You will infuriate your wife by trying to educate her about her emotional affair. You will make the situation worse.

She already has a solution for your annoying behavior. To divorce you.

You've already tried TALKING through it. Talking does not work.

Our plans do not require her participation. Our plans are for YOU to execute, and they will make a difference in your marriage.
But you have to have some measure of self-control. You have to be able to focus and stop jumping around so much.

Get a spy stick. That will retrieve all old deleted texts from her phone.
OF COURSE you only see innocent texts. Because she deletes all of the suspicious guilty ones. Sheesh!

There is not more than one way to fight and affair and recover and rebuild.

There is a lot of bandaids here and there which put off the inevitable of the marriage ultimately failing.

The plans are Marriage Builders are no guarantee....but....they are logical and give the marriage the best chance in a dire situation. They take bravery above all other things. Bravery to do what seems counterintuitive to our feelings and old thoughts.

But, we can only tell you that and you can toss it aside and listen to a counselor, your cheating/lying wife, your own sense of what is right/wrong.

There you go.

Affairs do die on their own. Exposure could rapidly accelerate it. However, my wife has already seeded our formerly mutual friends with the idea that I'm not a suitable husband any more, so they won't take exposure from me very seriously.

The only real evidence I have is a spreadsheet I compiled showing her month-to-month volume of texts between her and this guy vs. other people.

They like highschoolbuddy, trust him to be caring and fair, and would likely welcome him having a relationship with my wife in the event of our divorce.


Over-zealous exposure at this point will poison the relationship I'm rebuilding right now. Once she backs away from divorce (which I'm telling you she is close to doing), if she continues with HSB, I'll call her out publicly on it. I'm also going to demand access to the cell phone records returned to me. (she didn't appreciate my spreadsheet making.)


"Nothing between you two can happen" is an extreme and untrue statement.

How do you expect me to expose TODAY?

Keep in mind that, though these people know me and know how I am with my family, I am now "Mentally Ill" in their eyes and on their [censored] list.

A public outburst like that, especially from a person with bipolar disorder, is going to look like evidence of insanity, and inappropriate understanding of boundaries.

I think it's better if I appear calm and together.

Does she have a Facebook account? If so, carefully and slowly send this message -- no faster than one per minute or you may be flagged as spam --

Dear Friend:

My wife is in an affair with highschoolbuddy. I realize I have much work to do to become the husband that wife deserves, but nothing I've done deserves this betrayal. I was never even given a chance to work on our marriage. I'm calling on you to help me persuade wife to end her affair and work on our marriage. I see the errors of my ways and I will do whatever it takes to make my wife happy and be the man she chose to marry.

Sincerely, Ark77

The words can be your own, just ask for their help.

Actually, you are not open to "another point of view." You have your own failed plan and are apparently sticking to it. We have given you good Marriage Builders advice and you rejected it, favoring your OWN advice. Your own advice has led you to this dismal place, after all. I would emphasize that you are the least objective person on this thread and have very poor instincts about what actions to take to save your marriage.

Being "flexible" will not save your marriage. There is a very strict path out of this. Basically you are wasting our time here if you refuse to take the advice. You might as well just blog to yourself.

Well, obviously she deletes them. I'm not stupid. This morning, she had deleted all but the last message he sent to her (possibly she fell asleep?) and that message was simply, "<smile>".

She can easily argue that was an innocent thing to say.

Additionally, she doesn't have a smartphone. It doesn't save texts to sim card, so there is no way to retrieve them and there is no way to put spyware that captures and forwards the texts on the phone.

Making it:

Outbursts? No one is saying scream this at the top of your lungs. In fact, that's the exact wrong approach. Remain in control. Calmly tell the facts and seek help.

Just wanted to bump this post where he told me he HAS the software to download the contents of her phone. He doesn't want to do it because he doens't believe it is relevant. There is not much we can do to help someone who won't help themselves.

Thank you, sweetpea. That actually seems reasonable.


I would prefer for my WW to see the wikipedia entry about EA so she understands my definition of infidelity before I do this. That will probably be tonight after her individual therapy session and before our joint session tomorrow.

