If you want to save your marriage you need to follow the advice, snoop and get the evidence. You can then bust up the affair by exposing it using the tactics in the thread linked in my signature.

But you are going to n have to be more strategic and stop accusing her BEFORE you get the evidence. All you did was make her go further underground.

Do you want to save your marriage? If so, then please follow the advice. If you can't do this, then I don't think your marriage will make it.

Dude, the point of the spying is to gather evidence so you can expose this. That is how you will beat this thing. Affairs die in the light of day!

Luck has nothing to do with it!

Your wife is addicted. You are not going to logic her out of her affair. What she is doing is totally irrational, but her feelings are not going to allow her to make rash decisions. You're going to have to take the reins here. Waiting and hoping are not going to get the job done. Talking to her about it isn't going to get it done either.

This is the plan that works.

Amen!

I cant get her phone to do an install. Its not an iPhone

Then get spyware for her type of phone. Can't help ya if you won't snoop and come back with the evidence! Do you want to save your marriage or not?

When your wife got into her affair, she decided not to listen to or consider you. After making the decision, her mind turned to mush and now she CANT hear you when you talk.

You can't talk her round. Her shield is designed to block you.

The only thing that works is EVERYONE talking at her, and her inner sense of wrong being waked up.

That's why no one here cares what your wife says or thinks, or what you say to her. It's like talking to a drunk and many former waywards here will tell you they simply don't remember anything that was said at this stage.

Talking at her doesn't work. Exposure does.

If you can't get proof or expose then that's very sad because it means there's is no hope and you should get a D.

Waiting a few days is also a terrible idea because the more time passes without exposure the more entrenched the A gets and the more irritable she gets towards you.

GOOD LUCK

There has been no time for her to have a physical affair. She works full time. Unless she and her coworker has called off and spent the day together. It has been emotional at most. And with my past behavior, I am sure she has needed help as well. It tears me up, but as long as she hasn't had sex with anyone else I feel we can save our marriage. I'm stuck between the fine line of trying too hard and not giving a [censored]. There is nothing I want more than to work thinhs out. We are taking the counselor route. I have definitely been self centered and selfish with my needs (especially financially) and realize now that I have definitely been neglecting her needs. Especially when her very close great aunt was dying and I was worried about buying a motorcycle. Ive done my share of wrongdoing in the past that she doesn't know about so I feel we can get through this. If she ends up leaving me for someone else. ...that is unfortunate as I will mote than likely be in jail for my actions following that.

Maybe I can report back in a fee months with a positive report. Seems this os a feeding ground for negative actions that have horrible reprocussions. I want to fix my marriage, not end it.

Nobody in an affair 'has time'. Do you think everyone else here turned a blind eye to obvious gaps of time and waved their spouse off for a week? They fool around at work. Or on phones in the middle of the night. Since it's an addiction I can think you safely assume they have called off work. But affair partners don't really need a whole day. It's not a real relationship. They only need a stray half hour here and there.

Do you think you can accept that you don't know a great deal about affairs? It's not the same as ordinary relationships and they don't follow the same rules. For example you seem to think 'only emotional' is less serious and less of a threat. If anything, that makes it more serious and more likely to destroy your marriage.

By then your wife will have concluded that you don't care enough to do very much. It's hard to save a marriage by sitting on your hands while some creep moves in on your wife.

I've been lucky in that no creep has ever managed to fool me when I've been vulnerable. But if it did I don't think I could recover with a husband who watched and didn't help.

I've seen heroic actions from men on here and that's what women want.

Courage.

I'm not just sitting back. I've been quite clear of my intentions and she knows I care . We have been talking and are scheduling counseling to help us learn to communicate better and move forward together.

If you are considering counseling, I would consider the MB coaching. Many of us have had bad experiences with traditional marriage counseling, including myself. I was able to get my then WH to go to counseling when we were having problems and I thought the OW was "just a friend". The whole time, we were in counseling, my WH was physical with his AP.

Counseling also does NOT do anything to break up the affair. It just brings up issues that the wayward will use to justify what they are doing.

Please read this thread. Beware of Bad Counselors

Why are you here then? We can only tell you what Dr H would tell you. He tells men in your position to act because women lose all respect for men who do nothing - especially when there is clearly a man in the picture who does more than just talk.

If you're waiting for someone to post something along the lines of what you want to hear - it won't happen. Everyone here posts only Dr H's advice and if anyone were to post something different, the mods would delete it.

