Just about everybody who has ever been betrayed has been though this. That is why you need to get it over with in one session. Figure out the questions you need answered, sit down with your spouse and ask your questions and get the answers, and then NEVER ask again. Your recovery will be impossible if you just keep asking questions.

Ask questions that allow you to dig slowly so you can stop digging into something deeper.

Surely you do not believe this man because he has given you his word that he will not go. What good is his word? He had an affair with your wife for 8 years and did not care about behaving honourably. He gave his wife his word that he would be faithful to her, during the wedding ceremony, and he broke that for years!

I have experienced OW giving me her word. At one point, I confronted OW by phone. She promised me that she would not see my husband any more now that I had found out about the affair and my H refused to leave me. She had, for a year, been living out of the marital home during the week because she had a job in Luxembourg, and had now decided to live there for good. She did not love her husband and would move out of the home in Belgium. My husband could carry on visiting Brussels, she said, because she no longer lived there.

She then finished the call with me and sent my H an email at work, which he brought home to show me, in where she told him she had settled things with me by telling me that it was safe for my H to go back to Brussels. He could now go back there and they could carry on seeing each other, she said.

Affair partners lie, and they care nothing for the betrayed spouse. If they did they would not have an affair with their spouse. Why would you believe this man? Do you think he is capable of honourable behaviour towards you?

In answer to your question about the job and travelling, yes my H did stop travelling when I could finally take no more D Days. I'd had about 10 over the 3.5-year PA, because I kept believing him when he promised not to see OW again. In 2006, when I found out that yet again he had continued having sex with OW on every trip despite my tears and depression, I told him to leave. He declared then and there that he would never travel again, and I gave him the chance to go into work the next day and tell his bosses this, which he did. He told them that his marriage was in trouble and that he wold not be travelling again, and they moved hell and high water to cover his presence at the international meetings for the next few months. They kept him in post as head of the team until they were able to move him, with a loss of income (that did not matter to me one bit).

That was the only thing that stopped him and OW seeing each other - that and the fact that I finally discovered this forum and got advice about exposure to OW's husband, and did that, pronto. (It turned out that, heartbreakingly, his teenaged children discovered their mother's affair by reading text messages on her phone, and had kept the secret from him for 3 years. When he told his son about the affair, his son's response was "is it the English guy?" to his father's utter astonishment. He'd known all along and had tried to protect his father. The details of what we found out by our various questions to our spouses are too horrible and detailed to go into now.)

When I exposed to OWH, he told her that if she wanted to stay married she had to find another job and move back home, which she did. I stayed in touch with him for the three or so months that it took for that to happen, because as I said earlier today, her job involved travelling around Europe too (what are the odds of two cheaters in separate countries with jobs like that meeting each other and starting an affair?) As long as she had that job she could come to London from time to time, and, since he had stopped travelling, I would never know he was seeing her again. All he'd have to do would be to fake a meeting or conference during which I could not contact him at the office. Indeed, she had been in London a few times during the 3.5-year PA, and they had met in hotels here without my ever guessing a thing.

So, I managed to expose and lock down the travel so that physical meetings were not possible, but contact was still possible via workplace phone and email. The problem was that as long as he had a job outside the home I had no way of stopping them from contacting each other, and this they did for another 5 years following the 3.5-year PA. OW would phone him at work "to see how he was" every six months or so, and he was always delighted to hear from her and they would chat.

Things finally came to a head when he was about to retire and sent the one and only email he ever sent from our home PC, to give her his private email address. He was trapped by the keylogger, and again I told him to leave.

This time, when he asked to stay, I enrolled us in the online course and he spoke to Dr Harley, who felt that my H was really done with the affair and wanted to stay married, as he had always done. I was only able to go forward after this umpteenth D Day because he would now be at home, without a mobile phone or laptop, with only the home PC which is monitored (he does not know that, of course) and with the integrated marriage that is created with the MB programme. But it took that for the affair to end; it took his giving up work for good for the contact to cease completely.

That is the extraordinary measure that it took for us. For others it takes a change of jobs, and for others a house move, taking kids away from their schools and friends, and possibly leaving the doting grandparents behind. There is a couple who posted for a while last year who moved 6,000 miles across Canada to get away from the environment of the affair.

Dr Harley's recommendation for serial cheaters and for those who flirt at work and cannot seem to control their impulsive behaviour in mixed environments is that the unfaithful spouse should not work out of the home. The spouse should work from home, or they could set up a business where they can always work together (like Dr and Joyce Harley themselves do).

Your wife has had an extraordinary life of affairs and it will take extra- extraordinary precautions to stop the affairs from continuing. After 14 years of this, surely you can see this easily.

You may still have answers that you need from her, and you must get those answers in order to have a chance of recovery, but there is a lot more to rebuilding your marriage than simply getting those answers. Changing your lifestyle from the bottom up is crucial, and if she refuses to do this her affairs will not stop.

Wow, I ddeeply appreciate your sharing this story with me, I do admire you, now you really got me thinking hard.

tomek1963,

One of the reasons I suggested a polygraph is that it puts the questioning on a professional rather than yourself.

I sometimes think my W would only confess, and I believe has confessed to a friend of hers, to another person who would then tell me or when given a polygraph.

God Bless
Gamma

I think it would be best for you to learn about the MB programme for the ending of affairs and the rebuilding of the marriage.

I wasn't able to read all your posts from 2007 and before, although I will try to read some of them. I get the feeling that there wasn't much implementation of Dr Harley's programme in the years that you posted here.

Have you read Surviving an Affair? Have you read all the affair advice columns on this website?

