My modified letter. Thank you BH and UW for all your advice. I cannot thank you enough. Any more suggestions???

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xxx, it is unfortunate that it has come to this. I cannot carry on anymore, your hurtful actions is too much for me to bear. I am just not strong enough to fight for our marriage anymore.

I have decided to divorce you. I will be hiring a lawyer to help me work through the details of the divorce. He or she will be contacting you once you get back to work on the details. In xxx there is a 'no fault' type of divorce, which means I do not need your consent or agreement to divorce. So you cannot block it. The other part is that you and xxx may be subpoena (forced) to appear in the court. It is not against the law anymore to have affairs, so the reason is not to arrest you or xxx. The reason is to show that I am not at fault for the divorce, and that it is your wrongdoing.

If you continue to engage in sex with this lowlife loser, as a professional who works with the children of such disastrous and selfish events, I urge you to use birth control such as an IUD. Go look it up online if you need to understand what this is. If you need help funding your birth control, I will help you with this cost ALONE, and ONLY because I do not want you bringing an innocent child into this adulterous and selfish situation.

I will not finance you or your lifestyle anymore. It is NOT fair for me to give you money to continue on with your life just so that you can be with this loser. No it is not. And since the divorce is due to your actions, I am not responsible financially for you anymore. You will hear from my lawyer the details, but for now just get ready to find a way to support yourself somehow. Borrow from your family. Get a job. Tell xxx he needs to support you now.

I will have all of your stuff in boxes when you return. It will not be at our apartment; I will find another place for you to go and pick it up. I will also cancel your phone contract one week after you arrive; one week should be enough time to get a new phone and contact people to find a place to live.

Speaking of finances, by the time you get this, I will have cancelled all our credit cards together and emptied our joint savings account. Again, you will need to find some other way to support yourself. If you are afraid of this, I STRONGLY suggest that you consider staying there in xxx, even if just for a little while, where you will at least have a place to sleep and food to eat.

Tell your parents, cousins, uncles and aunts that we are divorcing. Tell them immediately. If you do not tell them, then I will. They will need to know.

Finally, I am going to completely shut down contact with you now. I have contacted xxx who has agreed to act as an intermediary. What this means is that if you want to send any messages to me, it has to go through her first. If you call me, text me, or e-mail me, I will ignore it completely. You need to give your message to xxx, and she will decide if it should go through to me. Likewise, if I have a message for you, I will contact her, and she will deliver the message to you.

I am still willing to work on our marriage, but you must agree completely with the ALL conditions I have set forth, the first and most important being that you cut off ALL contact with xxx. Otherwise, I have already initiated the process of divorce.

So much better.

I'm sure we will have some more feedback from our fellow MB warriors. So stay tuned.

One more thing. On her family you exposed to them, correct? So they will know what is going on. I wouldn't tell her to tell her family that's her responsiblity. You just need to make sure you've exposed to them so they know the truth.

When do you plan to send this? Also you saw the IM training link I posted, correct? I would let your IM see this so she is totally prepared.

Thanks BH. Yes, I gave my IM a summary of the post you gave me (tried to summarize it more based on my situation), as well as a list of the conditions I require my wife to agree to in order to give our marriage a shot.

I did expose to her family, but of course it was something along the lines of, "She is having an affair with XXX. I am willing to work on our marriage if she stops the affair completely." So okay, it's up to her to let them know that it's now at the point of divorce.

Now that I'm stopping all this enabling non-sense, I'm starting to feel better already.

I'm sure you are. You're taking your life back and not enabling her anymore.

No more drama especially when you're in Plan B. Plan B helps you heal.

Here are some suggestions about things you can delete and modify. I agree that this is a good move and you should just move on from this marriage. Really, you can do better, and three chances is more than someone deserves who's bent on destroying a marriage.

Maybe use these templates and modify it towards a divorce.
Plan B letter samples

BH, I think I forgot to mention this letter is going out in 1-2 days. My IM wants to look at the details of her role first, but she said she probably will do it.

JV, thank you very much for your opinion; parts of it is very good advice, parts are confusion.
- Okay, I'll hire a lawyer before sending this out.
- No, I'm not sponsoring her anymore (she's already permanent resident).
- Regarding the birth control, I am 99% positive she doesn't have a clue about IUD's; just from what I know about her medical knowledge, I'm almost sure. And I'm not sure if it is patrionizing, but in any case, I have heard three people now tell me I shouldn't mention she should use birth control, but sorry, this one point I cannot deviate from.
- That part about telling her to stay in her home country, you say its patrionizing and disrespectful. It might be, but I am also being very realistic here because I don't think she gets it; my wife is not a 'let me think before I act' kind of person. WW rarely are. Anyone else have an opinion?
- You told me to get rid of the 'tell your family' thing. Okay, that's fine I guess. It's not essential anyways.