If your counsellor is an MB style counsellor they will counsel you separately, and advise you to snoop and expose.

If however it's just a talking shop, you will just hear nothing but an endless series of complaints with no solutions. Run of the mill counselling has no goal of solving anything, they just get you to talk. Forever. While getting billed.

If you don't want to do MB, great but I'm puzzled as to what you are doing here?

trying to get to the bottom of the cause. I managed to get teensafe installed, but i'm not certain she uses anything but facebook to chat much as she keeps everything pretty much deleted. I really need to get her facebook password so I can watch conversations via facebook that she has while at work.

any suggestions?

i'm waiting to hear back from counselors. they don't respond too quickly . we "get along" but when we try to discuss things it doesn't go well.

her biggest point is that I haven't been there for the few yrs we have been married...and there are a lot of things that I could/should have done a lot differently! she does not forgive easily...as a matter of fact, she does not talk to her mom and hasn't for years and said she will never forgive her nor will she talk to her again.

the only way it will work is if she puts forth the effort and we BOTH let go of the past and we BOTH move forward and be keep positive. she said she is "trying" but she needs counseling to help her forgive because she doesn't know how. I have already read love busters, his needs/her needs and am reading Give & Take now. She is reading Love Busters (slowly) - I'm hoping we can get on the same page.

meanwhile.....I will monitor and see if I can find anything to expose. at least now I can read all texts and see her GPS - before , by the time I got to her phone (rarely) she would already have messages deleted.

she HAS told me that she feels like I haven't been there for her over the past few years and in hindsight, i can see why. I haven't been meeting her needs, she wasn't meeting mine. she wanted to do counseling after about a year, but she brought it up while we were fighting and angry and I refused. i was definitely selfish with my spending habits but have changed that since I realized it was a problem. I try to meet her needs now but it seems she wants nothing to do with that. she will not say "i love you" the past few days unless I say it first.....she will not initiate any affection unless i do. the other day we had a decent day and then in the evening she didn't say two words to me and I felt like she was giving me a cold shoulder. i finally asked if I had done something wrong (just before bed time) and she had a fit and said I make her feel like she doesn't do ANYTHING right and she is always under a microscope. she brought up some past issues and flat out told me that she HATED me because of it.

it seems no matter what I do, it just pushes her away. if I try , it's too much but i feel if I don't do anything it is like I'm giving up and don't care. I guess there is a fine line?
I agree with her that it took 4 years for it to get this bad and it's not going to be fixed over night. And I admit that I am scared and paranoid because I KNOW i cannot meet her needs right now (she won't let me) and that's why the guy she works with bothers me so badly.
I'm really hoping that I find nothing over the next month with the cell tracking.

how can I continue without feeling anxiety, paranoid, etc?? I am pouring my heart into things and it seems it doesn't matter to her. I cannot wait until we start with counseling. I have actually been seeing one for a couple weeks. I did suggest to here that maybe until we can get a set appointment with a couples counselor, she could try individual counseling to help her deal with things. she said that her old counselor doesn't have evening appointments , that's why she quit going and when i suggested a day appointment she said she doesn't have time because of work. however, she will take all kinds of time to do dr. appointments for her and my daughter or if she gets out early she will make a quick trip to the store to get things needed.

as my original title sates....i'm desperate! I'm trying to be a confident , supportive, and stable man but it's EXTREMELY hard when I feel there is no reciprocation. I try to keep as busy as possible but it is taking it's toll on me!

any suggestions on how to deal with being anxious and paranoid? I'm not being patient enough and that is definitely a problem.

What does this mean? Were you away due to work?

not at all. she feels I did not support her emotionally and did not help with our child. there are some things that she brought up (my actions) that hurt her but a lot of them were never brought to my attention until now. hindsight tells me that she is right about some of them, but if she would have brought it up earlier, it would have been easier to work through.
I always contemplate theories and try to figure things out. it seems it wasn't THAT bad until the above mentioned guy from work was in the picture and that seems to be when she brought it all up and said she was ready to "check out" of the marriage.

All of this is a distraction from the real problem: HER AFFAIR. Did you get the evidence of the affair yet? A person who is in an affair will exaggerate and manufacture grievances in order to justify an affair. So you are just chasing a rabbit down rabbit trails while the titanic sinks.

While you "contemplate theories" and try to figure things out, your marriage continues to crumble every day from HER AFFAIR.

If you want to save your marriage, stop fiddling around, stop calling counselors, and GET THE EVIDENCE. There is nothing we can do for you if you won't follow the advice.