Lilly, I remember spending a lot of time trying to decide if I wanted to save my marriage. Until I realized that I didn't have to decide right away.

The only thing you have to do right now is to set the bar and then do everything you can to help him turn himself around and reach that bar. If he is unwilling, then you decide to D. It is nothing like the slots because either he meets the bar for recovery or he doesn't.

You have to try first though.


This is why I say that. It is better for the kids to have a stable happy home with both their father and mother together.

If he goes crazy with exposure then you call 911. That will also be a shock of reality for him.

Lilly,

Tell your husband's commander about the evidence you have. If you are concerned about your husband's reaction, ask the commander to move your husband into military BOQ. What rank is your husband? What rank is the OW?

AM

Thank God Armymama showed up!!

Lilly,

Military commanders have an obligation to address affairs, especially when they involve married officers. Use that asset.

Since you have recently moved and don't know anyone, contact the installation chaplain. Explain your situation. Also, if there is a family support group, contact them and ask for help.

AM

Lilly,

Please listen to armymama.

Thank you, Armymama, that is good advice. My husband is a Major and the OW is a Lieutenant Colonel.

All waywards are angry at exposure. That does not mean you should fear it and turn away. It means you need to expect it and prepare for it.

Armymama has given you great solutions.


Exposure is your strongest weapon in killing this affair and bursting your WH's fantasy bubble that he is living in.

Don't let this POSOW steal your family. I know that you do not want her to be your kids step mom.

I am sorry that you are going this.

LP, when I first showed up I too had a strong desire to run off to my parents but I still thank heaven I followed through with the guidance here. While you do need their support, make sure you expose and confront and deal with this before you go anywhere. It will only take a short time and this is your only shot to do this, so do it now. This is YOUR marriage and your family. You will always regret it if you don't even try. You are not to sneak off like a thief in the night, ok? Stand your ground.

You can decide what is for the permanent best later.

I didn't recover my marriage but it wasn't until I exposed and confronted that I realised exactly what I had to work with. Plus this is the moment of absolute repentance for many waywards and many, many people do recover their marriage.

You also do not want OW around at all your children's future events. Exposure has a very good shot at running her off.



No matter what happens, you will know you did everything you could to save the marriage at its darkest hour. That will give you peace no matter how it turns out.

Exposure when you are highly pregnant is a valuable tool and you do not want to miss this opportunity to run off the OW! Do not fear saying flat out that you are heavily pregnant as it completely discredits any claims they may make about you two being separated. It's clearly a hole-in-the-corner piece of side action. I would also make a point of saying that you are alone in a strange place to support your husband's career and you hope people will give you their support in stopping this vile attack on your marriage before you have to give birth.

Few betrayed spouses have those arrows in their quiver and you should not hesitate to use them in your exposure to chase her off.

Lilly,

Did your H meet the OW while deployed? Does she work in the IG office or is she the actual IG for the installation where she is assigned?

Both my H and I are retired Colonels. H had an affair with an NCO while he was chief of staff of a 15,000 person organization. In our case, H admitted his affair to his boss, took non-judicial punishment and an early retirement. The OW is still on active duty. However, she was ostracized by the people at work and moved to a different unit. Exposure to the Army was the single most effective action that busted up H's affair. Today, we are in a recovered marriage, very much in love and devoted to each other. Should you desire to recover your marriage, it is possible. Even if you don't want to recover your marriage (no one would fault you for that), Indie has a great point about not wanting OW to be part of your children's lives. I know of one officer who had the gall to drag his nasty affair partner (a JAG officer) to testify as a character witness in his divorce/custody hearing.

You are not alone in this.

AM

indiegirl: Thank you for putting it into perspective. This is pretty hard...he stopped giving me the cold shoulder treatment this evening and actually had a conversation with me and ate dinner with us. He did, however, retire to the bedroom for a snooze shortly after, though.

Armymama: I think she worked in his Brigade and they were deployed at the same time. He had mentioned her before during the summer after his most recent deployment. He even said she asked about me and the kids...ugh. Her name just came up too often in conversation. I think right now she is not a post IG but works in the IG office. It is somewhere in DC. If I decide to do an exposure/ bust up, since I only have evidence of multiple visits from him to her house for weekends in DC. No sexual content in msgs. Would i expose this as an emotional affair or leave it to everyone's imagination? Right now i have plane ticket for thursday evening so could i do a bust and run?

The main concern I have about exposing this are the what ifs:

-What if there really isn't anything other than him staying over to save a few $$ while visiting DC? (Although the fact that he stayed over at her house multiple times with no plans of telling me makes me flaming mad)

-What if he does something like commit suicide with one of our pistols? (perhaps I should take those out of the house)

-What if I do expose this to the Army and he ends up getting punitive action, thus cutting his ability to provide for the kids' welfare whether we stay together or split?

This hot and cold thing he is doing is disarming me...After a tantrum, he usually perks up after a few days and returns to normal- fairly pleasant- behavior and this cold shoulder tantrum is shaping up to fit his normal behavioral patterns.

