I sense you are about to board the rollercoaster, or maybe a new extreme rollercoaster.


Be ready, be calm, be cool, confident. Control your emotions.

You are doing the actions, do them fully. You are getting priceless adivce here.

I did see the exposure thread and I have sent the letter this morning. I work at the same company as my wife and the OM and I am in a leadership position so I have to tread carefully to not open up the company to any possible legal action (ie, harrassment of any kind). I have notified my HR manager had a nice conversation with her that put my mind at ease that she will address the situation with the necessarry parties and will update me.

Meanwhile, I kind of messed up yesterday it appears. I swore my wife was hiding something because she was going to a frieds house to help her out with her kids B-day project and Iit turns out I was right. I kept looking for info and seeing some text messages by my wife I discovered she did go to her friends house and helped out but also took some photos in my favorite sports teams lingerie that she was planning to surprise me with on father's day. I really feel guilty and terrible for ruining her surprise as she was trying to do something nice fore me.

Any thoughts on if I should tell my wife about it or how I should proceed?

You do not reveal your snooping or your methods. In my opinion, you cant trust her yet, it is way too soon for that.

If the surprise is truly for you, then act surprised and be grateful.

One rule in my R with my FWW is that there are no surprises ever. Part of my conditions to R. For me, RH is of vital importance. So, I am not comfortable with any surprises. In order for her to surprise me, she would have to have a secret.

Secretes in my M = BIG nono. Doesn�t matter what it is. Birthday, Christmas..no surprises.

If you and your W can really study and incorporate the POJA and RH, you can mutually agree on a way to handle things. POJA applies to every single part of your M excluding when you are suspicious of an A or snooping etc..

A different point of view is instead of feeling bad, you should feel good that she was being honest with you.


Never feel guilty about your snooping. Never.

Ok, I need some advice. I sent the letter to our HR Manager and had a good convo, she called me to discuss. I explained I didn't believe any company policy was broken but this was at the very least causing distraction in the workplace for both. She advised she will address with the two employees and with their managers. Me being in a leadership role I understand when something like this happens it is to be addressed by the Manager with the employee as well. I honestly with about 95% certainty don't believe the affair is still going on.

My wife has told me she wants to work on our marriage and try to make it work. She had said this before I posted on here but was sending alot of troubling signals. She swears the OM is not an issue or even a factor in our relationship but she did say she wants a happy relationship because our relationship in the past was not. She told me I need to treat her nicer, appreciate her more and be there for her intimately as well. I do admit I was lacking in this area before mainly because I have been battling severe depression since the death of my oldest daughter 4 years ago.

To be honest, I was really a terrible husband. I wasn't in love with my wife and we were together because we had kids while we were dating as teens. Over the years and through this mess I've really realized how much I do love her and that I am in love with her. I couldn't imagine life without her and I know I wouldn't be happy without her. This has kind of snapped me out of a haze of the depression I felt weighing me down.

Well now to what I need advice on. There has been the warning signals of mistrust but we are going out of town this weekend with our kids. We are Catholic and are baptising a niece (we are going to be her godparents). We have had this planned for a while but it is something we both take very seriously and I honestly don't feel like she would want to go through with it if she wasn't serious about working it out. My question is we will be around all our family's this weekend and I have not exposed what's happened to them. She did tell the sisters she confides in and they all sided with me and she stopped talking to them about it after that. That happened about 2 weeks ago before she decided she wanted to work things out.

My question is should I risk harming things now if she has agreed to work things out by exposing this weekend? I kind of came in late to this thing and have been hesitant for this reason. She waffled back and forth for about a week after the affair about wanting to work it out or not but has been consistenly saying she wants to work things out and has only wavered when we argue (not surprisingly). It is so hard to get her to let go of the past at this point. She keeps bringing it up and arguing about it even though I don't argue and just say it happened already and we can only control going forward. In summary, I feel like we are in the beginning stages of trying to save our marriage together and I just don't want to mess things up like I have in the past.

Are the parents of the DD that is being baptized on your side or your WWs?

The mother (single mother) is her step sister but I'm sure she doesn't even know whats going on. She is younger than my wife and my wife has always seen her as younger and I'm pretty sure she didn't discuss it with her. She has discussed it with her 2 sisters who she is very close with (one older and one younger) and they both are on my side. We will see them this weekend and are staying with her older sister she discussed it with.

TSM,

I am in a leadership position so I have to tread carefully to not open up the company to any possible legal action

You did not in any way cause unnecessary liability for your company OM and WW did. This is a consequence of their choices.

And if you are in a leadership position you have some obligation to report unethical behavior, too bad the employees in Bernard Madoffs company did not.

