This is my first post here. I have read multiple other posts, and almost all of the free advice on MarriageBuilders.com. I'm not sure where to go from here though . . .

I have been married for 3 years now, and already my wife and cheated on me three times. I could not believe it, since we never just jumped into the marriage; we had known each other for nine year prior to getting married. Then shortly after marriage, she kept telling me that she was in love with some other guy from her hometown, but because she also loved me, she went through the wedding. I never had a clue, or maybe I refused to believe that she was not happy. In any case, for 8 long months she kept in touch with this other guy via internet chatting, and over and over she would say she did not want to leave me and she chose me over him, and that she would stop contact with this other person. But she kept breaking that promise, and over and over I found out that she was messaging him behind my back. I must admit, I was very neglectful of my wife that first year of marriage; my job required 80 hrs work weeks at the time, which left me little time with her. It also left me little time track her and see what she was doing. In any case, one day she found out that he had moved on, that he had a girlfriend, and was cutting ties with my wife. She fell into a deep depression, but after a few months we were back together, and our marriage was happy.

Or so it seemed. After a year and a half of marriage, she became more distant to me, leaving to 'study' with other grad students for her class, getting easily irritated, neglecting the apartment. The more distant she became, the more I tried to be loving. But I was also starting to get suspicious, and I started getting easily irritated too. One day, going through her phone text messages, I found that she was having an affair with another grad student. I could not believe it. We separated for two weeks after that. After talking things over with her, she told me that I was not intimate with her enough like before, that I was too controlling, and that I didn't support her career. It hurt me badly after she told me that, but I didn't want to give up on our marriage yet. It was at that point I first read MarriageBuilders, and learned how affairs happen, and all about love busters and meeting each other's needs. I was still in love with her so I gave her another chance. We went to marriage counseling, and I tried, I really really tried to change my faults, the ones that she said drove her to sleep with another man. Probably my biggest mistake at that time was not going through MarriageBuilders with my wife; I had done all the reading myself and thought that the marriage counseling would help.

It did not help. They just repeated what we said, summarized, ask us questions but didn't provide any direction or answers. For five months, I tried very hard to work on our marriage, to rebuild our love. She said she stopped contact with that other guy, and secretly I learned to track her phone, and as she promised, she never went to that guys house or saw him again. But I was paranoid. Crazily paranoid. Sometimes I would ask her where she was and who she was studying with, and I would drop by just to see if it was true. But everything was fine . . . until two weeks ago checking her e-mail I found her flirting with yet a third guy. I was pissed; I was trying so hard to work on our marriage and she is flirting with yet another guy (flirting only, no sex). But it did not matter, I kicked her out and we have been separated since.

I guess my question is, do you think my marriage has any hope? I find that I have hardly any love for her anymore, but after thinking it over, even knowing I'll probably be hurt again, I feel that I made a promise to God and to her to never give up 'in good times and bad', and so I've been thinking of giving it another shot. But sometimes I think that I should just cut loose now. We have no kids. We have no house, our careers are just starting, we are still young (I'm mid 30's, she is late 20's). Maybe we should divorce?

My second question is, if we do work on our marriage again, where should I start? I have actually ordered five books from the website:
Surviving and Affair
Fall in Love, Stay in Love
Five steps to Romantic Love (workbook)
His needs, Her needs
Love busters

I think alot of it overlaps with the website. This time, in addition to marriage counseling, I both my wife and I to go through Dr. Harley's plan, but nowhere does he say which book to start with. Or maybe we should start off watching the online videos. I have no idea.

Sorry for such a long post. Maybe if someone could point me to all those abbreviations you use (what does OP, WF, OW mean? WTF???), I could shorten things up a bit.

Any opinions are welcome, good or bad. Thanks.

Hi Jah, sorry you have reason to be posting here, but glad you found us.

Here is a link to help you decipher MB language:
Acronmys & Abbreviations

Until SAA arrives, you should read this: How To Survive Infidelity

As for the books, read SAA first. You need to follow the steps if you want your marriage to recover from this affair.

Your wife is a serial cheater. You have only been married for a brief time, and you have no children together. Whether you want to recover your marriage, that decision remains up to you. No one here would fault you from walking away, IMO your WW's serial cheating has given you a get out of marriage free card if you choose it.

