I pledge to match that with contributions of my own.

I will do that, thanks!

That free video is 30 minutes of a PROFESSIONAL.


That book is by TWO PROFESSIONALS, Dr. Willard Harley and Dr. Jennifer Chalmers.


All of those articles are from a PROFESSIONAL.


Written by Dr. Harley, a PROFESSIONAL.

Written by a PROFESSIONAL....


Written by a PROFESSIONAL....

The advice not to seek professional MC was based on the fact that MCs usually fail to save marriages. So, why would one think that their marriage is over because they didn't go to see someone who could professionally destroy it? I know I've seen that sort of logic before, but where? I know ... it's WAYWARD logic!

The failure rate of marriage counseling in general is abysmal. (isn't it something like 87%?) The divorce rate among marriage counselors is astronomical.

Meanwhile, Dr. Harley's practice has been offering a viable alternative for decades, including going so far as to monitor and measure his success and track couples after they have been through the program. (Dr. Harley was shocked years ago when he discovered that most marriage counselors didn't do any kind of followup or study to see if the recommendations they made actually helped and didn't hurt!)

How Dr. Harley Learned to Save Marriages

Romantic Love: Is it a Realistic Goal For Marriage Therapy? by Dr. Jennifer Chalmers (short answer: YES, even though most of the marriage counseling industry doesn't realize it)

How are you doing, mediamom?

Not well. The level of deceit seems so insurmountable. I was thinking I could really turn this around. He still can't tell me anything that is not based on a lie.

To that I'm just going to respond with what MelodyLane already posted today:


You are very right that you, alone, cannot turn this around. It will take a dramatic change in direction on his part. Right now while he is arguing he is showing no signs of that change in direction. He's still talking as if you have to earn him back, rather than the other way around!

Under the circumstances Dr. Harley would absolutely advise you to begin preparing for a separation. Otherwise he will have a severely negative effect on your mental, emotional, and physical health.

My hope would be that your husband would take a look at the materials provided about how to turn his marriage around and follow them - that would be the absolute best outcome for you, for your children, and for him! But prepare for a separation anyway - if he changes his mind and decides to do what it takes you can always choose to rebuild with him later.

he still thinks he is the victim here. he cannot tell the truth. he now is saying the affair was only one year. that real experts say that kids should never hear about their WF. He totally believes his own bull. The real scary part is that i still don't know the whole story, but every time i dig, it gets worse. he is now spinning his story to his family. and here is the worst part, he refuses to move out. i told him the level of pain that he has inflicted on me that i would think he would not want to do that in front of the kids. he says he is not leaving. i really thought that after the revelations of today, there would be a little bit of man in him that he would take the high road, literally and figuratively.

he did go back on the site and is dismissive of your posts.

MM, you are going to have to visit a lawyer and file for divorce or separation to implement this separation. If he won't move out, then I would make plans to move out yourself with the children. Please don't fight with him anymore, just plan to separate.

Mediamom husband.

If you have an ounce of honor left in your body than stop torturing your wife and kids. Move out and get help !!

<snip> <snip>
Whhhooooo-eeee! Well, I guess you told US!

This is one of the finer pieces of foggy prose that I have read in a while.

Let's look at this, shall we?

So, after you purposely and willfully inflicted this damage on your wife, not once, not twice, but consistently over a period of YEARS, she comes here wanting to save her marriage to you. That says a lot for her character and her commitment to her marriage and family - many wives would just kick their husband's [censored] to the curb and dust off their hands. And yet YOU try to give HER your ultimatums regarding what YOU will accept to stay in the marriage. And you think that is helping her, how? Media'sCheatingHusband, you should be on your hands and knees before her, begging for a chance to try to heal the damage you have done to her, your marriage and your family. Yet...I see NONE of that in your post and NONE of that in your interaction with her. Not surprising, because YOU ARE WAYWARD.

And you actually told MediaMom that you're keeping OW on the back burner in case your marriage doesn't recover??? We have a thread dedicated to the most stupid, thoughtless things that come from a wayward's mouth. Your comment ranks right up there with the worst on that thread.

I'm sure it was. It's hard to keep a healthy marriage going when one of the partners is having an affair. My FWH and I threatened each other with divorce too, while he was having his affair. Funny - the word "divorce" hasn't been uttered by either of us since we recovered and rebuilt our marriage. Why do you suppose that is? Think about it. I'll wait.

Yes, this won't make sense to you right now, because you are WAYWARD. This will make complete sense to you if you are ever able to get rid of OW and actually commit yourself to your marriage. Active waywards don't like the truth of their secret second life to be made known to the same people they're faking out. My H tried to hide his affair, too. Because he knew that it would be mortifying in many ways if anyone found out about it, not to mention the fallout with me. He is now GLAD the affair was exposed (and believe me, IT WAS EXPOSED. You got off easy, friend. )
Oh, you'll get no argument from us about this. And that love needs to be based on TWO people. Not THREE.

