I am so grateful to have found this place. I've been reading anonymously for 8 months while I try and work this out, and I just need help. Or encouragement. Or something.

I've been married 16 years. Four kids. My husband, 38, has been having an affair with a now 24 year old for the last three years, and apparently gas lighting me, along the way. Let me go into therapy. Let me take meds ( though he tried very hard to talk me out of them- now I know why), let me think it was my issue, and that my intuition was out of whack. In reality? My intuition was absolutely perfect. I just let him talk me out of honoring it. The list of what I now recognize as the truth is embarrassing to me. It�s overwhelming.

I got confirmation when I got an email from the OW�s father. He hates my husband, obviously, and had tried, several times, to confront my husband, apparently even coming to my house. My husband denied like a crazy person at the time, and told me it was a disgruntled business contact out to get him.

I knew it wasn�t true ( the denials), but got him to admit to a friendship. Asked him to have no further contact with her. A month later- it blew up, when I found he was carrying around medical appointments for her in his wallet ( she�s got several pretty major health issues), and that he was listed as her contact.

I found out that he had introduced some of our children to her , and brought her to his parents� house- on several occasions ( my in laws? Didn�t think telling me he was carting around a young girl- and man- she does look like a very young girl, was a big deal). He was paying for her cell phone.

I took the kids and left him. He panicked. I told his parents. I told his siblings. My parents. And people at work ( he was using them as cover stories).

We negotiated for a few days, and I came home. I asked for proof of no contact, her cell phone cut off, his number changed, and IC for him ( he has depressive issues, moodiness- it�s hereditary- his dad is a functional alcoholic to cope with it).

It�s almost March. He still has the same phone number. He has yelled at me for calling the OW ( her phone still works), and left the house, always to come back contrite, apologetic, and begging for another chance.

My therapist has told me that I have been enabling this behavior by being too damn nice. That I don�t want the conflict or him to leave me, so I accept a ridiculous situation. We are working on this- because in general, this has only happened to me in two relationships- my mother ( who is a borderline personality), and my husband, who is the best blame shifter in history, I think.

I need encouragement. I need guts. I need the strength to call him out and kick him out, until he gets the help he needs, and if he doesn�t, then for good. My kids don�t respect him much. I don�t respect him much. Hell, I don�t respect me much

I am not sure what kind of details y'all need- I'll answer any questions you might have.

I can give you examples of how he blameshifts. I can tell you abnout the days where he stays in bed almost all day. I can tell you how he always finds a reason to go out at night, and if I try to go with him, the panic that ensues.

Or what a good person he thinks she is. Or the pages of texts I have from him calling himself a horrible person in one breath, and the luckiest man alive to have married me in the next.

Or the jokes he makes about me finding a boyfriend. Or the outright infidelity jokes he makes.

Some of the stuff I could tell you wouldn't surprise you, but they are really embarrassing to me if I think too hard.

You can see by my signature line that my H's affair was long-running. I had about 3 D days after which he gaslighted me that the affair was over. On the 4th, I told him I was leaving, and he left his job instead, so that he could no longer travel to Belgium where OW lives. He still maintained telephone contact for 6 months at work until I found MB and exposed to OW's husband.

My voluntary paralysis about the affair led to my near emotional breakdown, drinking and my neglect of my kids, and still the evidence of this before his eyes did not stop my H's affair.

Nobody can make you strong. We can encourage you, but you're going to have to find the strength to remove yourself from this affair. You can't change your H and make him stop having an affair, but you can remove yourself from the environment. Only YOU are stopping yourself from doing this.

Welcome to MB.

Im not a pro, but it looks like you are doing the right things. I suffer from Nice Guy syndrome, and you have a lot more guts than I ever did at sticking to what is best.

Just prepare yourself that he will get angry and yell and scream and have fits that you are interfearing with his affair. In reality you are fighting for your marriage, and it looks like you are doing the right things.

Keep your cool, stay in control, and be assertive sticking to your guns with what has to be done. Avoid all love busters, which if you are genuinly nice like me it is easy, and comes naturally.

