Hi all. I'm afraid my husband of fourteen years is engaged in an emotional affair with a young woman who attends our church. He is 33. She's in her early 20s. I've had a chance to read some text messages. It seems like he takes her coffee frequently to her home or workplace. He takes her meals. He does college papers and projects for her. Buys gadgets for her car and such. He says they are just friends. The texts seem innocent for the most part. Compliments like calling her beautiful. (She is.) One message that concerned me is when he apologized for "stepping over the line". When I got another chance to view his phone that message was gone as well as any reply she made. That's when I knew for sure he was deleting possibly incriminating messages. I've confronted him and asked him to break off contact. He says he can't because she goes to our church. I understand he can't ignore her on Sundays or at events. He maintains their innocent friendship. After the confrontation I had another chance to view the phone. Still daily contact via text. Also offered to bring over dinner which she refused. There wasn't as much contact but not sure if that's because he's deleting messages. Still more contact than I would like to see. I'm so stressed out. I have a little disabled daughter and care for her full time. His income from preaching is all we have. If he leaves me, I'll struggle to care for my child. If I expose, he will lose his job as our church is very strict and traditional. He will never get another preaching job if I expose even an emotional (non sexual) affair. I don't know what to do.

I am sorry for the reasons that brought you here.

In spite of the potential job loss, you will still need to expose. Exposure is GOOD for the adulterer, because it shines the light of day on a terrible betrayal. You will need to expose to your family, including your children as young as 4, and to your friends. You will need to expose also to the OW's family and friends. Give your H 30 days to leave his position. If he refuses to leave, his congregation will need to know. Of COURSE they will need to know that their pastor is involved with infidelity.

Exposure is not to punish the unfaithful spouse. It's to give YOU, the betrayed spouse, much-needed emotional support during what will turn out to be one of the most painful experiences of your life. It's also to provide accountability.

He must never see this OW again. He has exercised very poor boundaries and obviously cannot be trusted around women.

I understand that he makes his income from being a pastor, but he will need to find another job. You stand to lose a great deal if you and he continue in this role. He will lose his job, but it's better than losing his marriage. He can always find another job.

If the OW lives close, Dr. Harley recommends moving far away.

While you are in Plan A, eliminate all your love busters.

First thing to do:

EXPOSE the affair Exposure 101

Second thing to do:

Demand that he never see the OW again for life.

PW, I am so sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. Your husband should lose his job because he is an unfit pastor. I believe you know this already, though. He is a fox in the henhouse he is supposed to be guarding, but he is exploiting them. You harm your husband greatly by covering up his secret. This enables him to be a bad man.

Expose the affair, my friend. I know it is scary for him to lose his job, but he can get another job in another field.

Oh I am so sorry. Welcome to MB.



You don't have any good options, but you are in good company. It is actually quite rare that an affair does not ruin a family's finances in every way. This is usually the case. Even if you were the breadwinner, you would be looking at losing your job because of childcare.

But thank goodness your church opposes adultery and is dedicated to fighting it. This isn't as common as you might suppose.

It's actually a plus, not a minus that your church is strict. That gives you a shot. We had a preachers wife on here a while back whose husband was in the grip of an evil church, which had gone entirely wayward.

She exposed, but the church men just smiled and said they forgave him. While he continued his affair. She evicted him from her home and the church elders came around to bully her into being 'more obedient'.

I wouldn't fear exposure if I were you. Without it, the affair continues and your H will become more and more like a stranger. You won't be able to rely on his income anyway, it will go on his mistress, or a second home when he destroys the marriage.

Better to nip it in the bud now, and plan to be flat broke but with a man who might be rescued from the worst he could be. Then you can both start to work your up again instead of being in a declining position which is where you are now. If your church are as opposed to adultery as you say, they may even help you as a victim of this appalling situation. They are your church after all and you have warned them about a false preacher.

Perhaps it is not even too late for him to redeem himself with the church. Waiting for him to carry on, make the A more entrenched and eventually getting caught (what usually happens when affairs go unchecked) is a very bad idea.

However every betrayed wife has to come face to face with the fact that she may end up supporting herself.

Do you have any family members who would help? One of the key aspects of exposure is gathering support to help you through such a difficult period.

Preachers_wife, does that seem innocent to you? If it seems so innocent, why are you afraid to tell anyone about it?

