Susie I know you are uncomfortable, I know you are afraid.

Do you think we were any different? No one is born knowing how to do tough jobs. They have to gather up all their courage, grit their teeth and just do it anyway.

Even if they think snooping will turn up something they dont want to see. If they fear exposure will be humiliating or make their spouse angry. Or make life awkward. Nevertheless they know that adultery and secrecy in a marriage is wrong. They know lying to kids is wrong. They know saying 'please dont' and hoping is not common sense.

Timid people come here a lot wanting blind hope for their wayward. They all get used as doormats until they have breakdowns - no exceptions.

Dont be one of them. I have a feeling you are stronger than you are being right now.

Tough people either recover their marriages or recover themselves.

That is unbelievable. Unbelievable.

Then you cannot recover your marriage. You cannot work any parts of the marriage builder plan without exposure. Exposure is the foundation. It is important you make honesty a tenet of your everyday life. Marriage is bigger than two people. Especially when children are involved.

Show some guts.



Then you need to get bigger. You are using a pea shooter to attack a tiger.

Inside the addict, your H may still be there. But you will never know until you get the guts to take away his drugs.

If he chooses to remain adicted after that, fine. But you will have done all you could to stop it.

Oh and the computer is marital prooperty. You do know that you both joint own everything right? You are his wife after all?

Get the keylogger on there. He definitely has some online stuff going on.

Enabling is also taking a position and you are doing that. What convinces you this is the right thing? The Bible does not endorse your secrecy and Dr Harley does not. So what is it about Plan "E" for enabling convinces you it is the right path?

Do you have some evidence that enabling works?

But you would if you were a cheater looking for a place to talk?

Dr. Harley telling a betrayed husband in this radio clip [whose wife was leaving him] that "it is hard to save a marriage when you are an enabler" http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=2815

Susie, this is some serious BS denial/fog.

Your WH is blantantly disrespecting you by continuing to be FB friends with his OW and to continue texting with her and refusing to tell her it's over. This should shock and upset you. But you make excuses instead.

Guess what? He isn't going to end this affair because he knows that he doesn't have to.

You are enabling this behavior. Big time. That is why he had another affair and that's why he isn't even trying to hide some of this contact.

This is true.

He can tell you whatever he wants and you will believe. You will not check. You will hope. You will stay. You will work harder to make him happy. This is a waywards paradise.

I have a formerly alcoholic uncle. I know that if his wife had not checked on him when he told her lies, if she had not told others and gained our support, if she had decided to keep the secret in the dark, that she would never have gotten him into recovery.

The recovery was his success, but taking away the bottle in the first place was hers.

"She will do him good and not evil, all the days of her life"

But doing him good was marvellously uncomfortable for her, I can tell you.

Right things are rarely the easy choices. Easy choices tend to involve doing nothing and enabling others to do evil.

That's a pretty extreme reaction from someone who is supposedly no longer in an active affair.

So, exactly how ARE you snooping to confirm NC? It sounds like you're doing nothing.

Do you have spyware on his phone?

Oh Susue

Have been reading your thread and you come accross as such a good natured soul, you love your H and you are trying to please everyone but have not taken the time to see that your marriage is suffering as a result. And therefore unless something changes I would like to officially welcome you to plan doormat.

I am not saying this to you out of malice but purely as a matter of fact. Doing nothing to actively save your marriage is equivalent to allowing it to fall apart.

There are three types of people that I see on MB on a regular basis and they all start out pretty much the same way

They are People who are in desperate need of saving their marriage, they come to the site, they post they get replies, they ask questions and they get given advice and directed to the correct reading material (most advice is backed and based on Dr Harley's research and vast experience at saving marriages)

From here on each individual has a choice

1) Follow the advice straight away, get control of the situation they are in and start to feel better by just doing the right thing as opposed to still going round in circles. This response tends to have the best result as far as emotional well being of the person posting and often on saving the marriage

2) Take time to think over and fight against every single piece of advice given on here but once the poster goes round in circles a few time and the realisation hits that their marriage is still in no better shape than the first day they sought help and at times being even more damaged than they first started the poster gets on board and follows the advice once again leading to the positive effect listed in point 1. (ps this is the route I followed and it wasn't too great)
Or
3) the poster makes excuses and reasons why they won't do what they need to do and before you know it the word divorce is being mentioned here and there and the chances of recovery are minimal because by the time you realise the advice your getting is correct and good your M would have had to deteriorate further.

