She was dressing up and telling him that she was going on dates.
He should have asked her to leave and carry on her adultery out of the marital home.
If she had her way, he would help pick out lingerie and zip up her dress when she went out on dates.

He saved his sanity and self respect.

The reason why I've suggested Plan B is because you've never really had a marriage.
She refuses to end her affair and agree to extraordinary precautions.

Brainhurts posted a link to jah's thread and it's worth reading.

As Sugarcane posted, some husbands are in Plan A for years (although Harley typically recommends 6 months of Plan A prior to Plan B).
These are often men that have kids and are willing to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their family.

You have never really had a marriage. You havent had sex for most of your marriage.

You need to consider how much you are willing to sacrifice of your life for someone that may never commit to a loving healthy marriage with you.

I think the basic issue is that he wants to save his marriage. Although I question his wisdom in wanting to save the marriage, he has made it clear that is his goal. Since that is the case, he made a strategic error in kicking her out. It is immensely more difficult to Plan A when you are not living together. It can still be done for sure, but it makes it much harder.

abc, if you want to save your marriage then stay in Plan A. That will give you the best chance of getting her back.

Hi, thanks all for your advice.

Sugarcane - just to clarify what I know she did, 6 weeks before I found out she had been sending emails saying she loved him. When I found out she admitted to kissing him as well. She has admitted to staying in touch with him and has been unable to account for her time (late from work by over an hour on several occasions, going out for half a day but then pretending she hadn't when I was at work). I still dont think I know the whole truth.

I actually think that our attempted recovery was nothing of the sort, from what she had been saying for a few weeks and she was looking at rented accommodation on her phone, personally I think she was trying to save face. Pretend to make a go of it for a bit so that she could say we had tried to make it work but it hadn't worked out. The exposure kept us together for a bit longer. As JK says she didn't end the affair nor did she agree to the EPs.

As for asking her to leave, I suppose I was tired of the lies and her still being in touch with the OM. Her leaving has felt like a blessed relief from being used as a punchbag. But as you say maybe this was the wrong thing to do if I wanted to save our marriage.

Was she "dressing up and telling (you) that she was going on dates"?

Hi, no that was something she didn't do. I believe she has been continuing to conduct an EA with him and the fact she is not accounting for her time and wouldn't let me see her phone points to there being more than she is telling. Whether that means the affair has got mor physical I don know.

I was very clear when moved into rented that she needed to be open an honest. I gave her several chances to do this even when I challenged ( and she admitted) that she wasn't. I thought by setting clear boundaries and then asking her to leave when she had broken them multiple times, that I was showing I wasn't just a pushover. Maybe that was wrong.

Also off to see one her closest friends this afternoon. She will be viewing me as the villain no doubt Any tips for what I should say to her, I need an ally who is a friend of my WS.

Well, from what you have written above, and from a careful re-reading of your thread, I cannot see that there was any indication that you should have asked her to leave so soon after D Day. I cannot see what was different about your case from other ongoing WW affairs that meant that you should have asked her to leave after she began her hiding, evasive behaviours again. I appreciate that you found Plan A hard on your emotions and so you sought a means to escape the torture, but Dr H recommends that if you want the marriage to recover, a man needs to be strong and fight in the face of torture.

Plan A is designed to be used on an active affair. It comes into operation when the affair is discovered, and, for a man, it stays in operation for some time when the WS attempts to hide the affair and continue it in secret. Plan A is to be used when the WW vacillates between her H and OM. It is designed to let her see her H as clearly the better man. By definition, that means that the BH tries to interact with and engage his wife in the marriage while she is seeing another man.

This is hard to do, and the thought of it is incredibly offensive to many. From my own perspective, I'm only glad that I am a woman and that had I sought Dr H's advice after my own D Day, I would have been advised to wash my hands of my H as soon as I could set up Plan B arrangements (an intermediary, child exchange etc.) In my case, had I put my WH out of the home and told him to end his affair and change his job before he ever spoke to me again, I'm sure he would have done those things pretty quickly. He was a typical cake-eating married man who, while he was in love with OW and completely out of control in his fantasy world, did not want to lose his marriage. Indeed, once he was forced to make a choice (when I did eventually find MB), he chose me, no contest.

