Wow. You people are harsh.

I'm really trying to understand these concepts, that's why all the questions. I'm not trying to say anyone is unqualified, I'm asking what qualifies you. Please don't take my posts as negative, I just found all this today and I'm trying to process it all.
I don't know how many marriages our counselor has saved. I haven't asked those questions yet. I will now. I'm not being dishonest about anything. I've just been following my counselors advice, and it seemed to jive with Dr. Harley's love bank thoughts.

It will take some time & prayer to expose my wife like this, but I have thought for months about telling her friends & parents.

Don't give up on me just because I'm asking questions. I've loved this woman since I was 16, and I will do whatever it takes to keep my family together.

Thanks.

That's because you are sitting on a train track with a train coming your way and won't get off the track. You are making strategic mistakes. We have seen so many people lose their marriages doing exactly what you are doing: absolutely nothing. On the other hand, almost every one of us here in recovered marriages attribute it to exposure.

While exposure is no guarantee, what you are doing is the most likely to lead to divorce. [did you listen to the radio clip I posted?] Enabling your wife's affair not only allows the affair to become entrenched but your complacence shows her that you don't care very much. Husbands who care about their marriages don't enable affairs, they fight them.

We are trying to wake you up so you will start fighting for your marriage and stop enabling the affair. You have very poor instincts about infidelity and an unqualified, dangerous "counselor." If your wife ever wakes up the fog, she will not recall your complacence fondly.

If you are insistent on saving the M I would contact the Harleys.

Affairages are tough to recover and the Harleys are the best. Therefore you need the best.

I have no problem telling you I am not qualified to help there.

If nothing else you will be able to tell your kids one day you tried everything.

We can only hope you really mean this. Enabling your wife's affair will not keep your family together so if you don't change your tactics, you won't keep your family together.

If your wife was a crack head, do you think it would help your marriage if you drove her to the crack house? Because that is exactly what you are doing by enabling her affair. You are currently part of the problem because you are aiding and abetting an affair. If you truly want to keep your family together then you need to defend your MARRIAGE, not her affair.

Since you just found the site.....here is a good post to read
http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1659680#Post1659680

and it will show you the general way things go for a betrayed person.

There is a lot to consider for you and your child......that your wife is still in love with her first husband and father to her two oldest kids and is willing to betray you for him makes an extra pickle of the situation, for sure.

So you're all saying that exposing the affair to everyone we know will end it.

What do I say to her though? Do I keep telling her to end it, which always leads to an argument, or do I just expose to everyone else?

One bit of info: The counselor told her to stop the affair, she says she is trying to talk to him less, and I haven't seen evidence of communication between them for a week. Yes, I'm still checking her emails & phone, unbeknownst to her.

You all say to stand up for my marriage by exposing to everyone else. I'm just asking if this tactic includes continuing to tell her to stop also.

Thanks.

BrokenIn2. Affairs thrive on secrecy. Exposure kills the secrecy and asks for support from people with influence on the wayward to end the affair and return to the marriage. Skipping the exposure part is enabling the affair because it allows the wayward to continue without any accountability or consequences as they are "allowed" to hide their abusive actions from their family and peers.

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Harley. Maybe it will help you understand the exposure part:

Melody, can you tell me how many marriages you know personally that have survived using the exposure tactics?

Thanks.

No, there would be too many to count over the 11 years I have been here.

There are no guarantees Broken. Nobody here has promised you a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow if you expose. Okay?

mmmherb wrote something on someone else's thread that has stuck in my mind for quite a while. I think I have it credited properly but if I'm wrong someone correct me:

(paraphrased)

There are no guarantees of ending the affair with exposure. But there are guarantees if you don't.

This is your life, not ours. Everyone here has given you the best advice you'll ever receive on saving your marriage. The advice here is NOT going to change to suit your comfort level. It just won't, so stop the justifications for not following this method.

It's up to you to follow it or dismiss it.

Psst.....

I'd listen, and implement, if I were you.

Wes, if he were interested in guarantees, he obviously wouldn't be following his current failed path. He knows it doesn't work yet he still follows it. That tells me a "guarantee" is not his issue, but something else.

We have given him all the necessary information he needs to save his marriage. It is up to him to use it or not. Nothing more can be said.

No doubt about that! Of course, we all know what that driving force is that prevents him from doing what he has to do to save his marriage.

Fear

I actually just read this today... Only about 30% of affair partners choose to continue after exposure.

BI2,

First of all I am sorry that you are here because of your WW. I am WW that found this site in January so I am still very new to this site. I like you was very leery at first of the people on this site and what they had to say. I honestly wanted to get off after one day because they were so hard on me.

