Melody. Thanks, that was a good read. You mentioned before that most Marriage Counselors are destructive to marriages. How so? We are scheduled to see one on Monday evening and I would like to know some warning signs to look for if the wrong one can be that destructive.

Couples who enter typical counselling aren't any more likely to stay married than couples who don't.

You can try to find a counsellor who will apply the principles in Dr Harley's books. You could also sign up for the coaching packages they have on here. The cost will be about the same, and it's more tailored to the kind of situation your W is in.

I'm lucky to have a great counsellor myself, but I consider it sheer luck.

I want my wife to put everything on the line, as I feel I am, to consider reconciliation of our marriage. She has agreed to my terms, but I need something that will stand up if this does not work. What I want her to put on the line is

1. If we try to reconcile and just are not able to, I want complete joint custody of the kids with no child support either way (our checks are about the same). No ugly divorce dragging the kids through what would be an already traumatic situation for them. Just simply split costs for the kids.

2. If infidelity ever happens again, I get complete sole custody of the kids with child support payments of $300 per month per kid.

3. If she ever ends up with him again, I refuse to allow my kids ever to go to his house again. i would fight this tooth and nail. I would want sole legal custody of the kids where I would be in charge of when and where she could see them to ensure it would not be at his house.

She has agreed to the terms. And I really want to work it out if possible, but I need her to show her commitment by putting everything on the line as I feel I am doing. Is this too much to ask or counter productive of our goal to reconcile? I would never keep the kids from my wife. I think it is very important for both of us to be big parts of their lives, but I couldn't handle them in that house ever again. I have been assured it won't happen, but I know I would of been assured it would never happen to begin with before it started. My faith to trust her word is non-existent right now.

Child custody and support are determined by applicable law and by the family court. You can't make prenups about custody/child support and I doubt this kind of contract would hold up either, although your W's willingness to agree to these terms (however unenforceable) is a good sign for her recovery.

Actually, you can have a post-nup drawn up by a lawyer. A few couples on here have had one done. Check chickadee1's thread in Recovery. Her and her H were having one drawn up (around page 82).

A few things here...

1. Facebook needs to either go or be a joint account where your main picture is of both of you. Not his, not hers, but ours.

2. Cell phone number needs to be changed and spyware installed on the subsequent phone. Obviously, don't tell her about the spyware. This also ensures that if there is future contact that you'll know she gave him her number.

3. Email address(es) need to be closed. Same reason as #2 above.

4. Do OM's parents know?

5. Install a keylogger on all computers.

Otherwise, yours seems to be fairly positive when compared to some of the other stories here. Good luck on the move. The quicker y'all get out of there, the better.

Facebook picture is of our daughter, and all of the pictures of all of us together, anything he was in, has been removed. It is basically a joint account. I am logged into her facebook 24/7 on my phone.

We had just decided to change her cell phone number a couple days ago. I wish I could install spyware. But they don't have anything yet for a windows 7 phone. All they have is for Win 6.x.

I'm in IT, I have all computer traffic covered. All traffic in and out transmitted will not get by me.

Not sure what you mean by OM. My wife's mom and sister know. Her dad committed suicide several years ago. So that's all her family. Bill, the guy that's like a father to her now, also knows. My parents do not by my choice. She left that up to me. A couple of our closest friends know, but haven't made it public. Also my choice. I would feel like the fool.

She is locked out of her email account. I have changed the password and the only one that has it. I also monitor that on my phone 24/7 as well.

Wow .. you seem to have all your Ducks in a row! .. Good on you! MCs are often destructive to marriages because they usually want and encourage you to do "what makes you happy" they also often want to talk about your child hood and work their way from that point. Both my wife and I attended MCing ... the person was nice and all .. but each time it was a rehash. Nothing but an emotionally fueld discussion with a 3rd party to listen. Often the MC will just facilitate the divorce. My wife and I went 4x ... and each time we left feeling worse than when we went in. That was the moment that my wife descided that we were wasting money for a shoulder to cry on basicly.

Dr. Harley's research (he was an MC himself in his earlier years) states that MC's have an 84% failure rate and the highest rate of D in any occupation. WIth little to NO tools to teach couples how to fall in love. HOWEVER they can teach you to communicate but being great communicators is not the path to learning how to love and cherish and fall back in love with your spouse. Thats where Dr. Harleys program totally overrides the MCing .. he has a plan and formula to fall back in love and it works fast when 2 ppl are on board.

