I have been lurking on the MB boards for many weeks now and finally have the wherewithal to post my story and ask your advice. I�m not sure which board I actually belong on, but trust your advice regarding my choices and actions. I�m struggling with how to tell the �story�, so I�ll try facts before reflection.
We have been married 17 years (dated 3 years before that) and most of it was great, produced two wonderful, happy children (15 &12). In July/August, following months (if not years) of escalating arguments, focus on kids, living parallel lives, my husband gave me the ILYBNILWY speech, said no one else involved (lie). We both felt we had been living as �roommates� but he didn�t know if he should leave. Not knowing what to do, my natural reaction was to tell him I would fight for our marriage and I unknowlingly launched in to a kind of Plan A. I focused on being a better wife, more attentive, available, engaged. Things seemed to be improving, but I was walking on eggshells. Kids unaware.
D-day came on Labor Day (9/4/11). All 4 of us were working in the backyard, when a text came on H�s iphone. My daughter saw it and said �Mom, who is this from?� I don�t recall the actual words but it was something like �I can�t believe you�re doing this to me again!� I knew what it was as soon as I saw it - a message from an OW. I acted nonchalant and told my daughter to take it to my husband, and he pawned it off as a guy from work. Over the course of the next few hours, his work & personal cell phone began going off like crazy, and then the house phone started ring with blocked calls � and the person would hang up when we answered. Eventually the calls started coming in with a name displayed. These �Telemarketers� were relentless! Amazingly, I held it together, could see the husband sweating bullets for hours, making a hurried angry call from the other side of the house. He went to take a shower and took both of his phones with him (later found he had turned them off and hid them in his closet). When he came down after the shower, he said he had to run an errand � I knew to where and said �no�. He said he needed to put a stop to this and we could talk as long as I wanted when he got back. He returned in 2 hours or so and we spent the next many, many hours in the basement. Long story short: he had been having an affair. His admission began as it had only been going on for weeks then he admitted months, but by the end of the night, he had admitted that the EA had started 2 years ago and the PA had started about a year ago (personally I believe the PA was longer). He said he had been trying to break it off for many weeks, but she began threatening him with exposure to the wife. He went to her house that day to tell her it was over, that I knew about the affair and to stop contacting him. He answered every question I had, regardless of the disgusting answers (�at the XYZ motel � we split it�). I have a name (the complete name that was on caller ID earlier), know where & how they met (work), etc. I asked him what he wanted (�to stay with me & the kids�) and I said the only way was if worked with me on making our relationship better than it was, even in the good old days. I would have likely not believed his attestations regarding trying to break it off, but my technology-challenged WH didn�t realize that the OW had left him a nasty voicemail on his iphone earlier in the day, which I listened to following our discussion. It was along the lines of �Look you SOB, you better stop ignoring me and answer my calls! You�re a lying SOB and I can�t believe I put up with your ***! I�m on my way to the bar to have a few drinks and get up the nerve to call your wife and tell her what�s been going on! You need to call me!� Skanky Bar Whore. I texted a response from my husband�s phone and just texted �If you ever call or contact us again, we will get a restraining order.� No reply and no further calls on any phones to this day.

I found a MC later that week, and began searching for resources to help me deal with this. Started with �The Truth About Cheating� by Gary Neuman, and eventually found MB. Thank God. Here�s my first question to you all: To this day, no one but he, I and the MC know about the affair � and now you. One of my primary goals in this is to keep the horror from our children. They know that we are �working on our marriage�, see us in more affectionate scenarios (�that�s gross!�), and even saw the 5 Steps to Romantic Love workbook when it arrived yesterday. I want them to know we�re working on it, but see no reason to scare them about divorce or any other potential scenarios they could think of. We live in a smallish community, and I fear that telling anyone, even one of my friends, could somehow get to them. Therefore, there has been no exposure and it seems that that is very important on these threads � but it seems that it�s important as a way to break up an A, but seems unnecessary if it�s already over. I believe that I was so oblivious to the goings-on for years, that I actually unknowlingly lived through the �natural death� of the A. Am I getting this right? Things aren�t perfect, but are so much better already. He is doing everything I ask: checking in, date nights, lots of family time, working on the affection pieces, watching MB video on Infidelity, committed to starting the program when it arrives, seeing the marriage counselor, no more mysterious late work nights or missing hours. We are struggling with the 15 hours a week target, but continue to push toward it each week. Am I deluding myself?

