My husband and I have been together for 12 years, married for 8 with two great kids (6 and 4 years old). From the beginning of our relationship, he would lie to me about small things that really didn't matter. I somehow always felt that if he could lie about small things, he could lie about big things and I never really trusted him. As the years have passed, he meets less and less of my emotional needs. I have informed him of this fact and begged and pleaded for a change, but my requests were always met with hostility. In turn, I began caring less and less about his happiness and became more and more controlling about the way that I wanted things in our house and more apathetic towards him, therefore meeting less and less of his emotional needs. I can't say that our sex life has ever been very good. And he has a history of developing inappropriate relationships with other women. I read an e-mail that he sent to an old college friend where he was telling her how pretty and desirable she was. I confronted him and he tried to make it sound like it was no big deal. At his last job, he developed a friendship with a woman and they would take breaks together, text each other at home and on holidays. I said that I thought it was inappropriate and he said he would end the friendship. I think he did. As I will set forth below, he has now started a relationship with a woman that reports to him at work. Despite these issues, we make some kind of sense together and I believe that we love each other. We are well-educated, have a nice home, and live all other aspects of our lives in a seemingly respectable and normal fashion.

Last fall, I reconnected with an old boyfriend over the internet. At the time, I didn't know the full ramifications of what was happening and thought it was just nice to catch up with someone who had been important in my life. I recognize now that I was not getting my emotional needs met and the OM met them very easily and all the warning signs were there for an affair. In fact, when I saw that things were headed towards an affair, I went to my husband, told him that I thought I was headed towards an affair and begged him to help me fix our marriage. He was bitter and resentful and spent that time punishing me and belittling me for having an emotional affair. I think he was hurt, but I also think that his ego is fed by attention from women and he couldn't believe that I would "reject" him. After months of isolation and conflict in my house, I took my relationship with the OM to a physical level and told my husband that I wanted a separation.

We separated, but after a few months, he moved back in. We never really fixed any problems in our marriage and I kept in contact with the OM. This went on for four months. However, about a month ago, some switch flipped and my husband and I started working on our marriage. We found a good marriage counselor that has been helping us and we have enjoyed our time together more and more. I think we could both tell that things were changing. I was encouraged...and hopeful. I ended things with the OM, but never told my husband the full extent of my relationship with the OM. My husband didn't know that it had become physical. We seemed to be headed down a good path for the first time in a really long time, which is why I was dumbfounded when I learned a few days ago that my husband was having a physical relationship with a woman that reports to him at work. I discovered his affair by reading their texts. He says he's not in love with her and has no feelings for her. He used to complain all the time about this person and how neurotic she was and how she drove him crazy at work. In my whole life I would not have put the two of them together. (Plus, this is someone I know....she is married and we have gotten together socially with her and her husband a bunch of times).

I know how we got here. I know why I cheated and I know why he cheated. I feel like a hypocrite for feeling so hurt and betrayed, given what I have done, too. In the last day, I have let me husband know that my relationship with the OM was more extensive than he knew. What I can't get over is why my husband continued his affair during a time when he had committed to making our marriage better and was going to counseling with me. We even planned to take a trip together in the next three weeks. I don't think he would have ended things with her if I had not discovered the affair, even though he says that he is not in love with her, has no feelings for her and was using her to stroke his own ego and to feel better about himself given the state of our marriage. In a moment of brutal honesty, he said he thought he would keep her in his back pocket in case things with us went south again. That statement, alone, makes me question what kind of person I'm married to. I have poured over the Marriage Builders site, but haven't been able to find something that addresses the issue of both of us cheating. And maybe it doesn't matter....maybe the recovery is the same, either way. Right now I feel so hurt and betrayed and it's hard to see a way to making our marriage better.

This is my real issue though: I think my husband has a problem with developing these inappropriate relationships with women. I believe that in every instance where he's done it, he starts by complaining about me and our life together...often making it sound worse than it really is. Then he starts complimenting them. He seems to target needy and kind of unattractive women. They feed his ego. Maybe I'm rationalizing, but I feel like my affair was born out of not getting my needs met, even after asking for it for years, whereas his was just the same thing he's been doing for years...born out of some ego-driven aspect of his personality, taken to another level. Is that fair? Does it matter? He is committed to seeking personal counseling because he says he recognizes that his behavior his slimey. I want to share the information on this site with him, but I'm afraid that he is going to start to believe that his behavior with these women is because I'm not meeting a need....And maybe it is, but it sure doesn't seem like it. Even he will admit that earlier in our marriage, I gave him everything....everything I had. And he just took, took, took, without caring for whether he was meeting any of my needs.

