Right now I am dealing with my WH having an EA. He is not wanting to cut it off while we try to work things out in counseling.

I read a few threads here and everyone says exposure is key. But I want to know if it has worked for anyone? It seems vindictive and like a disaster waiting to happen. I understand the point of it but it just seems like it could be more dangerous than helpful in a lot of cases. I would like to know if it worked for anyone here.

**edit**

Most of us here who are in recovered marriages attribute it to exposure. It is the most powerful weapon against affairs. While it is no guarantee, I would guess that about 50% of affairs are killed when exposed. The reason is because affairs thrive on secrecy, so exposure ruins the high. It is like bringing in a crowd of people into the crack house to watch the crackheads get high. It is no fun to get high when everyone is watching!

Dr Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders says this:

"Exposure is very likely to end the affair, lifting the fog that has overcome the unfaithful spouse, helping him or her become truly repentant and willing to put energy and effort into a full marital recovery. In my experience with thousands of couples who struggle with the fallout of infidelity, exposure has been the single most important first step toward recovery. It not only helps end the affair, but it also provides support to the betrayed spouse, giving him or her stamina to hold out for ultimate recovery." here

Dr Harley's radio show on the benefits of exposure [Dr Harley speaking to a betrayed husband who DID NOT expose the affair and his wife was now leaving him for the OM]: click here

Yeah...exposure works.

My wife's affair was over within a week of her mother finding out.

Unless and until the affair is over...absolutely over...your marriage is over and all the counselling in the world won't make any difference whatsoever.

Ending the affair = step one

There is no step two until step one is achieved.

Exposure is the only weapon you possess to assist accomplishing step one.

Sure he won't like.

Sure he'll think you're being vindictive

But your marriage can survive his upset and incorrect inferences...it can't survive continued infidelity.

Good luck,
Mr. Wondering

It worked fo me.

And it is not vindictive when you do it in a right way. The message should be facts only:

- your WH has an affair with OW
- you are interested to save your marriage
- you ask others to interfere
- you offer to provide proof if asked

Counseling when affair is still going on is pointless and total waste of money. Would you go to MC with your H who is drunk? I guess not - then why go with WH who is high on his addiction (affair)?

Kill the affair first, survive your WH anger, enforce the NC for at least 3 weeks and only then there is a point to start marriage counseling.

Yes, it's worked for lots of us.

Here's the thing:

Affairs thrive in conditions of secrecy. Most affairs would never start except for the fact that the affairees' spouses (or co-workers, or family members) don't know. Affairees start saying things to one another, exchanging confidences & verbal intimacies that they would never express in the presence of others.

Vindictive? How so, JAS2002? One doesn't need to be vindictive or vengeful to expose an affair. One can simply say "Here's what Person Y has been saying/doing with Person X, I have such-&-such evidence, I thought you might want to know." No judgements expressed. Let the people to whom this info is given make their own judgements.

If you are being mugged in a dark alley off of a main sidewalk, and you cry out "Help!" to passersby, would you be acting vindictively? Of course not. You'd be acting to save yourself from being mugged. Your first thought is not necessarily to kill the mugger yourself; if you were sure you could do so, then you wouldn't have any need for help, would you? The reason you cry for help is because you realize you might need help. Exposing the affair is calling out "Help!"

Now, the affairees may then be deeply embarrassed; but that's a consequence to their own actions & choices, not of the fact that their actions are now more widely known. They may accuse you of being vindictive, in order to try to get you to stop exposing further. So what? Someone saying you're vindictive doesn't make it so, any more than you'd be 9 feet tall if I accused you of being 9 feet tall. If the affairees' relationships are so special, so sweepingly romantic, so wonderful, then why wouldn't the affairees be proud of their newfound love interests and proud to have eneryone know? Maybe 'cuz it isn't exactly something they're proud of.

It's pretty sad when our culture has conditioned us to accept the unacceptable and to think that an affairee's supposed right to do whatever he/she wants to, without any hassles, trumps anyone else's rights or dignity.

Exposure is the very best weapon in anyone's arsenal when it comes to breaking up an affair, which is the necessary first step toward saving a marriage. Will exposure always end an affair? Of course not always -- there are no guarantees. Sometimes when someone chooses to continue an affair and/or chooses to leave a marriage, then opinions of othres won't matter to them. Exposure won't work on those folks. But exposure is the means that works better than any other for ending an affair. It is sad that people shrink from this step because they have been conditioned to believe that it is wrong to call out wrongdoers.

For your info, I am a man whose marriage was saved when the other woman's husband found out about us. Within 2 hours of learning that he knew, I'd told my affair partner that it had to end, and confessed to my wife. Within 48 hours, I had also called my pastor, and self-exposed to one of my good friends; and my wife had exposed the affair to her best friend. Now, I'll grant you that my case was easier than most people's situations, because I wasn't hell-bent on continuing my affair. I was embarrassed as hell over what I'd done. But I didn't think it was vindictive of my wife to tell her friend. On my wife's part, it was simply self-preservation. And the fact that people knew about the affair would have made it harder for me to go back on that path without forsaking everything I'd always been taught & believed in. Exposure helps.

Yes, it works.

Read my thread....don't hesitate as I did.

It works.

My H's affair ended the day they were exposed.

You need to do it correctly, though - don't threaten your WH and his OW with exposure.

Do they still work for the same company? Have you exposed them at work?

Let me just add a note that isn't about exposure but I want to put out there.
You believe your H is having an emotional affair. He might be having a physical one.
I have to add this since so many spouses are gaslighted to believe what they want to believe from their partner.
It is just something I want to put out there for you to consider.
Back to exposure....if you KNEW it was a physical affair, would you feel more open to exposing it?

I would emphasize that EA or PA is very insignificant. My wife was in what I still believe was an EA with our pastor. It went on for months, and I knew about it. Since it was EA, exposure really never crossed my mind. My marriage went down and down. I found MB and still hesitated, even after getting the same 2x4's that it seems every BS that arrives here gets when I thought my story was different and exposure was something I didn't want to do.

After a month or so, I finally did it, and the affair started dying then. It came back a little later, in "secret", but by then I was a pretty good snoop and exposed again. I think it killed it completely.

I will always wish I had done it at the beginning.

So exposure is vital, IMO, but NC is the other side of the coin. But unless you do these, step one Mr. W called it, then anything else is useless.

The path after exposure is not certain, but the path without it is.

I read your other thread. Stop posting on multiple threads. Sticking to one thread makes it easier to follow you.

Yes, exposure works.

Also, your H is not in an EA. It�s a PA. There�s no way he would leave his wife so he can simply exchange lovey dovey notes with OW.

You�ve exposed fairly well so far, but you�re going to be stuck if you have family that endorses what he is doing. My advice? Put a big wet blanket on his fantasy and file legal papers for abandonment. Get alimony and CS while he�s out �finding himself.�

All the while, let him know he can return to the marriage if he meets certain conditions. Read up on Plan B.

The path after exposure is not certain, but the path without it is.

Absolute truth in this comment.

When the Titanic is sinking, you don't go to counseling, you right the ship. I would forgo the counseling and work on killing the affair. Kill the affair FIRST, and then work on repairing the damage. You aren't going to have a marriage to save unless you focus on killing the affair.

Counseling can be a disaster when one partner is in an affair. This is because a counselor does not understand the foggy mindset of a WS and only serves to validate the destructive, marriage wrecking thinking of a falling down drunk.