Marital therapy will NOT help during an affair.
Your therapist is against affairs. Of course he is. Most people are. But that does not mean he knows how to kill an affair.
Recovery cannot begin during an active affair.
The best weapon for killing an affair is exposure.

Is work involved in any way with this affair? Her employment or OM?

I dont want to give too many details out. But he isn't getting support from an old country.

No work, no employment. The guy is thousand of miles away....

I plan on following MB plans (exposure is already done to the best i can do it). But I also believe in Fate...The therapist called me to reschedule our therapy session sooner (without knowing what really happened). It was suppose to be last week but he pushed it up for today. When I told him what happened (my wife's trip), he said sometimes God works in mysterious ways. I am smart enough to intervene when i feel the therapist is a bad, i already changed 1 (the other therapist, didn't even acknowledge the affair). If this one does not work out, i will look at setting up a session with MB. As long as my WW is willing to go to therapy and i continue with Plan A, i think i can win her heart back.

Sir you CANNOT win her back in marriage counseling.
She will only use that as a platform to support her affair.
Marriage counseling is to resolve marital conflict. Not kill affairs.
You say you are following MB program but you aren't.
You have NOT fully exposed this affair. You haven't told a single one of OM family. How do you know he isn't getting financial support from an old country? How do you know his family isn't religious and will cut him off if he is commiting adultery?

You think it's a positive sign your wife wants to go to counseling?
That's not a positive sign. A positive act will be when she stops commuting adultery.

Marriage counseling has nothing to do with killing affairs.
If you do not follow the MB program you will loose your wife and your family will be broken up.

As for the statement that God works in mysterious ways, He does.
But He doesn't intend the decisions we make in life to be mysterious. A phone call from the marriage counselor is a phone call from the marriage counselor. Not from God.

You can't expose OM, when your PI can't even get information on his wearabouts of his realtives...i tried everything to find details.
Right now, i know you guys/girls have alot of experience with this and I trust your advice but sometimes its okay to divert slighly to explore things yourself. Not saying Therapy will kill her affair but it will allow her to possible understand that everything she needs is already there. The Therapist already told me he will focus on stopping the affair because he knows healing won't continue unless it stops. He sounded like he reads the MB site...only reason why i am going to this guy.

and HDW, i really appreciate your focus on this. You and others are going to be the reason why i can continue to look foward with my life (with or without WW).

LostSoul,

I just wanted you to know I was in your position as well after discovery where my husband told me he wanted to pursue a relationship with his ow.
I thought it was hopeless as well, they worked together.
the ow left her husband for mine.

Exposure happened on both sides her husband and me.
After the anger stage and the plan A-ing on my part, after My husband having to explain his choices to our grown sons, family and friends
He realized no one would accept his reasons to be with his ow.
He realized that maybe a whore that would just Drop her panties after a few
weeks and a woman that was now spewing she had landed herself a better life had conned him and really didn't care
What happened to him or his children.
It took a while for him to process all the facts in the meantime I looked after him I was his safe place to land, I would give him comforting hugs and just tell him I was here when he was ready
to do what was right for his family.
It took months there were many times I wanted to give up and just kick him out.
It is the toughest thing I have ever done, this place gives you strength to stick with the plan.
You have to learn to be still sometimes and just take it hour by hour if that's what it takes.
Making the affair hard to conduct and exposing is your best shot, make nothing easy on her.
Don't let her use any family funds phone included.
I also started to separate my life from my husbands in terms of financial and started to work on a separation agreement so he would know I wouldn't accept the affair or his choices to keep her in his life.
He finally started to realize the mistake he was making and the fantasy life slowly ended, he started to feel stupid and very remorseful, he cried more than I did.
But it took a long 4 months to get to that, contact has to stop, so get in between however you can, paint a bleak picture of life sharing her children point out the financial hardships, and in your home let her feel the comforts you can offer as a husband and family man.
I just get the mind set that no one was taking my life from me, I would outsmart outwit her.
The om is a coward and an idiot with no redeeming traits your wife could admire long term,
You have already proved yourself and now you are going to show her that she is worth anything and everything you need to do, she will see it eventually.
I would suggest talking to Dr. Harley and get yourself the best help you can get, let him guide you to the marriage you want.
This is the fight of your life align with the best be patient a be that soft place for her to land.
Breaking up the affair with exposure and making it difficult is step one!!!
Good luck!

