20 year marriage
5 children, 2 under twelve

An EA started over the Internet a few years ago. The late nights turned the house upside down.

Then the WW took a trip to study abroad with a girlfriend. I stayed home with the kids. I'm not sure what happened during the trip, but there was some physical contact with the man the WW had met on the Internet. WW still hasn't talked to me about these things.

A lot of Internet problems continued when WW returned home. There were several promises to cut everything off. WW even started with MC for a couple of sessions and talked with a Church leader about stopping. Then, in the middle of stopping (supposedly), WW took two children out of the country. I didn't stop her because it got to the point where I would have needed a legal separation or a divorce to keep the children. I already posted about this situation on these boards, about not stopping her, and was roundly called an enabler and someone who hurts children. (I guess I'm back for more punishment.)

Surprise, the other man moved to this foreign city. Got kicked out by WW's roommate. Moved back to the city. When WW said she was going to divorce me in an email (must have thought she was safe to do whatever she wanted on the other side of the planet and with some time transpired), I was lucky enough to get a court order with the start of a legal separation and, with huge delays from the WW that lasted almost a month and cost me ton of money, I peacefully brought the children back home.

The children and I are doing pretty well now. It's great to have all the children together again. The children that were away are glad to be home and more stable.

Surprise, the WW feels very little remorse and now wants to come home during the summer. I mean she wants to live at home in a couple of months. At first I thought she might be repentant (that's one reason I'm on this board, to help myself not be gullible).

Tonight I found out that she's still seeing the other man while saying that she's going to come to live at the house. I guess she just thinks its unfair for me to have all the children. She isn't too happy about what her divorce might now be looking like, either.

She won't be living at home right away if the legal separation I started is able to protect everyone. There will be court orders and a parenting plan in place that will keep her in check. If I can help it, she'll need to find her own apartment or couch somewhere since she still hasn't broken off from this other man.

I have little hope that she will break things off after all this time and so many attempts. In my mind, I've mostly been trying to protect the children this year. I don't want them put into the middle of the conflicts, further exposed to the affair, taken out of the country again, or being asked to make the WW's divorce decisions.

I guess I'm in Plan B (if I understand this stuff) by holding the WW accountable. Tonight, when I found out she is still seeing the other man, I told her she'll probably need an apartment when she returns and that she can submit a parenting plan. I think this is what I'm supposed to be doing right now. I've tried filling her buckets during this affair and, of course, it just hasn't worked.

If anyone has feedback, let me know. I would like to stay strong without closing the doors (even if she divorces me, she's still the mother of our children and it would be nice to heal the relationship one day).

I guess I need to figure out how to recover, too. I've healed some, but I'm pretty scared to reunite with the WW. I also doubt that I'd trust my ability to fill anyone else's needs for a long time, which isn't too terrible of a thing right now because our children need me.

Well, you're not asking a specific question about repairing your lot in life, just general platitudes, to wit:

was roundly called an enabler .....If anyone has feedback, let me know

Okay, you're a weak enabler, seemingly without the fortitude to FIGHT for, and DEMAND decency from your wife and mother of your children, prefering instead to come here and "whinge" (amalgam of "whine" and "cringe") about the hand you've been dealt.

How's that?

Now, if you want to know (and are to commit to follow) advice on turning this around, come back saying so. (I'm hoping you do so.)

Nah. The title of his thread asks a question.


To string: In answer to your question, "Will the affair years end?" the answer is Yes. Affair years eventually end when your trashy wife gets so old and unattractive that no new man will be willing to take her on for sex. That may be 30 or more years from now.

Jeepers, creepers, Dude. This woman kidnapped some of your children and took them to a different country to pursue a sleazy, adulterous affair. She disrupted the lives of all five of your children.

What kind of freaking weird message does it send that she wants to have SOME of them, but not ALL of them?? Your kids will have LIFELONG emotional scars! But, you want to roll over and play dead for her??

Come on! Man up and protect your children.

And just so you know, this is what protecting your children looks like: you go see your lawyer NOW, while she's still out of the country and find out what you can do legally to keep her away from these kids that she has kidnapped and abused. (Yes, it WAS abuse.) Take whatever legal action needs to happen to make sure that she can't kidnap them again. That probably means supervised visitation. Find out if you can get a restraining order to keep her away from your home.

You've already been through a lot getting the kids back home. I'm sure it was expensive and exhausting. But, don't drop the ball now. Put measures in place to protect your kids. If you don't she may kidnap them again. If you let that happen, the government isn't going to be nearly as helpful the second time you want to bring them back from a foreign country.

And, string, stop talking to her on the phone. Stop reading her emails. Tell her to get an attorney and that all future communication will be through the lawyers.