However, if you and your WW are on board with MB and both a committed to recovering your marriage, you CAN build an affair-proof marriage and restore romantic love using Dr H's principles.

Thanks for the link. I think it might be too much to remember, plus I might start making things up and misreading things. So I think I'm going to stick to typing everything out.

Welcome to Marriage Builders.

Whom have your WW's affairs been exposed to?
Exposure 101

I am not a vet, and am sure they will be along shortly.

Meanwhile, I'll give you my 2 cents.

Your WW is addicted to getting her EN's met by other men. She seeks it out, and has no boundaries in place to protect your marriage. This needs to change if you are to recover your marriage.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but WW seems to have had little consequences from her A's. If any. She has the A, gets EN's met, you discover and get all upset, she ends it for a while until you calm down, and bam, the next A is on.

You don't want to continue this surely?

Exposure is the key. Hold her accountable. Let everyone of influence know, so WW sees her actions in the light of day.
Exposure 101

I have not exposed it to anyone. It's a little tricky situation; my wife's family (and her first affair) resides in another country. So I didn't expose him at all; I wouldn't even know who to contact. I didn't expose her second one either, he is a single guy living alone going to grad school; the only one I confronted is him. After the third one we have been separated since.

I can't bring myself to tell my family yet. I also can't expose things to her family because they don't speak English well! But they already know actually, my wife has told them what has happened and they have ALL chastised her and told her to stop; they are basically on my side.

Were any of the OM married?

I know the one was single, but the other two?

If any of these OM were married, the BW's have a right to know the truth about their WH's and the state of their marriages.

So they can decide what they want to do.

IMO, it is better to KNOW you are being betrayed, than to be driven bonkers with suspicions.

No, none of the three are married. All three are single guys. None of them even have girlfriends, except the first one. Well, it's because of having a girlfriend that my wife gave up on him. But I can't expose him, can't tell his girlfriend (even if I wanted to, and believe me I would), because he is in another country, and barely speaks English. Besides, he has been with this girlfriend AFTER breaking it off with my wife, so it's not like he was cheating on her.

Which brings up a question for me; is it more common for affairs to be with single guys or married ones? I would think it would be harder for two married people to get together, because they would BOTH be putting their marriage at risk.

To answer your question, affairs happen when a spouse with poor boundaries allows another person who is not their spouse to meet their emotional needs. This makes deposits in their lovebank (LB$). When the balance is high enough, the WS no longer feels "in love" with their BS. They "love" the affair partner (AP).

Married or single AP doesn't really matter. It is all about boundaries, EN's and LB$.

For what its worth, the OW in my sitch is single. But there are many cases here where AP's are both married and tear apart two families to get their fix.

Now, I want you to refocus on the plans and what is important.

Exposure.

You need to do this. Expose your WW. Don't let fear stop you from taking the right action to protect yourself and your marriage from further A's.

Besides, you will only be telling the truth. If WW is truly committed to recovery, she should have no issue with that.

Okay, I agree to full exposure, but to who? The second affair she actually was having sex with the guy. This guy is a single grad student. I couldn't get ANY information on him. Not his job, not his parents, nothing. He has no facebook page (hard to believe, but true). How do I get information on his parents and friends?

Besides, my wife has stopped seeing him (I know because I have been tracking her), and she has moved on to affair number three. But I'm not sure I should call it an affair. The extent of the affair it this: she wrote to him, "You have a cute smile." And he wrote back to her. "I've been thinking of you alot." That's it. No sex. No other contact. But it was enough for me to leave my wife, because after all I had been doing to try and work on our marriage, she still didn't really care.

Jah,

Sorr you're here. You should get some responses shortly about how to find information on the previous OMs. I'm just going to give you my 2 cents based on my personal story.

You should seriously consider leaving her. I've been married 9 years now, and I recently found out that my wife has been having affairs the whole time. She was just as Caracal described: She liked having her emotional needs met by other men (and she is very attractive, so this is pretty easy for her to do.) She may never have intended these encounters to manifest themselves into a PA, but they did...time and time again. If your wife doesn't put EPs in place, they will for her too.

