Merged threads. Please stick to one thread.

Well, it's kinda too late re: the link. But that's ok. I will handle it accordingly.

To recap, this was an Internet affair with an ex girlfriend, across the country, from his youth. 4 years of emails, mail exchanges. During that time, they made arrangements to see each other 4x, most recently this past February.

As far as work: my husband has been seeking a new job for a long time. There are not many opportunities in our area. Quitting is not an option. He will continue looking though. Would it be reasonable to ask the mail dept. to return any personal mail?

He does not have access to a private phone there. It's a very blue-collar job with specific in-out times and breaks.

People fall in love over the internet or via email exchanges all of the time. Just communicating via email can fill the needs for conversation, affection, and even sexual fulfillment to some extent.

In addition, affairs are largely a fantasy, and daydreaming or fantasizing about the other person can actually deposit love units as if the thing being fantasized about were actually occurring. This can also create quite the contrast affect. It's hard for real life to compete with a perfect fantasy world.

In fact, this is why exposure can be so effective, because it brings reality into the fantasy.

This is exactly why you need to take extraordinary precautions this time. You need to make it impossible for her to contact him. Just blocking her, etc will not get the job done. Change email addresses, get rid of Facebook, change jobs, change phone numbers.

So long as she has a way to contact him, you can never be sure she won't.

Expose. Let OW's f&f know she is a nutcase who needs serious watching. Let your H's and your supporters contact her and tell she has zero future in their family and won't be accepted. Right now she is being left comepletely free to cause whatever havoc she chooses.

Also, what is all this 'we' business? Exposure is something you do on your own. The WS plays no part, because the addiction is usually very active (so typically he either talks you out of it or he warns the mistress) until exposure is complete.

One of my best friends, who is now 30, saw her parents break up when she was five. After Dday, her dad chose her mum, and they moved across the country to get away from a typically nutso OW. They even changed their contact details and told close family members. However they didn't expose OW on her side.

A critical mistake.

The OW showed up at the family home and left the usual 'My life is ruined without you and I love you note' on the family car. Dad found the note and decided to leave his family for this cockroach. They were married for 12 years, cheating on each other throughout, and my friend grew up with a real-life wicked stepmother.

Nobody exposed to her either. Luckily she was a clever child who listens at keyholes.

For the love of sanity - he has ALREADY shown he is addicted by taking the affair underground once before. He has shown you that this is a nicotine-style 'what my wife doesn't know won't hurt her' affair. Why would he do that, and risk getting caught a second time, if it wasn't an addiction?

Expose - let your H know you won't cover up his decision to break your heart and your child's heart for some cheap attention from a desperado. Let him know that not only have you exposed him this time, you will do it every time he makes such a serious error.

The very most important thing is that you don't lie to your child. He trusts you to tell him when his family is even slightly in danger. If dad is now OK and is now really sorry then dad will be OK with telling him so and humbly begging his pardon!!!

One BW who recently exposed to her 6yo was certain he didn't know anything about the A. Nor did he. However he said he was grateful to know it 'wasn't my fault' that Dad yelled at him whenever he interuppted him on the phone. Talking to his mistress.

However the most important reason for exposure is to watch his reaction:

If he accepts people's shock and their need for amends, if he accepts people no longer trust him and he has to earn it back = then he is on his way to recovery.

If you have even the slightest doubt about his reaction and feel that it would make him angry - then it is probably because he wants to remain secretive.







That advice refers to one-night stands. You should hope and pray that you are NOT in that camp because serial cheaters who are addicted to attention to a series of women are far tougher to recover with. They aren't addicted to a specific woman, but they are addicted to one-nighters.

Serial cheats have to work from home and be monitored 24/7. A cheat like your H simply needs NC with his OW.

Someone who fell in love unplanned, simply fell foul of a human trait to bond with people. In your case he had a pre-existing bond, which is why Dr H bans contact with former lovers.

Sorry, but:

a) You aren't paranoid - you are experienced. You've already experienced what he can do to you for her sake.
b) Blind Hope is not a plan, but there is a very good one called MB just waiting for you to get some courage and implement it.
and
c) Ask Dr H yourself. If you think this is a case that doesn't warrant exposure, get his guidance on that. You can email the radio show free.

but do keep in mind that you don't control the truth. There is a million ways this thing could become public knowledge at any time. OW could get drunk and hit the phones, calling your relatives, the workplace could find out about stolen company time - I'm afraid you don't control the truth. All you control is how you are able to manage exposure.




It's truly heartbreaking that this isn't being explained to him. You are trying to hide an elephant with a hanky and it is confusing and scary for kids. This is why we hear of so many children taking matters into their own hands and doing their own snooping.

