Thankyou everybody. Possibly among the hardest things I have ever had to do.

So what are the next steps? At some point will come an enraged wife, either in person or by phone or some other method. I understand I am to remain calm and apologise for nothing and simply state "I am trying to save our marriage". Eventually she will tire of not getting anywhere in getting me to agree to her behaviour or admit weakness.

What comes next? Do I expect to not hear from her at all for a while and eventually one day will come to me with a more open attitude (perhaps when Tattoo Guy flakes out on her)? How do I handle the forced interactions with her until then - we have children that need handover, and so on.

Apparently today talking to her friend, her overall goal was to get me out of the house and thus miraculously cure her medical depression. In the process she would, paraphrased from her own words, try to deny me any ownership of the house (her inheritance money paid for it outright, but we are co-owners on the deed) and extract as much money as possible from me. But she did hope it eventually worked out (?)

I know that these words are heavily influenced by other factors right now and can't be taken to heart.

Wrong.

Right now you are not dealing with the wife you used to know. You are dealing with an evil alien that has taken over control of her brain.

Right now she has every intention of destroying you in whatever way she can.

If she makes you the enemy its easier for her to jusstify her disgusting actions.

Stop trying to make sense of this right now. We can do that for you. You are in your own version of the fog. We can help guide you through that.

Thankyou.

Am I right in the earlier parts of my post - about what to expect next, and how to deal with it?
I have read everytihng I can find on the matter but it can be so hard to distill down to something directly relevant without having first hand experience.

All hell is going to break loose. No doubt. You need to be the calm in the hurricane. Prepare yourself. Do you have anyone who can help keep you calm?

Melodylane usually posts this and I hope she doesn't mind if I do.

Be the clam in the hurricane? Interesting analogy but I don't know if I'm ready to be a mollusc.

I don't struggle with staying calm. I am not quick to anger. What I worry about is that I reason my way through things perahsp in the wrong direction - PRIME example in this thread with you guys telling me until you're blue in the face to accept that she has probably slept with him. If I'm going to need resolve that feels somewhat unnatural or "unfair" to me then I want to go in with a plan. What if she wants to take the children away? What if she insists I move out?

Do I just have to effectively tell her on all counts that she needs to come back when she's feeling reasonable? Or ignore them, say I'm sorry she's upset, and leave it at that? I'm worried of coming home one day to find the children gone too.

That was a great answer!


I can tell you are from a family environment that is somewhat dysfunctional [nihilistic] and tends to gloss over truth while doubting what is right before their face. I am from the same background and had to retrain my instincts and powers of reason. We can help you with this process. As you can see, a nihilistic outlook renders you impotent when you are under assault. I know exactly how you are struggling now and you need to let us help you.


Tell her she may not remove the children from their home without a court order and an armed sheriff. It is not fair for your children to be removed from their home to accommodate her affair. If she insists you move out, tell her "no thank you."


Tell her that she needs to end her affair NOW or this will lead to divorce. Tell her it is profoundly disrespectful to you and the boys for her to be out committing her adultery while she is married to you. If she is going to sleep with the OM all night, you will be changing the locks.

For right now, you need to clean up your exppsures and make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck. For example, when you sent those exposure letters to thee OM's FB contacts, did you pay thhe $1 to get them placed in their in box? If you didn't, they will go in their spam box and they will never see them.

What about the OM's parents? Can you speak to them on the phone?

Your goal right now is to cause as much HAVOC in the affair as possible. In fact, I would make plans to go to the OM's house and have a chat with him.

What if she wants to take the children away? What are the laws in your part of the world?

What if she insists I move out? What are the laws in your part of the world? I can�t see any law that tells a man who�s wanting to save his marriage and isn�t a danger to anyone that he needs to move out.

You best get a recorder, hide it on you and record your conversations. If she tries to play the drastic card and lie about your actions you best protect the truth best you can.

Your plan with her is the same as always.