Tomorrow, my wife has to leave our session early to pick up the kids (something came up with the baby sitter, and I want to talk to her alone, anyway). I want to talk to her about exposure before I do it.

If she acknowledges the EA in therapy, I would be inclined not to expose.

If the contents of her phone don't contain incriminating texts, there is no point in using it. It can't access deleted texts. Additionally, it requires me taking the phone up to my office and running the software, which is not too sneaky when I only have a minute or two to browse her phone.

If there is something really incriminating, I will take the phone and do it, but she'll know it's missing.

I'm glad that you care about my marriage and want me to do my all to preserve it. I would appreciate if you don't discourage other people from talking to me.

Okay, well having her read the wikipedia won't help.
Waywards don't want to and are not capable of education about their situation.
They are too invested in their world view/justification for continuing to be wayward.

Your actions cause change, not educating her.

HTH

This is not a chat forum for bloggers, this forum is for folks who are here to learn to about Marriage Builders and use its concepts. That is not your purpose here. You are not here to learn about MB or use its concepts.

I think others should be aware that you have no intention of taking the advice here and have your own plan so they won't be wasting their time. See, we are volunteers on this forum and most of us have careers and families ourselves. There is not many of us to go around, so when someone won't take our advice and is basically here to just blog his own plan, folks should know that, don't you think?

I'm not going to get anywhere with snooping. It will be a long wait until I'm lucky enough to get something juicy. Would you recommend exposing at this time?



Thank you for your time.

Ark: Telling your wife you're going to expose is NOT the right thing to do.

You really need to read the BASIC CONCEPTS, or I'm sad to say, leave this web site.

The strategies here work, but you're not inclined to do them. That's fine. Good luck.

Ark,

We�ve been on this forum for years. We�ve helped tons of people end affairs and save their marriages. We�ve helped others when the marriage wasn�t salvageable and offered advice for fighting the legal fight.

You�re here with a plan that we know for a fact doesn�t work. Appeasement and cowering in fear never work. The only men who do well on this board, without exception, are the ones who either instinctively follow the advice and do the right things on their own or they hear the advice we give them and they follow it despite the fact that they don�t believe us when we tell them it works.

Then, lo and behold, they get results.

You, my friend, are on the path I ended up in. You are heading off the cliff and it will be your own doing because you insist on following your own plan which we know never works. You�re offering every excuse in the book for why you can�t expose. No one here is advising you to expose in a vindictive manner. It�s really simple, �Hey, mother/father in law, your daughter is having an emotional affair with Highschoolbuddy and I would like to save my marriage and would appreciate your support.�

Done. Say that to all your friends who can put pressure on the affair.

But you�re on the path to failure and divorce.

I don�t know how many times I have to say this, but I�ll say it again: I followed the plan you�re following. I ignored the advice I was given because I felt that the online posters didn�t know my wife or my situation.

We know your wife. All WW�es are the same. They may look different and have different names, but their behavior in the middle of affairs are all the same. That�s why we say that they follow a script.

The BH is always demonized and always made out to be the most horrible person ever. You are the reason why we have 9% unemployment and Obama�s ratings are dropping. You�re the cause of the hurricanes and bad weather. You caused the earthquake in VA. You�re a horrible person that nobody in their right mind would be married to. You torture small animals in your spare time and you drink straight from the carton. You�re also the one advising George Lucas on how to destroy Star Wars with every new release of the films.

So, continue to follow your own way of doing things or actually listen to the advice we�re giving you.

I give up on you. You won�t listen or follow the advice we know works. Enjoy your divorce, because that�s where you�re heading.

Ark --
When I was in the midst of my affair, I told all of my friends about what a lousy husband I had. Because I wanted their support, because I was driving towards divorce.
My intent was to get my friends and family on my side. To attend counseling with my husband so I could tell everyone that I "tried" saving the marriage.
Then after an acceptable amount of time, I would introduce OM as someone new. Of course my friends and family would accept him and be happy for me -- because they all knew how I suffered being married to my x-husband!

That's your wife's plan.

But sure - maybe that WIKIPEDIA article will change everything!
HA!

Did we not tell you to snoop on her and get the evidence? I believe we have told you that several times. Once again, you didn't take our advice.