But for a betrayed man who wants to save his marriage using MB, if the affair does not end with exposure, then Plan A requires that he continues to fight the affair by not enabling it, but that he also digs deep and finds the strength to compete with OM for his wife while the affair continues.

If a wife has had complaints - and she usually has been unhappy for a few years - then telling her to get out early after D Day will only reinforce in her mind that her H is an uncaring so-and-so and she was right to leave him. If he wants her to return to him when the affair ends (which of course he tries to hasten with exposure), he must not do anything to confirm to her that he is uncaring. If he tells her to go early on, well yes, his self-respect will probably rise and his pain at the affair will be reduced since it will no longer be taking place in front of his face, but his marriage might effectively end at that point. She will have left a horrible marriage (in her mind) and even if the affair ends quickly, there will be little reason to return to her H. (With a childless wife there will be NO reason to return to her H.)

In your case, I have read carefully and cannot see your wife flaunting her affair in your face and making it clear that she isn't interested in a loving marriage with you ever again. I can only see that you learned about the affair in "late February' (so not even a full month of Plan A) and that last week you caught her deleting texts. When pushed, she admitted that OM had sent texts after the NC letter and she also said she had gone "near the town" where OM lived.

There is no doubt in my mind the the affair is continuing but she was doing what they all do; she was hiding it and lying about it. She was conflicted to some degree when she was doing that, because otherwise she, childless as she is, would have left of her own accord if she really thought OM was a better choice than you.

Hi, thanks for your honesty. I suppose I listened to the advice on here that said that if she was conducting an active affair whilst living with you, you were to ask the WS to leave but continue plan A (or go to plan B). From what you say this sounds like I have made a fatal mistake. Also have been plan A in since early January, after I listened to her complaints and said i would change, obviously I didnt know about the affair at that time, so not sure if it counts?

I still think the reconciliation was not real. She was looking at rented accommodation, was making no effort to reconcile quite the opposite in fact (although she said she was). it almost felt like she was desperate to get to a point when she could say "We have really tried to make a go of this, but it hasn't worked. It wasn't the affair that caused us to separate just that we weren't right for each other". That way she could reduce the feeling of guilt. She even admitted that the exposure made her feel trapped.


So given where I am now, and the mistakes I have made, do you have any suggestions to how I can salvage this?

Thanks

As for the view that you never really had a marriage and so there is nothing worth saving:

It may be right to say that you never really had a marriage, but I don't see that in itself as a reason to advise divorce if you want to restore the marriage.

You were married for four years and have not had sex for three years, which is a very bad picture. Your wife was withdrawn for almost all that time and you never really chose to deal with that withdrawal, or tackle her depression, for which she has just started taking medication.

The thing about never really having had a marriage is that you can start to have a marriage now, if your wife can be encouraged to see a reason to try again. You and your wife haven't ruined or obliterated your marriage with vicious behaviour or serial affairs during that time - it's more that a real marriage never got off the ground. She has had one affair, and the main problem before that happened is that you had no fun or romance in your marriage.

You decided to build a house from scratch, and that involved living in a caravan (a trailer to confused Americans!) for a whole winter, and getting infested with mice. House building and major renovation is not a bad idea in itself and has many advantages and can be very satisfying. However, it can kill a marriage if the work takes forever and takes over the couple's lives. It is nice to work on a hobby together, but house building can seem to take ages with no progress in sight, and can be dirty and not at all romantic, and it has to be done after a full day or night's work. However long is estimated for the work seems to double in time. It can easily become marriage-destroying. However, if some of us can rebuild horrible marriages that had very few, if any, years of happiness then a four-year failure can be redeemed and the marriage restarted.

Your wife has not been the town whore for four years. She has not created a situation that will be monumentally difficult to come back from. You both simply need to learn new habits and create love, possibly for the first time. You should not assume that your wife may "never commit to a loving healthy marriage with you" because of her affair.

