If you do one thing today, put a HIDDEN GPS on your wife's vehicle.

*** LINK *** to GPS thread

Let us know if you have any interest in saving your marriage. We will be here.

We talked again last night for a bit, and she told me a few other issues that always bothered her about our relationship. We spoke about counseling, and she said she would think about it.

HelpMeSaveIt - I just wanted to chime in about counseling, because you'll get a variety of opinions on that topic. If she's not willing to take any active steps as a part or result of counseling, it's doomed to failure regardless how good the counselor is. Also, what's your desired outcome of the counseling? What's hers? Ask yourself those questions. My WW and I went to weekly sessions for about three months and it was useful to get things out on the table and have a 'safe' place to discuss our relationship. I found that part really useful and theraputic for me. However, where I got frustrated was that she wasn't willing to take any ACTIVE steps to work on the relationship. I kept trying it from different angles and it didn't work. Well, I found out over time that it appears the OM was still in the picture. This was pretty much confirmed after she moved out via logger. So, here I am, she's been gone about a month and I'm about to go into plan B.

Do yourself a favor, ask yourself what you want to achieve in counseling.

Hopefully she says no to counseling because it would be a waste of time and will probably be destructive to your marriage. Marriage counselors don't have the slightest idea how to save marriages and even less understanding of the dynamics of adultery. They cause more harm than good and are often little more than divorce faciliators. They actually have a higher divorce rate than the general population and are destructive to marriages.

This is going nowhere unless you take active steps to break up the affair, Help.

I understand what the next step is supposed to be. Most of the family is aware of her new relationship with this other guy, but no one seems to really care about it. She seems genuinely happier now than she's been in a long time. She hasn't been home much to see the kids. She was out all weekend and came home around 10 last night. Saw the kids for about 10 minutes, was super nice to them. Kissed them goodnight, told them she loved them, and went to bed. She truly does seem happier now, so I don't know what I should do. We aren't talking at all. That's because I'm basically ignoring her. If I were to talk to her, she would talk back like everything is fine.

HMSI, there are so many parallels in your story and mine that I just had to pipe up.

Some of the posters who've been advising you through your thread are the best this board has to offer. They not only know Dr. Harley's principles inside and out, but they've also "been there, done that, and got the t-shirt!"

My reason for posting to you is to inform you that, like me, you have let your wife turn everything around on you and made you feel like everything is your fault. My WW did exactly the same thing, and said many of the same things yours has.

Here's the key to your recovery: DON'T BELIEVE A WORD OF IT! Wayward spouses have a way of magnifying every little flaw or perceived slight in such a way -- because it allows them to justify their abhorrent behavior.

The advice I was given was this: I may have had a 50% responsibility in the problems in my marriage, but my WW holds 100% responsibility in having an affair!

It's now your choice whether you want to recover your marriage or not. No one will blame you if you don't. If you do, the folks here at MB will give you the best advice -- based on 40 years of clinical experience -- you can find. If you do not, then it is still important that YOU recover. Do you understand me?

No matter which way this goes, if you do not recover yourself, you will be scarred and crippled for the rest of your life. And your kids deserve better than that!

Well, I just got the D bomb this morning. She said she's just too bitter about things and it's over. I might think things can be fixed, but they can't.

Help, when are you actually going to do something to save your marriage?

What can I do? Everyone knows about the other man, and no one seems to care.

Thats nice that your wife has a new "relationship." How cute and winsome.

Now, do you want to do anything to save your marriage? ARe you willing to do ANYTHING? Let us know when *YOU* get serious.

Helpmesaveit, I am reposting what you need to do in case you ever get serious about saving your marriage.

In case you get serious:

Unbelievable! What kind of husband does NOTHING while his wife cats around all weekend like an alley cat in heat pursuing her adulterous affair? A husband who does not care! Thats who!

Your complacence clearly conveys the attitude of someone WHO DOES NOT CARE. If you don't care, could you at least be bothered to lift a finger for the sake of your kids? They have NO ONE standing up for their family and defending their interests. NO ONE. Their mother is in an addictive affair and has lost her mind. And what does their father do?

NOTHING.

Would it be too much trouble to ask you to do get up and do something, Sir? Your kids have NO ONE defending their interests right now.

Well, it happened. Everyone knows about it now. She's freaking out about all the things that I've done to justify what she's done. Trying to make me out to be the horrible one who caused her to do this.

Who did you tell?

Family and friends. She is just saying "Oh well, busted. At least it's all out in the open now. We have been over for years, we just didn't realize it." She then began to delete a bunch of what were her close friends from Facebook, and starting to talk trash about them. To be honest, it does feel like this is truly what she wants, but just didn't know how to go about ending our marriage to be with this guy. Instead, she just used the "I don't have feelings for you anymore, and I'm so sorry about that" line to justify being with this other guy. She is a completely different person than the person I've known and loved for the past 13 years. All she does is bring up bad things about our marriage, and how she knows I wasn't happy too.

Her family completely backs her on this decision. They say that she should do whatever makes her happy, everything else will work out in the end.

One important point I haven't mentioned is that she did this about 6 months after we got married in 2001. We didn't have kids yet, so she just took off to Florida for about a year and a half. Then, one day she showed up at my doorstep apologizing for what she had done. She was 3 months pregnant with an old boyfriend's kid. It took me a while to accept that, but eventually, when the boy was about 6 months old, I was able to accept it. From that point on, everything seemed great and I've been raising that boy like he's mine.

Were you interested in saving your marriage? Or are you just going right to divorce? Let me know when you are interested, otherwise I won't waste my time trying to help you save your marriage. I don't see any interest here. And that is ok. It is your right to just give up. You are not required to try and save your marriage.