I definitely don't want this OW to be part of my kids' lives but it seems like they have ceased commo for the most part since he left the school he was at. There have been 2 or 3 sporadic - very platonic sounding texts so it doesn't look like this was ever meant to be a long term fling.

If nothing really went on and she was just trying to be a generous, hospitable person by letting someone bunk at her house, I honestly would feel awful about busting her if her intentions were honorable.

I know I probably sound a bit kooky with my what-ifs and I do try to give people the benefit of the doubt whenever possible...perhaps that is too trusting.

I think you know better than that, but if you don't believe it is an affair, you can hire a PI and find out for sure.


My suggestion would be to stick to reality and concern yourself with true and real current problems. You have some serious problems without imagining new ones. Now is not the time to imagine hypotheticals.

If you are truly concerned about your husband committing suicide, then you should want to expose the affair so it is ended because affairs CAUSE depression.


He is less likely to receive punitive action if you expose it versus them finding out on their own. They are more apt to take pity on you and just separate them. They tend to be very harsh when they find out on their own.


I am not sure what this has to do with the problem at hand. It really is a distraction to focus on his moods because it means you are not focusing on the problem. His mood is not the issue.


It is a conflict avoidance tactic. Understandable that you want to avoid conflict, but avoiding conflict invites more conflict and distracts you from finding solutions.

But wasn't he supposed to be staying with other friends? Why lie about it if he just wanted to save a few bucks?


I know you love your DH and want to believe him but you have to look at his actions.

Thank you MelodyLane, I am re-reading the exposure 101....OW has 700 facebook contacts!

I am also making a spreadsheet to kind of condense their text messages into something easier to analyze. From what I am reading, my WH seems to be the one trying to set up all the dates and doing the pursuing.

Your WH knows that you are suspicious. It is possible that they are sending non incriminating texts to through you off. I know it sounds cynical and crazy but that is exactly what OW and my own FWH did. They sent innocent e-mails that they could pull out to prove it was nothing. OW even sent my WH an email with recipes for him to give to me. Meanwhile, they took it underground with a secret e-mail account.

Maybe they have changed their communication methods. Have you put a VAR in his car? Have you been able to access the phone logs?

Honestly, affairs not only thrive on secrecy but they also thrive on drama. They love to break up and then get back together.

Without exposure, this OW is free to pursue your DH at will because no one is watching her and holding her accountable. I can't think of anyone who would be okay with a woman inviting a married man with a pregnant wife to secretly stay in her home ...multiple times at that.

You just need to pick through and id her closest family and friends, around 50-70.


I don't understand why you are doing this. Why? And you realize it is irrelevant who does the pursuing, right?

Lilly,

Hello! This is a sexual affair that most likely started during deployment. Mel is correct. Your H is in an affair and it doesn't matter who is pursuing who. Like your recent discoveries, my H's text messages were benign. I discovered the affair after one innocuous message from the OW. I then started digging around and found hundreds of calls and messages. And like you, my H would talk about OW. He did this because he would get a "fix" of affair high when he talked about her. H would be cranky and moody around the family and then brighten up when he had contact with OW.


My suspicion is that your H and OW are using their work phones and emails to communicate. Does your H have any travel planned? Is it possible that OW may be travelling to your location?

I do not believe that there will be punitive action against your H or OW. There is no distinct proof that they have a sexual relationship and if accused, they likely will respond with "We just bake cookies together". Without proof or an admission, I think the likely outcome would be for both commanders to prohibit contact between the two of them. In our case, my H confessed and signed an affidavit admitting his affair. For my H, it was an important step in regaining his integrity and in preserving our marriage. When my H asked JAG how often someone admitted to an affair, the JAG officer replied with "less than one percent". So, I think the possibility of an adverse personnel action against your husband is very small.

Have you talked to a chaplain or family support group yet? Make an appointment with your H's commander and lay out all the evidence you have, ask his/her support and ask for a no contact order between your H and OW.

AM

Pokerface: Thank you for the ideas...i have not been able to get a hold of his iphone but if he wakes up from this nap and decides to go work out, you had better believe I will check through the phone. I might have been too snoopy today with the ipad - no more synced text messages to find on there from where the last conversation cut off mid convo around the 4th of January. I am sure they just didn't sync and they were still on his phone if not deleted yet. He did make a show of removing his phone passcode once we moved into this house saying he no longer needed it because he wasn't in class anymore. hmmm. They could be sending fake out texts but some of the small talk conversations about sandalwood candles and baking cookies sound just like post hookup flirtations, especially after the last meet up on 7 December where there was no elaborate date day...they just hung out together and she also went to work. on credit card history, I see 2 DC parking stubs, one 45$ trip to safeway, 1 gas station stop to fill tank...Who knows what else they could have been doing on that weekend. Most of their weekends together were filled with museum, art gallery trips, symphony concerts (it doesn't look like he paid for her tickets on his card but they still attended that stuff together)

MelodyLane: I was mainly making the spreadsheet to convince myself that exposure is the way to go. I just wanted to slowly read through and process each and every text, the timing of it, and see if I could compare credit card statements with the planned dates. I was also able to obtain her address and could see that OW suspect #2 has met the main OW and consequently I don't feel quite as suspicious of her.