What kind of 'integrity' involves helping cheat on this poor woman? Perhaps she would show much more courage than you are. May someone help her if you won't. You are doing whatever your wayward wife commands and it will not end well for you.

She's commanded you to hand her the bottle and you will be still wondering why she acts drunk after you do so.

You too are now in a slide with your wife and her OM. A open marriage? You are fooling yourself to believe you have leverage over them and this affair. I'm guessing you have decided to end your marriage already. This is more about gaining in a settlement? If you really want to protect your marriage you will be better off following tried and true tactics. This isn't the Pentagon or Guantanomo Bay.

Very true Catwhit. The WW did admit over the weekend that seeing another female at the OM's desk causes her to feel jealous and uneasy. You are correct that one of them must be removed from the workplace or have some serious self-control, which..although not impossible, improbable.

That's pretty funny graceful2b, "The Pentagon or Guantanamo Bay"....like the humor. The WW obviously came up with the suggestion of an open marriage as a way to preserve the affair, and this is certainly a side effect of withdraw. I'm not naive to that and told her this is not going to work for us. The suggestion by the WW was through lots and lots of hours of communication over the weekend and that was progress.

It is impossible. Because she gets a hit of her drug every time she sees him. This keeps her in the fog.

And as long as he has you working for HIM as his accessory in crime, and helping him trick his wife, he is perfectly free to pursue your wife. This lying, cheating weasel can summon your wife anytime, any place. You have placed the future of your marriage in the hands of a faithless weasel who cares even less about you than he does his own wife. Does that sound like a wise strategy to you?

The only person who benefits from this arrangement is the lying cheating OM. You lose. Your wife loses, your marriage loses and his wife loses.

Tell me again whose side you are on, Sir?

What was the progress? If you "communicate" on the sinking Titanic, is that progress? Or is it window dressing?

The effect of an affair on the brain makes self control impossible. All you've done is make it more dramatic, more exciting.. More of a hit. When the affair restarts they will be completely swept away by it this time.

Who told you people in affairs have self control!

Do alcoholics have self control when they drink and go into the bar every day? No, they do not. But that is what you imagine will happen with your wife.

All that has happened here is that your wife and this OM are free to pursue their affair every day at work and they have you helping in the cover up.

The only thing that has changed is that you are their enabler, Sir.

Put another way: your goal is to honor your self destructive "promise" to a selfish, self serving, manipulative, liar and cheater who spits on your marriage. Our goal is to save your marriage.

He cares as much about your marriage as he does his, which is less than a piece of dog crap.


Your goal will lead to the demise of your marriage.

I hear you....the OM's spouse should know.

Good! I would strongly suggest you just call the woman up and tell her without forewarning your wife or the OM. Otherwise they will get to her first and paint you as a "jealous kook" who believes everyone is trying to bed his wife. Then his wife won't believe you.

Of course, that is just one small step. This is all for naught if she doesn't leave that job.

Mel, he didn't say he was going to tell her!

Knightstone,
Seriously, you are worried about your integrity over some promise you made to a man trying to destroy you.
Your rationale is beyond words.

Good luck!

Are you going to tell her?

I did this exact same thing and it turned out to be a big mistake! I threatened the OM with exposure if he did not stay away. It did not work! I had everyone telling me I needed to expose it to the OMW and still I didn't do it because I thought it gave me some leverage. This didn't work in my case and it won't work in yours either. Don't make the same mistakes as I did! Be the smart guy that learns from those who have come before him.

Knightstone:

The reason we are all giving you the exact same advice is that we have seen what happens when a different path is taken. We have seen it in our own lives, and we have seen it over and over again, here on the forum.

These are not "suggestions". They are a (very narrow) path to survive and recover from an affair. Which we have seen, countless times, is the way that works.

Some of the steps may seem counter-intuitive. Some may seem "the wrong way" to you. But I assure you, EVERY TIME a poster here leaves out a step or deviates from the path, recovery is completely hindered to the effect that it is very long and drawn out, or doesn't happen at all. EVERY TIME.

And there are lots of posters here who came back months or years later to say, how right the advice they were given was. And that they wished they had followed the advice given. (Me included.)

So I urge you. Contact the OM's wife and tell her about the affair.
Get your WW out of that work environment. (Can she take a leave of absence or vacation until she can find another job?)

You can do this.

Knight,
Seriously, this "take no prisoners" approach...waiting for them to fail and then go after them w/guns blazing is minus the parts and pieces that will stealthly end the affair and possibly set your marriage up for a recovery program ie Marriage Builders has a terrific plan. So far you are playing "War Of The Roses." Here you go. Coming this Christmas...

If you view them as two addicts, you see how this approach sets them up to fail. OM has no one watching him. OM is an addict who cares only about his next hit - he really cares squat about his job and his marriage. That's why he risked them in the first place!

With no one watching him, the addiction itches, and on the spur of the moment, he gives in.

This gives the WW a super-strong hit. He has risked eveything for me!!!!

Meanwhile her poor H, frozen with heartbreak and fear, has done nothing but make some empty threats. The man of action who behaves without fear of censure (in her fogged out view) appears to be the OM. No wonder we see so many affairs turn into marriages when the OM risks it all for his mistress. The sad thing is it is betrayed husband who has set up the threat which turned into a victory for the OM.

Knight, we get it. We know how frozen in fear you are. She's been treating you like you are just optional while to you this is everything. It feels like if you take the crack pipe away, she will get so angry there will be no getting past it.

That's just why it is important to make her angry. It really is. No addict ever got clean while everyone was too scared to take the addiction away.

She will be super-furious. The whole reason she extracted this low-down promise from you was so that she could carry on uninterrupted. She feels she has you under control and to her mind you are not worth considering much more than that.

There was one man who enabled for two years during an ongoing affair and Dr Harley said he had made any future impossible because his wife would never respect him again.

Your marriage can survive her temporary anger. It cannot survive an ongoing affair.

Thank you FTF, question: how did your WW react to you going back on your promise? Guess if the affair continued and she was caught again than it wasn't a broken promise in your case.

We see this all the time. Betrayed spouses who waste time and further entrench the affair and lose serious ground by coming up with a lame obstacle to surmount. You have chosen this promise you made which is really using your own marriage as a bargaining chip with this scumbag whom has no reguard for yours or this marriage. This is like allowing a known pedophile to babysit after making him promise not to molest your child again and you promising him you will not report him! Ludicrous! Who have you helped by making this promise? Yes scumbag. Plus you have given yourself the impression your managing everyone in this farce. We know you are afraid. We are attempting to help.