I guess now is the time to be kind, thoughtful, but still look after your needs. You do not have to do anything you don't want to, especially for a husband who is having an affair.

I'm still lacking the nerve to cut off the cell phone, finances, and internet from my WW.

Anyhow that is my plan for growing a back bone, and I want to offer it to you.

Thanks for replying.

I know you're right that no one can make me strong. I just need to be the person I am in every other relationship in my marriage, in terms of not putting up with this.

And for some reason, I am struggling with this. My therapist is great. My friends are great. I know I am a confident and well loved woman.

But in this area, he's undercut my confidence, and I feel like I am competing against a vacuous young girl, and I've been babysitting for him while he runs around having an affair.

If I confront him, he denies it. Tells me I'm living in the past, we'll never move forward, and I'm not trying. Then he usually runs out for a few days.

I know it's manipulation. I can see it. If I were my friends- I'd be pinching me so hard right now there'd be bruises to tell me to get out of this.

Do you struggle with the cutoff because you know it'll cause a hurricane? That's how I feel.

Dear RidicSit:

educate yourself with everything on this site. read all the material available to you here. then maybe you can begin to make some of decisions you seem to be afraid of.

so sorry you are here, this forum is a wonderful place to vent and receive encouragement, to receive opinions and get the benefit of alot of different experiences.

keep reading and the vets will way in and hopefully give you some options. my experience is not yours, so i am hesitent to give an opinion. but please know that i feel your pain, and i know you are hurting.

What I did was I blocked facebook, her primary tool for contact. She still has contact with the OM, and it has caused her to shut down completly from me. The hardest part was seeing her sit there and miss her lover. Strangely it made me sad for her, but I'm not going to let her guilt me into lifting any of her blocks.

I will expose on Monday. I just don't know what to expect then since I have forcibly cut off her primary contact with the OM. It might be hell for the next week, but I must prepare myself.

Please stop confronting him or trying to get him to admit to his affair. You know he is having it, he knows he is and so no-one needs to prove anything. Stop discussing it with him.

Act on the basis that the affair is a fact, and take action to remove yourself from it without asking for his help. You have lived with it for too long already, and you have already used the Plan A tools of exposure and trying to meet his needs. Dr Harley says that women should only try Plan A for about 4 weeks if the affair does not end, because it takes a serious toll on their mental health, from which it is hard to recover. You need to remove yourself from the affair environment, and from contact with your H, to protect yourself from further abuse.

I'm afraid that the advice that you should continue what you are doing is wrong. You are feeding you H's cake-eating desires and making yourself ill. Your H won't end the affair while you continue to accommodate him.

Please read Dr Harley's article What are Plan A and Plan B?, especially the details about separating yourself from an abusive spouse (Plan B).

I have to go out, but I'll look in here later.

Thanks Sugar,
I didn't realize that she may have been in Plan A for so long that it was actually hurting her mentally. I struggle with the line when Plan A should be turned into plan B, and the events that have to take place move between states. You are correct that staying hurting where she is at is wrong advice.

So I guess what you need Ridic is a spine to kick the WH out?

You kick a person out without evidence? as in- right now, on this day, I know you did this?

That's what I struggle with. He is very, very good at turning it around.

An example of what I think he's doing- going out at night to call her. Says he's going to store. I offer to go with. He says no, freaks out a little.

I calmly accept it. When he leaves, on the advice of my therapist, I say, after touching him on the arm, "It must be very hard to be in your head. It must really feel bad in there to need to act like this".

He goes out- comes back, acts like a lovey dovey guy.

Sugar- is there a place I can read your whole story? Find out what you did?

Hi Redic. I'm so very sorry for the events that bring you here, but please know that you are in THE BEST place to help you through this.

He is having his cake and eating it too, with you and the OW, and he will continue doing it indefinitely, if left up to him.

If I were in your position, I'd go into stealth-snoop mode. Place a digital voice recorder in his car (hidden), and you'll soon have your proof. GPS his car. Keylogger on the computer. There's a spying software that you could put on his cell, depending upon the kind of phone he has.

