I want to introduce myself and get guidance on how to handle our situation.
The only man I have ever loved, been with for 18 years, 10 years married, 2 kids together--just admitted to a 4 week affair with the mom of my son�s preschool friend. They got to know each other through playing music with a pickup band. They hooked up when I couldn�t go on a group camping trip with our preschool. They continued hooking up 4-5 times. The weekend before he told me, I was away, and he invited her and her children to go to the beach with my children. They played a fantasy of being together with my kids.

I am blown over with how painful this is. The MB article on infidelity rings completely true to our situation. It is uncanny.

I admit I wasn�t meeting his needs for love and affection. I was angry that he couldn�t meet mine so I lost affection. I believe suffers from ADHD and depression. His behavior and moods made it difficult for me to connect with him. So he was not always present and able to be a supportive husband. He is frequently distracted and forgetful. He walks in a cloud of extreme high and low feeling while I am stuck with submerging my feelings so I could take care of our home and kids and pick up his loose ends. I felt like I was giving alot of energy to keeping our family running while he was overwhelmed by his feelings, stress, and lack of sense of accomplishment.
But I started making peace with that before the affair and realized how amazing he is and how lucky I was. I realized that he brought alot of wonderful things to our lives and I wanted to keep those things. He is full of love and everyone who meets him notices how special he is. I was slowly rekindling my appreciation of him but not able to show it. I was working on being connected to my own joy and sorrow. But I was still angry about his blindness to his inability to accept his shortcomings. I wasn�t able to cross over to be open and accepting and show love. But while I was harboring these complicated feeling, he was withdrawing, hiding and finding affection and excitement with someone else.

When he told me about the affair, he expressed how he felt deep feelings, maybe even love, for this woman. He said he wanted to leave me and be with her because she �gets him�. I was crushed and felt completely dishonored. I also feel alot of anger and sadness about the betrayal. He was the only man I ever loved. I had only slept with one other man before. But I know that he is special and I don�t want to lose him. I am quickly finding how much I want to rekindle our passion and believe that we are capable of being better people, and better, loving couple. We have been talking alot, and we have been painfully open, honest, compassionate, and even full of love. I deeply want to work it out-and he expressed that too, sort of. Just 2 days later, I convinced him that we should try to work it out and take the time to figure out how we want to begin anew or end this, without the spectre of this woman possibly waiting in the wings. He agreed to cut it off with her. We have been connecting, having lots of intense passion.But he feels stuck in his feelings of confusion and hopelessness. He is in withdrawal--this all came out just a week ago afterall. He is still �unsure� and what to do. He says he loves me in times of passion and intimacy but wavers about whether he loves me enough to stay married or whether he feels hopeful.

I think he does love me and is capable of putting our marriage back together. But he has issues around depression and ADHD that leave him feeling hopeless. I think MB would be perfect for us. But he is still not clear and feels lost. If I follow what MB says, then he needs 3 weeks to withdraw. But it is so agonizing. I keep feeling like I am pushing him too hard, but I also feel like I need to be proactive and keep sharing my feelings with him. I am afraid that if I give him too much space, he will descend into despair and further lose our connection. But I don�t think he will be able to move forward if he doesn�t get help and be active in caring for his emotional health. I also want him to look at MB for guidance. The way it lays out infidelity rings perfectly true in this situation. But I don�t know if I should just wait until the withdrawal phase subsides. I am supposed to leave for a trip with the kids to visit my family for a week, in 3 weeks exactly. I am worried about leaving him. He doesn�t want to go because he is overwhelmed by being there and by my family. I don�t think he will go find her, but I think he may regress to feeling passion for her and unsure about me.
I also resent being the driver of this. This feeling that I have to figure out everything and fix all our problems is one of the reasons for my withdrawal from him. I want him to find his way back to me on his own. How much nudging should I do?

Welcome to MB and sorry for your pain.

Is the OW married? Who have you exposed to?

Have you read this?
Start Here First-Welcome Aboard

First off.....do not let ADHD and depression distract you about the situation. Do not let those issues get you off course.

1. Expose the affair to the preschool (do not warn about exposing it)
Also, expose it to family and friends.

2. Do not lovebust.

3. Do not justify all the mess by feeding into the reasons your husband chose to cross boundaries with another woman.

Your H will be very upset that you exposed and he might get ugly and say he is done with you due to it but don't be scared by that. Do it anyway and know that you two do not stand a chance of fixing the marriage unless the secret is known by others around you. They will hold him accountable for his future actions from here.

TAKE YOUR CHILD OUT OF THE PRESCHOOL ASAP. You can do this as you expose why you are doing it.

