My husband has been having an emotional affair for 4 months. I found out about it after 8 weeks and he told me all about it. He was convinced that they could have a platonic relationship. But over the last 2 months I can see through the messages they have been sending each other that the friendship is not platonic. When I talked with him about it during the week he said he would end it all the next day. He didn't want to talk about it for a couple of days but when he did he admitted that he was finding it very painful not being able to contact her. This I understood from reading the Q & A columns on this website. I asked him if he was tempted to contact her and he said all the time. I asked him if she contacted him, or him her, would he promise to tell me about it. He said he would. He is away on a business trip this week and when he called earlier today I asked him if she had sent him any messages. She had and he had messaged back , also saying that they weren't to message anymore. He still has her as friend on Facebook and checks up on her posts. He was annoyed that I had asked and said if I keep asking he will be tempted to lie to me. He doesn't want to cut all contact with her because he doesn't believe he is having an affair as there was never anything physical between them. He says he loves me, comes home to me, sleeps with me, not her. How do I get him to see what he is doing? I have listed out all the conversations I read in their messages to each other which prove this is no normal friendship, which he was shocked I saw and has since deleted. I don't know what to, it's breaking my heart. The last few weeks have been such an emotional rollercoaster, between highs of feeling really close to my husband to lows of finding out what and how often they have been messaging. Any advice?

GS:

First off: Welcome to the club no one wants to join. You are in the right place and will get excellent help, support and guidance.

I believe your best course of action is to expose this Emotional Affair (EA) to your family, closest friends, their workplace (human recourses) and her spouse/boyfriend. He is incapable of stopping it himself, and you have solid proof (the text messages) that this is NOT innocent.

Before you expose, you should click on her Facebook account, and see her friends list. Copy/past those into a Word document in case you need to expose more broadly to get her to stop contacting your husband.

Exposure is likely to make him very, very angry. But it has to be done, because he is in a FOG created by an emotional affair that he has become addicted to.

You should ask family, friends, work colleagues and her spouse/boyfriend for their help in stopping this relationship that is threatening your marriage. Tell them your WH will deny it, but you have evidence that it is not the kind of relationship between innocent friends. Tell them you love your husband and will do everything in your power to repair your relationship and heal.

Then, once their affair is dead, you can start to rebuild your life with your husband using Marriage Builders techniques that will safeguard your marriage from such attacks in the future and truly make you two happy.

More MB posters will join the discussion soon.

Questions? Concerns?

GinoSusan, I suspect you really need a hug

(((((((((GS))))))))))



Or rather, the addiction to the high of the affair is so sweet, that to continue, he has to be able to convince himself of self-justifying nonsense.


Yes, he is highly addicted to this nasty crack habit.



Translation - If you just let me smoke my crack pipe on the quiet, I wont get mad at you...



Can you simply ask the addict to put down his crack pipe and be a grown up? Um, no sadly. It has been tried. By yourself, in fact!

It will take a harsh dose of reality to shake him out of his little fantasy world, where only he matters.

In a word - EXPOSURE

Everyone who knows him, who has influence over him, must come down on him and reason with him, like an intervention.

Do the same on her side, asking all OWs facebook friends to reason with her.

Tell your family too, asking for their support

In the dark, their affair doesnt look so bad to them. It seems harmless. But when they see it reflected on the horrified faces of their friends, they will want no part of it.

Exposure often kills an A dead, and if you've caught it early enough, it may do the trick entirely.

First, don't tell your WH about this site as it will be your safe haven as you go through this.

Some questions:

1. Do you know anything about OW? Is she married?

2. How long have you been married? Any children?

3. Does he travel a lot?

You cannot educate a wayward. You've already confronted him now it's time to get to work. While you are doing all of the below stay calm and cool. Remain loving but firm that there is no room in your marriage for a third person.

Start working on yourself. Remember the breathe! There's an article about the Carrot and Stick of Plan A - I'll see if I can find it. It's a QRC about the steps to Plan A.

Start snooping and collecting your evidence. Don't share it with your WH. You may need it later.

Start exposing this affair to people who may have an influence over your husband (i.e., friends, family, minister, etc.) Don't be vindictive, but rather let them know what's going on and ask for their help to save your marriage. But before you do this, come back here and let us know how you plan on doing this.

The plan Dr. Harley recommends for recovery is very specific because even the smallest deviations from that plan are usually disastrous.

There are two steps: Step one is for your WH to completely separate from OW and eliminate all avenues of contact.