�I am doing what I can to save our family and our marriage. Would you like something to eat?�.
Rinse, lather, repeat.

Well an eventful evening, but positive.
The exposure dump worked in the sense that it sparked conversation and other viewpoints. One of Wife's best friends came to me to talk about it all, and she shed light on areas that were previously dark. Betrayal could still physically have occurred - but other surrounding circumstances make it look unlikely. The friend outlining my wife's mood in private with her before she went to Tattoo Guy's house last night; the fact that my wife was observed to spend much of today sitting in a coffee shop alone or the car park of the local shop, rather than spending all that time with Tattoo Guy.

My wife was not blazing with rage when she came home unexpectedly this evening. She was calm and willing to converse but also still certain of her unhappiness. She also expressed that she was angry at the exposure-dump, but I expected an incandescently angry betrayed reaction typical of someone who is themselves a betrayer (the false over-reaction) when instead she could calmly explain how she thought it was poorly thought out etc. For what it's worth, I did not apologise for the exposure, but I did explain it; in light of any other evidence and given there was prior precedent I had no choice but to assume the worst, and it did its intended job, which was to spark conversation and change.

I appreciate you guys are trying to help and working off of experience, but I don't feel that my case quite fit with the standard and that things have backfired a little as a result. I think this forum (Surviving Affair) could potentially be destructive to our marriage, so I'm going to relocate or restart over in Marriage 101. But thankyou for your help and goodwill. Positivity has come out of it.



We did manage to talk about the underlying problem further and the issue is that with things as they are, we are both unhappy, but I want to change it right now and she feels she doesn't want to. She wants to WANT TO improve things and feels it can only be done by spending some time apart. I described that I thought this plan was very passive and flaky, and unlikely to achieve anything, because even if she did finally come round to wanting to fix us, by that time I will have simmered on my resentment that she didn't immediately want to fix things, and perhaps found myself self-sufficient enough that I would be brave enough to say I wanted to do things alone, instead.

The compromise that we reached is that we would do separation (within the same house) combined with dating, which is the best I could really have hoped for. I managed to convey my (totally founded on fact and history) insecurity about male interaction and after some initial resistance I think she has taken it on board. A telltale will be tomorrow she had scheduled a coffee with a much older married man who suffers the same depression as her but is making his way through it and out the other side. I have explained that although it's great she could gain something from it, this kind of opening up to a member of the opposite sex (that isn't a professional) while our relationship is so vulnerable is not appropriate. It remains to be seen whether she will respect that.

You are in denial but I wish you luck. No man lets a woman stay on his couch without having sex.

SO Tattooscum wins and your family loses.

Wife has just come in and talked more about the exposure dump and, all of a sudden, the offense has kicked in. Now I am a terrible human being and I only wanted to hurt her and other people, and I disgust her. I've destroyed a route to her own happiness with herself (the tattoos, because he was the artist and presumably won't do them anymore).
edit to add: "I've ruined what chance I had".

What I take from this is that her friendship with somoene she barely knows is prioritized over our marriage and family.

Perhaps we're back on track to keeping this thread in this forum?

I still don't believe a physical affair was taking place but I do feel that something emotional was, even if it was just one-sided wishful thinking on my wife's part of Tattooguy as her white knight. If I have smashed that illusion away from her, then perhaps this is the normal progression and the crack pipe has been removed from the junkie. Here is the promised storm, then, I suppose.


For what it's worth, I'm a guy and I would let a married female friend sleep on my couch in time of need without expectation of sexual reward. Perhaps that's why I have struggled with assuming that must be what happened.

Venturi, I am sorry to read this because it indicates you are still in denial and will have to go through the school of hard knocks to wake up. The bad thing about that is that by the time you wake up, the affair will be so entrenched that it may not be salvageable.

You have fallen for the oldest trick in the book, the "pretend separation" card, the DREAM of every female adulterer. The way it works is the adulterer moves into the guest room while pronouncing herself "separated" but entitled to reap all the benefits of marriage while catting around like an alley cat in heat................while you and your children idly sit by and watch. You have signed on for a slow death of a thousand cuts.