Yes, I have direct experience with this. In my mind, I wanted all the details that allowed me to identify critical information that in turn was used to helped identify transparency parameters and how to properly set up our EP's.

We had to 'close off' all channels that allowed it to happen.

To me: Who it is, where it occurred, how it occurred, communication channels, secret email addresses and/or affair phone, how they knew each other, how the A started etc...was the direction I took. I limited my questioning to this line of thinking.

I also travel from time to time for my job. However, my W comes with me. We have a pact of no overnights away from each other under any circumstances.

I also have a rule that if ANY of the EP's are broken - Ever - she is out. No questions asked. Period. I will file for D that day, go for full custody of our children and will use all of my power and contacts to ensure she won't get a thing. This was a condition for me to agree to start R with her. So, I leave it totally up to her to make her own choices. But she is acutely aware of the consequences.

This is not a threat. It is a condition of our R. I refused to enter R with her any other way.

I am a FWW, my BH worked in the oil and gas industry from the day we met, right up until my affair, his turn around was anywhete from 3-6 weeks away and 1 week home. We were told numerous times that our marriage wouldn't be safe until he stopped travelling for work and remained at home. We also moved from one end of the country to the other, in order for his triggers to be eased.
I would have to agree with all those who've said the travel NEEDS to stop, if she's serious about recovering your marriage she will do what ever EP's you've put in place to do so.

You know, I think it's a real double-edged sword. I got ALL, and I do mean ALL of the details, right down to a frame-by-frame of some of the actual sex acts. Not pretty and even now, 8 years later, I still have that movie in my head and have the unfortunate ability to recall it when triggered. Our M is in a really good place so thankfully this is not often at all but because of the trauma of it all, that "movie" is still there.

At the time (about 6 months post d-day I think) I needed it. There was no doubt that I needed all those details and I am sure I could not have moved on without them. But now ~ I wish I didn't have to have them at the time and that I wasn't one of those BSs who needed them.

I wish I could just erase all of that from my mind. It doesn't often enter my mind, like I said we are 8 years out and doing really well ~ but when something does trigger me, man...it's no fun.

So I will offer the same advice I was given ~ if you can't move on without these details, then get them. Only you know if that is the case. But know that there is a chance they won't leave you and you will have these visuals in your mind for a long time.

Also ~I haven't read your entire thread but I see references to her having to travel for her job.

There is no way around this ~ your M will never succeed if she keeps this up. My H traveled for his job as well and at about 6 months into recovery, and his 5th or 6th trip for work, I nearly had a nervous breakdown. You just can't imagine the trauma travel does to an already fragile BS and marriage.

On his last trip without me, I told him in no uncertain terms that if he traveled again without me, I would file for D. I knew I would not survive another trip, my PTSD would flare up and I was a mess and it would take us weeks to recover from each trip because it would set up so far back in our recovery.

I traveled with him on his next 1 or 2 trips, which was FANTASTIC for our recovery but with 4 young kids at home we knew that traveling together once every 4-6 weeks was never going to work long-term. So while we were never in the market for a job change, it suddenly became VERY important once H realized the job he had that included so much travel, was no longer going to work.

He found a new job out of state that required no travel and it was the best thing we did for our M, hands down. We eventually even moved out of the country for 2 years and that was the second best thing we ever did. This was NEVER in our game plan but you can't underestimate how moving out of Affairland and into a job that is marriage friendly can benefit your marriage.

Never getting the answers will haunt you for over thirty years. Having 1% of the story will leave you on an endless quest trying to figure what the 99% that is missing.

This is all very true, but the curse of mind movies is one of those things that many BSs are just stuck with. You have a choice between the mind movies based on the facts of what actually happened, or the mind movies based on your imagination of what happen. Neither is good. My imagination tends to be worse, so I chose to know the facts.

This is absolutely true and I knew my imagination would be worse for me too, hence why I insisted on the actual facts and details.

I have a friend who did NOT want the details and she is happy with that decision. Each BS knows what they need and I know I needed them. I could not have moved on at the time without them.

There were a few things I thought I wanted to know but when my H started telling me, I changed my mind and told him to stop. Just a few things like what lies he told the OW about me (they were whoppers and made me VERY angry so after a couple of minutes of this discussion I told him to cork it, I changed my mind, I didn't need to know all the lies he told her about me). However I DID want to know what lies he told her about himself and I was sure glad I got those. They gave me a good laugh later on.

These are small details compared to the sex acts but details nonetheless. I am a very detail-oriented person.

This needs to be a notable post.

Markos, feel free to use that quote any way you see fit.

There are details I know and details I don't. The details I know trigger me when I hear phrases that remind me of his affair (from their texts). The details I don't know, are ones I sometimes wonder about but know they wont help me in the long run. You have to ask yourself that question. Will knowing them help you? If not, slam the door on them.

tomek, you abruptly stopped posting. You gave no indication of whether you intend to change your marriage so that your wife stops travelling and you lead an integrated lifestyle.

She was next due to travel in May. Did you manage to stop that? What happened?

Thanks for asking, in fact she is away now, at last the OM is not. Not that i feel great. Overall we are in good recovery, after a month she got it, she read the "how to help your betryed spouse book" and become really remostful. But still she is there now, though she insisted i join her to tell teh true!

The only way you can stop adultery forever is for her to strictly follow the program of Dr. Harley..not the book you mention in your previous post.
You must follow the program in Surviving an Affair and she must NEVER be alone without you.

Since she is away tonight, and this has gone on for years you obviously arent following Dr. Harley's program.

This is a terrible way to live Sir. Living with an adulterer is in some cases like having a disease. It is not healthy for the soul.

Tomek,
Did you expose this affair to family and friends?