By your own admission you have been pretty cold and indifferent to her, and critical and dismissive. You admit to not having shown care, until D Day, about the numerous ways in which you upset her. You said that only last week, just prior to her leaving, you left the bathroom floor wet after a shower and she blew up at you. That shows me a picture of a man with bad habits who in four years of marriage has not seriously tried to deal with this complaint of hers. A wet bathroom floor is majorly annoying. Who do you expect to wipe up that floor? Why do you think that it's okay to leave your mess for her to clean? Why don't you see how unpleasant other people's bathroom mess really is to live with? In all those four years of her complaining, not getting into the habit of taking the sponge and wiping the floor shows contempt for her, and that is possibly, judging by your own descriptions of your behaviour, not the only thing you has been doing over the years that is contemptuous.

If a poor marriage prior to the affair was a reason to advise divorce, then Dr H would have advised me to divorce when I finally contacted him, because my own marriage was horrendous, and so were many of the marriages of people successfully recovered on this forum, yet Dr H did not advise this. He advised using the MB programme to build a better marriage. The problem goes beyond ending the affair. It encompasses creating a different marriage from the one riddled with bad habits and minor abuse that we were living in before.

He does advise divorce when he sees a hopeless situation, and that can include a serial cheater or an pattern of abuse, or an instance of serious abuse. He also sometimes holds out little hope for the childless couple in a short marriage, but I have not heard him write off those marriages from the word go. It is the childless and short marriage factors that make me see your task as questionable, rather than the terrible marriage.

I do think that your wife was in an easy position to leave, and now that she has left, has no incentive to go back. THAT is why I would urge you to consider the enormity of the task you face before you commit to recovery. If you are going to do PLan A you will need to have the courage of a superhero. It would be beyond my doing.

I don't think you have made a fatal mistake at all, but I do think that if you still want to recover this marriage you have made things harder.

I asked you at least twice yesterday about writing to Dr H. I think that you need his expertise. He has dealt with many cases just like yours and will be able to advise you how to do Plan A if that's what you really want to do, in the face of the obstacles.

Have you begun an email to him yet? You need to send one to him today, and he will read it out on the radio show probably this week.

Hi SC, thanks again for your honesty. I do accept your points and although it makes me really sad to think of the situation I am in understand why you think there is not much hope now.

I do accept I made big mistakes. I suppose the hard thing to get my head round is how unhappy my wife says she has been. No one, not her friends, her Mum, sister, myself realised. Its not an excuse but makes me really sad for her that she has felt this way for so long with noone recongnizing it.

I have emailed Dr Harley to ask his advice.

It might be true that the reconciliation was not real. As I said, a WW usually has her foot out of the door when she begins the affair and so does not really want to come back on D Day. But that is what Plan A needs to fight. If she is searching for rental properties and lying to you about her intentions then you have a choice; accept that she wants out and let her go, or if you really want to do Plan A, do not take the lying into account as a reason to stop. The lying is normal. Plan A has to be done, if you want to do it, despite the lying, not only until you discover more lying.

Can you post your email here, please? I'm glad you sent it.

I wish I had spoken to you before I asked her to leave.

Email that I sent:

Very briefly, I thought we had a happy marriage. We had bought a barn to renovate together 2 years ago and were going to live the dream of renovating and living in the barn in the countryside (my wife wanted this more than me as she grew up on a farm but I was happy because she was happy). We lived on site in a caravan since October last year. We had a few disagreements but nothing that I thought was major (I was wrong)

In January my wife told me that she wasn't happy and hadn't been happy for over 3 years. We haven�t had sex in three years, she now blames me saying the man should be the one to lead. I thought she didn�t want sex by some of the things she said. She also feels I am a bit controlling and don't care and has used numerous situations going back 5 years to prove it ( some of it true, some of it not, some of the 5 year old arguments I don�t even remember).

I apologised and have since January tried to be a lot more supportive and not do anything to cause her pain.

At the end of February I found emails to the builder next door expressing her love that she sent him in mid January. I confronted her and she says it was never physical, she only kissed him and she had ended it. We then went through everything that was wrong with me again, and then I asked what she wanted. She doesn't know. I managed to persuade her to leave the caravan and she agreed to go to counselling/coaching. She said she thought coaching is a waste of time but agreed to go.

