My husband and I have been together for 15 years, married 13. I have 2 children from a previous marriage and we have one together. We were both in the Military with my Hubby doing a tour in Iraq. We are both out now but it seems that Iraq is still with my husband and with it has been some very hurtful decisions on his part.

We have had some trials since he returned 7 years ago but this last year it all came to a head. It started last March when my husband started losing interest in me physically and getting angry all the time. I would set down and talk to him and tell him how hurtful his action were and try to figure out what I could do to make him happy and things would be ok for awhile but then go right back to where they were.

I hate ultimatums but I told him he needed to start counseling or we were not going to make it. Well since then things have been pretty good and he was working with tools to help with his anger and though I was still guarded with my emotions, I felt we were making progress, until about 2 weeks ago.

My husband started living in his phone and computer, He would come home, talk to me for about 5 minutes and boom he was in his chair with his phone and computer and that is where he would stay until bed time. This has been a problem this past year but really bad lately.

So yesterday it was his birthday and I hopped on our computer and went to his facebook and was going to leave him a little note saying he had been hacked by the b-day farry when I noticed a message from someone I did not recognize and it was too personal to be from a stranger. I let it go as it was his birthday until last night when I had cooked him a home cooked meal and we were suppose to watch a movie and he no longer sat down but was in his phone. I took my dinner to the kitchen and just went to bed.

Well I sent the girl a friend request to see if she would message my husband about it and when I went to check his facebook tonight, he had changed his password. He had gone to bed at that point and so I texted him and asked who she was. It took him a good 10 minutes but he finally came out to talk to me with the dear in the headlights look and I knew at that point that there was truly something going on between them.

Of course he tried to assure me that she was nobody and that he was only talking to her about us and that they were in the same gaming group online and even though she lives in another State, I don't believe he is being truthful with me at all. He said that he told her when he started counseling that he couldn't do this anymore and I knew by those choice of words that there was truly more than just casual talk with them.

I don't know if you guys believe in an emotional affair but after this past year and all that I have gone through with him, trying to get him to talk with me about his feeling for me and our family and then to find that he has been pouring his heart out to another woman while pulling away from me was just as painful as if I had caught them together. Truthfully at this point I feel there is more that he has not told me but I just did not have the strength to deal with him anymore tonight.

I figured since I had been lurking around here for the past few months reading everyone's advice and using the tools here to try and help my marriage that after tonight, I find myself needing more that just looking but input to where to start trying to bring my husband back to me and away from this other woman.

Thank you for reading my novel and I look forward to any help or direction I can get at this point.

Kiley Ann

Dear Kiley Ann,

So sorry to hear about this situation.
You probably can save your marriage and even get an even better marriage than before. But first you will have to drag this relationship out of the dump.

The first and most important step for now, is to get all of the information. Your husband won't tell you. He will lie his ears off and minimize everything. You do not even know how long this has been going on. They might even have met in Iraq for all you know and this could have been going on for more than a year!

Divorce is going to cost the two of you tens of thousands of dollars. If you can save this relationship, you will have more financial freedom for the rest of your life than if you don't. Soooo,

1
scrape 99 dollars together and order e-blaster via the internet. Once you have it installed, E-blaster will e-mail you ANY activity on the computer to your e-mail account. That will tell you what he is really up to. Google e-blaster. Use an e-mail account he does not know.

2
Snoop on his phone. Take a look at the phone bills, see if there are any numbers he constantly calls. If you cannot acces his phone and look at the messages, maybe he will leave it even once and you can install flexispy, which will tell you exactly what he is doing. If you cannot get to his phone, you might want to give him another one as a gift, where you have it preinstalled, or drop the xxx phone in the sink by 'accident'.

3
Take a look at your finances. Look through his wallet for receipts, look in his pockets, work bag etc. You want to know if he is actually using family money to further his affair.

Those are the first steps. Once you have evidence that he is heavily involved (well even if it were not physically, but it often is) you will be able to expose his behaviour to the rest of the world, which will let him see what a fool he is and which will get you support.

Untill you have enough evidence, do not let on anymore, that you are mistrusting him. Don't talk about it anymore. Tell him nothing about this site, nor about snooping or about your suspicions. Try to be nice and pleasant and do not argue.

God bless,

Happyheart

P.S.

His bad behaviour is not to be blamed to his time in Iraq. Although I am aware about PTSD, I do not recommend that you use that as an excuse in your head. If he is not having a sexual interest in you and is behaving like an [censored], that is having an affair and not PTSD.

I also have been known to have angry outburts and I was never in Iraq ;-)

Thank you so much for the pointers. I am not letting him blame anything on anything except for him. He knew what he was doing was wrong and he is a grown man who made grown up choices. I am getting a prepaid visa tomorrow to order the tracker for the computer and I will look into the phone thing. He just got a new phone but I will grab it when he showers.

Well I got e-blaster on my computer to monitor the kids and I am impressed. They will e-mail you any chat-activity on the computer right away!

I looked into it and it definitely is the route I am going to take because at this point I don't believe a thing he has to say.

Ok, it has been a long three days and a lot of tears on both sides but I finally got the whole story from my husband and the other woman in this whole mess.

