I just got off the phone with the husband. I decided to bite the bullet and tell him it was me who sent the anonymous email and that there's a huge and helpful resource waiting for him at Marriage Builders.
He said he didn't pay too much attention to the email because he didn't know who it was from and said now he's going to give it another look.
He welcomed the call and said he appreciated the information.
I encouraged him to post here and to call the coaching center as soon as possible.
Please keep your fingers crossed.
Wonderful to see someone put their neck on the line by risking an unknown reaction (who knows what some people will say to you when you call them unsolicited with marriage advice or to discuss their spouses infidelity)....all in the name of helping marriage. This speaks wonders about you.
Adultery is rampant. The fact that only a few hundred people are here per day out of the 1,000's that are experiencing their d-days this week alone speaks to the fact that it's highly unlikely any one particular known person will show up here and actually post.
My wife and I just this past spring tried to get a betrayed husband that's been married 42 years to post here. Gave him links...told him how to do it...emailed him SOME advice and told him to post for more. He still didn't do it and inevitably lost out. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make them drink. This particular BH, against my explicit and repeated advice THREATENED OM with exposure instead of actually doing it. This lead to OM supposedly ending it with his wife but low and behold...limited secret contact ensued and OM promised to be with WW again ONCE SHE DIVORCED HER CONTROLLING AND MEAN HUSBAND (which he isn't). OM could do this because his kids, neighbors and friends don't know. Nobody held a mirror up to his behavior and told him how the affair will never work and he should butt the heck out of this married woman's life. So then, for 9 months WW acted like she wanted to maybe recover but never pulled her head from the fog. She still talked to OM and "loved him" even more since he was giving her the chance to work on things with the BH. Also, BH, against my explicit and repeated advice...kept the affair a secret from their adult only daughter as well. Now it's 9 months later and the BH is finally done. He is sick of it. They told the daughter at Thanksgiving they are divorcing and daughter is PISSED at both of them (mom for having the affair and Dad for not telling her sooner when she MAY have had some influence). To late....they are divorcing. Point is...IF the BH had posted...he MAY have listened to just the right post on the right day from the right person and done things differently (and correctly). He could have saved himself a lot of grief and not shot himself in the foot. Maybe they wouldn't have recovered anyway...but he'd be walking away KNOWING he gave it his best shot. Him not listening to me and NOT POSTING was, perhaps the downfall of his marriage.
Whoever your friend is ...I hope he reads this and helps himself, his wife and his kids by taking the first step and sharing his story here with people that have been in his shoes (and many of us that have recovered our marriages using these techniques).
Mr. W