Sbt, it will be a mistake to not confront her now because you already know something is going on between her and the OM. SHE SEES HIM AT THIS SPORTS EVENT. She sees him at the sports event, which is a breach of no contact and she will not engage in the recovery of your marriaage.

So it is ludicrous to say you are "afraid to push her further away." Are you kidding me? Do you see how irrational that statement is? You are already as far apart as can be and it will remain that way until YOU DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

Do you think enabling her continued contact with her lover and enduring her hostility will bring you closer? I assure you it won't!

Sbt, it is time to start fighting for your marriage and take back control of your life. It hurts your marriage for your wife to see that you won't fight for her. This causes her to lose respect.

Nope. But when W refuses to go along with it and takes her anyway it will lead to a confrontation. She will just walk right past me, get in the car and take DD to practice. If I confront it it could easily turn physical or I would need to back down and let her take D regardless of how I feel about it. I don't think the people running the sport will get involved or care.



She knows I think OM is a scum bag but she doesn't know why. I'll tell her. I told my DS13 back in the spring. My DD18 knows but figured it out on her own and is sided with W and is actually friends with OM.




It's not.

To be clear I have made it very clear to her that I don't want ANY contact. She claims there is no communication and no feelings so it's rediculous to "make the kids pay." I get how silly that sounds but she doesn't. I don't know how to FORCE her to go back to no contact when she doesn't consider seeing him with no communication or interaction to be contact. I don't know how to FORCE NC even is she DID consider this contact. I have made my feelings about the situation very clear. So far she has refused to do anything about it. Honestly, I don't think she sees or realizes the damage this is causing. She does not link seeing him to our most recent troubles.


I started with your earlier suggestion of how to approach this and am working on it. I will post it here for comment before I take it to her. I am out of town for a couple days so I plan to get all this straight before I head back.

His wife was a major source of information in the spring but at that time they were already having problems and the A pushed her over the edg and they are now divorced. She is no longer a source of information or leverage.

What is this all about?? How is your 18 year old OK that her mother is having sex with another man??

Ok. Divorced mom (now happily remarried)can tell you this. Kids want to win the love of both parents, and when the wayward parent as emotionally abandoned the family (that's what a wayward parent does besides abandon the marriage), the kids feel it and will do whatever it takes to please the one parent they feel doesn't love them as much anymore.

They're just doing whatever they can to feel loved by their psychologically unfit wayward mommy/daddy. It is a horrible crime imho, what waywards to emotionally to their children. I say that with over seven years of experience in dealing with this situation.

My son tried to win his affection by pretending to be ok with his new affairage and wifey for a few years, but now he doesn't want anything to do with his dad at all and I have full custody.

Kids hurt during a divorce. It's time the waywards learned this 100 percent.

I'm not one to give advice here too much, but your WW is following my XW's script to a "T", so I may have a little insight.

Here's where you're going wrong. YOUR WW DOESN'T CARE! She doesn't care one iota about your feelings, she doesn't care if she's doing damage because in her mind your relationship is so far done that nothing can damage it further. She doesn't even care about how her actions will affect the kids. The light isn't going to suddenly come on, so don't expect her to suddenly start caring. She will only respond to actions, not some vague concept of how her behavior is "hurting you".

Let me tell you what my XW's plan was. Her bright idea was to live in the same house together, coexist with me well enough that we wouldn't divorce (she didn't think I had the stones to pull the trigger), and keep carrying on with her independent bahavior. She planned to do this for 12 MORE YEARS until our youngest leaves the house for college. Really, that was her plan.

In the meantime, she still had an affair phone (her third one), still went out with "the girls" every weekend or more, and was open to further affairs with OM#2, OM#3, etc. I'd be willing to bet any amount of money your WW still has one.

Stop the relationship talk, all it will do is open old wounds.

I don't understand it. W has always had VERY strong connections with our kids. When I told DD18 that I didn't want her to be friends with OM she said "they are just friends." I told her that wasn't true but it didn't matter. I caught a TM later that she sent to a friend saying her mom was having an A. It didn't change anything. I blocked OM from her phone anyway because OM was texting her - I believe as a way to communicate with my W after I blocked his number from W phone. It was shortly after this that I found and destroyed the A phone. This all happened months ago before the A ended this spring.

BTW, my W claims to this day that it was only a EA - not PA. I don't believe her. There were at least 4 nights she didn't come home until 4 or 5 a.m. and one of them they were both at the same hotel. This is all from months ago.

Thank you for this. W has put 100% behind connections with the kids lately. This is saying a lot considering she has always put the kids before everything anyway. "They are her identity and legacy" she has said. I'm not sure how that fits with your comments.

So that is the dynamic that happened this summer. She told me straight out that she was staying because of the kids and would use 17 years as how long she "signed up for this" - until my littlest one was 18. However, over time the independent behavior began to decrease and we were more than just co-existing. Then school started (other priorities trumped our marriage) and OM came back into our lives and the wheels have come off.

