No I have not been tested, but I'll do follow your suggestion.

As for your second question, I did reply so to a similar one by 'indiegirl':
I told my wife I'm seeking advice and I've signed up to this discussion forum and will encourage her to participate herself. For now she does not really sound like she'd do anything I ask her, but maybe she could try to take a look. Not sure, though, how would it be if she decided to post something on this very thread... how do you guys see this?

**EDIT**

moderators note: please familiarize yourself with Marriage Builders material before posting advice to others. Any questions, shoot me an email.

Missy, what do you mean by "these things"? What things are never the fault of just one spouse?

An affair is always the fault of just one spouse. The faithful spouse didn't get a vote in whether the affair should go ahead, and never got a copy of the email saying that it would be taking place.

MB helps build a marraige that is fulfilling to both spouses. But the A is 100% his fault and he has no excuse for it. Boundaries must be put in place to protect the two spouses going forward becuause he is now as much or more at risk of having to deal with unfaithfulness going forward.

I would add a couple of steps:

- expose the affair to her family and close friends
- send the OW a no contact letter that is approved by your wife and mailed by HER [template in next post - please post your letter here for feedback before oyu show your wife]

When you say your wife did not want to know, do you mean to say that she would rather you lie to her?

here


[from SAA, pg 58]

OW, I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife and children, I have come to realize that I must never see or talk to you again. My relationship with you was a cruel indulgence that BS did not deserve. While I cannot completely repay BS for the pain I caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she has been missing. I care a great 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, XXXXX

Um, there it is in black and white. Sorry if I missed it but are there kids involved?

yes, that is part of the plan, too, but a bit complicated to do on my own, because (to complicate things further...) we come from different countries (I'm Italian, she's Polish) and her family does not communicate in English at all.. So I simply cannot do it verbally with them and I'd need someone to translate for me.
Maybe I could find an agreement with my wife for her to open up to her own family instead?


here's the text:
"G.,I want you to know that out of respect and love for my wife 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 my family did not deserve.
While I cannot completely repay my wife for the pain I have caused her, I will do my best to become the husband she has been missing. I care a great 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 decision to completely end our relationship.
Goodbye, M"


Exactly. She says she resents me more for having exposed the affair, than for the affair itself and repeats that whatever I did, she would have preferred me to hide it from her forever. Maybe it's a temporary reaction to the shock she's going through. Some sort of denial phase, I don't really know..
Besides my intention to follow strictly Dr. Harley's advice and recovery plan, I did come myself to the conclusion that I could not carry on with the lies and keeping secret a part of my life that changed me and my values so dramatically. What kind of life could she get out of my omissions? Yes, maybe now we would still be living together and I would keep providing support, good care and, maybe, some good moments as well, but that would still not be the full picture of me and that would simply transform my lying into a chronic disease, which I of course do not want.
It also does not make any sense at all to carry on with lies even in front of our growing children. What a terrible example and disappointment would I be for them if they discovered it one day? How could I justify myself for that? "Because Mommy did not want me to be sincere"? No way.

Yes, they are, to the extent that my wife brought them back home with her. They don't know what's going on, because they are too small (4 yo and 1 yo). Filip, our first son, though, has already started behaving grumpy and keeps asking about me and when are they coming back.

Sorry, but I need to get back to one of the points: whether to share of not with my wife the full identity of the lover...


Far from any intention to protect the ex-lover, and ok for giving all rights and means to my wife to recover and elaborate her grief the way she prefers, but I'd like to avoid any additional rough times between the two of them in case they came into contact.

The book Surviving an Affair does not seem to touch this topic among the extraordinary precautions, so I'd really like to avoid taking any counterproductive step...

I see a lot of genuine remorse in your posts, but we're going to carry on bootcamping you! I see potential here.

You simply cannot lie to your children. That is completely out of the question. We see every day how these children see the effects of the A normalised and then they go on to become wayward themselves. This is because they see poor marriage habits like living apart as being OK and the tragic lesson learned by their parents was hidden from them.

I'm a bit concerned about your BW's fear of the truth. However it is fairly normal to feel initial shame and shock as though you, the betrayed, have done something wrong. Once your wife has lanced this groundless fear and got the loving support of others it will do wonders for her healing.

If your wife were to post here she could start up her own thread or view how you are responding to advice before she makes up her mind about you. She would get advice on whether or not is wise to trust you again. From people like Melody Lane who has a happily recovered marriage or from people like me who divorced because their Wayward spouse did not have what it takes. There are also many Former Wayward Spouses who can tell her how they made amends.

Your wife may wish to contact her so she will need her contact information.

You are the last person to decide what is productive and counterproductive in this situation.

Your wife has every right to contact the OW if she wishes and Dr Harley would even encourage that. If contacting the OW is something your wife needs in order to heal, then who are YOU to deny her that right?