Welcome to MB, SSW. I am sorry to read of these events.

You might be deluding yourself. Many WSs, my husband included, stopped texting etc on the phone the BS knew about. The OP also stopped texting. It does not necessarily mean that the affair has ended - just that they have taken it further underground. That is what happened to me. You need to do a lot more than take his word for it that the affair has ended.

You said that they met at work. Could you tell us more about this? Do they work together? if so, your H will have to leave his job.

Is she married or living with a boyfriend? Has he been informed, directly by you? It sounds as if not, since you mention reluctance to expose the affair. We will all tell you now that the affair must be exposed to your close friends and family, to our children and TO THE OP's SPOUSE. If you do not expose to the spouse then you are simply giving OW permission to cary on sleeping with your husband.

You should not have sex with your H until you have both had full STD screens.

Your first post was very long. I can't remember whether you told us how long you have been married, how old you both are and the ages of your children.

I found these details.

Has either of you been married before?

If WH and OW are still working together, the answer would be yes. Read the following excerpt from:
Coping with Infidelity: Part 2 How Should Affairs End?


Can you give us more details on this OW?

I will say, your kids should know.
It is the truth of their family. It sucks but its part of their existence now.
It was part of it even before your own d day.

If the whole community finds out.....guess what? Many of them will reach out to you and say "I went through this too." My whole community reached out to me and you would not believe the people I knew for decades who then shared their story with me and gave me a shoulder to lean on.

Take the OW's power away from her and tell people yourself (yourselves if your WH will dare to).

Sorry you are here and we welcome you though we all shake our heads with the constant new folk that arrive.

SSW, do your WH and OW work together? How do they know each other?

Is OW married?

This may be one of our easier affairs to kill..

Welcome to Marriage Builders. You can make a new marriage here.

My WH is a beer salesman, used to sell bars (now only package stores in a different area). When they met 2 years ago, OW was a bartender at a bar that is now closed (over a year ago). They no longer have work contact. I checked her out on Facebook & LinkedIn - she's working at a bar in a farther away suburb. She is divorced (not sure how long), three kids, 15 years younger than me.

Neither of us was married before. To be perfectly clear, we aren't even close to sex. We are working just to have affectionate physical contact. No sex without Dr's clearing it all. I sometimes wonder how I will ever manage to share my physical "imperfections" with him again when all I can picture is her skinny, big chested Facebook bikini picture.

Also, my husband is beyond technology-challenged. I check the personal cell & home phone accts regularly. His work phone is harder since we have no billing access, but it only has incoming text capability (out is blocked by company) and I secretly check his call & text history regularly. When he has to send emails to his boss, he needs me to help send the email. He has trouble with the TiVo clicker. He's NOT stupid, but he doesn't really understand the capabilities of technology. He's more of a sports guy.

SSW, I don't understand the underlined sentences.

Is your H still a salesman?

Does he still travel around?

She still works behind a bar?

Well, if s"yes" to all three, then there's you opportunity for contact, right there, through their jobs.

I am sorry to say that I very much doubt that this affair has ended, just like that, just because you found out. It has been going on for two years, which means it is deeply entrenched. Your H has made promises and said things to her (Like "I love you") and she wants payback for all the investment she made, waiting for him to leave you.

Ask me how know this.

The affair is still going on, SWW, in the form of some contact or other.

It is likely that OW broke up her marriage for your H. You need to track down her XH and talk to him. See if you can find her kids, then find him on their contact list. If not, try Googling his name, and there are other ways that will find him easily. I do not live in the USA and I do not know all your search facilities, but others will help you here.

Howe old are her kids? If they are old enough to have Facebook accounts, you should expose to them, too.

Talk to us when you have found out the details of the H and kids. Do not do any exposing without coming back here and checking with us.

You need to tell your own kids too. There are no ifs or buts about that step. Your children need to know what is happening in their lives, and their reaction to their father's adultery will help him see what is at stake if he keeps this up.

Find out the details of these people and get back to us, please - and please answer my questions at the top of this post.

I bet he understand how to delete a "sent" message.

Is it a smartphone? You need to install spyware on it, if so.

I bet he is also smart enough to buy a secret second cell phone that he doesn't have to bring in the house. I would be putting spyware on his phone that has a built in GPS, such as eblaster or flexispy. You can also install GPS on his car.