I would most certainly close the door because she is toxic to you. I would suggest Plan B while you are obtaining a divorce. Plan B means complete and total separation with no contact whatsoever. Any contact would have to go through an intermediary. [I would only allow her supervised visits with your kids since you know she will steal them] I would change the locks and never allow her back into the house. And I would do this with a modified Plan B letter. Instead of telling her she can come back if she ends her affair, I would just ask her to stay away. Your wife is so dangerous and so abusive to you that I don't envision there is any future.

OK, string, so between this & your September posts, let's see if I've got this right. She has:
--carried on an emotional & physical affair for many months;
--taken some of your kids out of the country, while abandoning the others, in order to pursue her affair out-of-reach of your country's laws;
--stated that she intends to divorce you;
--forced you to bear huge legal & travel expenses to get your children returned;
--not expressed remorse;
--not stopped seeing the other man;
--indicated that she wants to come back into your home but with no recommitment to the marriage?

Seems to me your wife is manifesting symptoms of being, to use precise clinical terms, a freaking, psycho nutball.

If you can't bring yourself to accept this, then I think your next step should be to sit down with your children and have the talk, where you let them know that there's a pretty good chance mommy will try to take some of them away from you and possibly spirit some of them out of the country again, but that none of you will know which children until it actually happens. Because that's the truth, and you owe them at least that much.

When someone is at your door who's shown inclination and capability to take your kids away to disrupt their lives & raise them in a state of exposure to a sleazy affair-lifestyle, you don't just close the door; you slam the S.O.B. shut, you put on 5 deadbolts, 6 padlocks, dig a moat in the yard, stock it with starving alligators, build a 20-foot-tall, electrified perimeter fence topped with razor blades, and surround it all with 3 concentric rings of barbed wire.

For you, in my amateur opinion, this means that you get the best lawyer in your state & you settle for nothing less than full custody with minimal, fully-supervised visitation, and you route all communication with your wife through that lawyer. Because she's put you & your poor kids through all this and she's not even remorseful.

You see (below) what my wife said to me when I confessed my affair? One more strike and I'd be out on my butt. (And at the time, I was already remorseful, and had never considered leaving her or breaking up my family.) My wife has gumption. She showed me some steel that I could respect. What have you been showing your wife, who's not even remorseful? (String, that's not a judgement -- just a question for you to ponder.)

To answer your question from your thread-title, it's wishful thinking to wish that there were some period in a person's life when they're more vulnerable to affairs, and that it's just a phase that will end organically in the same way leaves fall off trees in the autumn. There is no such thing as a period of life called the "Affair Years." Someone in an affair is someone who is behaving selfishly and who is getting emotional needs met by people other than her spouse -- age is irrelevant.

Affairs are no respectors of age. Here on these boards, you will find posters or spouses who have had affairs at ages ranging from 20 to 60. They don't start because of reaching a certain age, they start because someone had weak boundaries, or lets once-strong boundaries become weak. And if/when they end, they don't end because of reaching a certain age, they end when the affairee stops allowing the other person to meet his/her emotional needs & ceases contact with the other person on a permanent basis.

If you've read much around here, then you should know that as long as she's still in her affair(s), there's virtually nothing you can do to meet needs of hers. As long as there's no remorse & as long as her affair is ongoing, then it doesn't matter where she lives -- she will not be someone that you or your children should feel safe around.

In other words, what Melody Lane told you.

Thanks for the responses. I do appreciate most of them.

I guess I wasn't clear in my post that I already have an attorney, a very good one, and am in the middle of the legal separation. I'm making sure she doesn't come back to the house, have told her that I'm not talking to her (except I did tell her that she could submit her ideas for parenting plans, but I guess I should have her to send those straight to the attorney). It would be foolish to talk about anything until quite a bit of time has passed and she's no longer a threat. I thought this was closing the doors, was a good Plan B.

I'm not sure what I'm doing or not doing that makes me deserve the name calling again. **edit**

Thanks for the clarification, string. That sounds much more definitive than your first post. I applaud you for getting your kids back. Are you concerned she will snatch the kids when visitation is allowed?

Do you have the book Surviving an Affair? In it, Plan B is explained more fully, but the main purpose is to remove an abusive person from your life. What your wife has done is extremely abusive and staying in contact with a wayward can cause incredible emotional and physical problems. In Plan B, all necessary contact is conducted through an intermediary, which could be your attorney. Or it could be a neutral friend.

I'm sorry if my response upset you.

In your initial post on this thread you mentioned several times that she felt a certain way and that she's planning to do this thing and she has told you this or that. That sounds like too much contact. Way too much contact. You'll heal from this mess much more quickly if you'll end the phone calls.

You said that when she comes back she won't be living at home "right away if the legal separation I started is able to protect everyone." You sound weak. You need to put legal protection for your children into place, and when she violates it call the cops. That's what I had to do.

My WstbXH refused to create a visitation schedule and kept demanding to see the children without reasonable notice. I finally told him that I needed 24 hours notice or I would not make the children available to him. (They were asking not to go anyway, and I was sick of forcing them to drop everything and go do yard work.) He called in the early afternoon and said he needed them to come help work around his place. Said he'd be there at 5pm to pick them up. I refused. He showed up anyway. I didn't answer the door, but he could see through a window that we were at home.