Dr. Harley says:

"This information is important for two reasons: (1) it creates accountability and transparency, making it essentially impossible for the unfaithful spouse to continue the affair or begin a new one unnoticed, and (2) it creates trust for the betrayed spouse, providing evidence that the affair is over and a new one is unlikely to take its place. The nightmares you experience are likely to continue until you have the facts that will lead to your assurance that your husband can be trusted.

An analysis of the wayward spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them."

The second step is to create a romantic relationship between you and your husband using Dr. Harley's 10 Basic Concepts here
as your guide.

But you can't get to step two without step one.

Welcome to Marriage Builders.

The Carrot and the Stick of Plan A

The carrot of Plan A

Meeting your wayward spouse's emotional needs.

Making "home" a warm and inviting place to be.

Placing emphasis on what has worked in the marriage.

Showing consistent self improvement in areas where previously lacking.

Stop LoveBusting behaviors.

Communicating with a calm reassuring voice and relaxed body language, even in the center of a verbal storm created by the infidel.

Becoming the person any reasonable spouse would want to come home to.

Remaining open to the possibility of recovery.

Offering forgiveness and understanding.


The stick of Plan A

Exposing adultery where it matters most. Exposure that takes the form of a swift and sudden unexpected tsunami of truth.

Not apologizing for exposure or speaking the truth in a kind yet direct way.

Directly communicating the hurt and devastation that the affair has caused.

Not accepting blame for the infidel's choice to become adulterous.

Let the consequences of adultery and infidelity fall freely upon the heads of the adulterous.

Establishing boundaries that disallow the affair to effect children of the marriage, financial security of the marriage, and otherwise ruin innocent bystanders.

Standing up to infidelity as a beast that must be slayed for the good of the family.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Plan A is both a *carrot* and a *stick*.

The Carrot and the Stick of Plan A

Remember not to warn or threaten you are about to expose!

They will paint you as a crazy jealous harpy who should not be listened to.

Do it simply, without warning. Purely tell people the facts and ask for their help in reasoning with them and for support in saving your marriage.

I'll hunt you up a template exposure letter.

Do you have kids?

Dear friend of Skankyhola,

It is with great regret that I send this letter but I believe all of her friends should be aware that Skanky is having an affair with my husband, Joe. We have been married for x years and have x heartbroken children. They have been having this affair since x according to the evidence.

I would be happy to provide the evidence to anyone who asks.

I would ask that you use your influence with Skanky to persuade her to leave my husband alone. You should also watch your own husbands around her because she is no friend to marriage.

I would appreciate it if someone would notify her parents and ask them to call me at xxx-www-xxxx.

Thank you, BW

Is she married? Are they co-workers?

I would go to her facebook page right now and copy and paste all her contacts into a WORD doc and save it.

When sending to his family and yours, (if not by phone or speaking to them direct) just amend the above letter to focus more on what has happened and asking for support for your marriage.

There is also a HR letter that is useful if they work together. How do they know one another?

Yes she could block you at any moment on a whim and you would lose access to her info.

GS. This is most likely the ONLY thing that he is not lying about. We call it taking it underground... and waywards are very good at it.

Don't ask him. He won't tell you the truth.



He will not "see" that what he is doing is wrong until ... you kill the affair and he then starts to come out of the fog. So that is your mission right now - kill this affair.

Affairs thrive on secrecy and that makes exposure your most powerful weapon. Expose to anyone who may have influence on him. Do it unexpectedly and all at once. Also expose to OW husband/boyfriend and her friends.

Expect him to be furious. That is good. It means you have made it difficult for him to continue the A. Think of it as a drunk getting cut off at the bar. The drunk always gets mad and thinks it is unfair. The sober ones can see that it was for the drunk's own good.

Stay calm and take deep breaths.

1. Do you know anything about OW? Is she married?
OW is married. She hasn't told him anything even though he did start asking questions as to why she was suddenly best friends with my husband. She says she doesn't want to tell him cause he has just started working in the same company as them.

2. How long have you been married? Any children?
Married 14 yrs, 3 children

3. Does he travel a lot?
This is his 3rd trip since May. OW was on business trip in May too which is when this all started. She hasn't been on the two trips since.

The thoughts of exposing him scare me. I have talked with my sister about all of this which my husband did not like at all.
Its very hard to not have them make contact as it is mostly done through gmail chat ( not anymore since I told him what I saw there), texting and work IMs which I can't get access to. They used to run together after work but have stopped that as I didn't want him spending time with her. I also had asked that they not meet up for breakfast, coffee,etc but found out last week that they had continued with that. They also meet at an exercise class 3 times a week. For a while he used to let me know if they had communicated, but I have since realised he only told me about a small part ie not about meeting for coffee or most of the messages.
I can see how exposing the affair could be effective but he would be soooo angry with me.