God Bless
Gamma

The big problem right now is my wife claims she wants to work our marriage out and has made her mind up 100% but she doesn't trust my actions. She thinks I'm trying to manipulate her because I'm acting drastically different than I did for a long time. I agree I am acting different but I realized how my actions drove her away and I've made the decision to change and save our marriage. I did tell her this but she doesn't believe me and she keeps bringing up the past. She also jumps all over me anytime I do anything that btohers her. The last big problem is she says she understands the need for openness and transparency but when it comes down to it she gets irritated when I ask to read messages or look at phone. She lets me do it and I have GPS on her phone but she isn't happy about it. Advice?

Thanks for all the advice and care really. I am leaving for the weekend (not really looking forward to it honestly) but will try to make the best of it. I will update you guys how it went when I get a chance or if I get a chance during the weekend.

Edit: Oh, and I will read all posts and any advice you might have even if not until weekend is over so please post if you have anything you think might help. I will try to look in during my spare time this weekend.

This board has been a real help BTW, thanks to all of you.

TSX,

There are a few major problems I still see that you and your wife are going to HAVE to put in place if you truly want to recover.

1. She CANNOT continue to work in the same building with the OM. There is NO WAY she will be able to recover your marriage even seeing him for a second. I am a WW and my AP was moved to a different building. I can guarantee you if he had not been my A would still be going on or I would still be thinking about it every time I saw him.

If your wife is truly committed 100% like she says she is, she will understand why she or he have to be relocated IMMEDIATLY!

2. The only expose that I saw on your thread was to her workplace. This is not going to work. Her affair needs to be exposed far and wide and on both sides. This is coming from someone who was exposed far and wide by her H. Yes, I was angry at first. Yes, I hated him and blamed him at the time, YES IT KILLED MY AFFAIR!!! Yes, today I am grateful that he did this to me for us.

You said I did tell her this but she doesn't believe me and she keeps bringing up the past. She also jumps all over me anytime I do anything that btohers her. The last big problem is she says she understands the need for openness and transparency but when it comes down to it she gets irritated when I ask to read messages or look at phone. She lets me do it and I have GPS on her phone but she isn't happy about it.

Here is my advice on all of the above. There is a huge difference in saying you want to be transparent and actually being transparent. Your wife is saying the words but she does not want to follow through on the actions. Meaning your wife is not giving you JUST COMPENSATION (Dr. Harely term). This is a major problem because again, if she is 100% into recovery, that means change in both of you. That means Radical Honesty, EPs, Just compensation, POJAing everything.

She doesn't just get to have an affair, say she wants to stop and go on without any consequences or changes.

Ok, I'm back from our weekend trip and I thought I'd give you guys and update and see what you think. I spoke with her family this weekend and exposed what was going on. I don't know if anyone spoke to her about it though. Both our families seem to really want to stay out of it and I can't blame them because I honestly wouldn't want to be involved in other people's lives either.

We did ok this weekend, not great but not terrible. She seemed to really enjoy the time with her family but as you'd expect it wasn't great for me but also wasn't bad.

Some of the things that have gone on of note are as follows. On Friday on the drive up there (about 2 hours) she received a text from a male friend just asking what was going on. This is not the OM but during my detective work on the A I did find out she was texting this male friend alot recently. They text back and forth about 250 times in 1 month. I think she may have been having some emotional needs being met by him so I told her he was off limits as well. She got upset of course and accused me being controlling (this is a theme I keep encountering). Well she did not respond to him but she did "like" a couple of his facebook posts this weekend (she has allowed me access to her account any time I want it) and commented on one. I thought it was clear that I wanted her to have no contact with this guy either but she claimed she didn't take it that way she just thought she was not to carry on convo with him. We established my clear expectations and reasons (I expressed to her I felt it was way excessive the amount of contact she had with him and that even though nothing physical or over the line had happened it would probably end up happening). Her response again was getting frustrated and accusing me of being controlling (this all happened on Friday). On Sat morning I looked at her FB and saw she replied commented on the OM post. It was something about being sad he lost his Grandmother on this date several years ago. She just posted she was sorry. I still did not approve of this and she said she understood, deleted the post and said she didn't think it was a big deal and wouldn't comment or like any of his stuff anymore. She said she was totally over him (even though IMO the posting on his page proved she isn't all the way over him and for the record later I asked her to delete him I think on Fri or Thurs from her FB friends). I also went through her text meesages and saw that when she worked in the same location on Friday as me and the OM she text her frined that she still thought that the OM was very sexy but she did not want to talk to him or didn't want to show him any emotion because she felt he used her and she doesn't want anything to do with him. She was texting this to her BFF on Friday with no knowledge or anticipation I would be reading (dont' really know how to take this and we are still debating on the work issue). For the rest of Saturday we had what I thought was a good day. We were at a B-Day party and she appeared to have fun. At night she shifted and was mad at me and accused me of staring at her sister all day (imagine that, jealousy after all this). I for the record wasn't and could care less about anybody as I was focused on trying to make the day fun for her and be there anytime she wanted to show me any affection (was few but not nonexistant). She ended up calming down and we had a "good" night. On Sunday (father's day) we were pretty busy with our nieces baptismal (reason for the trip) for most of the day. When we got home it was night and I didn't feel great because she really didn't pay much attention to me all day (it being father's day it kinda bummed me out). Me not feeling well led to a fight that eventually got on the A topic. At this point I expressed dissatisfaction that she had not deleted the OM from her FB friends, she did so after this and she claimed she just forgot about it because of our busy weekend and claimed there was no other reason.