Then my husband crossed a line. He OPENED the door and started yelling for the kids. I had to call the cops. When he heard me on my cell phone to 911, he got scared, turned tail, and ran away. My place is in my name only, and he had no rights to enter my property. There was a police report filed and if he ever does something like that again, I'll get a restraining order.

string, since your place is presumably still in both names, you need to continue the good work that you've already done to make your home off limits to your WW. And, then, you need to be mentally and emotionally prepared to call the police when she violates those orders. I'm sorry. It sucks.

You also said, "I would like to stay strong without closing the doors (even if she divorces me, she's still the mother of our children and it would be nice to heal the relationship one day"

In order to be the best dad you can be for all those kids of yours, you need to stop thinking about healing the relationship. SHE has closed that door for now. If she chooses to open it again, then you can think about it.

String,

Do you know why you get the responses you do? You don't provide a complete story and your incomplete story indicates that you have allowed your children to be taken out of the country and live with an adulteress who is their mother. You indicate that she is still in the affair with OM, and that you are separated.

Well DUH!!!! Of course you are separated you two live in different countries...for now.

Now do you mean you are legally separated, and that in your state this means you are on your way to divorce? Let's be very specific here, if you want specific advice.

I cannot see why you would allow her to see the children unless it is supervised. I cannot see why you would not be in the process of divorce given what she has done and is still doing. I cannot see why what you are actually asking advice for since more reasonable people would take what she has done and cost you and your kids far to seriously to be playing a childish game of "what if".

So why don't you quit making us guess, and tell us the real situation without the euphamisms, and then tell us what your goals are and finally and I mean finally after your are clear in the previous points ask us what you wnat advice about.

I and others will help, but I read your first posts and these posts and they sound so wishy washy and incomplete that it is hard to fathom what your real problem is. Time to firm it up String.

God Bless,

JL

String, you are getting way more qualified advice than me, but my wifes AP was also overseas, and at one time I had the same worry - and I grabbed my kids passport because of that.

I also read your other thread, and literally stood up and cheered when you wrote they were back with you.

Just saying protect those kids, at all costs. Supervised visits, attorneys and armed guards. Whatever you have to do. But you already know that because it takes a real father to go get his kids out of a situation like that.

Oh yeah, and keep your wife away from you and the kids. Find them a new mom after an appropriate amount of time...

Good advice, Reynolds. In case he doesn't have the passports, can he get them voided? Something like a "no-fly-list" that flags them if they try to leave the country.

They do that here, you go to the passport office and wait in line for a week though...but worth it if it came to that.

As far as protections go, I now have the passports. We've also tried to get restraining orders served while starting the process of the legal separation.

I've used the words "legal separation" in all of my posts on this thread. As far as I understand, in most states a "legal separation" is the same as divorce (you just don't have to get remarried to end the separation). A "legal separation" is different than being separated by oceans.

Sorry I wasn't more definitive about the legal matters right now. Again, they're just something I started. The WW evaded the initial servicing and notice and is trying to evade it again. Her location makes some of this difficult. In the long run, I think all these things are just going to keep giving me the legal upper hand, but I don't think people should go crazy confident about my legal battles. These things can shift quickly, even if I have a good attorney and the WW is in the wrong. It might also not be good for me to go on these boards saying what I'm going to be able to do, even if we knew what we're going to be able to do, because who knows if that might help the other side.

I've stated that my goals are to give the children stability and a good home.

Anyway, raising five children on my own is hard. It's taken an incredible amount of work to make it through the emotional blows of the affair, to handle some of these legal issues, to fight the whole overseas thing, and to now be making our home a better place.

I'm not offended by anything anyone said (sorry if my post was modded to make it look like I was offended). I simply get surprised by the things that get said. I guess I don't know the right vocabulary or I don't throw enough hate at the WW to please everyone.

The articles on this site are great. I also appreciate that people have commented.

Huh???

NO ONE here expects you to throw HATE at the WW!

They DO expect & hope you'll learn to protect yourself & your kids inspite of the promises made & gaslighting by the WW.

String, it sounds to me like you've made a good start on making things stable for the kids. Getting the kids' passports to a safe location is huge. Good job!

You're making a wise decision to keep specifics off the website. If you get worried that you've said too much, the moderators can pull threads or big sections of threads. I hope you'll keep us updated on events as you feel able.

Since I also have five children, I know what you mean about the difficulty of raising a big family. Don't neglect yourself in all this. You haven't mentioned the kids' ages, but if they are all still small, make sure that you occasionally get a babysitter and take a few hours to do something just for you.

Remember the safety presentation on the airplanes - if cabin pressure is lost, you HAVE to put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. As a single father, you cannot help your kids if you don't take care of yourself, too.