This is where you should start. The affair should be exposed to her husband, and to your family members. Affairs thrive on secrecy so the longer you wait, the harder it will be to save your marriage. Exposure is the most potent weapon against an affair. Keeping it a secret is good for the OW and the affair, but bad for you and your marriage. Here is what Dr Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders says about exposure:

here

Why do you think this is an emotional affair and not a physical affair?


The goal here is to save your marriage, not to avoid your husband's anger. Your marriage can survive his temporary anger, it can't survive this affair. You are going to have to take some very strong action to bust this up if you are serious about saving your marriage. And your H will have to leave that job in order to save your marriage. I don't believe they haven't slept together.

I would plan to expose the affair all in the same day. In order to be effective, it needs to be a tsunami, not a trickle. I would copy all the OW's facebook into a WORD doc and do that NOW. Go do that right now. I would then make up a list of exposure targets and plan an exposure that looks like this:

1. call his parents, your parents, close friends and family. Tell them about your husbands affair. Ask them to use their influence to persuade him to end his affair.

2. call or email the OW's husband. Tell him all about the affair and give him the evidence. Ask him to help you kill this affair.

3. send a private message to this skank's facebook friends and family. Try to locate her parents and family members and contact them FIRST. Send them a letter like this:

SPACE THE PM'S OUT A MINUTE APART SO FB DOES NOT SHUT YOU DOWN FOR FLOODING.

4. Send a certified letter to the Director of Human Resources, ccing a key VP and both of their bosses. This cc is CRITICAL because no one will be tempted to toss your letter. They will have to take official action if they know others know about it.

Here is sample letter:

GS. Things will get worse before they get better. Your M can survive anger but it cannot survive a third person in it.

Ok. You have tried asking him nicely to stop and he hasn't...they never do. He is addicted. But this addiction is not so fun anymore when the people he cares about most are watching him get high. This is the purpose of exposure. It removes the secrecy and holds him accountable for his actions.

We were all scared so I can relate 100%. But you should be more scared of divorce. Because that is where you are headed if you continue to ENABLE this affair by keeping it secret. The longer you wait the more entrenched it becomes and the more likely he will leave you for OW or she gets pregnant. OW are sneaky devils and they are not above getting pregnant to trap a man. Just go check out the Pregnancy forum here. Happens all the time.

And yes, your H will be furious when he finds out. He will make all manner of threats and may even go stay in a hotel for the night. THATS OK. Don't let it bother you one bit!! Just envision that you have taken the crack pipe away from the crack head and you will understand what has happened. When he comes after you, just smile and say "I am so sorry you are upset but felt that everyone should know about your affair. Can I get you a drink, dear?"

Don't let him scare you one bit. And don't let him bait you into a fight. Simply DEMAND that he end his affair and end all contact for life or this marriage will end in divorce. BE a broken record.

This poor man needs to know. You can then both work togehter to keep an eye on things from both sides.

If they work together he needs to quit his job. Every time he sees her there is contact that triggers his addiction. You also need to expose to the companys HR department.



This is a lot to lose without a fight isnt it? When you send your facebook messages to skanky's friends I would change your facebook profile picture to one that shows what a beautiful family she is messing with.

Remember you are fighting for your children too, you must get tough on this affair.



We can coach you through this, but first exposure needs to be done before the A progresses any more. They are already q entrenched by the sound of it.



Which isnt really the h you know, is it? The person you know a)wouldnt do this and b) if so, would be on his knees begging forgiveness, willing to do anything, willing to accept all consequences. Accepting blame.

But it's not him that will get angry, its the addiction. Like Mel said, he is going to kick up a fuss when the bar closes. But its the only way to get him sober.

Think about it - if his top priority is to keep this thing secret.... If he would even dare get angry at his beloved wife for people knowing about actions HE chose to commit.. then you are going to need all the help you can get.

Quote:


3. Does he travel a lot?
This is his 3rd trip since May. OW was on business trip in May too which is when this all started. She hasn't been on the two trips since.


Why do you think this is an emotional affair and not a physical affair?

- I do believe my husband when he says it is not a physical affair. When I first found out about it he told me all about that business trip and the weeks after it. He gave me great detail and did admit to being very tempted on one occasion but didn't act on it. Do I think it would never progress to a physical affair? I think it would. With feelings that strong and emotional needs being met I think that is exactly where it would eventually end up.

Thanks for all the advice. I will have to think about how I will about exposing this affair.

I am sorry but this is likely a lie. He would not be expected to tell you the truth about that. Liars do not tell truth.

You already know that he is capable of bending the truth to fit his own needs.

Be smart here GS.