My final issue is this: I know that exposure of our affairs is a big deal, but we are both attorneys and what my husband did with his subordinate is sexual harassment. I feel that if my husband's affair is exposed, he will lose his job and it will be my children that suffer. Further, for reasons too complicated to go into, I don't think my husband can leave his job any time in the immediate future, which means he will continue to have contact with this person until one of them finally leaves. Is there any hope that we could have a recovery given that circumstance?

Thank you for enduring the long post....I'm only days out from learning about his affair, so I feel desperate to figure out a plan of action, even when everything is telling me to put this tragic marriage out to pasture.

Welcome to MB, broken, and I'm sorry to hear of these events in your marriage.

The short answer to this question is no; your marriage does not have a hope in hell of recovering while your H and OW work together.

Your H's affair does not have to be exposed at work immediately but he needs to leave the job immediately. Dr Harley advises giving the unfaithful spouse one month to change jobs and then exposing at work if they will not leave.

I live in the UK and I might have a rosy view of the lifestyle of attorneys in the USA that I've gathered from watching too many crime dramas, but I cannot believe it would be hard for your H to find another job far away from where you live now.

Have you told any of your family and friends about the affairs on both sides? Whom have you told? Do you kids know about them?

There are many other things to deal with from your post, such as your rationalising and differentiating your own affair from your H's, but there will be plenty of time to discuss those issues. The most urgent ones are the questions I am asking now.

Dr. Harley says that we are all wired to have an affair. And if we don't have a plan to prevent one, we are very likely to have one.

Affairs happen because of poor boundaries around the opposite sex. Obviously, this is the problem with your H. He has always had terrible boundaries around women. But this is why you had an affair, too. Granted your unmet emotional needs made it much easier to have an affair, but even if all your needs were met, poor boundaries make an affair possible.

First, you both need to be radically honest about the extent of the affairs. Your H needs to know that your affair was not only emotional but physical. He deserves to know the extent of your affair, so he can make his own decisions about what to do. He needs to answer all of your questions about the number and extent of his affairs, who were the OW and so on. After all your questions and his questions are answered, then it should never be brought up again.

Both you and your husband need to expose your affairs to your children, to your family, and to your closest friends. This will give you both support for what you going through and accountability.

The reason for telling your children is so they know the source of the tension in their home. Most children over the age of 4 can understand the concept of how married people aren't to be with others.

He or the OW will need to leave the job. Recovery won't be possibly until that happens. I would give him 30 days to leave before going to their HR department to expose his affair with his subordinate.

Do you have the book Surviving an Affair? If not, you should buy it right away and read it. You can get it on Kindle, too. It's the best, most concise book I've personally ever read on recovering from an affair.

There are folks here who have recovered after both have had affairs. Recovery in either case is a narrow path. Each step needs to followed to have a successful outcome.

Here's what SAA has to say about how to end an affair and begin the recovery process:

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.

I'm sorry for the reasons that brought you here. But MB is the best place for recovery from an affair.

Thank you for your response. My mom and sister (my closest family) know about his affair. I have not told my own family about my affair, though I have told many of my friends. He told me that a few people at his job suspect that there is something going on between him and the OW. To my knowledge, no one else knows about his affair.

We work in a state capitol and my husband has a high-level job with the state, controlled by the governor's office. Most of the jobs in town are state jobs. The governor's office will not give him another state-level job because they want him in that position. He may be able to get a job somewhere else, but it would take more than a month.

My children are small....six and four....so they do not know about the affairs, nor would I want them to. My son heard us fighting in the car (something we never do in front of our children) and it made my son physically ill. I would never burden my children with this when I think they are far too young to understand....Maybe that is the wrong approach. I don't know.

Thank you, LongWayFromHome. I want to fix our marriage and he says that he does, too. When I first discovered the texts, he said that he would change jobs. I don't know how feasible it is, but I am willing to tell him that he needs to do it and see what happens.

I could tell from the texts that the OW felt that this was some sort of special relationship. Further, my H told me that even after he realized he wanted to repair our marriage and end things with the OW, he didn't because he is a coward, wants people to like him and didn't want her to be angry. Because I felt that I could not expose this situation without fear of my husband being fired for sexual harassment, I sent the OW a text informing her that she is not special, that she is part of a pattern of him doing this with other women, and that I thought her husband should be informed. It is my fervent hope that she will find the conditions at their job intolerable and will leave, particularly if my H cannot.

I told my H that I thought radical change needed to happen quickly, but I wasn't sure what to do. I am glad I found this site.

Dr. Harley would absolutely advise you that your H and the OW must be separated and never see or contact each other again. If you both want to recover your marriage, this part must happen. That's why extraordinary precautions to prevent affairs are so important.

Affairs cause immeasurable emotional harm, great economic harm, and the loss of many families. Many people find they must move away to get away from the OW or OM.

I understand that leaving his job will be difficult, but either he or the OW needs to leave the job. And if the OW lives close by, Dr. Harley would also strongly recommend moving.

