It's crazy how people who have been gaslit think they need to work on "their issues" while the WS continues engaging in marriage-wrecking behavior.

Amazing.

It's posts like yours that drive us, the ones who have BTDT and been posting on these forums for YEARS, crazy. Because you are on the train tracks, about to get run over and not listening when we are telling you to get off.

I post to people like you ALL THE TIME and most of the time, these posters, like yourselves come back and say "Oops, you were right."


This is according to her. The word of a proven LIAR. That's a fact. Waywards lie and lie and then lie some more. Until you realize this, you are in serious trouble.

The fact that she adamantly refuses a POLY is exactly what I would expect for someone who hasn't given up their Secret Second Life (SSL). Acting offended that you would even ask is exactly what Dr Harley says a person who has a SSL would react.

(As I read RR's thread, my goodness do I feel just horrible about what I put all of you through...Susie, Mel, Marital, Pep, BH, HHH etc. My denial, fear, in face of the reality of what needed to be done. I'm glad I wised up before it was too late and my marriage and family was destroyed).


RR, it's okay to want to clean up 'your side of the street', but you don't just accept doing that while your W is engaged in an AFFAIR.

My FWW also touted the "we'll just stay friends....I don't want to be rude...we should end this cordially" fog. Shame on me for accepting that for 3 months, allowing an active affair to continue for 3 more months?!?

And I will reiterate again...from 1st hand experience...so long as the affair partners work together the AFFAIR IS STILL ACTIVE.

Let's get moving, brother!

What happened is what happens to every person who finds themselves in an affair and Dr Harley has spoken about it often:


Your WW is no different than any other WS and her A is not any different. No, your situation is not "special". That's exactly what every other person who wants to cut corners wants to believe about their situation too.

Plain and simple....this OM made enough LB$ deposits to cause your W to fall in love with him. That does not just go away, despite your WW's declarations that she now "hates" OM.

I will be bumping a thread for you and I hope that you read it.

I would encourage you to start reading and learning about Marriage Builders.

No offense but I don't think you understand the basics...because by understanding the simple Love Bank model, you would realize how much you put your M at risk by allowing contact to continue REGARDLESS of what your WW tells you.

It's not just about meeting ENs and avoiding Lovebusters.

There are two thread I bumped for you: I told ya so and Cutting corners and the marriage builders program.

RoughRock;

Like HelpForDad, my WS stayed working with the OP, "until he could get a transfer" (which, not surprisingly, kept taking longer and longer to materialize...) During the 5 MONTH that they continued to work together, he reported to me daily every "business-only contact" they had.

Though I was snooping, and though I was told differently from all the vets here, I still bought the story that they could be professional during their supposed-rare meetings.

At D-Day 2, I learned that this was all a smoke screen, and that the A just went underground. Trying to recover from a False Recovery, and deal with the extra lies and SSL which took place during that 5 months, has been MUCH more difficult than dealing with the original pain.

Please, please, DO NOT set yourself up for this. You are underestimating the power of the addiction of the A, as was I. Your wife gets a "hit" even just seeing the OM's car in the lot, or seeing his name on a memo. She cannot reconnect with you while she is under the influence.

I am sorry. I know how much you want to believe your marriage has a foot on the right track. But it is better to know the truth. Your wife MUST LEAVE that job, before she can even begin the withdrawal process.

My now-former WH will tell you the same thing. He now admits he was powerless to end the A while contact continued.

She has to get outta there.

Roughrock,

I see you are posting on other threads, but stating you will no longer post on your own due to the "beating" you are getting.

It seems a little absurd to call it a "beating" when we point out that you can't recover with your wife working with OM during the week.

Dr. Harley has NEVER seen a marriage recover like that. We see those "it started again!" Posts constantly. Even people who thought the same as you are here, trying to snap you out of it.

Hiding your head in the sand while people yell at you to pull it out is not a beating. You can cover your ears if you want, that isn't going to change the reality that she obviously isn't interested in putting your marriage first. And if you can't stand up to her, well, you will suffer the same fate as every other victim who backs down.

I don't see why you would advise other posters when you obviously don't believe in MB. Doing the opposite and calling it MB doesn't make it so.

This is a hopeless situation and your marriage will never recover. I am so sorry. The first step in recovery is complete and total separation between the affairees. Every time she sees him her feelings will be triggered and the affair will become more and more entrenched. Eventually she will leave you for him. I have been here for 13 years and have never seen a marriage recover this way. Neither has Dr Harley in his 40 years of professional experience.

Dr. Harley speaks to a husband on the radio who did the same thing: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=652

And if people being truthful to you about the hopelessness of your situation is a "beating" then prepare to get beaten up! The fact that you have not even taken Step One in recovery should remain on the front burner until you resolve it.

It is the job of any good coach to make you do the things you don't want to do in order to achieve an objective you desire. You are not being beaten up. You are being coached.

RR,

You are not getting a beating.

As a matter of fact, it is difficult for me to post here sometimes, becasue I am so embarrassed. And because I get upset at myself thinking about the time/effort of good people I wasted....people who have NO ulterior motivation to help complete strangers except for to build a strong marriage.

Yeah, I didn't want to face reality either for awhile...didn't expose out of fear, denial...and it may have felt like ' a beating' as you call it, its just tough, caring love.

Looking back, I feel I owe some of the vets a personal apology for all my argumentativeness, and foot-dragging, etc...man, I mustve drove them nuts. And I was so blind -- they lived through it! Who else would be experts in how to navigate this than them?

It still haunts me to share this with others, but I will:

The vets told me that after exposure, if we recovered our marriage, my FWS would thank me -- thank ME -- for exposing and saving her from that destructive path.

