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Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,964 Likes: 1
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Joined: Jul 2008
Posts: 2,964 Likes: 1 |
fg,
One of the other important benefits of exposure is that the betrayed spouse no longer has to live a secret second life. It frees you from the burden of maintaining a happy public face while you suffer at home.
Dr Harley frequently speaks about the need to end the cheating spouses secret second life, but the betrayed spouse can be an accessory to the crime when they say nothing.
God Bless
Gamma
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Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 1,757
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Member
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 1,757 |
I know who the guy is. He lives on the west coast while we live in the midwest. They met up while traveling and I can only assume they put their travel schedules together.
I cannot guarantee that she has not been contacting him. But I am not seeing the email trail that I saw. But, she certainly could have gone the burner phone route. Obviously, she has a history of lying to me.
The counseling plan for the time being is to do some individual sessions, each with our own counselor, then come together at some point, but I don't know when that point is.
Everything you've been advised about exposure is spot-on. It's your best chance to kill the affair. You must do it with zero warning to the affairees; you let their family & friends know suddenly, and <bam>, all of a sudden, they're no longer in control of events, no longer able to spin everything, no longer to maintain the veneer of deception without which affairs lose their fantasy aspect & start to become an awful lot of trouble for one or both affairees.
Some guys who are content to take what's thrown at them by a married woman if no one knows, suddenly aren't so keen on playing that coward's game any longer once it's driven home to them that there's another, real live human being out there, who's in addition rather pissed off & who's not gonna stand still for having guys like that messing around in his marriage. That's a hot potato that the other man probably never bargained for; and suddenly, after you've dropped the info on all of his acquaintances & family members & they realize what he's really been up to, and he realizes that morally-speaking, he's given you every justification for you to do stuff to him such that he might well wish he were dead, chances increase markedly that he'll suddenly start to consider your wife not as his fun, secret friend-on-the-side, but as someone who's actually a whole helluva lot more trouble for him than she's worth.
Sorry to say, I know what I'm talking about, from the wrong side, because I lost my damned mind to selfishness about 4 & a half years ago & got into an affair. We were both married. I knew better than to behave like that, but she put herself out there, and somehow I convinced myself that as long as no one knew -- especially my wife or her husband -- then it was somehow ok. 
But when I learned that her husband had found out, it took me all of a matter of minutes to decide that it had to end then & there.
It took a lot more than that to recover my marriage afterwards, and my wife had to be a manner of saint, along with me getting my act back together; but the key first step was killing the affair. That's why you expose.
You don't need to decide today or tomorrow whether you want to save the marriage. Maybe you won't want to, and ultimately if she doesn't get her act together & get on-board with saving the marriage, then you won't want to anyway & it'll be for the best. But if you want to give yourself the best shot of potentially saving the marriage, even if only to maximize your future options for later when you are ready to decide, then you really need to expose the affair in order to give yourself the best odds of killing it.
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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