I'm sure that's not what you want to hear, but the truth is so many marriages are crippled by infidelity. Even if you stay together under these conditions, the success of marriage is very likely doomed. I'm sorry.

The reason we were able to achieve a wonderful recovery after my H's 2nd affair and not from his first is because we followed MB. We now have the best marriage we have ever had. It's very romantic, very passionate, and very safe. Our first "recovery" resulted in a crippled marriage that hurt for a long time and was still unsafe.

If you want the best chance at a successful recovery, MB is the path to follow. But deviations from the steps that have been studied and found to lead to success will pretty much guarantee a very disappointing outcome.

So, LongWayFromHome, do you mind if I ask why your first attempt at recovery resulted in harm? I'm okay with my husband getting another job. I'm okay outing myself to my friends and family. I am having a hard time with the idea of telling my very young children this very adult information. And I think my H is going to find all of the steps to be excessive because he doesn't believe he has any real feelings for this person....that he is using her as he used all of the women that came before her. To some extent I believe him. Maybe that is na�ve on my part?

You are making recovery impossible by refusing to do the things Dr Harley recommends. One of these is telling OWH. He deserves to know the truth about his own marriage and he could become a great ally, keeping tabs on his wife to make sure that she is not in contact with your H in the future. He could demand that she leaves her job; that's what OWH did in my situation. He might not want to make her bring a sexual harassment charge against your H, because she will then have to discuss their sexual relationship and have her own conduct on her record.

You need to tell OWH about the affair. You also need to tell more people within both yours and your husband's family about all the affairs between you, so that they can give you help an support.

I don't really understand the intricacies of why it would be difficult for your H to leave his job, and neither, quite honestly, do I care about them. I care about you, as a BW trying to recover with your H working with OW. (Your issues as a WW are also critical, but not to the discussion of your H's job.)

This is something similar to what I went through myself and if I had known about MB I would have exposed the affair to my H's employers on the spot, and gladly risked his unemployment.

There is no such thing as a job that cannot be resigned from. You can choose for your H to keep his job and for you and the kids to keep your standard of living, or you can choose your marriage. You cannot have both - and I know which one was more important to me.

Pleas tell us briefly about "all of the women that came before her". What did he do with these women? Did you say above that it was all flirting and banter, or has there been a deeper emotional or physical affair before this one?

The problem is that since your H has terrible boundaries around women and does not see what he does as a problem at all, there is no point nailing down this affair and making sure he goes NC with this woman if he is just going to continue on his merry way, chatting up the honeys as a matter of routine. If he is a serial cheater then there is no point your going into recovery unless you can remove the conditions that allow him to do whatever he does - which might mean that he cannot work around women again.

What did he do with these other women?

The reason my H's first affair didn't result in a real recovery was because:

1.) My H never became transparent with me. I never even thought to get his email passwords, etc. Or ask who this OW was.

2.) He still had inappropriate conversations and flirtations with different women.

3.) Our marriage didn't become better than before the affair.

4.) He still traveled for business reasons. (one of the conditions of his first affair was travel.)

5.) Hardly anyone knew about the affair. It was all I could do to tell my own parents and his parents. Our daughter, who was 15 at the time, wasn't told. She was greatly stressed by our fights. Now she knows, though.

Because of the above problems, our marriage was still a great disappointment to me. It always lacked...something. I resented him for a long long time.

After a few years, I discovered very flirtatious emails with another woman. Luckily she lived very far away and didn't seem nearly as interested in him.

Years after his first affair, he had another affair during his long deployment. He had completely forgotten his first affair. I had not.

Recovery is very difficult. It's the hardest thing I have ever done. But three-plus years later, I can honestly say that I'm glad I stayed. Our marriage is everything I ever wanted. And my H says the same. We are in love with each other. So recovery was worth it.

You are, of course, correct. I am worried about our reputations, our jobs, our standard of living. But my marriage means more to me than any of those things. I guess when I read the Exposure rules, they seemed to be geared towards a WS that is in love with the affair partner and refuses to end the affair.... My husband is not refusing that. To the contrary, he insists that the OW was a means to an end and that there were no real feelings present. My H told me that in recent weeks, the nature of his "relationship" with the OW had started to go back to something that was more friendly and less affair-ish. Even if I don't fully understand the reasoning, though, I will follow the guidelines because I want this to work.

First of all read some threads here, ALL WAYWARDS LIE. If you remmember back to your Wayward time you probably lied alot as well. Your H will gaslight you so he can keep the A an option, he admitted this to you.

Seondly, your children already know something is going on but are confused as to what. Your 4 year old will know its wrong but will move on within about an hour of your both coming clean. Your 6 year old shoudl clearly understand what is going on. You need to make sure they know the tension and problems in the household does not have to do with them and you need to show them an example of honesty so they develop that virtue. They will aslo keep both of you accountable. The 6 year old should be told whto the cheating partners are on both of your parts so they can hold you both accountable and keep you both on track for recovery. If they don't know the truth they could be introduced by either of you the the OP unknowlingly and have them introduced into their lives under false pretense.

