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Here's my story. We've been married for 20 years and have an 18 yr old daughter. Our home life has been kind of rocky for a few years- financial troubles, negativity and lack of attention on my end. My wife started having a text affair 5 months ago and it has grown and continues now. I want to save the marriage. I have changed my ways and returned to the person I was. This has caused more confusion for her. She is still in the house while our daughter is home from college. We went to 2 therapy sessions but since she won't end the affair we're not going back. She has agreed to go to therapy for herself to sort out her issues. I'm trying to figure out what steps i should take next. Thanks in advance
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Joined: Apr 2001
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Hi Sotheby, welcome to Marriage Builders. Sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so the fastest way to kill an affair is exposure. It is no fun to have an affair when everyone is watching in horror.
I would start there. Go read the thread in my signature about exposure for best practices in killing an affair. Once you run off this OM, we can help you save your marriage. But you must first get rid of him.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Joined: Dec 2010
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Have you exposed her affair to your family, including your daughter? How about to your friends and pastor?
Have you read the sticky thread at the top of this forum?
Make sure you eliminate all your love busters and do a great Plan A, giving your wife a soft place to land when her affair ends, as most affairs do. Make sure you stay in your home during Plan A.
Marital therapy is a disaster during an affair. Most MCs don't understand the addictive nature of affairs and are of little benefit. If you get your help from this forum, you will be much better off than going to an MC.
Who is the other man (OM?) Do they work together?
I'm sorry for what you are going through now. You will get plenty of help here.
Married 1980 DDay Nov 2010
Recovered thanks to Marriage Builders
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Thanks for responses. My wife and the other man do not work together, they became friends through mutual love of skiing. I've only told a couple of friends about the affair. I'm very reluctant to utilize the exposure techniques. It is definitely not my style. I'm still grappling with how it will effect our daughter. I'm inclined to wait and see how her personal therapy goes since she's acknowledging that she has some issues to resolve.
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Joined: May 2008
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Exposing the worst thing that ever happened in my life was not my style either. But it was necessary to end my H's affair and recover our marriage. Your daughter probably knows something is going on. Tell her the truth. Is the other man married? If so, most certainly his wife needs to know what is happening in her life. In our case, the OW had had at least three affairs (that he knew about). He had never exposed her affairs; so she just kept having them. I truly believe that if he had exposed her previous affairs that my H wouldn't have "slid down the slippery slope into an affair" with her.
Personal therapy is a waste of time. Most counselors have no idea how to deal with infidelity. The bulk of the time will be spent coming up with all the reasons she is entitled to have an affair and what a jerk you are.
Do you ski? Does your wife ski without you? In our case, one of H's and my favorite recreational activities in the winter is skiing. But, we ski together and it would be nearly impossible for one of us to meet someone else and be attacked to them.
BW - 73 WH - 68 M - 43 years D-day - 17 Apr 08 H broke contact 11/1/09 Back in love after the worst thing that every happened to us.
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BTW, your WW's affair has gone way past texting. You do understand that, right?
AM
BW - 73 WH - 68 M - 43 years D-day - 17 Apr 08 H broke contact 11/1/09 Back in love after the worst thing that every happened to us.
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Thanks for responses. My wife and the other man do not work together, they became friends through mutual love of skiing. I've only told a couple of friends about the affair. I'm very reluctant to utilize the exposure techniques. It is definitely not my style. I'm still grappling with how it will effect our daughter. I'm inclined to wait and see how her personal therapy goes since she's acknowledging that she has some issues to resolve. That would be a terrible mistake. The affair needs to be exposed regardless of her "therapy" outcome. The longer you wait to expose the affair, the more entrenched it becomes and the less likely you will save your marriage. "Personal therapy" is a needless distraction at a time when you need to be working on your marriage. If the Titanic was sinking would you run off and have some "personal therapy" or would you save the sinking ship? Sir, if you want to save your marriage, you are going to have to get to work. Putting this off while your wife goes off on a needless endeavor ["therapy"] will destroy your marriage.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Thanks for responses. My wife and the other man do not work together, they became friends through mutual love of skiing. I've only told a couple of friends about the affair. I'm very reluctant to utilize the exposure techniques. It is definitely not my style. I'm still grappling with how it will effect our daughter. I'm inclined to wait and see how her personal therapy goes since she's acknowledging that she has some issues to resolve. Is OM married? Does he live in your state?
FWW/BW (me) WH 2nd M for both Blended Family with 7 kids between us Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.