She lives over 2000 miles from us and the relationship between them consisted of online, texting and phone calls. It started in a gaming chat room and went from there.

My husband is very apologetic for how far he let this go and is willing to do anything to make our marriage work. I want to do this right and get my marriage back to where it was before all this or better.

I am so glad that I found this website. my only wish is that I had started a little sooner on all the material and maybe this wouldn't of happened.

Well you are here now, stick around this is a great place to learn how to be married the right way, It amazes me how far off the mark my marriage was and for a long time........
Learn and read all you can.............
First thing you need to do is together write a no contact letter to the other woman so she knows in no uncertain terms it's over, you mail it, then changed the email address, phone # close down anyway she could contact him......
then you figure out what your emotional needs are both of you and you start meeting those needs and you put in a least 15 hours a week of undivided attention..........
and make sure there is a change in his boundaries with other women.........
chose to be open and honest.......

As an example of one of the conditions of recovery, here's a list of our Extraordinary Precautions, created to drastically tighten up FWH's sloppy boundaries around women:

1.) No contact ever again with Affair Partner
2.) Total Transparency:
a.Email passwords shared
b.Accounting for all time and money
c.Eliminate all social networking sites, except for shared FB account
3.)No communicating with a female in any other way than the necessary professional manner needed for work
4.)No intimate conversations with a female (no conversations about anything personal, such as likes, dislikes, marriage, music, etc)
5.)No flirting, no inappropriate conversations or jesting. No �boobs or butts� comments ever.
6.)No business mentoring with a woman.
7.)Women must be at least an arm's length away.
8. No porn, no �adult� clubs or shops, no chat rooms
9.)No nights apart.
10.)No recreational activities with the opposite sex.
11.)No interactive online games.

My H also committed to learning and instituting the MB principles, which were instrumental in creating a much better and safer marriage. Without MB, I can't imagine why I would have stayed.

I have actually talked to the other woman and she knows that she is not to try to contact my husband again. He took himself off of all his gaming sites, gave me his passwords, and took his lock off of his phone and we are working on finding out where our marriage took a turn for the worse.

He has been in counseling for about 6 weeks now and I am going with him this Sat. I have also ordered surviving the affair and His Needs, Her Needs and am looking forward to getting them.

I brought him here to the site yesterday and showed him everything and he really liked what he saw and read and feels that by using the tools here that we can get back our marriage.

I think

Most counselors have no idea how to create a romantic marriage nor do they have any idea of how to survive infidelity, emotional or physical. You'd be better off ditching the counseling, unless he or she is a strong supporter of Marriage Builder principles, then going through the Online Program.

The counselors we have hired in the past never, NOT ONCE, discussed the issue of sloppy boundaries or transparency in marriage. They never even addressed the conditions which led to the affairs, which in our case, was busienss travel. Instead we discussed things like communication and conflict resolution.

Guess what? Most couples in a passionate, romantic marriage never need such tools. So the goal is to build a passionate, romantic marriage.

The conditions of the affair should be addressed. The affair was not your fault. Your H should not have been online gaming with members of the opposite sex. So many affairs, emotional and physical, start out that way.

If your H is completely onboard with MB, then MB is the best way, really, the ONLY way, to go. It will help you and your H to learn about Love Busters and how to eliminate them and Emotional Needs and how to meet them for each other. My H, never one to read about "relationships," likes the Harley's very straight-forward and logical approach. We now have the marriage that we have longed for.

DON'T bring him here!

You are still snooping and he has not proved himself yet!

Keep your tactics secret. It is very common for the WH to simply take the A underground. Do you understand that he will not choose just you if he can have his cake and eat it too.

This is so common and even then is not hopeless. As are addictions.

Do you know about the conditions you must demans? NC letter, polygraph etc?

I am in such a bad place today! The last couple of days, I have wanted to believe that things are going great and we are going to make it through all this. My husband has been amazing and I see the man that I fell in love with but all I can think about is the things he said to this other woman and the trust he betrayed in me.

I feel like a caged animal that has nowhere to run and I just want to scream!!! He is in counseling for his anger that he has built up since Iraq so nothing to do with marriage. His Dr. just wants to meet me.
I know you are all right about what you are saying and I really believe that my heart is trying to blind me in the fact that i think my Husband would say and do anything to keep me from leaving him but I have no faith that he would not go down that road again.

What if we hit a rough patch again while we are going through this. Will he return to his destructive behavior? How many others have there been? Are there others right now? He has answered all these questions but I just have no faith or belief in what he sais anymore and I HATE!!!! being here.

I feel like I have been rewarding him for his bad behavior. He told me all the things he said to her so I have been bending over backwards to be what he wants and then I think, why did it take this to finally get him to talk to me when I have given him so many chances!

Then I get to thinking, what if he is trying to lull me into a false security so he can continue this behavior. How will I ever trust him again?

NEVER blindly trust again. Dr H says his wife and he do not trust absolutely that would be stupid. They trust but verify.

Take a breath in. You will be fine. You will get to the bottom of this and will have a plan for all eventualities.

You will stop working in the dark and lying to yourself. You will acknowledge that your H is capable of many things but that you won't enable evil.

You can do this.

What snooping is in place?