Please let me correct you: the AFFAIR was venomous to your marriage. Not the advice given to save it.

True dat. We don't know, and we don't NEED to know about your special "personal forces". You are having an affair. And it is a fairly garden-variety one, at that. We can get into some finer points of your marriage as you recover in order to help you stay on track, but those special little personal forces you've got going on aren't material at this point. You are having an affair. It needs to end. It's pretty simple, really. No need to gaze at your belly-button about the 'forces' at 'work' in your marriage.

Oh, goodness no. We don't want her to avoid seeking a professional. We want her to avoid seeking a HACK who hung their counseling license because they flunked out of their first choice in college and had college loans to repay. She - and YOU - are encouraged to email Dr. Harley (that's his name, by the way - your attempt to dismiss and minimize him by pretending not to know his name isn't lost on me). So if you're so interested in seeking the services of a professional who has saved THOUSANDS of marriages over the past 4 decades, why don't you email him? If you're really interested in seeking a professional's help, that is.
Have you ever noticed that this phrase is always followed by a pre-formed opinion beginning with the word "but"?
Oh, look - there it is! Thank you for admitting that your affair is what drove your marriage into the ditch. Of COURSE you had marital issues before the affair. Of COURSE your marriage wasn't front and center for both of you. That was the case with pretty much ALL of us here. That's common, not unusual. But again, not being a stupid man, you understand that your CHOICE to have an affair was NOT a way to heal the issues in your marriage. You can right that wrong by agreeing to meet MediaMom's conditions to remain in the marriage. You can right that wrong by committing to do whatever it takes to save your marriage. And I don't want to hear "I'll do whatever it takes to save my marriage, but.." If you can't say this, you need to stop hurting MediaMom with your presence and you need to GET OUT. Stop damaging her and your children with your unrepentent wayward self.

I'm calling you out on this one. Don't weave threats into your post. It's manipulative and dishonest. MediaMom deserves better than that. She's asked you to leave and you're not going anywhere. Don't play us for fools. We aren't. So...when are you going to email Dr. Harley?

And why don't you start your own thread, instead of weaseling in on MediaMom's? You're allowed to do that, you know. Unless your only goal was in attempting to neutralize our advice and cow MediaMom into accepting a wayward husband and his affair partner?

By the way - she's asked you to leave unless you dump that skank like yesterday's dishwater. Good on her! You need to understand very clearly that we will continue to advise her of this. It is for her health and the health of your children. If you aren't going to dump that ho, please don't continue to emotionally skewer your poor wife by pulling any of the typical wayward stunts, like sleeping in the spare bedroom and calling yourself 'separated' while you text OW to keep her on the hook.

Cut bait or fish, Media'sCheatingHusband. I hope you make the right decision so I can call you something other than that. And you also need to know something else: we're going to advise MediaMom to insist on a polygraph in order to discern the truth of her life. So you may want to consider ending the deception and the lies and come clean sooner rather than later.

I'll be interested to hear why you think the complete truth is a bad thing. I suspect you've got an argument for that, as well.

Well done, marital bliss. Well done.

let it all sink in MM they all say what he is saying and they all try to minimize....
My husband wouldn't leave either, I wouldn't worry about the expose talk telll him simple you did what you needed to do to save your marriage and family.
don't say anything else.
maybe he will read some posts and get a better understanding of what his reality is now .....let it happen.......just be still for now go see your own lawyer and make sure you are protected financially as well.

I totally forgot to tell you: on d-day, WH actually had a professional therapy appt. he told me his therapist told him to keep his skank on the back burner while he figured this out. But. Being the upstanding WH that he is, he told his doc that he wouldn't do that. So against my wishes he went to the skanks apt to break up with her. He told me he was doing this his way.

Do you understand now why he wants to go to "counseling?" Another lady signed up today to tell us about a "counselor" who told her husband that going to strip clubs is perfectly acceptable. She is ready to divorce her husband.

This is 2 bad examples in just one day. Guess how many bad examples I have heard in 12 years?

What say you, Media'sCheatingHusband? Do you really think this is appropriate counseling to repair a marriage? Is this the sort of 'professional' you're demanding us to endorse? I won't throw in your face the fact that you castigated counseling to recover your marriage, while you've already been to a :::cough HACK cough::: 'counselor' who encouraged you to keep a whore in your marital life. Excuse me... Is this what you're suggesting MM be exposed to? Stop thinking about yourself for a minute, MCH.

I certainly hope you didn't pay this wannabe. I suspect he really wanted to be an Earth Science teacher, so he could get summers off....

Whoops! I got that wrong. There were THREE bad examples yesterday. I missed this one:

We need to start a thread about the dangerous fogbabble that comes out of therapist's pieholes. We need to keep a star chart of the worst offenders, and we need to name and shame them all!