It is summer at the school so the OW is not around. Her kid is not really around either. My son will be done there in 2 weeks, heading off to kindergarten.
I have told our director and plan to tell some of the parents I am close with. The director is very close with the families at the school and is very understanding.
He is revealing it to our close friends himself.
She is married but the husband is allowed to have other relationships- he is bi. She is cute, young, lonely and my husband is very charismatic and sensitive. So I can see the attraction.
He is trying to move forward with me but it is so early that I don't trust this. I also don't trust my feelings right now. I am very attracted to him, and we are spending lots of intimate time together. But I haven't been able to fully confront him about the affair. He believes he had reasons though he regrets going forward. But I don't think he really gets what he did is wrong.
We are both tryin hard to connect. And it feels good, especially the sex part--which has never been that great for me. I am confused about where we are headed.

...he expressed how he felt deep feelings, maybe even love, for this woman...he wanted to leave me and be with her because she �gets him�...he feels stuck in his feelings of confusion and hopelessness. He is in withdrawal--this all came out just a week ago after all. He is still �unsure� and what to do. He says he loves me in times of passion and intimacy but wavers about whether he loves me enough to stay married...He doesn�t want to go because he is overwhelmed by being there and by my family...I think he may regress to feeling passion for her and unsure about me.

I had to reread your notes before it was clear to me:

ARE YOU HIS WIFE, OR HIS MOMMY???

Ten years into marriage and your relationship consists of you worrying about his self-esteem issues while he's (thinking about) plowing another woman?

He is revealing it to our close friends himself.

Let me project his spiel: "Ummm, wifey and I have been having trouble for years and not really living a truly satisfying married life. In the middle of this, another sad soul, a fellow band-member, whose husband swings (often) both ways, turned to me for guidance, and through no fault of ours, she was soon tuning up my instrument. I feel just terrible about it and don't know what to do!"

What you WANT the message to be is: "My husband has been boning the mother of our son's classmate. I need your help in telling him he's acting like an [censored], to break it off with her - FOREVER - and start working on repairing our marriage!"
I keep feeling like I am pushing him too hard... Kiddo, you ain't pushing him at all!

But you are not acting like it is wrong. Nobody is.

If I stole a dress, and then when I got caught said: "Whoops, sorry" and the store simply acted grateful to get it back, I may not realise the full wrong either.

As someone who has suffered the exact pain that you have, I know why you are walking on eggshells. But honestly, you are following fear, not logic and you setting up ideal conditions for a resumption of the A.

You couldnt be planning a resumption of the A better if you tried. If you tried to do so your plan would look like this:

PLAN TO GET MY WH AND OW BACK TOGETHER:

When my H gives me weak excuses regarding depression and unmet needs, agree with them
When my H acts like it is not wrong, shelter him from all consequences which may show him differently
Keep my H and OW in a bubble of secrecy where no one is disgusted or shocked at their actions
Allow them to continue daydreaming about how innocent their love is.
Allow only a weak exposure to close friends where WH gets to spin a version where HE asks for support!
Go away and leave them both open to temptation, while also displaying I am not very protective or concerned about the marriage.

I dont mean to hit you over the head with a 2x4, but you are making every strategic mistake in the book...

Acting like you are grateful for crumbs gets you..crumbs.

Acting like your H is a poor misunderstood out of control baby gets you..... an out of control baby.

You are going to have to raise a little dust here. Without change, nothing will change. Can you read up on exposure and do it the right way? Informing everybody of importance in both your lives? Exposing the OW to the censure of her family and friends? Without forewarning anybody?

I'm not saying dont recover. What I am saying is you cant recover while you are still so passively supporting the A.

Priority #1 - Read Exposure 101 and post your exposure plan here for feedback

Totally agree with indie.

When are you exposing?

The affair is still very much on, by the way.

It's word for word what every 'torn between two lovers' wayward spins when they 'feel too lost' to end the A.

And he should of course go with you to see your family (after exposure) so he can apologise for his treatment of their daughter. What kind of person pretends to repent but won't even face the victims and apologise? One who is still up to his neck in crime, and who has not faced any consequences.

DO NOT WARN HIM about exposure, just do it. Then tell him he's either coming with you or you are not going.

What snooping have you done to extablish ongoing communication? Have you looked for a secret affair phone?
Do you have a keylogger on the PC?

I would also be interested to hear his reaction when you insist on an NC letter. Tell him this is non negotiable.

Priority Two# Read up on and complete snooping measures

You're just making it far too easy for him to have his cake and eat it too.