No kid WANTS to hear that sort of info. I hope you did not give him some watered down version about what this affair means for your family and that you mentioned that it will not be intact if Mom doesn't stop.


This is typical and you just barely exposed. Do NOT give up on killing the affair. If this is your attitude already you might as well prepare for D right now. I do strongly advise you to seek legal advice as I do all BSs...NOW. That is way more important than the therapy you are counting on. The ugly reality of divorce may be a wake up call for WW...it may not but you need to be informed and tell her exactly how D life is going to be. No...we will be friends and sing kumbaya together.

Speaking from our experience, we had a counselor who was invaluable to our recovery. There is no substitute for cutting through your own BS fog like the human interaction of a good counselor. However, the counselor *must* be committed to MB principles, and to helping you apply these principles to saving your marriage. I would call that the definition of a "good" counselor. I agree with HDW in all other respects. You need to put all your effort into killing the affair first.

Already told her the kids are mine . Told her, the kids will not live with her and the other guy. She was so pissed.

I already separated our accounts. So i am making progress on that. Signed up for checking/savings and moved half of the money to my new accounts.

I am letting her keep the phone hehe (u know)

Thank you for sharing your story. It gives me hope. One advantage I do have is the guy is 1000 miles away and not a co-worker. Hoping the distance makes this go by faster.

Sir when you write "Right now, i know you guys/girls have alot of experience with this and I trust your advice but sometimes its okay to divert slighly to explore things yourself"

I suggest you read what Dr Harley says about deviating from the plan. He has saved tens of thousands of marriages. He is a national expert.

HDW,

I suggest you read what Dr. Harley says about marriage counseling:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi7100_counselor.html

Marriage counseling does not kill affairs. It is for resolving marital conflict.
In an affair the first step towards saving the marriage is to kill the affair through exposure

FWIW-

1. must not deviate from the plan. Follow it as is, and as advocated on this forum by the vets -- and it shall work.

2. marriage counselor...I found one that, while not wholly familiar with MB, atleast supported the tenets of it and my actions following it. One glimmer of hope I remember early on was that my W was seeing her own MC -- literally across the hall from our MC -- and stopped seeing after 2 visits, because W stated all the MC wanted her to do was "discuss her feelings for OM and what might have caused her affair", and while that may be important, my W wanted help in ENDING the affair, dealing with the CONSEQUENCES of the affair, and RECOVERING her marriage....not introspection of childhood calamities...

(I kinda laugh remembering my W kvetching: "Im not spending $20 a session for a MC to analyze the obvious: what I did was a mistake and I need to right this wrong").

Everyday its so hard to do plan A, when you get the colder shoulder.

I exposed this to her best friends but they don't want to get involved. I can't find crap on the OM. I exposed everybody on my WW side.

WW is facing all this pressure and she won't change. How long till the affair is killed (weeks, months, years)

Its been 2 weeks and it feels like forever.

How long till the affair is killed...

Well, why don't you keep us advised as you muddle through the "Plan LS76" instead of the MB program?

Right now, you've ceded control of the initiative to your WW. Shall I dredge up all the ML analogies about letting the drunk drive your car to her favorite repair-shop/bar, after she just had the accident that precipitated the drive?

The MC will be giving her warm feelings and comfort that she's not a bad person, that she's entitled to pursue her own happiness, and the two of you should work out a paradigm in which you can co-exist. (Excuse me for a moment: )

Personal responsibility and integrity, and marital care and protection (the backbones of MB actions), are not likely to be major topics of your sessions. Good luck. Keep us informed!

Her 'therapy' will not be geared to marital recovery. Unless her 'therapist' is able to get phone numbers and addresses of her OM and his family that he can give you. Other than that, I hope you're not paying for her to go to a 'therapist'. They're pretty much worthless.