to shed light on this emotional/physical affair so it does not seem so romantic for your WW.

I would have someone you know follow her to make sure she is actually going to dinner at a restaurant and not to a hotel restaurant if you know what I mean!!!

I don't think they have meet in person because we live about ten hours from him. I am just not sure what to think ..Is she just going to meet him for closure from 20 years ago or is she still really in love with him and willing to risk all that we have for him.
She says that she is just confused right know because all of the feelings that came up when he got in contact with her.

She's not going to meet him for closure. What the heck is that supposed to mean, anyway? They DIVORCED. He ignored her for 20 years. How much more closed can a relationship be than that?

She thinks she's in love with him. She is confused.
Expose the affair. This is your single strongest tool in ending it. Your marriage cannot recover while she is in an affair.

Don't tell her your plans, don't make threats. Just get a list of people and their phone numbers and start making calls. Exposure targets:
OM's wife
WW's parents
Friends that you know are pro-marriage
Clergy if you are religious
Your step daughter
Your daughter

Exposure is not done out of malice. It is done out of love. It goes like this:
WW is having an affair with OM. I am devastated, of course, but I want more than anything to reconcile with my wife and build a new and better marriage with her. I'd greatly appreciate your support and I welcome any advice you might have.

Expose to everyone on the same day. Go nuclear with it.
Your WW will be FURIOUS. She will tell you that she hates you, she wants a divorce, you have destroyed her trust in you (hahahaha), that any chance the marriage might have had is gone now, that you have shown your true colors, blah blah blah.

The backlash is because she won't be happy having her fantasy world exposed to the light of day. And it IS a fantasy world. If it were truly so great and wonderful, she wouldn't care who knew.

What's going on?

Well she came back and said that she is still confused.. we talked a little that night and she said that she need a day or so to sort things out. I said ok and we did not talk about it yesterday, but last night after I told her that I had a dead line in mind for a answer and if I did not get one that I would file the papers( I was not mean or anything and I took the basic concepts into it) she said the she did not want a divorce or to split our family up.. Sha said that she did not think of it as an affair just as an old freind that she had not seen in 19 years and that she is trying to figure out if we can work or not.That she is not sure that she can give our marriage 110 percent and that is what she is trying to work at. My wedding ring was broke and she picked it up and I told her not to give it back till she could tell me that she was staying and willing to work on US

Hi Hurting,

Won't you clear up your choice of namesake:

I understand it as "hurting bad".

This is not MB approach at all. This is a lovebuster. Breaking the wedding ring is a buster. Learn to be cool and firm.

Finding a male friend -is going to break a family up. No questions. Use this as the stick.

Read plan A in the articles above.

Did you ask anything about the evening? Did they have sex. How would you know if they didn't? I'm glad to here you threatend her with filing. She said she was going to decide after their dinner. BS. She now knows that you will let her date him if she pressures you. How much longer do you think she will wait to push the envelope and have sex with him? Let me tell you how it would happen. She will say once again. "I am having dinner with him once more to gain closure". She will say she will be home by 10:00. You will call at 10:15. Her phone will be shut off. Then you will call at 11:00. And the phone will still be off. Then you will call at 1:30 in the morning. She will answer this time and say, that they went for drinks and she will be home by 2:00. She will role in at 4:00 and confess that they had sex twice that evening. She will say she wants to work on your marriage, and does not want a divorce. She will say something like. I just need more time to figure this out. Be prepared.

You may consider saying this. " You may still be confused. But I am not. You are my wife. And I will not stand by while you ease yourself out of our marriage. You have said that you're not sure you can give our marriage 110%. I am letting you know now that if you see him again. I will consider that as you deciding that you can't make our marriage work. So the next time you go out, the morning after I will file for divorce. Further more, you will write a letter of no contact to him. I am not saying that you cannot see him. I am merely saying that if you do our marriage is over."

On a side note. Does your wife understand the damage she is doing to her relationship with her daughter. If she breaks up your family with the man who deserted her before. She risks her daughters hatred over this. I think your daughter needs to apply pressure on her as well, by saying that she not live with her or visit her if she destroys your family and hurts her father like this.

well here it is monday and today I was talking to her and she said that she was emailing him once with her decition that she said she made that was to stay and work it out..I checked our phone records and she had been texting him all day... I was on line and we were chatting when I found out.. it turned from there...she was still saying that she was trying to sort things out and that she was still contused...I have caught her in lie after lie and I told her today that when she gets home tonight that she needs to move out...she started telling me that she will read this site and start working on us I just don't believe her..she has told me that she would not talk to him and then does every time.. I love her but will not be a door mat. I have tried all I can and even when she got off work and while we were chatting she was still texting him..she called him after work and did not even bother to call or see me before she went to her salon job..after she knew that I was done and that I told her she had to move out.. He is ten hours away and she calls him.. what is up with that ...I guess it is truely over. any thoughts anyone I need all the help I can get...

