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Dear friends and family,
I am writing you this message because you are an important person in the lives of WH and I. As many of you know, our marriage has already suffered infidelity in 2008. We reconciled and recovered our love and were blessed with two beautiful children.
Regretfully my husband has recently met a woman online, who he claims to love more than he loves me. He tells me he is not sure he wants to remain in our marriage and refuses to end the affair.
I love him with all of my heart and soul. I am positive our marriage can overcome this affair and we can be happy again. We If you have any influence on my love, please do what you can to get him to commit to me and the children and to stop contacting the other woman (include name). I want to stay married, but the affair must end, there must be commitment.
As our friends and family, I am asking that you use your influence with WH to persuade him to end his affair and try to work on our marriage. Our marriage can be salvaged if he would only end the affair completely and recommit to our love. Please support him in doing the right thing.
I would so appreciate your support and prayers.
Warmest regards, This is how I would write it. Just keep it simple. You want to enlist their help. This is not the time to start feeling guilty about what you did in 2008. He is only bringing that up to silence you. He had the chance to leave you after it happened but he chose to forgive you and start a family with you. Now what kind of a man finds 'love' online and contemplates leaving a real family for some fantasy over the internet? Do you know why his prior relationship did not work? If you were 18 6 years ago and your stepdaughter is 12, he must have had a six-year-old child in those days. How come? Is he that much older than you? Why did this cradle robber cause an 18-year-old to elope? Is he a serial cheater? Those questions may not be urgent now, but would influence recovery. I want to stress again, that he has no right to hold your behaviour of 5 years ago over your head. He is just doing it to shut you up. He has to make a decision. To be honest, I cannot imagine that he would move to the other side of the country for someone he does not really know, while he has a lovely wife (or so you have become) and to little children at home. Regretfully, we know that wayward husbands do all kinds of weard things, so anything is possible. In the long run though, after a dose of reality, many come to see the silliness of it all. Just show him what marriage with you can be like at its best and tell him, you want to have a fantastic marriage and to be a better wife, but that you will not tolerate his continued contact. Then he can go live with hist reverend father. I wish you all the best and God's blessing Happyheart
me, DH
all the children
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Also, what do I say if he asks why I exposed him? "i will do what it takes to save our marriage. would you like a cookie?" your WH will be angry that you have exposed. this is good! do not allow his anger to sway you. he will be angry because you will have taken away the secrecy that allows his fantasy world to thrive. exposure puts it in the light, where it is not at all attractive. exposure is your best weapon in ending the affair. i would shy away from any contact with the AP. she will only play you off each other. also, you should not "trust" your WH. he is not deserving of your trust - trust has to be earned, not given blindly. you do him no favors when you reward him with trust for bad behaviour. lastly, i hope you overcome your aversion to spying. how else will you get the full information to make a knowledgeable decision about your own life? transparency is going to be a prerequisite to recover your M.
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So now I don't want to do the exposure until after our Chaplain's session tomorrow, because I have a feeling he really really won't want to go if everyone in his workcenter and family and friends know why he is going... Help? There is not much reason to go to the chaplain if he is still in an affair. Your marriage will reap much greater benefit from exposure than going to the chaplain. I wouldn't use that as a reason to delay.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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In exposure do I have to tell my family too, mom, dad, sister?
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I am feeling so much fear right now, right before exposure and even just now, checking my husband's account (he can see when someone other than him is on his account, though he gave the Chaplain his passwords too...). I know he knows I was on there... and I am worried about his reaction. This is probably normal fear, I need to worry less about him threatening to leave and more about what kind of marriage and commitment I deserve.
If your husband stays in this affair -- an outcome which is much more likely if you don't expose -- then he won't really be the kind of person you'll want around.
If, on the other hand, exposure gives him pause and leads to the death of the affair, then this may well be something that he'll one day regard as a remarkable gift.
Let me tell you about a day that I'm grateful for:
I'm grateful for a day, just over 4 years ago, when I learned that the other woman's husband had snooped & uncovered evidence of the affair.
That's right. My affair.
No, I wasn't grateful at the time.
But what I'd somehow convinced myself was beautiful, special and acceptable under the black dusk of secrecy was ugly and horrendous -- as anyone, even I as I was then -- could start to realize, once it was under the full daylight of truth.
That exposure saved my marriage to an incredible woman. It saved my family. It may well have saved my life.