I exposed to all her friends and family and to his friends, family and work colleagues. This has had a negative effect on our relationship, she said I was being controlling by exposing to people. I confronted the OM to tell him to back off.


Since moving in to the rented, I have tried to plan A as much as possible. We went to coaching but she used that against me (more blame). When we went to coaching she said that she had been depressed for over 14 years. We have only been together for 9 years. That's the weird thing she hasn't seemed depressed but from what she said in our coaching session she just buries her feelings so she doesn't have to deal with them and she doesn't show her feelings. All her friends and myself were so surprised when she said she hadn't been happy as we all thought she was, with life and our marriage.

My WS has had a huge amount of other stresses in her life that will have played a role in her unhappiness. We have been doing a self build and been living on site in a caravan through the winter, were infested with mice, she hates her job, feels like she is the parent to her mum and sister, has been depressed for years, gets frustrated with her friends, the list goes on but I hope she may begin to gain some clarity once the antidepressants begin to have an effect and she has had some time to think. However it could firm up her resolve, I don't know. I also think exposure will make her more reluctant to reconcile as she has told her friends I am the villain and has said she can't face my family.

I have tried in the past to help her with her other stresses but she seems unwilling. She has complained about her job every day for the past 3 years because the people annoy her. I have suggested she look for something else, reduce her hours, go back to university but she always made excuses. I have offered to support her financially whilst she find something she would enjoy. She hated her previous job and the one before that because of the people.

Similarly with the others I have tried to make suggestions to help, many many times. Maybe I have not been communicating properly but have tried many different approaches. If deep down she has been depressed (and not telling anyone) maybe this has meant she hasn't felt she wanted to do things differently, I don't know.

I was very clear when moved into rented that she needed to be open an honest. I gave her several chances to do this even when I challenged ( and she admitted) that she wasn't. I thought by setting clear boundaries and then asking her to leave when she had broken them multiple times, that I was showing I wasn't just a pushover. Maybe that was wrong. She has admitted to staying in touch with him and has been unable to account for her time (late from work by over an hour on several occasions, going out for half a day but then pretending she hadn't when I was at work). I still dont think I know the whole truth.

I actually think that our attempted recovery was nothing of the sort. Just before I challenged her about her not telling the truth, she said she thought we were going back to the way we were (in a bad way). I found she was looking at rented accommodation on her phone. She dismissed coaching, and said she didnt believe that people could fall in love again. Personally I think she was trying to save face. Pretend to make a go of it for a bit so that she could say we had tried to make it work but it hadn't worked out. The exposure kept us together for a bit longer.

She has now left the rented property since Wednesday evening when she confessed to still being in touch with him. Since she has left I have been feeling strangely calm, upset at times but it is relief to feel like I am not being used as a punchbag for a while, the past 3 months has felt like a living nightmare. I have started on antidepressants.

I would like advice on how best to handle my situation if I want to try and win her back, and if it is even possible?

I couldn't be on the board for the past couple of weeks.

I need to do other things now, but I'll be back later.

Ok SugarCane, thanks again for all your help and advice. Even if I don't reconcile, you are making me realise that I need to change myself for the better whatever happens, even though thats really hard to get my head around.

You need to tell him that you told her to leave, not that "she left". "She left" makes it sound as if she definitely ended your marriage, whereas the issue to my mind is that you might have told her to leave prematurely on the basis of what happened so far. I think telling her to leave was a crucial tactic that you need to discuss, and you need to ask whether, if that was a mistake, you should ask her to come back, and if you do that, whether you should accept that the affair might continue.

In other words: if asking her to leave was a mistake, should you reverse the mistake now with things as they are and her still in the affair, or should you wait now for the affair to end and tell her she can come back only it ends. If the latter, should you write a Plan B letter so that she knows she can come back, or should you attempt to continue Plan A and if so, how can you do that when she no longer sees you. If the latter (leave her where she is for now), what is the likelihood that she will come back when the affair ends.

That is what you need to ask. Send another email!

Yes: MB is about a lot more than ending an affair.

Now sent the revised question. Thanks SC, you are a star