These are the roads you have ahead of you. Your choice which one sounds most appealing.

Good luck.

As said before, you are married so the computer belongs to both of you. You can install a keylogger on your computer.

I'll tell you what, install that keylogger and spyware on his phone. Look at what it shows you and then come back to us saying that the affair is over. I bet you'll be surprised at what you find.

It's not over, he's just hidden it from you and you've bought the lies.

Been there, done that, got the lousy t-shirt.

Susie, I am afraid that by the time you are ready to do the real work, your marriage will be heading down the toilet.

My children were 9 and 6 when I told them about the affair. They know all about it. They understood it because I told them in an age appropriate way. It was important for them to know what was going on in their lives so they wouldn't blame themselves. Also, they won't repeat the mistakes of their father because they know it won't be acceptable to me, at all. I would kick their butts.

You need to wake up and start acting. You are letting your marriage get driven into the ditch while you do NOTHING.

It's fine that you want to start standing up for yourself and not be easily persuaded, when it would HARM you, but this won't harm you, it will empower you.

Susie, we want the BEST for you. The best for your children. The best for your marriage. Listen.

Susie, time is not your friend here.

Time to act?

Hi

I wanted to check in and tell you what happened because I appreciated all of the time and concern people put into helping me even when I was such a slow learner. I am finishing the thread.

First of all, you were all right. H was continuing the affair under cover, by means of text, email and Skype and met her a couple of times too. You were right that it was no help to be 'working on the marriage' until the OW was out of the picture.

You were also right about exposure. I have not posted in the thread because I was not able to find a line to draw between exposure and 'naming and shaming' that I felt would satisfy you all.

I exposed to two pastors at the church and H's sister and asked the other people who knew about the situation to contact H and make their views clear. The pastors agreed it was a priority to break contact with OW and get her to leave the area. H's sister was furious with him and so upset and rang me and made her feelings very clear! This had the effect of me realising that I was not able to distinguish between truth, lies/concealment and fog any more and I walked out and left overnight (I knew I could trust H to cope with children) and refused to tell him where I was.

When I came back things were still unresolved but H then told me that OW had broken off the affair as she couldn't take him sitting on the fence any more.

Things were clearly reaching crisis point.

We had been talking throughout about ways of mending the marriage if we decided to stay together and a lot of the things we had worked out ourselves were things that are put so clearly on the MB website. I had sent H a couple of links to things on the website but not sure they really resonated.

Then suddenly, H told me he'd read something really important about honesty on a website he'd found. It's a website called marriagebuilders.com (heard of it anyone?) and he realised that he could not go any further until he'd been completely honest with me - there would be no chance of the marriage working if he was not honest.

On Monday he spent about 10 hours writing to me a letter being honest about our marriage. There were a lot of things that he had concealed - painful devastating things. He realised that by not being honest about very little things he had become used to 'not hurting me' and had not been honest about bigger things. It was intensely painful to read - especially as that was when he admitted he'd stayed in close contact with OW throughout. He said that he'd been to see her after she'd broken up with him as they felt they deserved a 'proper goodbye' and had agreed that breaking off contact completely would be too painful so they would just email (yes, I know).

On Tuesday morning I had decided that I had very little choice but to move to Plan B as I pointed out that there was still an affair going on. At our MC session I let him talk (I was still wiped out by the revelations) and to my surprise he openly admitted the things he had written to me (they were very painful things to admit to a third party) and said he wasn't sure that I would still be interested in trying to work on the marriage after the revelations. I admit it was a struggle but I said that I loved him and still believed in the marriage although I had found the revelations very hard. I pointed out he was still having an affair by being in email contact (the MC nodded as I said this) and, to my shock, H suggested that I could read the emails from now on. He said that it was no longer an 'if' NC but 'when'.

I was uncertain and when I read the emails, doubly so. OW had obviously weakened on her stance of splitting up with him and was sounding increasingly desperate to be together but H's emails have become increasingly bland over the last few days and H's whole manner has changed entirely over the week since Monday. It is as if the scales have suddenly fallen from his eyes and he's realised what a mess he's got us all into. The radical honesty policy (which he printed off from MB) has helped us both to understand how even in little things we have been dishonest by not sharing how we felt about things leading to ever increasing distance.