MNG

I meant did you expose to OM's side.

Excellent job on covering the bases. It's refreshing, actually, to hear of someone being so proactive.

By OM do you mean the guy she cheated with? If so, I exposed to his live in girlfriend, and exposed his lies he was telling her. Also exposed to one of his good friends that I had met through him. That friendship is now over as he chose to keep relationship with me and was sick over the fact of what happened. I did not expose to his parents. I don't even have their contact information. But I guess I could hunt it down if needed.

Marriage counselors have an 84% failure rate and have no idea how to save marriages. They have a higher personal divorce rate than the general population. They are especially detructive when there has been an affair because they don't understand the dynamics of the FOG of the WS or the affair. As such, they often validate foggy, destructive notions which ruin the ability to save the marriage.

For example, a MC often tells couples to "separate" when one spouse is unhappy. This makes the problem worse and makes it much harder to save the save the marriage. And why do they tell couples to do this? Because they don't have the slightest idea how to save a marriage. We have to clean up their damage every day on this forum. Your marriage would be SAFER if you got pedicures.

We went to see the MC last night. She actually seemed pretty good, at least for the 1st session. She did a lot of listening honestly. She was very even keeled and kept the conversation calm and what seemed to be productive. She did not ever mention separation or anything even close. She wanted to know what we wanted to do so she could help us towards our goals. She said it seemed we had done quite a bit of talking already, and she left it up to us whether we wanted to go through all the painful details again, or start trying to move forward. She wants us to think back to 14 years ago, to what made us fall in love, and all the little things we loved about each other, and try to reconnect to some of that when I am ready. Sounds like reconnecting is the first step, then she wants to work on strengthening our marriage. Were going back in two weeks and surviving an affair book is suppose to be shipped today, so we plan on doing some reading in the meantime and trying to work on things the best way we know how between the MC and book. Now I just can't wait to get moved. I have rented the house out starting Jan. 1 and were meeting a realtor Thursday to go look at some houses. Move date could not come soon enough for either of us.

rrr, this is a commmon mistake made by many marriage counselors. This is why Dr Harley never counsels couples together. If you had talked about the "painful details" you would have both left the session more upset and angry than when you went in.



And what would have happened if your wife, while fogged out in the fumes of an affair, had told her that her goal was to separate? This is often what happens. A confused and fogged out wayward will tell the MC that he/she doesn't know what they want or that they want to separate. The counselor then validates that desire.

What is the PLAN to save your marriage? Because unless it involves the Basic Concepts of MArriage Builders, your marriage is not going to recover. Most marriages do not recover from affairs. They limp along in a crippled state of the pre-affair marriage and after the initial relief, resentment sets in.

There is a very strict path back from an affair. I would show this to your "counselor" and ask her to help you through this plan. It is doubtful your MC has any idea how to save a marriage after an affair:

She wants us to think back to 14 years ago, to what made us fall in love, and all the little things we loved about each other,

Such a waste....

rrr, you are NOT the person you were 14 years ago, nor is your wife. The priority scheme between your ENs of then and now likely have very little similarity. So a different set of people, with different desires from their spouse, are to attempt to "reconnect" as 20-somethings fourteen years later? (I "fell in love" with my first car, a 1963 Ford Falcon - no seat belts, unpadded steering wheel, no air, am radio, rusted like crazy in a heavy dew! You could not get me in that thing today!) This is the nonsense that renders MCs as useless.

You and FWW have to start appreciating, enjoying, and eventually loving, each other as you are NOW. The MB program incents your joint actions in just that direction.

Instead of imagining long gone romantic feelings, wouldnt it be more productive to actually BEl in love again? That is what this program does. You don't have to imagine it, you can have it again.