Please understand JV, I do appreciate your opinion. But I'm getting conflicting advice from people who say, "Your [original] letter is just to caring and enabling" and now you say "Your letter is now too patrionizing and disrespectful". I guess there's has to be a balance in between.

A previous post by [unwritten] mentions that I am too enabling and I need to have some 'tough love' and hope she hits rock bottom. Maybe I overshot and now my letter is disrespectful?

Thanks BH. I'll take a look at that. (you have all the links down!!!)

NeverGuessed calls me the librarian. Wonder why?

Okay, now I'm REALLY confused. Sorry BH, but the link just makes it harder for me to think now.

The letters all have the common elements, all of which I threw out of my letter:

1. Make it a love letter (apologies & how you can/will correct) - I can put some apologies in, but I really don't feel like taking any blame for her actions. I've been in Plan A for so long now.

2. No lovebusters
- My letter is (I think) full of lovebusters. Well, as 'unwritten' said, isn't that tough love?

3. Make "NO CONTACT" clear - okay, I can do that.

4. Make unambiguous the "condition" of return to marital relationships - I have a whole list of conditions for her (the first being no contact). Should I not have given her my conditions???

5. Limit references to OP - I have it all over the place!

6. Plan out the logistics (as best as possible) - Someone just said leave logistics out.


I really, really appreciate everyone's help here, but I'm getting more and more confused. I really need to make sure I don't say the wrong things in this letter!!!

My conditions again:

1. End all contact with the xxx for life. This involves writing a letter (agreed by me and you) stating you do not want to see him again.
2. No more nights apart or going out without each other.
3. Complete transparency - cell phone, email, facebook, passwords, etc. You give me access to everything.
4. No more opposite sex friendships
5. Complete honesty about you affair<s> � I will ask you take a polygraph test to see if you have had any other affairs. You see, honesty cannot begin at all until the entire truth is out. Even if I find out there have been more affairs, I will not give up on you.
6. Commit to the Marriage Builders program for recovery as outlined in the book Surviving an Affair.

Well jah the question is do you really want to give her path back to the M then Plan B with a path home.

I think what we're trying to say is file for D to protect yourself and then if your WW was to make radical changes and meets all your conditions then you could consider a reconciliation.

Your WW needs a huge wake up call and you filing and divorcing her still may not wake her up.

You could just file and have your lawyer send the paperwork to her. If she wanted to make radical changes she will.

Hi jah, I know where your confusion comes from. But the thing is, enabling is patronizing. They are the same thing. They are both assuming that someone else isn't capable of managing their own affairs, and then acting in a parental role instead of an equal role. I come from experience in having made these mistakes myself, I think disrespectful judgments through my words and actions towards my own WH were a very harmful part of our relationship. Does that clarify things at all?

In terms of the birth control...suggest birth control, heck, you can even recommend an IUD (though I wouldn't be that specific) but don't tell her to get more information about it or where to go. She is in graduate school, right, she can figure that out!

The staying in her home country part...well, let me try and be more specific. One of the things you would probably want her to address is her "act first and think later" nature, correct? Because that leads her to adultery. So why outline how you think she should handle her life?

It's too bad you took the name 'brainhurts' cause thats what I wish my nick was right now.

Thanks for replying. Okay . . . Yes, I want to give her the path back to the marriage. Thats what I really want, to do MB and work on our marriage. I also want her to have a wake-up call so she can make the radical changes needed. The wake up call in my mind is 1) Filing for divorce 2) Making her support herself (which she can't) so that she is not in this fantasy land of 'I'll keep getting the support of my husband but I can still have my affair.'. If this other guy supports her, fine. If she can get a friend to support her, fine. I doubt either will happen, though. 3) Separation - where the intermediary comes in.

My wife is in her home country; she comes back in 3 days. I am lucky that for the past month there is no possibility of physical contact with the OM; once she gets back I'm going to go paranoid with what she is doing.

My wife also just sent me another e-mail. "Yes, I want to still work on our marriage. I am still leaning towards being with you rather than [OM]. But I cannot write the letter. I will just promise to not see him."

That sounds alot like plan A, and I have come to the conclusion I can't bear to be in plan A anymore. I feel like I was stuck in plan A for a year already.

