polygraph.

And take that phone somewhere to recover the texts. Brickhouse?

I already looked into the brickhouse idea, and they cannot recover deleted texts on her type of phone. I mentioned the polygraph, and she absolutely refuses, and says how degrading it would be for me to make her do that. At this point all I can do is go into full surveillance mode. It is taking everything I have to not explode. It is hard to cope right now. I know you guys believe without a doubt that they had sex, but I still do not believe it happened.

RR18,

One other approach is to meet with the OM and tell him you know everything, but want to hear his side of the story. You might have to promise not to go to personnel in order to get the truth from him.

I'm taking that approach with OM2, and plan meeting with him about a month from now, when he attends an annual event. I might have to promise no retribution in order to get him to talk.

God Bless
Gamma

You might be able to get what you need via snooping, but there may come a time when you may have to insist on her getting a polygraph. She should WELCOME a polygraph if she is telling the truth because it will exonerate her. That is how I would position it. Let her know you don't believe her story and want to give her an opportunity to exonerate herself and give you peace of mind.

When she sees you are serious, she will agree to do it because she will have no defense.

I don't know much about Polygraph test. How accurate are they, and what kind of questions should I ask her. Did you have sex with OM? any idea how much they cost?

They run around 450-600. They are very accurate, but the most value comes from what happens BEFORE the test. You would hand her a list of all of your questions and ask her to come clean BEFORE the test. Tell her this is her chance to come clean one last time but you expect her to pass the test. She won't know which questions will be on the test, though.

Typically, the WS sings like a canary before the test and you get the full truth at that time. The polygraph will only validate and confirm what she told you. Most DO pass it, but most come up with "additional" facts before the test.

But FIRST, see what comes up in your snooping.

RR,
Almost everyone of the betrayed spouses on the forum (including me), believed that their spouse didn't/wouldn't have a physical affair/emotional affair and were lied too.
Your situation is no different.
Snoop like it is your job. Get it done, VAR, GPS, keyboard tracker, new phone, etc.
Keep control of yourself, be calm, cool, James Bond.
Do not talk about it anymore with her, DO NOT EVER reveal your sources of info.
If you can't find anything by snooping, then insist on a polygraph.

Update on my situation. Through a couple wise tips that I got from you guys on here, I was able to drum up much more information about what happened. Not only did my wife tell me a lot more of the little details, but I was able to use some of those details to contact the OM, and trick him into giving me more info. I have been able to match up and check things that make a lot of sense now. Despite what some might believe on here, I am positive that the affair never became physical.
One thing I learned was that my wife was the main initiator in the texting. She said it was exciting to talk to him, despite knowing that I would be upset. Looking back through two months of texts, It was always my wife that would send the first text, and on some occasions she would send multiple texts before he would respond. My wife made multiple attempts to get him to go to lunch with her, but he always refused, because he had made a boundary that he would not go to lunch or out to dinner with any employee. My wife said at that point it became kind of a game in her head, to see if she could convince him to go. The timeline to everything she told me added up perfect, and I could see that nothing happened as far as ever meeting outside of work.
So with this in mind, I am faced with other problems.
#1. My wife does not consider what she did to be an affair at all. She still stands by her statement, that he was never anything more than a friend, and she never did anything wrong. This kills me, because I have suffered for the last 6 months with worry and heartache.
#2. I am getting to a point where I am starting to resent her. When I am with her, I sometimes catch myself thinking about how she could be so cold and heartless that she could continue texting and talking to him despite knowing what kind of mental pain I was going through. I feel like I am starting to love her less.
#3. She seems very unwilling to work on our relationship through MB program. I have showed her different articles, and told her about how we can make things great in our marriage if we will work on these things. She resists, and won�t put any effort into it. She thinks everything is fine, and that I need to just quit dwelling on what happened and move on.
#4. I have been doing really good at avoiding �Love Busters�. Yesterday, even though I was really upset, and mad at her, when she got back from the store with our daughters, I went up and gave her a hug and asked how her day was. The reason this is a problem, is because I am getting sick of bending over backwards for her all the time. It seems like I am working 24 hours a day to keep her happy, and she doesn�t really even appreciate my efforts.
Anyway, right now I am feeling discouraged. I don�t really feel like my wife is sorry for what happened. She really believes in her mind that what happened was not an affair. I just don�t know where to go from here.

RR, I don't believe anything the OM has told you because even the dumbest cheaters know how to coordinate a story. And they have all day to do this at work. I would start a campaign to get her out of that job because that is the only way your marriage is going to ever recover. Start by exposing her affair to the workplace, your family and friends. Its ok if she wants to deny the affair. Many alcoholics, for example, deny they are alcoholics. But you can't tolerate her staying there because this will get deeper if she doesn't leave.

Your wife will never want to work on recovery as long as she works with the OM because she is fogged out. She has already told you that she chases this man. Eventually she will get him if she doesn't get out of there.

I would start by sending a certified letter to a key VP and the Director of Human Resources. When your exposures are finished, tell her she will have to leave the job and end contact with the OM or this will lead to divorce. You don't have a marriage otherwise and the affair will only become more entrenched as time goes on.

Send this letter to your close friends and family:

Dear friends and family,

I am writing you this message because you are an important person in the lives of xxxx and I. I am saddened to have discovered that WW has been carrying on an affair with her boss, a man named xxxxx xxxxx who resides in xxxxxx. He is also married and has young children . This affair is breaking my heart.