But that is your prerogative because it is your life. We will be here when you recognize the destructive you have endorsed. They can't help you on MB101 as long as there is an affair.

You sir are a man that's why you can do it but the temptation is too much. He and your WW are intimate and they had sex. Until you have concrete proof and not her word. The only reason she is upset now is because your exposure was good. She is hearing a bunch of negative feedback from it and she is mad at herself not you and baiting you into a argument.

Perhaps I am in denial - but Occam's Razor suggests that the simplest explanation is probably the right one, and the simplest explanation of historical events is that she saw him as a friend but also admires him even if she doesn't admit it to herself. Assuming that they are sleeping together requires far more leaps and roundabout explanations to support the theory.
If I am in denial then I will accept the consequences when they come.

Thanks for the support guys. She is mad at herself? Can you explain why?

We're not surprised.Yes, you have figured out that you're in the right forum.

No. She's pissed because you've interfered with their affair. This means nothing, as far as ending the affair, until the affair ends. You now pretty much have proof positive that she is in an affair with TattooGuy.

Don't think for a minute that their affair is over. What she is saying to you, in affair-speak, is "my boyfriend is getting flaky because of your exposure." This is GOOD.

Now you know better. Going forward, remember that you will NEVER allow a woman to sleep on your couch. That can get you into a tangle you never anticipated. That's the kind of thing you need to avoid at all costs. There are other ways to help women; they don't need to sleep on your couch.

ETA: The chance is good that your WW's tattoo boyfriend started out with the same morals: "I'm a guy and I would let a married female friend sleep on my couch in time of need without expectation of sexual reward." You see where that went.

Correct me if I'm wrong that theory doesn't account for human emotion. If he was just a friend then why all the deceit. Common sense dictates they had sex. You can argue that all day but the fact remains YOU HAVE NO PROOF. Until then use this program Marriage Builders will help you. Either way its an affair and you are denial, friend. ML hit a very good point. This will be my last post to you but I will follow your thread. Good luck and God bless.

An interesting point that I had not truly considered before. In speaking to her mum this evening it seems that she lied by omission to her mum about it too. "I went to stay at a friend's house" rather than "I went to stay with a guy I'm friends with".

Lying to one's mother about it when the mother is calling concerned for her wellbeing is probably a bad sign, huh.

It's what waywards do. See if you can get her mom onboard with killing the affair. She may be a valuable resource for you.

The evidence adds up in a way you don't like. I can think of several reasons why she sat in a coffe shop instead of being with tatoo guy that adds up with an affair also.

Tell her if she spends any more time with him, she can't live with you. She either moves her kit and lives over there or she drops all contact with the other man. She may move in with him, but that's the risk you take when enforcing your boundaries.

Should that be my next move? As of right now, things are just hanging in the air after her anger last night. Should I go and open a new conversation with that statement or is it something better left until she comes to me wanting to talk again?

Also, when she was talking to her mum yesterday morning - way before the exposure, in the same conversation where she only described it as "staying at a friend's house" she apparently let slip later on that she "wasn't going to see him any more", an inconsistency which her mum picked up and called her out on, because saying something like that implies that there was something TO be "seeing him" for. Just thought that seemed relevant as it's a self-admission of sorts.

Some snooping also has uncovered a conversation between my wife and one of the OM's exposure contacts who asked her if anything was going on between them (this is post-exposure):

"No, he was being a friend and let me crash. I apologised to Tattooguy and I believe your sister [Tattooguy's girlfriend], tonight that they have been roped into my problems. I won't be contacting Tattooguy again as I feel it is unjust that a nice guy and of course your sister, encounter any problems due to my husband."



Your thoughts? Course of action now: Open a dialogue with the "break up the affair" line, or let the dust settle a while and when/if she comes trying to talk to me again bring it up then?