Hi I'm new here. I was recently using another infidelity website and it wasn't working for me there. After reading I think this site may be where I need to be.

Any way my husband was having an emotional affair with an online friend. She lives hours and hours away so the possibility of a physical affairs is highly unlikely. I'm pretty tech savy and found evidence of the EA. Confronted. He was angry at first. He agreed to end the friendship. I asked that he write her an email or message explaining everything and telling her they can't be friends any more. I expected his to send this message with my approval, he didn't. I retrieved the message, he doesn't know this yet. I'm not really thrilled about it. Yesterday he broke down with some full on honesty. He told me that he can never be friends with her and it was his fault for taking the friendship to an inappropriate place. He said he sees why it hurt me and he needs to make some changes in himself and stop being an a** to me. He wants to go to individual therapy and couples therapy to work out issues he has that have nothing to with our marriage but effect it. He was all most in tears. I felt sincerity from the conversation, I felt he had remorse.

I didn't tell him that I obtained the message or my feelings about it. I have to do that and I planned on doing it last night but he came out with so much emotion I felt that was the time for me to listen to him. I plan to tell him today. Do I request he send another message with my approval or do I just move forward. After our conversation last night it seems insignificant to me to stop go back and do it again. The basic gist of the message was true but he left it open with a possibility of them being friends again all though he appears to have moved past that idea in our conversations.

I got flamed for thoughts like this in the other site. I don't want to rug sweep. I do want to address it and my feelings abut it with him but I do feel like typing another letter is redundant. Oh he sent the message a week and a half ago and as far as I can tell he has not contacted her in any way. We have an open internet policy so I have all passwords to everything. Advice Welcome.

After typing this out...I think I do want him to send another message the right way...Even though no one responded I guess venting it out here helped me figure out what I need.

Hi, MOTG, welcome to Marriage Builders. Please be patient with the folks here. You will always get a response, but we are all volunteers here, and things can get busy.

Have you read the Start Here thread at the top of the SAA forum?

What did your H's letter of No Contact say?

Has your H changed all his contact info so that there is no way for the OW to contact him?

What were the conditions that led to his affair? Each condition needs to be eliminated.

From the book "Surviving an Affair" by Dr. Bill Harley:

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

Don't believe the emotion and tears. Believe your husband's actions. Actions are what matter after an affair. He will need to follow EPs for the rest of your married life. So should you. If all married couples followed EPs, no one would have affairs.

Couples therapy is unlikely to do your marriage much good, unless you are able to find a skilled therapist who is an expert in infidelity.

Yeah it was the no contact letter from this list that wasn't done properly. I know what I have to do now and what I need to request of him to make it right. I'll look into getting the book soon. Some of the steps are complete. Bah I hate this.

I'm working on the conditions that led to the affair. I'm trying to take ownership for myself and my actions that facilitated this. He appears to be taking actions for his but this check list will help a lot.

Do you think full reconciliation is possible with out couples therapy? Money is an issue we have right now. I don't just want to trudge along I want to fix this.

Unless you get a really good marital therapist, counseling, especially after infidelity, can be a disaster. We did months of marital therapy after my H's first affair. She was really really nice but somehow the topic of EPs was never broached, changing the conditions that led to the affair, meeting each others needs, avoiding love busters were all ignored. We scratched the surface but neglected to make our marriage better than it was before the affair.

We were able to recover our marriage using MB materials. We eventually signed up for the Online Seminar, but you can start out with SAA, then work your way through LB and HNHN, using the workbook Five Steps.

If you and your H really want to try therapy, be sure and ask a lot of questions first about their philosophy of marriage. See if they know about MB and use it in their therapy.

But first things first. Your H must end the affair the RIGHT way with a letter like this:

OW,
I want you to know that out of respect and love for my W and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk with you again. My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that W did not deserve. While I cannot completely repay W for the pain I have caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she has been missing. I care a gread deal for my family and I would not want to do anything to risk their happiness. I will not make any further contact with you and I do not want you to make any contact with me. Please respect my desire to end our relationship.

Sincerely, (your husband's name)

You did nothing to facilitate your H's affair. You are responsible for your part in neglecting your marriage, but he is 100% responsible for his decision to be unfaithful to you.

In most cases couples therapy hinders recovery from an affair.
The best co urse is to follow the guidelines in Surviving An Affair

Your first step is to expose this affair to family and friends.
You should also expose to her husband if she is married.
If they work together you should expose to the workplace.
Do you have children?