And they were right...my W did and has. But it's always tinged with personal regret for me, becasue when she said it, her only caveat was: "I only wish you hadn't waited that 3 extra months."

She knows that I could've ended her affair (she could not...alien, fog stuff)and put us on the recovery path 3 months earlier, and I putzed.

It did delay our own recoveries, and I still regret not following Dr. Harley's advice to a T earlier.

I hope you will gather the strength soon to do what's necessary to save your spouse.

Nobody is beating you up. We are just telling you what you already know, you yourself have written it multiple times on your own thread. That your wife continuing to work with the OM is a recipe for disaster. That every day she goes to work you will spend the day wondering if she will see the OM by mere chance or by careful planning.

This scenario will NOT allow you to recover. It is 'hard for you to deal with' because you instinctively perceive a threat to your marriage, and you should listen because it IS a threat to your marriage.

Okay, I am very scared, and I am not stupid, I know that while they work together it is the worst possible situation. I don�t know how to fix it. I would love to expose in the work place, but I absolutely have no evidence. I would basically be writing a letter saying that I don�t have any proof, but I think you should fire your department head because he talked to my wife. I never mentioned this before, but my wife and I have 6 kids, and we barely scrape by each month, if you even want to call it that, because we seem to get further and further behind. Her job is huge chunk of our income. She has been there 16 years, and does not want to ever lose her job. I don�t know what to do. I know you guys look at me as a stubborn ignorant person, but we are talking about uprooting my whole family.
I am willing to work and listen, but I want to get one thing straight, and I am asking you guys to respect this. I know for a fact, that it never became a physical affair. I know this, and every time someone on here says �I�m am sorry to tell you this, but your wife is having a PA� I get so frustrated, because it means nobody is listening to me. Can we move forward with the understanding that this was never physical?
So here is the latest update on the work situation. She started back a couple weeks ago, after having a month off, and believe me, it was very hard on me just knowing that she would probably see him. I had some major triggers that day, and was very miserable. So after a couple weeks, She is not talking to him at all, (this has been confirmed by people that she works with), but last night she was telling me how awkward it was not even saying hi to him. I know this is just her being frustrated, because she wants things to be the way they were. In our conversation, I told her what my opinion was, and that I was okay with the awkwardness. She said it would be less awkward, if she could at least say Hi in passing, because the other day, her and another coworker �Amy�, were walking down the hall, and he passed them, and in passing he said �Hi Amy�, and she said it was the most awkward situation, because Amy doesn�t know any details, but she totally noticed how blatant it was. Then she said that she was walking outside, and he was outside smoking, and she had to walk past him to get in the building, and as she walked past he turned the other way, and blew out smoke, like he was trying to make it extra awkward. I told her that this is just him sending signals to her. He is purposely running across her path to make it awkward, and to send signals that he wants her to open back up to him.
So Hypothetically, I asked her if it was mutually agreed that she could say hi to him, would it be too much to ask that it be just �HI�, and not even as much as �How�s it going�. She got frustrated and said I am asking her not to be herself, because she says that to everyone, not expecting an answer. So, at the end of the conversation, I told her that I was not comfortable even with �HI�, but that I ultimately can�t force her. She was frustrated, and said �Fine, I will just let it continue to be awkward, because I don�t want you to be disappointed�.
I know this situation is not good, but I don�t know what to do. I know that it could start back up in a flash. Right now I am trying to be the best husband I can be, without Love busters, and I am snooping like hell. It is complete radio silence right now, and they are not contacting each other at all. I am sorry that I look like such a stubborn person. I know that my marriage is hanging by a thread here.

Nobody here thinks you are 1) stupid, 2) stubborn, or 3) ignorant. We do think you are devastated by betrayal and scared to take action. MANY people here have walked this path before you, you could not find a crowd more understanding of your fear.

But we also know that hiding in fear does not accomplish the goal of ending affairs and building strong marriages. Instead, hiding in fear *promotes* affairs, and a 'do nothing' plan of attack is a plan to fail.

So what we know is that your wife has remained in the job, she IS seeing her OM frequently at work, and she is trying to gaslight you into giving her your blessing to communicate with him. (which you gave her...)

And she seems to be more concerned with him or her feeling 'awkward' than the fact that she has left you devastated by betrayal, and has done immeasurable harm to her marriage. I think it is pretty clear that she is still in the fog.

We really don't need to spell this out for you at all do we.

RR,

In your very first post you wrote:

She tells me that she was trying to get him to go to lunch with her, but he would say "No, because I don't think I could keep my hands off you" then she would reply "Don't you think you can control yourself"?, to which he would reply "I don't want to control myself". I am sure there are a lot of details that she left out, but the bottom line is, she said she recognized that his true intentions were physical, and she said she started to feel like a piece of meet. She said at that point she decided not to text him anymore, and I could see from the phone bill that there was definitely a date where it seemed to stop.[/color]


My questions:

1. You approve of your wife arranging a lunch date at work with a man other than her husband?

2. You approve of another man speaking to your wife this way, the mother of your children?

3. You approve of this scumball seeing, working, interacting on a daily basis with your wife?


By NOT exposing, by sitting on your hands, by doing nothing but posting here about what you're not doing....you are answering 'YES', sadly.


I believe on Melody's note is the "Exposure 101" link.

Use it, please. Stand up for your children, your wife, your marriage.

I understand your financial concerns. Since workplace affairs are so common, many people here have to find new employment to end contact with an AP. This is not a forum just for the privileged, just regular everyday folks like you from all over the world, many scraping by also. The decision has to be made to put your marriage first, and job second, regardless of whether you are financially well off or scraping by. Your marriage and family need to come first, not the job.

She can find a new job.