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Personal therapy is a waste of time. Most counselors have no idea how to deal with infidelity. The bulk of the time will be spent coming up with all the reasons she is entitled to have an affair and what a jerk you are. Armymama is right. This is a needless waste of time. We know why your wife had an affair: she has poor boundaries around men. Dr Harley is a clinical psychologist with 40 years experience saving marriages from infidelity and here is what he says about therapy: An analysis of the wayward spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them. hereAs a clinical psychologist who has been in direct therapy with 50,000 individuals and supervised over 600 counselors, I have not found that resolving issues of the past does much to help people deal with issues of the present. In most cases I've witnessed, it makes matters worse because it drags the most unpleasant experiences of the past into the present. I know that my perspective is in conflict with many therapists who are trained to treat the past before they can treat the present, but I have yet to see any convincing evidence that this approach is more effective than letting the past stay in the past. My personal experience is that dredging up the past actually increases the risk of suicide and other dangerous symptoms of mental disorders. Another important reason that I am opposed to bringing up issues of the past is that it wastes time. When you could be forming an effective plan and putting the plan into motion to resolve an issue of the present, you spend months, and even years focused on the past while the problems of the present keep building up, eventually burying the client. In your situation, I strongly recommend that you not waste your time talking about the past. And don't try analyzing your husband. I know that his affair was a terrible shock to your system, and you want to feel closure. You have been terribly disillusioned by what he did, but the best you can do under the circumstances is look to the future instead of the past. Don't discuss the past with your husband or anyone else for a while, and see if you don't agree with me that it helps improve your relationship and it also causes you to be more relaxed. Focusing on the past causes depression, while focusing on the future with an eye to making it successful causes optimism and gives you energy. http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2413831#Post2413831"Some counselors think it's a good idea to "resolve issues of the past" by talking about them week after week, month after month, year after year. It keeps these counselors in business, but does nothing to resolve the issue. In fact, it usually makes their poor clients chronically depressed.
My experience as a Clinical Psychologist has proven to me that dredging up unpleasant experiences of the past merely brings the unhappiness of the past into the present. The problems of the present are difficult enough to solve without spending time and energy trying to resolve issues of the past, which are essentially unresolvable. You can make your future happy, but you can't do a thing about bad experiences of the past, except think and talk about them -- and that makes the bad experiences of the past, bad experiences of the present." Dr. Willard Harley hereOne of the reasons I'm not so keen on dredging up the past as a part of therapy is that it brings up memories that carry resentment along with them. If I'm not careful, a single counseling session can open up such a can of worms that the presenting problem gets lost in a flood of new and painful memories. If the goal of therapy is to "resolve" every past issue, that seems to me to be a good way to keep people coming for therapy for the rest of their lives. That's because it's an insurmountable goal. We simply cannot resolve everything that's ever bothered us.
Instead, I tend to focus my attention on the present and the future, because they are what we can all do something about. The past is over and done with. Why waste our effort on the past when the future is upon us. Granted, it's useful to learn lessons from the past, but if we dwell on the past, we take our eyes off the future which can lead to disaster.
I personally believe that therapy should focus most attention, not on the past, but on ways to make the future sensational. here
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Please read this and listen to the clips. Beware of Bad Counselors
FWW/BW (me) WH 2nd M for both Blended Family with 7 kids between us Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.
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Thanks for responses. My wife and the other man do not work together, they became friends through mutual love of skiing. I've only told a couple of friends about the affair. I'm very reluctant to utilize the exposure techniques. It is definitely not my style. I'm still grappling with how it will effect our daughter. I'm inclined to wait and see how her personal therapy goes since she's acknowledging that she has some issues to resolve. You have one question to ask yourself: "Do I want to save my marriage?" If the answer is yes, then you are going to have to follow the narrow path of recovery. It starts with exposure. My wife's affair was primarily conducted by text messages. I had to do a lot of things outside my comfort zone. Exposing isn't anyone's "style". But if you don't do what is necessary to blow this affair up, there will be enormous consequences, starting with devastation for you and your daughter. Forget about treading softly. There are times to be bold and unapologetic. This is one of them.
me-65 wife-61 married for 40 years DS - 38, autistic, lives at home DD - 37, married and on her own DS - 32, still living with us
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Other man is legally separated and lives in same town
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Other man is legally separated and lives in same town How does his wife feel about the affair? He is a married man, after all.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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Sotheby,
Other man is legally separated and lives in same town
Find his Wife, she may be able to furnish you with information about prior affairs OM has had. There's a very good chance your WW is not as special to OM as she believes she is, but instead is just another number to OM.
Find the OMW!
God Bless Gamma
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i'm preparing for the exposure. I've got questions about Plan B. I've been utilizing form of Plan A- showing attention and kindness etc. But now I feel ready for Plan B. Should I implement Plan B directly after exposure? How does timing work? Do we meet with daughter first and tell her everything? I want my wife to move out of the house (she stayed at a friends while our daughter was at school). Is that correct procedure?
Thanks
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Sotheby, I would not go into Plan B for some time. Men are usually better off staying in Plan A for a longer period of time because they can win their wives back.
You should tell your daughter all by yourself. Your wife should not be forewarned about exposure. She should be told afterwards. Have you read my exposure thread?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
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