Ok here goes,

I have been on this site intermittently over the past few years mostly due to possible and sometimes proven infidelity on the part of my wife. Tried several good ideas I received on this board but unfortunately still seem to be in the same situation. Basically I have come to the point that whether there is an affair going on or not it seems my wife has just checked out on the marriage. To be fair I probably have as well at this point.

It is to the point that for my daughters sake I just do not confront things any more with my wife as it just quickly ends up with her hurling verbal obscenities at me even as I try to remain calm and that can�t be good for a 6 yr old to be observing her mother in a rage belittling, tearing down and basically just calling him everything in the book.

Basically at this point my wife is gone 80+ hours a week at �work�, not uncommon for her to work all day when daughter is at school, pick daughter up at school, drag her around to work locations until I get out from work then drop her at home and go back to work till 1am. When she is home she is on her work cell phone or resting upstairs. So long as I do not question anything all is well however and things are amicable although cold.

Basically I work full time, pay most of the bills, do all the housework and yard work, do the grocery shopping and make almost all the meals for my daughter and I, as my wife is usually not home to eat with us. I would also say 5 out of 7 nights a week I am the one that puts by daughter to bed at night as again the wife is not there.


I know this all sounds like a complaint fest and I apologize for that but I really wanted to get all the details out there as to the situation. We just seem to be in 2 separate worlds, (she did not even want to go on vacation when I took our daughter to Disney a couple months ago as she said she is tired of Disney even though our daughter was begging to go back). She basically has no interest in doing things together.


So now my question. My tact up until now has been to just as I said above avoid confrontation and go along for my daughter�s sake. My other choice is to split up but that may get ugly as that is me disagreeing with my wife and I really don�t want my daughter to have to go through that. I do still care about my wife as well but after all that has occurred it is a different kind of caring if that makes sense? I don�t really have the intimate type feelings that were there for the 1st several years of our marriage. So my bottom line question I guess is should I stick it out or give up on it?

The problem is that when you spend your life avoiding conflict, you create more conflict. Is your goal to avoid conflict at all cost or is it to find solutions? Because your obsession with avoiding conflict has prevented you from finding solutions.

And no, you are not avoiding conflict for your daughters sake. She benefits in no way from having estranged parents.

Hi Melody,

Good points both. I have been thinking about the second one alot lately. Perhaps you are right and my daughter would be better off if I just say enough of this and bite the bullet and seperate. But i still worry what effect that will have on her.

As to your other point I know that avoiding is not really a solution and just pushes the can down the road but I just get so tired of fighting for every little thing that I may not be in agreement with my wife on. I guess I choose to pick which battles to fight I guess.

I truly think I know what the only solution is. Crap my wife even says now and again "why don't we just get divorced and stay living together until our daughter grows up" Now I dont think I could do the divorced living together thing but i do think that divorce will be the ultimate outcome.

You can't ever win the battle if your strategy is surrender. You surrendered your marriage and your daughter at the first shot.

Me too.

I dont think of it as surrender I think of it as trying to find the best course of action to have the best possible outcome especially for my daughter. Trust me the whole thing truly pisses me off, who wouldn't be pissed off by being walked all over but I don't see how engaging in arguments will be of benefit to my daughter. I followed that tact of defending myself from the criticism up until recently and that didn't get me anywhere near finding a solution.

Surrendering your marriage is not the best course of action, Sir. That HARMS your daughter. Running from criticism is a poor excuse for not taking the necessary action to save your marriage..

You could have done next to nothing to save your marriage. No exposure, no steps to end the affair.

First I want to thank you for your thoughts I truly appreciate the honest opinions.

I do need to ask though if not fighting all the time and just doing our own thing and the road that that leads to constitutes surrender then what is the other course of action available? War?

Fight all the time and have my 6 year old daughter get in between saying pleaaasssee stop fighting?

Or just give up on anything I believe and do everything to be something I am not so I will be the impossible to attain "perfect spouse" that might "woo her back"?

I am not good at faking emotions, In fact a good part of me says, I have done a lot to try to make things work and really am burnt out on trying anymore. Now this is not in any way to absolve myself from guilt in getting where we are at, but it is hard to try to fix things when you feel like the only one trying.

We told you not to fight. So I have no idea what you are talking about. We told you to fight for your marriage, not to fight WITH her. Huge difference!

We have NO affair busting strategy that recommends fighting. NOWHERE. Just the opposite. Fighting will not save a marriage.

But if I were to have told all sorts of people of something that I still to this day (and not for lack of trying to gather) have no hard proof of she would have gone off the deep end. I have no doubt that marriage would be over now had i done that.

My lack of hard evidence has actually made me wonder if it is just the Job that seems to be meeting her needs and has been prioritized over family and that perhaps it may not be an affair with a person but with a job.

We didn't tell you to expose with no proof. We told you to get the proof. You wouldn't do that.


Once again, a lack of hard evidence causes you to "wonder" while your marriage slips away. We told you to get the evidence and expose. You REFUSED to do that. If I go to the doctor with an ailment and I REFUSE to take the medicine, guess what? I stay sick.

You are headed to divorce because you refuse to take the medicine.

And that is ok if you refuse!! Please understand I fully support your choice to throw your marriage away. It is your life. We have saved our marriages. You are perfectly free to do anything you choose with yours.

But I could find no more proof. I bought GPS tracker and used it for a month. Never got any un refutable evidence. Yes there were some suspicious things but nothing that could not be explaied away. I used 2 voice recorders one in car one in bedroom, again nothing. Does it really matter though? If she has decided that she wants something else other than our family be that a person a job or something else what is the difference? She is still checking out of the marriage.

I have tried having conversations with her on the situation but all they ever end up being is her going off on all that is wrong with me.

I think I have tried damn hard to do what needs to be done to fix things. I am fully aware of my shortcomings but i feel my strengths of what I offer far outweigh those. If she does not feel that way what can i really do?

You didn't try hard enough. You just checked a box and quickly gave up. There are lots of ways to get the goods and thousands of people do it every day. All it takes is willingness. I haven't seen that on your part.


Yes, it matters very much. Or we wouldn't tell you to do these things. We have saved our marriages using these tactics.


And once again, we never told you to do that. What a waste of time.

I haven't seen you do anything effective to save your marriage. Nothing. You are on Plan Dad102, and not Plan A of Marriage Builders. But that's ok, it is your right to refuse to follow this program!!

How would you know what matters if you have no experience whatsoever saving a marriage from infidelity? Do you see my point? You have no earthly idea what matters and what doesn't matter.

I do see your point.

Couple questions though. If I do go back to trying to gather evidence and say I do get concrete evidence what do I do if upon finding that evidence I can't forgive her? I ask because I dont know that I can do that. I say that as I tend to be the type of person that once someone i trust betrays that trust my "walls go up" and they usually do not ever come down again.


Also what if it is the job and not another person what then? Do I do exposure on her and her job? I would assume that sometimes it is not an affair that makes marriages go bad. What path should i follow if that is the case?

You shouldn't forgive her, that is inappropriate. Rather, we would help you obtain just compensation from her. THAT is better for your marriage.


If it is her job, then other solutions would be warranted. But it is of no use to discuss every hypothetical when you could be focusing on finding out the truth. If I were in your shoes, I hire a PI for a couple of days. That will get you all the information you need.

I think I will try the PI thing so long as it is not break the bank expensive. Then at least I can either know something is going on or know it is not.