It seems like you've been so steeped in impropriety that you, like the proverbial frog being boiled in slowly-heated water, are inclined to downplay evidence of how bad the situation actually is. Everything you've described of his conduct doesn't hint of impropriety; it reeks of it. Deleting texts? People don't go out of their way to conceal things when they have nothing to hide. Home visits to a young woman, unaccompanied by any 3rd person? That's practically on Page 1 of the "Things definitely not to do!" chapter in preacher school in any respectable church. His refusal to break off contact with her? That's because affairs are akin to addictions; and until you grasp this crucial fact and begin to accept that ALL of his decisions & logic are effectively the actions of an addict, who prioritizes getting his next "fix" over all else in his life, then you're going to guess wrong about what he'll do next.

Why is this your understanding? Do you think that an emotional affair is "better" than a physical affair, such that you think you might be able to grudgingly learn to accept the former? How do you think physical affairs start out? I'll give you a hint: It isn't by two strangers running into one another in the grocery-store checkout line and deciding to get a room. Rather, it's because an emotional bond is allowed to form and deepen though constant communication. Emotional affairs are physical affairs waiting for an opportunity & a tiny bit more human frailty, that's all. You read the Bible, so you know about human frailty, right?

I was lucky my wife gave more of a hoot about my soul, our marriage and her own sanity than about trying to preserve a facade of propriety in the church where I got into my affair. Although I wasn't a preacher and wasn't employed by the church, I had no business staying there if I wanted to save my marriage.

You seem to be hoping there's some way to end the affair without his acknowledging it, without your telling anyone about it, without confronting your husband, and without making a stink. It's as though yuo're looking for some way for an addict to break his addiction without giving up the thing -- in this case, at the very least, this woman's attention & the sense of "being needed" that he gets from her -- to which he's addicted. The problem with that is, addicts don't give up their addictions without coming face to face with the consequences of them.

I sure don't mean to suggets that you have any easy steps before you. But speaking to you as one who got into an affair, which almost cost me my marriage, I at least wanted to offer you some truths to think about, which I hope can only help you and your husband in the long run.

Thank you everyone for your replies and support!

I confronted my husband who reminded me I had told him I didn't want to hear about this woman. They volunteer together and I foolishly said "it's fine if you go to coffee after ----their volunteer gig----- but I don't want to hear about it." He's using that statement as his reason for concealing the time he spent with her. I don't think, if he were being rational, he would stretch that to cover meals out and other coffee dates and meetings. Even the movies.

I exposed to this woman's husband who told me knows about their friendship and trusts his wife completely.

I'm just worried I'm over reacting.

I mean, it's a serious boundaries problems we have to fix. For sure. But what if he does just think of her as a friend...?

I got the teensafe.com going on his phone and read all the messages and all the deleted messages it could recover. I discovered lots of compliments and, like I said, a boundary problem. I've decided to continue monitoring.

I guess my question is - do you think we can turn this around and end the friendship with that couple? Or make it more of a four person healthy friendship?

But he is NOT being rational. Why? Because he is in the fog of an affair. He is already getting his needs met by this OW, and has become addicted to it to the point of being irrational. This is why YOU need to stay rational, and not let yourself get sucked into this affair land thinking and gas lighting.

THIS...is not rational. Sorry.

I'm sorry. It's hard because she's my friend too. I feel like I'm losing everything. Like my whole life is quicksand.

Your gut instinct is telling you that this is WAY more than a friendship. You know it is a threat to your marriage. You are trying to persuade your gut instinct to believe that 'maybe this is just a friendship.' But you know deep down it is not, don't you.

A boundary issue is...your spouse is going to happy hour after work without you and with other females. That is a poor boundary, because it is putting him in the path of possibly having another woman meet his needs. Your WH is ALREADY having another woman meet his needs. That isn't simply a 'boundary issue' it is an EA and possibly more.

You CAN turn this around, if you follow Dr. Harley's plan.

I am sorry too, that you find yourself here like so many others have. The knot in the pit of your stomach, the rug being pulled right out from under you.

No woman who goes on secret dates to the movies with your H is a friend to you, or your marriage. Right now you have to ask yourself if your marriage, and getting in the path of this train about to go off the tracks, is worth saving? If it is, then you need to be willing to fight for it.