I have mentioned to her several times that I would prefer not to have any relationship talk but she continued to bring it up and would get angry if I didn't participate. So I would go along for a short while and then change the subject or end the conversation. I really would prefer to NEVER talk about relationship issues again unless we are talking about a go forward strategy.

My W doesn't go out with anyone I wouldn't trust anymore. If she has a second A phone I haven't found it yet and if there is communication happening to other men I haven't been able to find it. I will continue to look.

A big problem I have right now is I feel I am losing my mind. She twists things I say and turns them into "emotional or verbal abuse." I think I am going to get a VAR and keep it in my pocket so I can have someone else listen to some of these conversations and tell me whether my interpretation is reasonable or not. We obviously have very different takes on things that I say but I am honestly starting to wonder if I may be wrong and I may be saying these mean awful things that she claims I say. I was near breakdown on this the other day but feel a little better now that I have been posting here again.

She is a Wayward, you can't argue with a wayward. They have twisted their minds up so much to justify their affair that their view of reality is warped and twisted. It's like looking at a Carnival mirrior. It looks like a normal mirror, but when you stand in front of it you're distorted or upside down.

Though she is not ACTIVELY committing adultery (yet, as contact has resumed) she never went through withdrawal and began recovery. She's held on to her anger at you and her feelings for the other man, committing adultery in her mind every day. Now she sees the OM on occasion and the fog has thickened.

This is why you can't reason with a wayward. This is why you don't do relationship talk with an active, fogged out, wayward. You will lose your mind.

This is why you stand firm on NC.

Your attitude must be: "Yes there is much in our relationship that needs to be fixed. I will work on myself to make myself the best husband possible, but I will not tolerate OM being in our lives. Until NC is established any relationship work is futile." "When you establish NC with OM I will be happy to discuss our relationship issues."

Stop talking about your relationship, it will get you nowhere.

I think it may be time to start planning a Plan B.

Interesting that you should bring up the topic of a VAR. I was just getting ready to post to you that you need to get one and hide it in her car.

sbt, it sounds to me like she is gaslighting you, which is very common behavior with a wayward. I would have that discussion I outlined above and strongly suggest that you tell give her that message over and over again, that you won't live in a loveless marriage where she remains in contact with the OM. If you don't give her that message over and over again, she will rightly conclude that you don't care.

The bottom line is that if you don't raise the bar she will just live down to your standards. I agree with schtoop that she plans on living there in a non-marriage enjoying your support and killing you a little at a time. That will be a death of a thousand cuts.

I don't know how to plan B with 5 kids and our state laws. I can't force her to leave the house. If I do then I risk being a judge looking at that as abandonment of my children and could have significant impact on my ability to get custody if we were to get to that point.

I agree you can't leave because many courts view this as abandonment. That is why I suggested contacting an attorney and getting HER out of the house. That is what many of the men here have done. They filed legal separation or divorce and got her out.

Does anyone have experience telling kids? I told my DS13 this...

You mom had an inappropriate relationship with OM and that is why we have been fighting recently. I love your mom and believe things can work out as long as she has no contact with OM again.

I'm not sure if I should have told him more and I'm not sure if I should use the same approach with DD10 who had not been told yet. Also not sure if I should make another run at DD18.

sbt, that is a good start, but I would be more explicit and explain what is inappropriate. They won't understand that unless you tell them. What is inappropriate is that it is ADULTERY. [be sure and use that word] It is immoral to have an adulterous affair with another person when you are married. Adultery is a romantic sexual relationship with someone who is not your spouse. The OM is an enemy to your marriage and their family. I would also tell them how the OM's marriage ended. Tell them as much as you can.

Your kids have already been exposed to this sleaze bag and instinctively know something is wrong. They need those instincts validated or they will conclude there is something wrong with THEM and learn to doubt their own instincts about right and wrong.

I agree with Melody that your WW is gaslighting you. Do a Google search on "gaslighting spouse". This is an especially cruel form of emotional abuse - don't fall for it.

Sbt-what you told your children was a little too vague. Not only was your wife having an inappropriate relationship, she was having an affair. Use that word. Tell them what that means. My children are 7 and 10, they were 6 and 9 when I told them. They KNOW what my WH is doing is WRONG WRONG WRONG.

You need to tell them straight up. They are not stupid. They already know what is going on. As ML has posted, they understood that something wasn't right but they weren't sure what it was. Validate their feelings and let them know that they were right not to accept everything was okay.

You need to tell your children something along these lines, "Your mom has been having an affair with OM(say HIS name, they need to know who the enemy is). When two people are married, they take vows that they will not date other people. Your mother took those vows, but she IS dating OM. I will not accept a marriage where my wife dates another man. I still love your mother, and I am willing to work on our marriage. I will not however, do this while she continues to have an affair. I am going to do what I need to do to save our family. I love you and I have your best interest at heart also."

Repeat the message as necessary, and if you have younger children, you just change the words a bit. Not only are you exposing your wife's affair to your children, you are also teaching them how NOT to accept an affair when they are married in the future.