Ok I'm going to try to answer all here. I like that letter and I will request one similar. Skipping MC works for me because we were going to try to figure out how to afford it. He does want to do individual counseling. I think I want to encourage that and make it happen for him. He said he would like to organize his thoughts to someone not involved so he can share them with me is a positive way. communication is a big weakness of his. His parents don't communicate and have sort of an anomalous relationship and I think he lacks some of those skills. She is not married, they do not work together, they met online gaming...At his second job gaming is part of it and they host game nights and lan parties. We have outted the affair to two close friends, Well I did and they in my opinion are friends of the marriage and felt they needed to communicate their feelings about the affair to him. They also play online and participate in the group with him. We do have 2 children. We have been together 9 years and married 5. Having children changed the dynamic of our marriage a lot. I stopped supporting him emotionally in his musical aspirations and I was very mean about another hobby type goal he presented me with. In hindsight I see what part I play in all of this. Not making excuses for him or his actions but taking responsibility and step to fix the problems I have caused.

Hi MOTG, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that brought you here. Hopefully you understand that you did nothing to facilitate the affair. The conditions of the marriage might have made it more tempting, but it was his actions that facilitated it. You could have been meeting his needs 100% and he would have still had an affair if he had poor boundaries around women. So unless he corrects those poor boundaries, it is likely he will have another affair.


Marriage counseling will not be much help in your recovery. There is a very strict path back to recovery and we can give you a step by step guide.

Individual counseling is not very helpful when you are trying to save your marriage. It is usually a major distraction at a critical time in your lives. An individual counselor has no training in repairing a marriage and typically are not good in these situations unless he has a mental illness.


Most people do know to communicate already. What this program teaches couples is how to communicate in a way that complements and creates romantic love in your marriage. We can show you how to do that.


Part of recovery would include stopping the online gaming since that is the environment in which he had an affair. And that is pretty typical. When a member of the opposite sex engages in recreational companionship, affairs are often the result.

Good exposure targets would be all of your parents, family and close friends.


Please understand that you have no responsibility for his affair. You have responsibility for not meeting his emotional needs. But he would not have had an affair if he had appropriate boundaries.

I understand I'm not responsible for the affair. I do understand I am responsible for some of the needs of the marriage. I get that. I all ready like this site much better then the other site I was working in.

Mulling over some of the other comments here.

Welcome to MB

This site is by far THE best for situations like this. Follow the advice from the vets here and your marriage will turn around for the better.

Online gaming that puts you in clans and guilds etc is a breeding ground for affairs. Especially when you can private msg in the game chat etc. Beenderdundat. I myself used to game like that frequently and didn't think much of it until I noticed it consumed all my time and my wifes time. We spent more time gaming and talking (typing) to others we would have no desire to talk to eachother. It opened a big can of worms (too many guys were attracted to her cuz she was a gamer girl and that got my blood boiling after I realized the dmg) and took many years to see the damage it was doing.

Keep on the narrow path. Online gaming can be a huge threat to the security of your marriage if the people interactions get out of hand or too personal. Feel free to read my thread in marriage builders 101 to see some of what I'm talking about. Regardless if the affair is emotional or physical. They both hurt just as much. Sometimes (especially for ladies) the emotional affair hurts more than if it was just physical.

MNG

Ok I read your link about exposure...I had called out the emotional affair in the gaming online group chat, so all of his friends there know plus I personally called 2 of the friends (they were together) and outted the affair to them and I know for a 100% proven fact that they came down on him about it. My family knows his family does not. Nor do my children who are very young 2 and 4. I can certainly tell them and his parents and his sister but at this point it would be "trickling" As far as I can tell he has remained no contact with her. Should I tell the rest of the family or no?

I want to specify this was an online emotional affair.

Yes. Dr Harley would encourage you to expose to his family

Emotional affairs are very damaging to a marriage. Don't discount this because they have not yet had the opportunity to have sex. Many affairs start out this way, then when an opportunity arises, the couple can get together physically.

Let everyone in your family know. Let your friends know. Ask them for their help.

You and your husband should end all your online gaming. They are breeding grounds for affairs. You can still play games as a couple, just not online. My H and I play lots of Euro board and card games together, but one of my husband's EPs is to never engage in online gaming.

I don't discount that this EA is damaging but due to the distance I think a physical affair in this situation is highly remote.

do you live near an airport I can fly to California from Ohio for about $500