Preacherswife,

NO SPOUSE should be blindly trusted. Ever. Blind trust is what gets us into trouble. We can all be trusted in some conditions, while no one can be trusted in other conditions. Your H can NOT be trusted with this other woman. The woman's H is being very foolish in his blind trust of his wife.

You have a shot at killing the affair, but you will have to act quickly.All contact needs to end. Immediately. You and your H cannot be friends with this couple. They have already crossed the line from just friendship.

Even if your H were NOT having an affair, he should be following the Policy of Joint Agreement - Never do anything without the enthusiastic agreement of your spouse. He is reluctant to end this "friendship" even though it is bothering you. That's a big red flag.

Affairs nearly always begin with friendship, then little boundaries are crossed - complements, flirting, time spent by themselves. Once it turns into an affair, the fog starts, and the REAL pain for the betrayed spouse begins.

You don't want that, do you? Your marriage is at risk. Demand that your H stop seeing her and end the friendship. If he refuses, you know you have a bigger problem.

Collect the inappropriate texts and when you have evidence that would convince a jury, expose. This will help kill the affair.

Don't be afraid to stand for your marriage, pw. You are doing him a great favor by ending this affair right now. If you hesitate, it will too late.

Think about it... if you found that a friendship of your own was causing conflict in another marriage, then you would end your friendship right? The fact that they ignore your feelings (which are justified) is a red flag that they are not "just" friends.


I am sorry but this OW is not your friend.

Your WH is gaslighting and manipulating you by turning it around on you.

That was my situation too. My best friend's DH died and she became the OW in my marriage after her DH's death. He was my H's best friend, more like his brother really.

Our quartet was blown to smithereens and we were all three of us devastated by his death, aged just 30. Strangely, by seeing myself as the least affected, wanting to help 'my friend' - I became the biggest victim. I did not object when he went round so much to help her out. I watched helpless, trying to be a good friend as all the attention that was my due was just handed over to her. How could I object? She was my friend. Well all I did was allow my H to use her grief for fun and allow her to become a monster who began to meddle in my marriage.

Don't do nothing just because your head is spinning. Don't stand on the train tracks frozen with fear. Act now or wave goodbye to everything. Save everyone from this mess that your H and his mistress are dragging you all towards.

My advice would be: Snoop for dear life and keep snooping. You know what they are doing isn't right.

His callous remarks regarding your concerns are major red flags.

Yes, my gut instinct says there's a big problem here and my life is about to fall apart. Thank you to the poster who mentioned "gas lighting". I read an article defining it and it really fits my situation.

I've decided to spend a few quiet days snooping, gather as much incriminating info as possible, and confront him again. If I can't get him to listen I will expose to his closest male friend who is also a minister and ask him to talk with us both. Maybe we can get through to him before it gets any more serious.

Thanks guys! I'll keep you posted!

This is a mistake! You need to have a full exposure and it should be done all in one day. If you do multiple small exposures your WH will have warning and can do damage control and spin the situation ahead of your exposures.

He needs to be taken by surprise, have no warning and expsure needs to be done to everybody at once so it can have a snowball effect on him. This will have the same impact an intervention does on a drug addict.

I'm glad you are going to take this seriously. But you will be making a strategic mistake once you find the evidence you need and confront him, as you say. You don't need to confront him, because he already knows what he's doing. Confronting him will alert him and the OW that you are on to them, and they will try and spin the story to make you look crazy.

Dr. Harley would strongly advise you to snoop quietly, as you are about to do, then expose widely. Remember it's not to embarrass you or him. Exposure is the fastest way to end an affair.

Make sure you get very serious about the snooping. He should not know that you are doing this. Does this violate the rule of Openness and Honesty? Not when you are fighting an affair! Do you have access to his phone, computer? Can you get a VAR?

Make sure you eliminate your love busters. Are you able to eat, sleep?

Good girl! I just saw your posting on the Operation Investigate forum about getting into your H's phone.

For now, keep this forum a secret. You don't want to let him know the strategy you are undertaking.

I've been having trouble sleeping. And no appetite today. What's a VAR? Yes, now that I have access to the texts, I think I have everything. Facebook, email, computer. I've been Doing my best to act 'normal' and avoid love busters and confrontation. I'll see what the next few days turn up while his guard is down.