Something however kept bringing me back and the advice that they have given has changed me and slowly started to recover the marriage that I almost destroyed.


In addition, the Marriage counselor that tried to help my husband and myself actually made him feel so bad that he not only stopped going to her but he moved out shortly after our last session. He actually said that she made him want to give up on our marriage more than anyone else.

Since then I have been following the advice and steps of the people on this site. Everything they have told me I have taken to heart and it not only changed me and continues to change me, but my husband can see through my actions how dedicated I am to our marriage and building up to be better than it ever was before.


Another thought that I had as I was reading your forum. I had my first affair when I was 19 (one year into my marriage). This affair was kept very quiet and only very close family member knew about it. In addition both my husband and myself swept it under the carpet and moved on with our lives. I NEVER thought I would have another affair. Unfortunately, keeping my first affair secret and me never truly learning my weaknesses and the boundaries that I should have set up years ago, left me prone to have another affair thirteen years later.

This site has CHANGED me and my husband exposed my affair to EVERYONE we knew. I was very angry at first by this but now I am so very grateful. It brought me to the reality of my situation and lifted my affair fog.

I know you feel like you are betraying your wife, but take it from a WW, this is the best gift you can give to your wife and your marriage. Also, don't give up on the people on this site. They are a Godsend!! God does not always tell us what we like to hear. Listen to them and take action!

Here is a radio show where the caller's "counselor" has told the husband to do nothing about his wife's affair. Dr Harley explains why he has probably lost his marriage due to his complacence - you might want to play this for your counselor:

part 1, part 2

BrokenIn2, I would like to bring you back to your original statement about your counselor's advice and highlight WHY you should consider the Harley's method.

Your counselor wants YOU to change YOURSELF and YOUR marriage.

Let's look at the history you have subsequently given us:
- Your marriage started as an affair, which means your wife already has a proven history of going to another man when things get rough
- Your wife claims she was a victim of assault etc... which is how she originally presented herself to you. Yet, she continues to romantically seek this so-called terrible abusive man when her children are grown and there is no reason to.
- Your wife has made it clear THIS IS WHO SHE IS. She is the kind of woman who will LIE when it benefits her. I will *guarantee* that she has told her ex-husband some very terrible and untrue things about you. You have probably been demonized in the same manner

Your counselor wants YOU TO CHANGE. However, if you want to have a successful marriage, it is your wife's character that must change. She must learn to have proper boundaries around men. She must learn to not LIE in order to get what she wants, no matter who she hurts. In implementing this program, you can help (by extraordinary precautions,etc)

The Harley's teach to expose affairs not only to prevent htem from reoccuring but to "burst" the fantasy bubble. Your wife has clearly held onto some sort of fantasy for what, almost 20 years? Notice how your wife has PATTERN of doing this???

You need the Harley's even more than most posters on SAA. You are dealing with someone who has a pattern for 20 years of doing this. You have a lot of work ahead of you.

Bingo. You can call yourself a counsellor and have a plaque on the wall but that doesn't mean you can start operating outside common sense. Or ask people to trust you without demonstrating a success record.

Your counsellor has looked at this situation and accurately judged that it is just easier to pick on you. You want the marriage, are committed, motivated. But telling you to be more so doesn't fix a thing.

I'm not a particularly religious person, but after the first MC we hired turned out to be a complete hack, my wife found another who counseled on "biblical principle." I had no problem with that, so I went along.

Ultimately, the counselor was quite helpful, but blanched at the concept of exposure, claiming it was an act of vindictiveness and revenge.

I asked her under which biblical principle it was acceptable for me to become complicit in my wife's lies, deceit, and infidelity by actively covering her sins. I further asked her under which passages in the bible it was deemed Godly for a father to knowingly lie to his children, force them to live a lie, and teach them that, sometimes, lying is okay. I asked her when the church became about avoiding hurting people's feelings instead of teaching people to be Christ-like. I also asked her what right she had to project her feelings about exposing sin onto me.

As I suspect your pastor, counselor, or whomever you're consulting for advice would react: she had absolutely no answers.

Since the majority of our session had evolved into a spririted debate on exposure, which the MC lost in a run-away, I offered to reimburse my wife $50 for her portion of the session.

Me? I got my money's worth . . .

*******************EDIT*****************

Please help this poster find solutions for his marriage problems rather than turning this into a lecture to board members on posting styles. If you have an issue with the posting style of another board member, forward your concerns to the moderators and we will determine if it is a violation of our TOS. It is our job to do the moderating.

Thank you.