Wow. I need to really pay more attention to some of the advice I have received here. I'll be honest, before last night I was a little apprehensive about all the negative talk about MC, and was really wondering if a book could help moreso than a live counselor, especially after thinking we had a great session. But the results from reading in just one night and the visit we had with MC were dramatically different. We received the book from Amazon yesterday and both read several chapter, and I have to say, we had the most productive conversation afterwards that we have had since it started. Not saying we got everything out in one night, we know that's not the case, but it was a good start and all stemmed from ideas we took away from our reading. Didn't directly relate to everything we read, like Jon, Sue and Greg's situation was much different, but we still related enough to some of the feelings and were able to discover at least a few underlying problems in a more clear way from discussions after the reading. We both had some issues, affair aside, that I don't believe we even necessarily understood how deep they were. I think the more we talk, we are finding that the drinking was a major factor in the distance that fell between us. I feel I had kind of given up after trying to help her over a period of time because the drinking always resorted back to no limits drinking. As a result, I resented her for the drinking, gave her a hard time about it, and concentrated my efforts on the kids, causing a distance between us. In hindsight, I wish I would of brought his previous affairs to light before I fell victim to my relationship falling to one of them. I had knowledge of several he had previously. I never told my wife or his girlfriend. And it always bothered me. Not even sure why I was protecting him. As far as the drinking, I felt my opinion and how it was affecting me and the kids was not being taken seriously, so I took more of a F it approach. I also don't think she wanted to stop at that point, and the distance grew between us over time. I also noticed he was starting to treat their relationship differently, and was trying to garner her attention when we were hanging out, but I made the mistake of trusting her to do the right thing and did not address the issue. I also noticed when i did try to engage in the conversation, I was being somewhat ignored. I'll touch on that in a minute. Those were things that were bothering me, and I did not adequately address them, regardless of the fact I felt she was mostly to blame because of what she was doing to our marriage, our family during her self destructive behavior. We also feel part of the reason it may have happened was because I did not condone her drinking, and he did. So he was accepting of the issue she had. We wonder if the addiction subconsciously was drawing her to what would allow it to continue, and drew her to him a bit. She knew she would get a hard time from me, and support from him, which is why I think I was being ignored for his attention while she was drinking, because my attention would of led to negative attention. He actually wanted her drunk. Her mom also noticed a time where she was thinking he was trying to prey on her, and after a period of time, she succumbed to the affair, by her own choice. I really wish I had addressed what I was seeing, when we don't even believe she knew what was starting at the time, and maybe none of this would have happened. maybe it would of never progressed into an affair. I did notice her drinking dramatically decreased around the end of July, and I was wondering what brought on the change. That is the same time she said she realized what kind of damage she was doing to me, the kids and everything we had built and ended it. The number of text messages being sent and received from her phone also went from the dramatic increase that started in April, back to her normal text numbers she had generally had in the past. From the time she cut her drinking after affair, until D-Day, we had actually had the best month of our marriage in over a year. I even started thinking maybe I was crazy thinking she strayed with him, but not enough not to keep snooping til I found the evidence. Then that drew us back apart, big time. Amazing what we were able to come up with after a little guidance that pointed our conversations and way of thinking in the right direction. We did not get that kind of production after our visit to MC. Just thought we did. I can't wait to get home and read more. I also put down the beers to try to get through this with a clear head. I don't have the drinking problem, but since D-Day, I had resorted to enough beers to numb the pain almost every night, and that was not helping the situation. Thanks for letting me rant. It has really helped to be able to get some stuff off my chest these last couple weeks.

RRR ... good job on the reading. YOu will find that the books do a FAR better job and putting things into perspective. The MC only really wants to rehash and keep you guys coming back in so they can make money. The longer you are in their office .. the more they make!

My wife and I both found the books to be FAR more helpful than ANY MC could ever be. YOur marraige is about today .. and moving forward ... not going back then rehash .. and moving forward days and days or months later once the MC knows your life history. They dopnt need to know the past .. only how to change your future. WHich they dont!

MB is an amazing tool ... the books make GREAT UA time .. and result in personal discovery. Once my wife and I got one book finished .. we had to get more ... as Johnny 5 would say "Need More INPUT!"

Each day as we read the books and realized our own contributions to the demise of our failing marriage was another love bank deposit with heart felt discussions and realizations. (huge deposits actually beacasue not only did the books show us our mistakes but how to correct them AND how to comunicate them safely without making love bank withdrawls for the most part) Dr> Harleys approach to marriage is GOD SENT!

ALL marriages should come with His Needs Her Needs .. and Love busters books. Its not your typical self help books ... people need to open up and take this stuff in.

Congrats my friend .. welcome to the beginning of th next chapter in your marraige that could make you and your wife happier than you have ever been. Once you two get the ball rolling and read some of the good Dr's books .. PAY IT FORWARD!

MNG

Also .. please break down your posts into paragraphs. Was a bit hard to read.

One other question. Does anyone know any spy software that works on Windows 7 mobile? Mobile Spy and the other major ones only work on Win 6.x mobile, but not 7. Or anyone know anything about Spyphone Tap. That has a symbian package but not sure if it works on win 7.5, tango.