Give her ALL of the contact information about the OW. Since this hoe was forced into your wife's life, she is entitled to know everything you know about her.

What if Mane puts the OW info in a sealed envelope and gives it to BW to do with as she pleases? She can leave it sealed for now if that is what she prefers, but Mane will have fulfilled that step. Of course he must answer any questions she chooses to ask.

She will need name and address to mail NC letter.

Mane, it is a good sign to see you taking some hard steps.

Okay, will do..

This is actually a brilliant idea! Thanks

Also true...

Let's not make this more complicated than it has to be. Is the purpose of putting it in a sealed envelope to discourage her from contacting the OW? I see that act as sending a very unnecessary and counterproductive message that you are in NO position to give.

That seems to be sending the message that you want to protect the OW and that is not the message you want to send.

Your wife has more right to the OW's contact information than you do. It is not necessary to seal it up in an envelope. This is not sacred information. It is the contact information of the skank who attacked her marriage.

It is important that your wife have the address, name and phone # of the OW so she can watch for any future contact. It will be harder for her to watch out for this enemy if she does not have this information. She may also choose to contact the OW directly to get her side of the story. That is her right.

Please don't drag your feet in giving her this information because it will scare her and - rightly - cause her to question your sincerity. If you won't help your wife protect herself from the OW, then you are still not safe. Please focus on protecting your WIFE, not the OW.

I applaud you for coming here and taking the initiative to pull your life and M back together.

As others have alluded, at this stage, the worse thing you can do which may destroy any possibility of R your M is to give your wife false hope in the form of a false recovery.

If you are serious, great! go for it. If not, please just walk away now. Ok?

In my situation, the FR was far more painful to myself than the A itself. The love I was trying to build with my FWW was totally lost when I found out the A never ended. As you, after dday, she promised to end all contact and never lie to me again..9 months later I revealed that the A never ended. It just about killed me.

Please...I implore you...do not do this to your W. Do not start this process unless you plan to follow through.

Fully understood. Now my wife has the OW contact info. No sealed envelope, she got it in a simple email.

I should have never gotten myself in situations at risk of betrayal and I should have never fallen for the other woman, in the first place. I always had a lot of self control, but I somehow lost it in the worst moment. And now of course it is so difficult to get out of it, to forget the OW forever, but I am being serious about this.
If I could fall in a state of hibernation until I've gotten over with the withdrawal and the memory of the other woman, I'd be first in line to sign up for it, but no. I know there is no skipping steps here and I won't. Rather, I'll get my self control back.
Some might say it is too late to repent, that I've lost her and the children, but I think nothing is lost until we both give up for good, so I'll go for it.


Back to my wife's reaction...
She is still unwilling to open up to her family. Well, both her parents have survived serious heart attacks, so I can understand her concern that maybe this news could put too much of a strain on them, but she's got two sisters and a very very close friend of them who is a priest and I'm sure he could help more than anyone else. But no, she wants to spare everyone until either she's sure that our marriage is over, or until we are well into recovery.
She has exposed it to one male friend of hers who gave her some support, though.

I encouraged her, as many of you folks suggested, to come and post on this forum herself. Maybe she will.

I am telling her about the steps I'm pursuing and she is happy I'm trying to do something to end the affair and work on our marriage, but she is still not into working on it together.

Also, she is not into considering the extraordinary precautions, either. She's happy I've proposed it as a way of to start the recovery, because she sees I'm making attempts instead of letting our marriage die out, but she does not want to follow the advice to have an access to my email logs, cellphone, finances, daily schedule etc... and most of all she does not want to spend our nights and spare time together.
So there is no coming back home for her and the children, yet.
For the moment, she wants to regain her trust in me her own way.
I don't know....

She's not even two weeks into the drama, so maybe that's why.. I hope the more efforts she sees from me, the more she'll loosen up and eventually decide to pursue the program together.

Gravely concerning. I saw it as a tiny red flag that she was scared of the truth in exposing (sometimes BS's who are also having affairs are not keen on exposure; most are in desperate need of the support and cannot help confiding in some)

Here we have red flags 2, 3 and 4. She has a close male friend? She is closer to a male friend than her own sisters? She discusses her marriage with him? That isn't really a safe topic for Opposite Sex friends. I'm sure you discovered that when your own too intimate friendship became an affair. A life apart is also an ideal environment for affairs on both sides.

The worst of it is, you are in no position to accuse or demand anything. But I would keep your eyes peeled in this direction. I would also seek to encourage your wife into the MB programme which secures an affair-proof marriage all round.

I'm not saying it's an PA or even an EA at this stage but they must be very close and this usually heads in the direction of an affair. Men tend to flock around vulnerable and lonely married women so he is well worth watching. Particularly with the marriage so rocky. At least she was honest with you about the fact they discuss this stuff. That suggests perhaps she doesn't yet see the danger in getting so close to this man.