I still get the feeling she is lying to herself and that she isn't over everything but it does seem like she is genuinely trying. She does seem to have trouble with accepting that she cannot contact these other 2 men and reverts back to calling me controlling. At this point I really don't care if she feels that way and I have made that a non negotiable condition for us to move forward and she has grudgingly went along with it. I felt like at times I was being walked over and I will not allow that to continue on stuff that really is serious IMO.

Well this is where we are right now. We still don't have a resolution on the employment thing but I will monitor very closely and discuss with her to get to a point we are both comfortable with. I do understand this is not in line with the program but I have to make a judgement call and IMO the way I'm handling this is the best way. She is scheduled to work at our location again on Thurs but after that we don't know when she will need to work over here again.

I also seem to have the feelings of this whole thing come up often and am trying to figure out an effective way to cope with that. They are mainly feelings of resentment.

Any comments or thoughts are always appreciated aa I know we are very far from a happy ending at this point and we are not out of trouble yet either. I am pretty confident probably 95-99% that aside from the FB post I detailed above that she has had no contact with the OM for about 11 days.

Thanks for listening and thanks for all your continued support, guidance and advice it is very appreciated.

Your wife is in the fog. This OM is still a grave threat as she is addicted to him. The fact that she still texts about him to friends shows she is still wayward. Her friend is probably an enemy to your marriage. WW's girlfriends often are. Until she leaves her job or he gets fired, it won't work. Period. Furthermore, her insistence on opposite sex friendships indicates that she has zero barriers.

If you are to recover, she must agree to your EP's. She must get on board with the MB program. If she doesn't then you will be fighting a losing battle with your wife. She has had two affairs and surely has the attitude of a renter.

Does she know about Marriage Builders? Has she been reading Surviving an Affair or any of Dr. Harley's books?

You need to get into a serious Plan A and see if she will come on board. As it stands, she is going to meander in and out of affairs because her behavior and mindset are wayward.

Might consider emailing Dr. Harley as well. Both of you could join the show. That way you won't make any disrespectful judgments. Dr. Harley and Joyce will in your stead.

Ditto on what Justthe3ofus said.
Read that over and over until you get it.
Work contact must be eliminated (someone must go)
No opposite sex friends, this does not work either and very disrespectful to you
This girlfriend must go as well.
Facebook must go!!!
Doesnt appear that she is serious, and you are compromising left and right.

Thanks for this and yes I do feel like I'm compromising alot. I kind of feel like its the right thing to do. I don't want to give any merit to the idea that I am trying to control her or not treat her with love as this was what drove her away to begin with (I don't want to sound like a victim right now because I was a terrible husband for a long time, I didn't even know I loved my wife as much as I do for a long time so I know I didn't give her the love she deserved.)

I have brought up the work contact again but my wife doesn't agree and is adamant she does not want the OM and doesn't feel like it is necessary or worth it to the point of saying if our marraige cant survive then it can't. She keeps saying she is fine and that the one that can't handle her working in the same location is me. She is right about that because I don't think I can handle it. Also, I kind of get her view as this is the first realy profession/career she's ever had. She was always a stay at home mom and she doesn't want to lose the only career she's ever had. In her defense, that used to be a big gripe I had that she didn't contribute financially and I would say she received alot of emotional abuse because of it (LIke I said, I was a pretty bad husband in the past).

I believe her to a point but I also question whether she wants to fix our relationship because she doesn't even want to read any articles about infidelity. I told her I would like her to read anything (I told her just google and read so you can get at least some insight) but she refuses to for some reason.

I am beginning to see she is probably still in the fog and as hard as it is to do I might have to take some drastic action if I want her to get engaged in recovery. At this point I don't think she realizes the consequences of this affair or the severity of how much it has hurt me. I guess thats something I need to come to terms with and decide what to do.