My advice: get out while you can, before you bring a kid into a marriage that is fractured to the core. It makes things infinitely more difficult.

jah, i have 5 children with a woman who has had 2 affairs (that i know of) and counting. we are in the middle of D process. you have no children yet. can you imagine "reconciling" with her only to discover at some point down the road that she is cheating again (and again) on you but this time with children? you would have to break up your family then. run while you can my friend. please consider that very strongly.

I have just read two positions that I should just divorce. However, I just cannot give up our marriage just yet. I have not tried marriage builders yet, and also, I have not done full exposure.

As I read my responses to several people already telling me to do full exposure, I agree it's absolutely the right thing to do, IF she was still seeing this guy.

But why should I expose my wife now? To be honest, I read about Exposure 101 only a few days ago. But before that, my wife has said she wants to work on our marriage. She agreed to stop seeing this guy. For all I can tell, she is being honest (but who knows, right?)

And also, if I am going to expose the most recent affair, but the problem is, I don't have the strongest proof. I found a handful (maybe 5) e-mails from her to this guy. Most of it was just friendly talk, but what constituted as 'too friendly' to me was that she wrote to him, "I think you have a cute smile." and at one point he said, "I think about you alot." To me that is more than just friendly talk. But is that considered an affair?

But that's it. I have nothing else on him. She said she has never slept with him, never went to his house. I tracked her phone, I checked her phone calls, so it seems to check out. But after I read those e-mails, it was enough for me to throw her out and separate.

So my question, is that amount of 'cheating' enough to fully expose him? Should I do more snooping around? (not sure what else to do; keylogger? My wife has a macintosh).

Her second affair is not 6 months in the rear-view mirror. If I had known about exposure 101, I would have done it at the time, but now it is 6 months later and he is out of the picture.

Exposing will help hold her accountable because she will have people watching her.

Jah, they ALL say that. They ALL say they have stopped contact, please don't tell anyone... all of them. She also said her wedding vows while in love with another man. She also agreed to be faithful, but is a 3x loser that you know of.

Her words do not mean a thing, and if you choose to seek recovery that is your choice, but you cannot trust her words right now.

So yes, full exposure is still necessary. You are right now being an accomplice to her adultery by allowing her to get away with it. She gets caught with her hand in the cookie jar several times and you say "don't do it again... don't do it again... don't do it again..." -> she has no consequences, why would she stop. Yes, you said you separated and 'threw her out' - but you are willing to take her back and let her hide what she's done. So, no consequences.

You must find out more. If these men are single, as you say, then they aren't going to waste their time entertaining her without any physical contact (either immediate or near future). If they are single, they have nobody to answer to at home, no woman waiting at their house, etc. It is even easier to conduct a PA. You must be aware of this and find out the truth. Demand a polygraph as a condition of recovery.

You say you knew her for many years before and she is from another country, was your relationship with her before marriage primarily from a distance. How well did know her 'in person' before you married her.

And finally, no kids right now or near future, take your precautions. Single men willing to entertain a married women will almost certainly be around the block with who-knows-what diseases.

Your WW is likely a serial cheater - she is addicted to affairs vs one OP.

There are some serial cheaters (this is my STBX) who need to have ALL opportunity for an affair taken away...ie, she needs to have a job working with you, you will need to always closely monitor her internet/cell&texting use, etc, you two will need to spend ALL of your free time together, etc. This sounds like it could be your WW.

Is that something you think that she will ever agree to? Will you be happy being married to someone who you will have to monitor so closely?

This is also the type of person who will probably have difficulty adhering to the PORH considering her history of having a secret second life...which makes it difficult to use many of the MB tools.

Not having children together and not having a good marital history prior to the As does not give you too much to work with, you know? I definitely would strongly consider Plan D.

Sorry you are here and welcome...

Since you have already booted her out of the house, she is likely in contact with her OM's right now. "He kicked me out... we're married only on paper right now". Remember this. MB does not endorse separation during recovery under most circumstances, it allows the adulterer to continue their ways with practically no way for you to know what's going on.

These contacts all seem to be by e-mail and phone, did you meet her online or date her distance. It seems to be a pattern for her.