Make sure you are present when he exposes himself. Waywards have a terrible tendency to expose out of one side of their mouth, and justify the affair with the other. You need to tell them yourself, or be there to make sure his version is an accurate accounting.

Did her husband tell you this himself? If you heard it from one of the waywards, don't believe it until you've verified it.

Expose the affair to him anyway.

Waywards know it is wrong, but dwelling on this causes depression. It causes depression because they are powerless to stop the addiction while it remains so secret, and so accessible.

It is VERY very common for waywards to be depressed. There are very few 'happy' affairs.

Their usual technique to manage depression is to just stop thinking about how wrong it is. Or to focus on how 'wrong' their betrayed partner has been occaisionally. This is a popular one because no one is perfect.



Exposure may make your H properly remorseful. If he cannot become properly remorseful and committed to recovery, you're doomed.

WH's have gone back to the OW after 20 years of successfully recovering the marriage - but not recovering their own moral comapss. Do you want that to be you?

We have many, many recovered couples on this site. There has never been a successful story that resulted from a lack of exposure, or an unremorseful H either.

If he doesnt get fully on board with MB in three weeks you are advised to Plan B. It's risky because a separation can lead to divorce. It did in my case. But I am glad I avoided a repeat affair and an unremorseful H who would only cause me more pain.

I agree. There is always some story about how the OP's spouse is such a weirdo, you shouldn't bother exposing to them.

On these forums I've heard that the other BS is violent, a criminal, has left any way, is a swinger etc.

These stories are hardly ever true, its just a way for the OW to paint herself a damsel in distress and the WH to put the blocks on exposure.

MSBSF. You have found a goldmine of info and experience in the MB site. I hope you will use it to educate yourself about affairs and for guidance in implementing the PLANS.

My FWH also had an affair with one of the other mothers. It was by far the most painful thing that I ever gone through. I know you resent being the "driver" but if your WH knew what to do, he would not have gotten into this mess to begin with and now that he is in this mess he still has no idea what to do because he is stuck in his foggy fantasy world.

You have to pick yourself up and take control. Think of POSOW becoming the stepmother of your children if you need to find the strength to fight this. That is where I drew most, if not all of my strength, because I can tell you that OW would have become a part of my children's lives only over my dead body.

Read up on exposure. Buy the book Surviving an Affair.

MSBSF, in the approximately seventeen hours since your last note NG, IG, BH, MB, and PF have effectively given you the same advice:

Toughen up your concept of what YOU must do, and toughen up your expectations of what WH is going to have to do.

Here are the key points.

1) BREAKING UP AN AFFAIR AND RECOVERING A MARRIAGE IS NOT EASY! There will be effort and pain for all parties.

2) NO ONE ELSE CAN BE DELEGATED TO PERFORM YOUR TASKS! 1-800-WRECKAFFAIR is disconnected.

3) THE COST OF ABANDONING YOUR MARRIAGE WILL PRIMARILY BE BORNE BY YOUR CHILDREN. The will join the millions of "split-custodial" families. "Vows" and promises will be displayed as meaningless; that lesson might never be unlearned.

Soooooo, are you "in" or are you "out"?

RED FLAG. He's demanding "time alone" and "space to think" means he really wants time to continue the affair in private.

As others pointed out...unfortunately, it's most likely the affair is continuing underground as he decides what he wants to do.

Keep snooping.

Don't allow him the choice to stay home. He either goes with you or he packs up and leaves. You aren't his keeper...he is free to go but he better not expect you to endure one more night of wondering what he is doing, where he really is and whether or not someone is there with him while also keeping YOU as an option.

YOU MATTER TOO.

In my opinion (IMO), don't bring him anywhere near MB until you confirm "no contact" and he's most of the way through withdrawal. He won't get this stuff yet. You can't teach a active wayward and you need this place to yourself to strategize your way through the first few weeks.

Godspeed,

Mr. W

X 2

My FWH arranged for me to go to our home for three weeks before him. He was on a business trip away from our second home, but I later discovered he was just trying to get rid of me so he could spend alone time with The Dolly. He had convinced himself he needed that time to "play house" with her, to see if he and she could actually make a go of it. All the while telling me daily that it was over between them.

He has subsequently told me he could NEVER give up the Dolly on his own. When he was with me, he was resolved to dump her. But as soon as he saw her again, or even had time to himself, he was "like a fly on a honey pot", as he put it.

Discovering and working through the False Recovery was EXPONENTIALLY harder than the first D-Day. I am still a sitting on a steaming pile of resentment over this.

Don't let yourself get here. Put your foot down. He either goes with you on this trip, or he leaves, period.