Lather rinse repeat

tx:
Your wife cannot work with the OM. Period.

My WH just chimed on this issue, because he tried that in our situation, and I believed him for 5 months (while we waited for his transfer to come through, which mysteriously kept getting delayed...) And, come to find out, after 5 months, that the A only "ended" for 5 days, while we were away. Literally the first day he was back at work, they resumed their A.

Taffy says there was no way he could keep away from the OW. He says he was kind of looking forward to finally getting the transfer, because it would be the only way he could end the A. And that it was agony for him to lead the secret second life after D-Day 1, but he was powerless. During that entire 5 months he was begging the OW to run away with him. He says he would occasionally get desperate thinking what he'd do if she ever said yes... So, totally in the fog. But the entire time, he had NO concern for how much he was hurting me. It wasn't until he got away from her that he could begin to see things straight. To me, an amazing demonstration of the fog at work. And the powerful addiction of the A.

But, EVEN IF, by some miracle, your WW ISN'T addicted to the OM, even if she found some way to work at the same place, and have occasional contact, without being effected, it is still a terrible assault TO YOU that she stays working at the same place. You will be triggered. How can you possibly move on if this situation continues?

I understand how difficult it can be to change jobs/move. Especially in this economy, and considering your WW only recently got this career move established. However, change is necessary. In our case, we moved to another country, across the continent, 2800 miles away. And accepted a lesser position at half the income. And STILL Taffy had secret contact with the Dolly until I found out. But I now know this change was imperative before we could take the next step. And now, so does Taffy.

An update. Yesterday was a tough day for me but ended up pretty good actually. My wife and I have begun having lunch together every day since I discovered the A. She swears its over, admits she still has feelings for the OM but is adamant she is done with it (she claims she ended it after the 1 physical encounter (she swears just once) because it forced her to see it wasn't what she wanted). For the record, I understand there will be feelings (even though its hurtful and enraging) but the goal is to make them fade away as much as possible. I am also sure he actually stopped being her friend when she told him thats all she wanted to be. I feel like she's been honest as she has fully disclosed anything I've wanted and needed her to even if she feels its something I shouldn't know. She also has opened up all phone records, texts and FB acct anytime I want.

I have some issues personally. I have a terribly inquisitive mind and when there is an unknown detail of the A it really bothers me to the point of obsessing over it. My wife understands this about me and has agreed to answer any question or provide any detail I feel I need. I know this is a slippery slope and I don't want to alienate her but I also KNOW it can't work when I am obsessing over something I don't know. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated, maybe another perspective with some insight behind it could help me.

I also find it hard to keep my emotions in check. When a thought comes into my head about the A it really bothers me and really hinders me from fulfilling her emotional needs. It is something I need to work on and any help or advice on this is also appreciated and sought after really.

Last night we had an instance of me getting really bothered by something. My wife got upset about my emotional unavailability but then calmed down and actually was there for me emotionally. It was really nice and to top it all off she apologized twice about making me feel the way I do (and the A). I feel like this is the first time she has given a sincere apology. Maybe my hurt and sadness finally hit something with her. This made me be ok for the most part (still not 100%) but we also met each other's needs physically after this exchange.

I hope she's making progress, we have exchanged pleasant emails all day today and even though I thanked her for the apologies last night I did so again today to let her know how much they meant to me. She appreciated that I seem sincere and apologized again and apologized for hurting me emotionally when we argue. She says she knows exactly how to hurt me and what will hurt me and its just a reaction she has become accustomed to. She promised to work on this and wanted me to know she never means any of it when she says it she just knows it will hurt me. We have talked about some emotional needs we need going forward today through email and both have said we intend to work on meeting them. I hope we are making a bit of progress and I will see her for lunch in 15 min so we will see how that goes.

Thoughts, advice and comments are always welcome. This is really the only person/place I have to talk about this with.

Edit: The work thing is something we still haven't agreed to. Honestly, I think I need to let this go for a bit because our LB is so low (hers is almost empty) that no mutually beneficial resolution is going to come of this until the care is really built back up. She only works at the same location as us maybe once or twice a month for a day at a time and only sees him once or twice for 10-15 seconds at a time. I understand what the program says about this and I don't want her to have any contact with the OM but I also want to save our marriage and have to make a judgement call. Maybe my willingness to bend on this for now will help my wife see how hard I am willing to fight for our marriage. She knows how much this hurts and how much I disapprove but Im hoping in time she will want to not cause me this pain and will realize it hurts me every time she does have to work at this location. Again, I know this is not recommened by any site, article or this program but again this is a judgement call I ultimately have to make. I hope it pays off but time will tell.

Anyways thanks for the posts and for the advice it really means alot to me.