This is dreadful. Your H doesn't get any say in the heartbreaking news you must tell your son.

You are telling your H that you trust him blindly and you will forewarn him before you do anything.

Excellent behaviour in normal circumstances but very destructive with an addict.

What do you think an addict will do if you tell him you trust him and you aren't going to be able to catch him?

The temptation you are creating for him to carry on is enormous.

I know you all don't agree, and that's fine. And maybe I shouldn't have sent it. But on the same token, if he and I are going to be completely honest and open, then I don't see why he shouldn't be privvy to the knowledge and understanding that I am. He too should know that telling our child can be a benefit to us all.

It appears that you have largely ignored the advice that you were given earlier in the thread and that you don't really understand what Dr Harley teaches about affairs and how to recover from them.

You are standing on the tracks and you are being told over and over to get off, and I can tell by what I have seen thus unfold so far on this thread that you are probably not going to be willing to listen until you get hit by the train again.

Sigh.

Let us know when you are ready to follow MB.

I'm sorry that you are not going to take that advice.

I've been through all the things that I underlined. My H never showed a drop of withdrawal, never one. That was because he wasn't in withdrawal. He stated that he was not in love with OW, although at times he had had periods of serious infatuation with her, but he was adamant on the distinction between infatuation and love. (I see no such distinction, and I don't think Dr Harley does, either.) My H said he always knew that the affair was a fantasy and an escape from everyday life and that he always knew that he wanted his marriage and would choose the marriage, once I inevitably discovered that affair and made him choose. (In other words, he knew that day would eventually come. He couldn't get away with the affair undetected forever.)

That didn't stop the sex meet-ups continuing another 16 months through another 3-4 D Days (I've lost count), and it didn't stop the phone calls and emails to his work continuing for another 5 years after the last physical contact, when I made him give up travelling.


That loose string is your undoing. You might as well forget everything else while his workplace communication remains available to them. My H brought home 3 letters sent to his work address under the same agreement as you are making, after he stopped travelling. When I began to argue that the reason the letters were continuing must be because he was continuing to talk to her at work, and was not telling her to stay the heck away from him, he simply pretended that he had told her and that all communication had ceased. However, as I said, landline and email communication continued for another 5 years.

I did not tell family or my children until the final D Day, after a total 3.5 years of PA and 5 subsequent years of EA. I exposed because by then I had found this website and, having endured so many D Days and so much heartbreak, and the deterioration of our relationship to the point of non-existence, I could see that not having told these key people had protected my H's secret while he continued to abuse me and the children.

When I told my children (nearly 15 and nearly 22 at the time) their grief and disappointment with their father was immense. Both refused to speak to him - for about a week. My daughter was studying abroad and told him not to call her for a while. My son was not nasty to him - just saddened and silent. My H apologised in writing to my daughter (and again face-to-face when we went to see her in Paris), and face-to face to my son, and set about rebuilding his relationship with them. They, essentially, wanted their father back, and they quickly began being civil to him when they saw him working on his relationship with them, and more importantly, on his relationship with me.

I think that having his children know that he was selfish and cruel enough to have an affair and risk breaking up the family has had a much bigger effect on my H than when I found out. It is shameful to bring children into this world and then put their needs at risk for sex in hotels with a skanky woman, and it has been entirely positive for my H to feel that shame.

I feel sorry for your son, knowing that something is wrong and being deceived about its nature by you. You are the one person that he should be able to trust to protect him fiercely and never knowingly let anybody hurt him, but you are hurting him by allowing him to stay confused and anxious. He has his own fears and suspicions and yet has nobody to tell him the scope of the problem, and that he will be safe. You are putting your own fear, and wish to cover this up, above your young son's needs. That is shameful. It is bad parenting.

When I told my H's two older sisters (both our parents are all dead), they kicked his butt soundly and kept a protective eye over my children. One of his sisters had an H who committed suicide over his own affair about 30 years earlier. This had rocked the whole family, and left her 13 year-old daughter fatherless. The effect of his affair and suicide has never really gone away. That sister had a few choice words to say to my H about what he was doing to his children, and they made it clear that his affair partner would never be accepted by them, and that I would always be a member of their family if he was head-up-his-backside enough to continue the affair and break up the marriage.

Because my H is so much younger than them, and because their parents died when our children were tiny, they have taken a protectively role over both their younger brother and his children. They have filled the roles of parent and grandparent that their parents have been unable to fulfill for my family. We have been surrounded by love and support from my H's family through our entire marriage, and their is NO WAY that they would have said nothing while I and the children are hurt by something as intrinsically pathetic and selfish as an affair. If I had known that, and exposed to them, when I first discovered the affair, I would have been spared so much pain.