Oh, and if you do go into snoop mode, NEVER NEVER NEVER reveal your sources. There's ways around getting him to confess w/o revealing how you know things.

Here's a breakdown of Plan A (meeting his EN's, while getting the affair stopped):

The Carrot and the Stick of Plan A by Pepperband:


The Carrot of Plan A


Meeting your wandering spouse's emotional needs.

Making "home" a warm and inviting place to be.

Placing emphasis on what has worked in the marriage.

Showing consistent self improvement in areas where previously lacking.

Stop lovebusting behaviors.

Communicating with a calm reassuring voice and relaxed body language, even in the center of a verbal storm created by the infidel.

Becoming the person any reasonable spouse would want to come home to.

Remaining open to the possibility of recovery.

Offering forgiveness and understanding.



The stick of Plan A


Exposing adultery where it matters most. Exposure that takes the form of a swift and sudden unexpected tsunami of truth.

Not appologizing for exposure or speaking the truth in a kind yet direct way.

Directly communicating the hurt and devastation that the affair has caused.

Not accepting blame for the infidel's choice to become adulterous.

Let the consequences of adultery and infidelity fall freely upon the heads of the adulterous.

Establishing boundaries that disallow the affair to effect children of the marriage, financal security of the marriage, and otherwise ruin innocent bystanders.

Standing up to infidelity as a beast that must be slayed for the good of the family.

This is good advice and where I'm at now. I'm tired of the snooping, discovering followed by a day of anxiety and no appetite, then the unsatisfying confrontation. Now I just assume the contact is ongoing until she proves to me differently. In my situation I'm 100% right and it avoids a lot of the up and down rollercoaster ride.

Ridic, you asked whether you should kick someone out, just like that with no evidence.

I thought you had all the evidence you needed. I thought your evidence was this:


I thought when you said "begging for another chance" that this was his admitting to the affair.

I think that you are in a position to decide that you have enough proof and will act accordingly to protect yourself. However, if you wish to hold on, waiting for more proof, you need to improve your spying methods, as others have written.

Digital voice recorders are relatively cheap to buy and easy to hide in a room where your H might have a telephone conversation, or in his car. You could also GPS his car, and try to install spyware on his phone and PC. If you can afford it, and you want a quick result, you could hire a PI, who could find out a lot about your H's comings and goings in perhaps 3 days.

I'm not in favour of spying when it is clear that the affair is continuing. I think spying at that stage sends you round in circles and becomes a displacement activity for actually doing something about the affair. I think it is degrading for you to feel you have to justify protecting yourself against abuse that you already know is taking place. I've done this, and I wouldn't do it again. I would leave it to my H to prove that he has ended the abusive behaviour. I would concentrate on protecting myself and my children. If he is innocent now, and wants the marriage to continue, he will show you by his actions that he is protecting you and the marriage. If he flounces off in a huff because you DARE to suspect him, when you've already had to leave your home once, and continue to this day to suffer gaslighting and rages, then he is not interested in protecting you or his marriage.

Your conduct from today onwards should be about controlling your side of the marriage for you and your children. The affair is a reality; get yourself and children away from it.

I don't have a single thread with my own story. If you click on my name you will get a drop-down menu. Choose "view posts" and go to my first ever post on this board. It is long, and describes the affair.

Ridic,

You'd better take up Pep's offer of advice and do EXACTLY what she says.

"No thank you, I'm not interested" is the WRONG answer.

Sugar- You're right in that I have proof in the things you highlighted.

But he denies that he has any further contact with her right now, and I cannot prove it- other than his suspicious behaviors. I know his phone number is the same and that hers still works. And he's told me four different stories about that, mainly blaming the phone company. Which I don't believe. And he knows I don't believe.

I have no physical access to his phone, or the records, and I am not in his car, ever. He sleeps with his keys. And his phone.

I know. I cannot believe I've done this. And let it get to this.

Pepper-

I will do whatever I need to do to go forward.

Everything I've done so far hasn't worked.