I think you did exactly the right thing. She has no self control. You don't want her around that way. I would suggest that both you and your daughter go NC with her. She needs to find out what life will be like without the two of you. It is a hard lesson. But if she is continuing the EA. It is only a matter of time till it goes PA. You have set clear boundaries. It would be one thing if there was contrition. But she will say and do anything to keep both you and your daughter and the OM. She must realize she doesn't get both.

How are you hurting? What's the latest?

Ok heres the lastest.. she did not move out our 13 year old went to the bathroom and after I told her she needed to leave I went to check on her and held her for awhile with my wife standing at the door. Our duaghter then went and hugged her mom and said that she just wanted it all to go away and my wife said she wanted the same. They sat on the camode and my dauther asked me to give her mom one more chance and I did not want to, but had to explain to my daughter why I was doing what I was and she just continued to ask my to please give mom another chance.. My wife then asked me to please do the same and I asked her to talk to me and tell me why I should after being lied to over and over and she said that she did not want to lose me and did not want to leave and agreed to tell him goodbye.. she has had email contact with him that she said she would send me a copy of all that was said and did most of the time but I am not sure all of it... I then came home early tuesday and found them chatting on line and she said that she had plans to forward that as well but I just don't know what to beleive. she told me to trust my heart that is was right and that she loved me and I was her life and her love. She was all nice that afternoon but the next day she was right back to being her old self(cold and distant to some extent not as bad as she was) and did forward me one email that he sent her. Today I told her that I wanted no contact with him for 5 months and I know that he will continue to contact her and that I did not want her to respond in any manner and if I found out that she has in that time period that the marriage was over and that I will file the papers and there will not be another chance.. I give it five months because that is our 19 year old daughters birthday and he has plans on surprising her in person.

well I will keep you guys informed ..Thanks to all that help

Very happy to hear you put it to her. Do not expect her to be honest. You need a keylogger on the computer. You can get one off here. You must know what she is e-mailing him. Don't believe a word she says. Stay strong.

Hurting666,
Your situation is not going to get better until YOU start enforcing some boundaries. Your lack of a real response is only emboldening her. She will continue to do this for as long as you continue to be her doormat. Women don't love men they don't respect and they don't respect weak men, and thats what you are being right now.

You allowed your daughter to be used against in a form of emotional blackmail. You should have clearly told her that her mother is betraying you and her, by bringing another man into the marriage. That there is no marriage to save while she runs around with OM.

Its been what, 1 day, and your wife has already violated NC multiple times and is back to chatting with him online? Oh she was going to forward that to you as well? Will she give you the videotape of them sleeping together? I'm sorry to be crass and harsh, but you have GOT to put your foot down! Don't ask her to go NC for 5 months. Tell her that she is DONE talking to him if she wants to stay with you. Cancel her phone, shut off the internet connection, whatever it takes. But most of all, expose (or re-expose) the affair to everyone you can, and speak to your daughter about why what mommy is doing is wrong, and that it is WW who is tearing your family apart, not you. And then be strong.

Your situation is not going to change until you change what you will put up with.

Unfettered is right. Not talk to him for six months? She drags your daughter in on this and makes her part of her moms affair. That is horrible. Your daughter will get over her leaving. You tell her she can't talk to him for 6 months. Now she's thinking

"If I can just keep our affair from him for six months. I can start up again and blame him for it. After all, he said I could talk to him after six months. That means I can do him after 6 months too. I want my security at home, and I want to have sex with my ex too. I want both, I deserve both. My daughter will help keep her father cool, while I have more time with my ex."

How is what I described in any way not exactly what is expected from her?

DO NOT INVOLVE YOUR DAUGHTER. IF YOUR TREACHEROUS WIFE INVOLVES HER AGAIN. TELL YOUR DAUGHTER THAT IT IS BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR MOM (HORRID PERSON FOR USING YOUR DAUGHTER AGAINST YOU). TELL HER THAT ITS YOU OR HER. TELL HER THE QUESTION ISN'T WHETHER I LOVE YOUR MOM, SHE WILL NOT QUIT HER AFFAIR. SHE IS USING YOU TO GET ME TO LET HER DO THIS. THAT IS NOT FAIR TO YOU OR ME. SHE MUST LEAVE, OR I MUST LEAVE.

HURTING, DO YOU UNDERSTAND THAT THERE IS SO MUCH MORE AT STAKE HERE? YOUR DAUGHTER IS LEARNING FROM HER MOM AND YOU, WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE IN MARRIAGE. WOULD YOU WANT YOUR DAUGHTER DOING THIS TO HER HUSBAND. YOUR MARRIAGE IS THE MODEL FOR HER MARRIAGE. DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

Worth repeating.

Look, the ONLY people who get their spouse back are the people who quit being afraid. They start being MAD. How dare she do this to you and your child?!

She has to respect you before she will ever want you. She has nothing to respect right now, because you are being a doormat.

Spot on cat!

Hurting666,
Please understand that we take no satisfaction in speaking to you like this. We care about what happens to you and want you to recover your marriage. We are just trying to do whatever we can to help you break through to that point when you realize, "I have worth and don't have to accept scraps from WW. If she leaves, that stinks, but I'll survive and ultimately thrive."

Bump