Your H's family care about their grandson/nephew and they will not support your H while he tears that boy's life apart. They love your H and they probably love you, and their love and support, and condemnation of the affair, will make it hard for your H to simply drift back into it.

You will have no luck asking for this if you continue posting here. Nobody who gives advice on these boards today gives bad advice because that is what the poster wants to hear - which is what you are asking for. The advice given here is taken directly from the work of the founder of Marriage Builders, Dr Harley. We would not be posting here if we did not support what he says. As long as you post here, you will be told to expose this affair to you son and your families.

My feeling last week, when you stopped posting, was that you did so because you did not accept the advice you were given. I think you will do the same after today. That would be a shame, because people like Neak and I, who have been through the mad-OW-who-won't-give-up-and-the-H-who-thinks-he-owes-her-and-wants-to-be-the-nice-guy syndrome, have been trying to spare you from going through what we did. A false recovery is harder to bear than the initial discovery of an affair, because after the first D Day, your H knows how hard this has been on you, and can no longer say that as long as you don't know, nobody is harmed. He is no longer "merely" lying by omission, or lying about a few things while not having to lie to direct questions. A false recovery after D Day involves his lying to your face, pretending that you are paranoid and mad to imagine that contact continues, and showing you to be vindictive, cruel and obsessed when you question him about your suspicions of continued contact. When you discover that he has done this on your next D Day, you will feel so much worse than on this one and it will be much harder for you to recover your marriage.

You don't want to take our advice, which means you are prepared to go through a false recovery, as we did. You are free to make that choice. Good luck to you.

You have absolutely NO idea how much damage you are doing.

MB is where you will get the tools to help you kill this affair dead. You have just given the battle plan to the enemy.

Dr. Harley is very clear that exposure should be done without the cheating spouses knowledge or consent.

I don't feel I have blind hope, folks. If it was that, I wouldn't be here asking for your thoughts. I have serious concerns and I've been chipping away at this massive iceberg all week.

I am terrified that he will do it again. I KNOW that they can contact each other should they choose. Short of locking him up, I cannot guarantee anything. He has her phone number memorized. If he wants to call her from another phone, he could.

The fact is, I feel a total lack of control because he is a person with free will. I can take all of the steps you propose and, lets face it, he can still do it.

You, and you alone with telling your H, can expose this affair to your H's line management.

Tell them that it is being conducted through workplace resources and ask them to to first, institute disciplinary action on your H, and second, block telephone, email and letter contact from this woman.

Ask for their help in saving your marriage. They won't refuse.

This is what I should have done, since my H's affair was conducted using workplace resources. When the cost of international mobile and landline phone calls is totalled it must run into to tens of thousands over 8 years.

I do not think my H would have lost since job, since workplace affairs have happened there before without that punishment, but if he had, or if he had had to repay "stolen" revenue, I would gladly have accepted that to have my marriage protected. I can't tell you how desperate I was for help after many D Days, but thought it wrong to expose until I found this site.

There have been thousands of internet affairs on this forum. That makes no difference.

April, you have no idea what you are doing. You think you know better what to do because this is YOUR husband and this affair is somehow different. WRONG!

Those of us who have been here for years know more about what your H is going to do than you do. Why? Because waywards all act the same. We see the same thing OVER and OVER and OVER again for those who cut corners and skip steps.

Thank you for the constructive reply.

Thank you SuzieQ. I know you are trying to be helpful by being blunt but your approach is only cutting the knife deeper.

Not at all - plenty of couples have seen exposure work.

Free will is exactly why exposure is so effective. Free will comes with consequences. I am free to rob a bank if I want to. But I know there will be consequences.

If you take away the consequence of exposure - knowledge that cheating ruins the reputation - you make a mockery of free will and encourage him to fall victim to temptation a third time.

Would YOU cheat - if you know you would have to look your son in the face and explain why?

Your H decided before he cheated that it would never happen. You would be so happy to tidy that up for him. He cheated once, then twice, quite SAFE in the knowledge you would cover it up again and again.

How many times?

April, if you don't want to expose this time, do know that we are here for you to come back to.

However it is only fair to warn you that by that time the affair has usually gotten so entrenched it is now to the point that he is leaving the wife for the OW by the time she decides to expose.

And he should know that if he does, it will be exposed to everyone, because that's what you did last time. That's what accountability is all about.

I'd be more worried about her contacting him first if it were me. You need to cut off all avenues that she might take to do so.

If you want to focus on anything that may be different about your situation, the only thing that stuck out to me was the length of time. 4 years.

Your WH has had a SSL (secret second life) and also been getting his needs met by two women for a VERY LONG time and this is going to be a very hard habit to break.

Not only should you NOT be cutting corners and skipping steps - you need to go the extra mile and take away any opportunities for this SSL and the A to continue.