She refuses to end the affair. I want our marriage to recover from this affair. If you have any influence on my babe, please do what you can to get her to stop this affair. I want to stay married, but the affair must end.

As our friends and family, I am asking that you use your influence with xxxx to persuade her to end her affair and try to work on our marriage. Our marriage can be salvaged if she would only end the affair. Please support her in doing the right thing. Please support our marriage.

I would so appreciate your support and prayers.

Warmest regards,

The only problem I have is I do not think that it was ever physical, and I don't have a problem with modifying the text to at least address that the relationship was inappropriate, but it is hard to go and expose my wife, when she hasn't talked to the guy in 2 months, and is making an effort to change. I am confident that it is over between them, but at the same time I am not stupid, and I realize that it could start up again in a heartbeat. My wife won't be back to work there until September,so I just don't know how I feel about exposing this right now.

So she's going back to work where the OM is?

Don't you agree it's an emotional affair?

Your wife had an affair. An affair is chacterized by a romantic relationship, not by whether or not it was physcial. She has already confessed to this.

If you don't expose it, she will go back there and just resume her affair. Do you want that to happen? You do realize you have NO CHANCE if she goes back?

RR,
There are so many red flags with your wife still, she is so foggy and acting like a true wayward. All waywards lie!!!!! They all say "quit dwelling in the past",etc

You are not in recovery, because your wife is not following any plan, she is telling you to get over it, nothing happened. Spoken like a true wayward in an affair. No wayward wants to be held accountable for their actions or pain they caused, that is classic affair/wayward mentality.

Send the exposure letter.

RR,
First you say your wife is not putting in any effort, doesn't appreciate your efforts, etc.
Then you say she is making an effort, as an excuse to not expose.

You need to stand up for your marriage and expose the filth, if you want to save it.

Brainhurts: I absolutely believe it was an emotional affair. I believe any relationship that you hide from your spouse is a betrayal of trust, and is cheating.

NebDane: When I said she wasnt making an effort, I meant that she is not on board with following the MB program. She did make an effort when I am talking about her ending the relationship. I talked to the OM personally and asked that there be No Contact, and my wife gave him a letter demanding No Contact. That was back in the first week of May, and I believe there has been no conversations between them for the last 8 weeks. Also, I feel like she has revealed everything to me. She went into the all kinds of details last weekend that she did not back in May. I was able to confirm the things she told me with actual dates, so although I can never know for sure that I have everything, I am confident that I have a good picture of the whole situation. I do not believe it became a PA.
The reason I have fear of exposure, is because we have made so much progress, and like I mentioned before, back while she was texting him, I felt so alone, and so disconnected from her emotionally. I don't feel that way anymore. She is so much more tuned into my needs. I also saw her truly remorseful, and I believe she knows what she did was wrong. She admits it was wrong to hide things from me,and that the relationship was inappropriate, but she says she still never thought of him as anything more than a friend. We just have very different opinions of what is acceptable as far as a friend goes. She has agreed with me however, that moving forward she should not have friendships with men at all. She has said that she understands now why I was so adamant about it before.
She just does not know anything about MB program, and I am just trying to introduce it to her a little at a time. Last weekend she was willing to sit down with me, and we discussed each one of the "Ending affairs checklist". She committed to me that she will not talk to him under any circumstance.
The only exposure i am thinking I could do right now, would be to send the letter to the director describing the inappropriate relationship, and request that they move one of them to a different department, and warn them to avoid all contact. I just think if I send letters to all my wifes family, and tell them that she is unwilling to end the affair, that it will backfire on me because of all the effort she has already made to end the affair.
I truly believe in her mind, the affair is over, or as she would insist, the friendship is over. With that being said, I am still aware of the danger that still exists. I just want to be really smart about how I handle things.

But this is not a rational belief given the fact they have worked together all this time. This belief is based on your wife's words. And you know she is dishonest.


Feelings are not truth. I know you want to believe her, but you must not go by her words, but by her actions. She has WORKED WITH her boyfriend all these months so it is not believable that there was no contact.


You are now contradicting what you just said. You told us she won't partiicapte in marriage recovery, which means your marriage won't recover. So I don't know what you see here that is "progress." There is no progress if there is no plan. And hope is not a plan.

You have not even taken the first step towards recovery and can't make any progress until that happens. I will just say, as a woman, that your complacent approach reflects a lack of caring. She will think the same when/if her fog ever wears off.

You did have a small hope if you exposed and tried to save your marriage while she is laid off, but all that hope is dashed by your inaction. And of course, the affair will resume when she goes back in September because you have made it clear her job is more important than your marriage.

I don't see how we can help you.

Rather than being smart, I see you being complacent and irrational in some areas. We are giving you tried and true steps for recovery that were developed by Dr Bill Harley, clinical psychologist, and founder of Marriage Builders. Those of us in recovered marriages here used these steps. We can't help you if you refuse to take those important steps.

RR18,

Sorry if you mentioned it, but is there anyone you can speak with about the affair, or are you holding it all inside.

Exposure would allow you to talk openly about your pain and anxiety and would be therapeutic. Particularly since your WW does not think there was an affair and that this mess can simply be forgotten.

God Bless
Gamma