I think I have misled you all. He is starting to show remorse, just not as completely as I need. He still feels like it was a consequence of all the pain in our marriage for the last 8 years. It has just been 1 week since I was told of the affair and he is still emotionally withdrawing from the affair so I don't expect him to fully feel the remorse until he has let go of his attraction. I have shown him how hurt and angry I am. I have written a letter to him and her about how much damage they have caused. He has read it. I have not sent it to her as I am going to share it with our marriage therapist first.
I also don't want to tell my parents as they are very unhelpful in these situations. I do want him to tell his, with me listening in, but I will wait to run this by our therapist first. I do plan on being there. I know he has talked to the OW and told her that he is done. I believe that. I also know he wrote her a letter and is going to show it to me before sending. Her husband knows but otherwise, I don't have any personal connection with the people she knows. I don't want to randomly call people I don't know.
He is a man with integrity in most other areas of his life, but he is emotionally weak. We have spent 8 years being distant and he emotionally separated from me long ago.
I do fully plan on holding him to account.

I do agree that I have a tendency to show too much understanding and have do too much mothering.

I am wondering if and when I should ask for details on the affair. I asked him to not delete the emails and texts he shared with her and I want to see them at some point. He agreed. I just want to talk to our therapist about what she recommends. If your WS revealed the details, are you glad you know. I already asked him some details, and the small ones I found out were so nauseating that I don't know if I can handle more.

I think he wants to do right, it is just a slow process right now.

No, you haven't misled us. We really don't care about his blaming of his affair on any perceived deficiencies in your marriage. That's all BS.He had an affair because he wanted to. His boundaries were poor. If he is blaming the affair on anything other than that, he is NOT sorry and ready to recover your marriage. He needs to be coming to you with his hat in his hand.

Ask him for complete details of the affair NOW. Write all of your questions down and expect a complete answer. Be ready to schedule a polygraph if the answers are not acceptable to you.

It does not seem like you are interested in the MB plans. Good luck with your approach but we cant help you with anything that isnt MB. Dr Harley would not recommend your approach.

Come back if you want to try MB later. i will be thinking of you.

I am a perfect dieter, except at meal times and snack times. I also have an alcoholic uncle, who is perfectly sober when not drunk. Do you see my point?

This is how you describe a man who has betrayed the wife he is supposed to love, cherish, honour and protect? A man who has betrayed the tiny children who trust him to not to destroy their world? In front of them? A man who has attacked the marriage of a man who has never done him any harm? And the family of that man's children?

To describe him as having 'integrity' shows just how much you are deluding yourself.

Look at the sentence you have written above. You are twisting the truth to avoid facing it. We call this Betrayed Spouse fog.

You are really being far too nice for your own good and despite the excellent advice from other posters, you do not seem to understand the danger you are in.

You should understand that your WH actually harboured ideas of REPLACING YOU not only in HIS life but also your kids' lives:


The affair partner is a predator who has her eyes on your marriage and your kids. She will not hesitate to throw you out broken and bleeding onto the curb. Your WH is deep in affairland, as evidenced by


You should understand that he is addicted to OW. Affair addictions are incredibly powerful, they are like heroin addictions. There are hundreds of stories on this forum of people who changed completely while being in an affair, they became unrecognisable to their BS and their family and friends. Many people feel like an alien has taken over their spouse's body.

And I strongly doubt that the affair is over.


And you are not taking the danger seriously:


I am almost certain of this: If you leave him alone for 3 weeks, he WILL go and find her. That's the lure of addiction.

I'm going to repeat a lot of advice that other posters have already given:

First, you must make sure that that affair is DEAD! Dead as a doornail and no chance of it reviving. There must be NO CONTACT between WH and OW for the rest of your lives. Otherwise your marriage is finished and you will be sharing your kids with a predator who had no qualms about destroying their family life.

Second, you must SECRETLY start to monitor your WH for any contact with OW: key loggers, voice-activated recorder in his car, GPS etc.

And do not alert WH to this forum yet. Give him MB materials to read but don't tell him you're posting.

Third, you must immediately expose the affair to everyone by yourself - no warning WH. Exposure includes kids older than 4 and everyone on OW's side, including her BH, her family, her FB friends, and definitely the school.

And forget this, all WSs have inner conflict because they know they are doing something wrong but they really want to keep doing it. It makes them depressed:


And finally


You should be his lighthouse. He's in a fog of his addiction, he is confused and lost, you need to guide him.

Later, when he is out of the fog, he will have to take concrete actions to give you just recompense and make you feel safe in the marriage again.