The man your husband is now is not worth doing this for. He's not worth anything more than a kick in the [censored] on his way out the door. But do this for the man he could become, because you may be saving his marriage, his family and even his life, so as to cause him to reflect one day & be grateful.
Me: FWH, 50
My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold
DD23, DS19
EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09
Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009
Married 25 years & counting.
Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband.
"I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol
"Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
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In exposure do I have to tell my family too, mom, dad, sister? Yes, Wouldn't you want the support? Exposure targetsParents of all concerned, family, close friends, children of the BS, workplace [if a workplace affair], spouse of the affair partner, pastor. Facebook friends of affair partner.
FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.
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My family might be a bit more critical than supportive. "Leave that jerk." "How could he do that to my baby" etc.
EXPOSURE TO HIS COWORKERS AND FAMILY IS COMPLETE.
Just need exposure to his friend (he only has one good friend), my family and my coworkers. Waiting on email addresses... and I really don't want to tell my family.
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You should still expose to your family.
They may not be supportive of your marriage but they would be supportive of you and extra opinions don't hurt
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You also need to contact the Inspector general
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Why must I contact the IG?
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You contact the IG because it is a violation of the UCMJ to engage in adultery.
The IG has the authority to issue a "No Contact" order between himself and any affair partner.
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Because if you go through his chain command they will sweep it under the rug. Go to the IG and they will have to investigate.
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I am on Chapter 6 of Surviving an Affair... and full exposure has been completed, to include my family, friends and coworkers.
I am still planning on meeting my husband at his job 10 minutes before our scheduled time with the Chaplain...
I am unsure if he will join me. After all, he will probably by then realize that most people in his office know of the ongoing affair.
I am worried he will refuse to go, even in front of everyone in his office.
Should I warn him that I am coming to meet him, or just surprise him in his office, right before the session with the Chaplain?
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He just sent me an email saying he doesn't think he can "get away" for the session HE scheduled just yesterday...
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Hold on. Full exposure has not been completed to the IG.
You need to do this
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In the interim you also need to start planning for separation.
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LIP, the next conversation I would have with him is a demand that he end his affair. Here are the steps I posted to another poster: When things die down somewhat, it is important that you present a PLAN to your WS for recovery. The next step is to lead your marriage out of the ditch.
First step is to DEMAND your spouse end the affair.
Originally Posted By: Dr. Harley Effective Marriage Counseling pg 94
"Granted, there are situations when demands may be necessary in marriage. During a spouse's affair, for example, I recommend that the betrayed spouse demand there be no contact with the lover. If there is continued contact, separation or even divorce would be the logical consequence. While normally demands don't work, in this case there are no reasonable alternatives because thoughtful requests are even less likely to separate lovers."
Ask him/her to send a no contact letter to the OP that is written together, approved by you and mailed together. [template below from SAA]
Set her down and explain to her that you want to have a romantic, loving, SAFE marriage and that you won�t stay in a loveless marriage. Tell her you are willing to give her an opportunity to earn your forgiveness. In order for the marriage to recover, certain things have to happen. This is what it will take to keep you interested:
1. end all contact with the OM for life
2. no more nights apart or going out without each other - create a healthy, integrated lifestyle
3. complete transparency - cell phone passwords, etc
4. no more opposite sex friendships
5. complete honesty about her affair<s> � passing a polygraph
6. commit to the Marriage Builders program for recovery as outlined in the book Surviving an Affair.
Tell her "this is what it will take to keep me in this marriage." Whether your marriage ends up with success or failure will depend almost entirely on her willingness and ability to make radical changes. Her lifestyle must become absolutely transparent, holding nothing back. She is in no position to negotiate when it comes to extraordinary precautions, because those precautions are designed to prevent another affair and help you feel safe. She must also meet your emotional needs in a way that until now she has failed. Unless she makes a 180 degree turn in her approach to what it means to be a wife, your marriage won't recover, it will be a crippled version of your pre-affair marriage.
You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking this approach, because if she won't do these things, you will have lost nothing except a loveless, abusive marriage.
Unless you use this program to create a much better marriage than the one you had before the affair, you are likely looking at repeat affairs. So don't even think you can get away with sweeping the affair under the rug and going back to what you had before. What you had before led to the affair!
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Now that exposure has been completed, I feel the need to tell him I exposed him. He does not seem to know yet, and I am unable to keep a secret from him.
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