Thirdly, that A will not end until either the OW or your WH leave that job. You do not (and should given your previous A) understand the power of the A, it is an addiction that will not end with constant exposure. That's like expecting an alcoholic who works at a bar to stay sober. NOT HAPPENING.

You have articulated my fear....that this is an issue with his personality that is going to follow him into another job or another situation even if he is cut off from this OW that he says he cares nothing about. To my knowledge, this was the only PA he has ever had. Early in our relationship, I would find e-mails to old girlfriends where he would be complaining out me...often portraying me poorly and very unfairly. He would compliment them....telling them they were pretty or whatever. At his last job, he started spending a lot of time with a woman in his office (who did not report to him). They texted a lot and I told him I thought it was inappropriate. In the last day, he admitted that he did the same thing with her....told her how pretty she was, that her husband treated her badly and she deserved better, etc. etc. To my knowledge, that never led to a PA...Likely because I cut it off before it went further. Then, at this job, he did the same thing with the OW....Complimenting her all the time while confiding in her about our marriage problems. Eventually, she told him that she had a crush on him and they began a PA. His says that they never had intercourse, but only made out several times. I don't draw much of a distinction, though.

Hi broken, welcome to Marriage Builders. You are getting great advice from some of our best posters and I want to reaffirm what they have told you. Some points that I want to address from your post:

1. You and your husband had affairs because you both have poor boundaries around members of the opposite sex. Period. And it will keep happening until that changes and the environment that led to the affairs is changed.

2. No, your marriage will never recover if your husband stays in that job. That is like asking if the falling down drunk can recover by going to the bar every day. I would give your husband 30 days to leave that job or I would expose his affair to the workplace.

He needs to quietly get put of there before the news comes out on its own. He should never supervise women again and needs to be in an occupation where he won't be so tempted, whatever that may be. I am surprised that an attorney would be such a loose cannon but since he doesn't have any better sense than that, you can help him in that regard by giving him 30 days to leave.

I would also tell everyone about your affairs. You need the support and more importantly, you need people to hold you accountable. I would also inform the OWs husband about what your husband has done. He has a right to know.

And lastly, tell your husband the full truth about your affair. Don't hold back anything. This is information about his life.

The point of exposure is to end the A by removing the secrecy and bringing out to the forefront. Your H has poor boundaries and his behaviro should be made known. He has a pattern of seeking women out and seemingly taking advantage of them and he should be exposed. The leadership at his job needs to be made known so it can protect themselves from a lawsuit by helping end the A. Trust they will, especially in a government office and the chance of scandal.

It appears your H will need to go into private practice or a law firm with no women as he has already proven his poor boundaries. As long as you leave him in that environment you are enabling his addiction and he will continue to have inappropriate relationships with women leading to more A's.

I guess I am a bit confused because I read Willard Harley's "When Should an Affair Be Exposed" article on the website and it says, "While I unhesitatingly recommend exposing the affair to friends, family, clergy, children and lover's spouse, I'm not so quick to suggest exposing it to an employer. That's because such exposure could have unintended legal and economic consequences. For example, the affair might constitute grounds for a sexual harassment claim by the unfaithful spouses lover. Or it might trigger the outright firing of the spouse, making it far more difficult for them to find another job." And that's when the 30-day rule kicks in to find another job. I feel like when I expose this to the OW's husband, he will likely be the one to make sure my H loses his job and has a sexual harassment charge filed against him. Though, the OW is also an attorney and has a reputation to consider.

Bullcrap aside, his tortured "explanations" change nothing. An affair is an affair. Exposure is for marital recovery after an affair. Your husbands feelings about the OW (whatever lie he tells about them) have no relevance.

Yes, give him 30 days to leave the job or you should expose it at work. The OWs husband has to be told also. You might wait until your husband leaves but I would wait no longer. The OWH right to know what your husband has done supersedes your husbands selfish interests. He was not "concerned" about his reputation when he was shagging this mans wife.

My H says that he is going into counseling to try to figure out why he is doing these things. He copied me on an e-mail to our marriage counselor, asking for a recommendation for an individual counselor. Do you think that we will both always have poor boundaries with people of the opposite sex? You don't think that is something that can be changed?

" I feel like when I expose this to the OW's husband, he will likely be the one to make sure my H loses his job and has a sexual harassment charge filed against him. Though, the OW is also an attorney and has a reputation to consider."

Keep in mind that the OW and your husband weren't "considering" their reputations when they were conducting a workplace affair. That is about as unprofessional as it gets and surely you realize that your husband should NEVER be in authority over women much less work around them.