Hope that clears things up . . . I'm really starting to get a 'brainaneurysm' (maybe my new nick?)

Thanks for your reply. I looked up patronizing to make sure I understood; it says that it is "Treat with an apparent kindness that betrays a feeling of superiority." Well, that was of course one of the problems in our marriage. I was always controlling (superiority). I don't want to make things worse by being patronizing.

I looked up enabling too: "Approaches that are intended to help but in fact may perpetuate a problem". Not quite sure if its the same thing as patronizing, but I feel basically it means I do things that make the affair possible. The best way I feel I am enabling is by telling her "I apologize for doing this and that and causing the affair to happen." I am sorry for not being a better husband, but I DO NOT apologize for what she did. Also I'm also enabling by supporting her (working hard) while she has all this free time to go be with that guy. That's why my letter keeps saying, "That's it! No more support!"

I really have to look my whole letter over again, I think. I'm not sure what to think.

jah, I would send your Plan B letter TODAY and go dark in Plan B. You do not have to wait to until you hire a lawyer. The lawyer can contact her with his contact information when you file. Set up your IM today, add it to this letter and get it sent. When you send the letter, be sure and block your wife's emails and phone calls so she can't get through.

Here is a letter that is patterned after the one in the book Surviving an Affair - I changed it up to suit your situation:

My Dear WW,

It is unfortunate that our marriage has come to this but I feel I cannot reconcile after all that has happened. I feel my love for you eroding due to your affairs. Your affairs have been the most painful thing in my life. It is because of this that I cannot continue in this marriage until radical changes are implemented to protect me from another affair. I am not willing to take that chance again. Until I am assured of those changes and you agree to all of my conditions, I will be pursuing a divorce.

I am willing to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past and create a new life for both of us that meet your needs. But I cannot do that until you agree to the conditions necessary to recover our marriage.

Until then, I will avoid seeing you or talking to you. I will also not be able to help you financially. My friend, Sally, has agreed to act as an intermediary for now. Please contact her with any pertinent information. Otherwise I ask that you do not contact me.

I will make arrangements to send your personal property, if you will notify Sally where to send it.

I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you this way. You must know about the suffering I have endured because of your affairs, and I cannot be with you any longer. I still love you but I cannot see you under these conditions.

As soon as you are willing to commit completely to my conditions, I will be willing to discuss our future together.

I loved you when we married and I continue to love you right up to this day. I just cannot be with you or help you unless you seriously commit to these conditions.

With my love,
jah

In the meantime, go read these links:

HOW TO PLAN B CORRECTLY

Intermediary Training School

Thanks ML, that helps alot. I feel like your letter is close to near perfect; I can't believe you modified it for my situation.

I will talk to my MI soon. I'll also read through the links thoroughly. In the meantime, can you explain, "jah, I would send your Plan B letter TODAY and go dark in Plan B."

What is 'go dark'?

Also, you just told me to send the letter immediately. But the very fist thing in the links says, "Do not go into plan B quickly. It takes lots of time and thought to go into plan B"

Why do you want me to send it immediately? (I'm not sure you explained why in your post)

As soon as you have your intermediary lined up you will be in a position to go into Plan B. That advice is for people who don't have the proper preparations in place, for example, they have no IM lined up and might not have the locks changed. Many people rush into Plan B when they are hysterical and they don't have everything in place. In your case, you are lacking the intermediary.

Also, have you removed your wife from credit cards, bank accounts, etc? Does she still have access to your money? If so, I would get that changed asap because you don't want her to plunder your money.

A dark Plan B means that you cut off all contact and don't allow her to get through. When you send the letter she will likely try to contact you so you need to anticipate those attempts in advance and shut that door. For example, you would want to block her email address so she can't send you emails. She will try to call you, so you should have caller ID turned on so you don't answer. If she leaves you voicemails, delete them without listening.

Does your wife have a key to your house? If she does, I would get the locks changed.

jah, lets discuss something else. Where has she met these all these OM? At school? Because in order to recover, the conditions that led to the affairs has to change. If she is meeting these OM at school, then that is the condition that has to change, ie: she has to quit school.

I have a feeling she will immediately agree to your conditions in order to continue getting financial support from you, then go right back into the environment that led to the affairs. Then you are right there again.

That would be a huge mistake obviously. My point is that you should not end your plan B if she immediately agrees to your conditions. Rather, I would make it clear she has to first demonstrate faithful behavior over a period of time - ON HER OWN DIME.

Where and how did she meet all these OM?