I have printed off the EN questionnaires for us both and we are going to do that. SAA arrived yesterday and I've read it through quickly (lots familiar from the website) and we need to make a plan. Now we are starting to communicate more and better and schedule time to discuss problems H is finding less need for OW. Even she has spotted the problem - in one of her emails she admitted that she was afraid that if the emotional gap in the marriage was filled that there wouldn't be room for her.

So there we are. H is close to NC - whereas before he was insisting that NC could only happen if things in the marriage were better, now he knows it has to be done but I think feels intense guilt about what he has done to OW. (I never did contact her supervisor. It turns out that he had an affair when he was about H's age with a student and left his wife for her! They are still married so not sure he would have been necessarily on the side of our marriage!). He really wants the problem to go away but I have thoughts about how he can tackle it that we are going to talk about tonight.

I'm not sure you'll all approve of how I've done it but I feel as if a huge storm has finally passed and we are looking around at the damage to see what can be salvaged and what must be rebuilt entirely from scratch. It is both daunting and exciting. As I realise how little my EN's have been met over the years (I've realised I was a renter in this marriage, when I thought I was a buyer) I feel very excited at the thought that there could be real happiness in store for us both. ML was the first to give me hope for that - that has been something that I have really tried to hold on to at the most difficult times, even though I wasn't sure I could believe it.

Thank you again.

What does this mean?

Has he commited to NC, agreeing to write a NC letter and change all of the ways that OW made contact with him (phone number, email, etc?) Is OW still his FB friend? Has he agreed to be transparent, giving you all of his passwords?

The rest of it doesn't matter unless you have this.

Most likely this affair just went further underground...again...unless you exposed it properly. Were your children informed? Both sets of parents, siblings & close friends who could put pressure on your WH? Who on the OW's side was exposed to? Were you able to reach her parents??

Susie, you have agreed to let the alcoholic have a little sip every now and then. It won't work that way.

You think you have achieved a small victory toward the goal of NC, and that's not what happened. Your WH achieved the victory - he gets to continue cake-eating by having both of you.

It may not happen tomorrow, or the next day, but these continued email contacts will cause the A to heat back up. Your WH thinks a little sip is all he needs, but that won't last long. He'll start looking at the whole bottle soon.

And if that's not enough: think about yourself! How long can you emotionally withstand this business of your WH giving himself, even through emails, to another woman??? How do you plan to live in peace, wondering about the UNbland emails he's sending her and NOT showing you??? Or wondering if today is the day he chucks all sense to the wind and arranges - VIA THE EMAIL THAT YOU APPROVED - to meet her somewhere?

He's hoping she'll come around to NC herself. I think he'll do it tonight actually. She knows about the NC policy from the forum that she goes on (for OW/OM)

She has already told him that she will probably move away if it is all over (she has suggested 3 cities but has said she won't tell him which one).

There is no point in him changing his email address as he has quite a web presence (his own website and through work) so she could find him easily any way. If he changed job this would be the same - he is known and any google search would find him easily and he has the type of job that has an email associated clearly and directly with him.

Possibly his phone number could change. I need to discuss with him EPs. He's agreed to be transparent and I know will give me all the passwords I want. He also told me that I could have accessed his emails any time I want from the iPad (he was keeping that secret before obviously!) so that I could access it at any time. To be honest, though, if you want to get in contact with someone that badly you can, even if everything has been changed! If he wants to go underground he will.

He was close to doing a NC letter a week ago. That definitely would have been a 'deeper underground' one I realise now.

I do understand that having been so blind before you see me as blind now. I see a different man who is sharing all of the issues and wanting to work on them. He is starting to see that 'weaning off' contact does not work, particularly for her and is uncertain how to proceed. He has discussed NC letters with OW in the past few weeks so it will be clear to her if it's one that has been written for him by someone else - she'll assume he's been pressured and won't take it seriously (I gave him the MB template to start with).

Exposure was not complete in the MB forum understanding of it. His job is at risk if he does not stop everything, however, and that was made clear to him. It's not just the job though - it's his career and the reputation of the (high profile) church he works at. I cannot contact her parents. I cannot go further without 'naming and shaming' and I will not do that. My father wrote a strong email saying how he felt and that was not in the end influential. It is the people who have understood him but led him in the right direction who have made a difference. A friend told him of the NC she had to put in place with someone and how hard it was and how glad she was she'd done it. That is what has made a difference to his change in attitude.

When I was demanding him to have NC I wasn't getting very far. Now he is doing it himself he is getting there.

Or figuring out a way to deceive you.