Another thought while I ponder exposure...they are both in the same program at college...I think he graduated recently, she's still got a little time left. I've met several of her instructors and gotten to know a few and they are very straight laced people who would not approve of this. My wife has tremendous respect for these people and I think they might have large influence over her in this, particularly since the OM is another student/former student. Might also have great influence over the OM since they know me, I have paid for her education and we have been married several years now. They're all on both wife and OM's Facebook friends.

Out of line to contact these people?

No, it is not out of line.
If the affair is in a place, such as college or workplace then exposure should be done there.

He's probably the OM.
Get his info and some proof and then post the OM and the proof on www.cheaterville.com

Another Q:

The vehicle she is driving is in my name and I paid for it. It's always been considered a gift to her, and I've put a tremendous amount of work into it (it's a classic).

I have been tempted after exposure to retrieve it and change out the ignition tumbler so her keys no longer work. Not to spite her, but because it would make her dependent on the OM (who is currently unemployed...his biz went under as well) for transportation and remind her of her economic dependency on me as well. Too much? Bad idea? Save for Plan B?

This is exactly the reason for exposure. To put pressure on the affair and garner support for you. This would indeed do both of those things so it is absolutely not out of line.

But make sure you have your ducks in a row first, so you can do the exposure all at once and without warning.

Wife just texted me saying she wants to chat this weekend and "pick out a time we can talk". I'm guessing this means that we are actually going to talk at a time beyond this weekend, but I'm not sure.

All of the uncertainty is like a roller coaster ride. I feel like the whole concept of a discussion at this point is ridiculous...it's more like she will tell me what she feels like doing and ask me to deal with it. Unless I'm completely wrong about things at this point, this will be completely unilateral on her part with me just left to pick up the pieces...everything up to this point has been this way. Sorry, but I feel like X and so we must Y.

It feels like an eternity since I've seen her or talked to her. I actually dread seeing her. I miss her but the trust is so broken that I feel like she's a different person now, someone I profoundly do not understand.

But more than anything I'm puzzled by what she will have to say, and whether she'll tell me to my face or over the phone. Will she ask for me to co-operate with legal separation/divorce? Is this talk about revealing the affair? Is this something unexpected, like asking to try to fix things?

I suspect the first option, but I think her guilt might lead her to the second, in which case I don't know what I will do. Do you expose an affair someone has admitted to you? If she reveals it to me I will guess that it's in the "I'm in love with him so you and I are done now" sort of way.

Third option seems like a fairly tale by now.

PI can't get started till Friday. Going to gather funds, pay him ASAP, and stop thinking about this until I have a report or talk to her, whichever comes first. Her family still doesn't know where she actually is and I wish I could tell them but I'm waiting for all of the facts.

Sir,

Please do yourself a favor and ignore your wife's fog babble and focus on exposure; expose to the OM family and friends. Post him on Cheaterville

axslinger, you are doing great. Just keep moving forward, get the evidence and we will help you with next steps. In the meantime, I would start creating a list of exposure targets. Go to the OM's Facebook page TONIGHT and make a copy of all his contacts. Start prioritizing them into a list with family first, college professors, married friends.

Read through my exposure thread and start making your plans.

Going to have to take actions at the bank today. Wife has added nothing to our joint account from her new jobs and is paying most of her bills out of the account using my income only. Today she withdrew 75% of our rent payment from my account. Apparently she has some logic on how it's going to be split, but that logic includes me covering 3/4 of it along with all of her bills (except for food and gas from what I can tell), and all of the marriage counseling (which she agreed to split). As usual (since the separation announcement), I have no seat at her table. Unilateral.

Where we live if you get served divorce papers you have 30 days to respond or the filing spouse is awarded their demands. I have a feeling I am going to get served by the wife ASAP so she can try to kill the marriage without the affair being discovered. I am going today to talk to an attorney about how to stall her, at least long enough for exposure and fallout.

axslinger, hopefully you have removed the rest of your money from this account and rerouted your deposits so she can't plunder the bank account.

fyi, the attorney will likely tell you NOT to expose. The reason is because his goal will be to facilitate an easy amicable divorce. Our goal is to help you save your marriage if possible. Just warning you that most attorneys do not like their clients to make waves. They just want you to be as amicable as possible and make their jobs as easy as possible.

Yeah, opened a new account at the bank that's just me. Going to spend the next few days rerouting all of my autopays and my paycheck to it instead.

Contacted an attorney but no appt yet. Good tip though, I will keep that in mind and not mention exposure.

Went through my text history while waiting at the bank. This A has been happening for a while, at least 4 or 5 months. WW texts to me almost dry up after April, and lots of familiar excuses start to appear about being away from the house. I think it's been a competition in her mind between OM and I all summer, and finally she settled on me losing or felt too guilty to continue.

Lingering question: What if she talks to me and admits the affair? Continue to expose it? She'll expect me to tell everyone if she tells me, so I wonder if it still has the same effect.

Yes, once you have the facts, you should expose the affair.

Should be able to pay the PI tomorrow, moving the amount of money it cost took a while.

It's hard to believe how much of a roller coaster this sort of thing is emotionally.

After I found out about the money earlier, I was excited. I also realized that this relationship very closely matches some of WW's lifestyle before we were married and before she was a committed believer in Christ. She was wild, promiscuous and threw herself into destructive relationships with unbelievers and people she was actually scared to commit to long-term. OM's FB profile suggests a lot of these characteristics, so it looks like a spiritual relapse to me. That also gives me hope about when the fog lifts. She was a strong believer during our marriage and I think God will shake her up after exposure.

On the flip side, I found out through intel that she is getting an IUD installed and has an appt for this. This is just extremely frustrating because (1) we figured out around our anniversary when her sexual aversion finally ended that IUD was part of the solution and she promised she get an appt set up for one but never did (it was a constant point of conflict for us during spring/summer) and (2) she and OM are having a lot of unprotected sex apparently.

Between her history before me and now this, I feel like I tried to do the right thing by marrying her and ended up getting bookended by illicit sex while our actual marriage was a 6 year drought. I know now part of that was my fault for telling her to "fix it" and not trying to help more, but it really makes me question whether I want to continue. She couldn't wait for me (and even boasted about her sexual experience while we dated), gave me almost nothing during marriage in this dept, and now has cheated on me and given OM everything I was denied and patiently waited for.

I believe it is my spiritual obligation to continue this but God will have to work strongly on both her and I for me to just jump back into this if she gives me the chance. I have too many wonderful memories with her (and her family) in other areas to torpedo this just yet, but the pain of that realization is so deep. God will have to lead me through that door.

I'm planning on doing a Cheaterville post on OM. What about a post on Craigslist or online message boards dedicated to our area? Lots of possible targets to put pressure on the OM because of the nature of his profession.

Also planning on confronting the OM after I start exposure as suggested in another post. I've been wondering if this would be effective the whole time. Not violently, just sternly in explaining my intent to fight for her, make life inconvenient for him as long as the affair continues and also explaining the extent to which I care for her and the extent to which he is causing pain and destruction in our families.

I'll ask the PI to determine his employment status and was thinking of going over after the wife leaves his place for work and having a chit chat with him.

Very curious to see what dynamic prevails after exposure, wife is doing everything she can to maintain the deception. All of her stuff is still here as if this is just a "cool off" time for us where she's staying with a female friend. When her family finds out she's been staying at another man's house the stuff is really going to hit the fan. She's in a fantasy world right now.

Her intended conversation doesn't appear to be "I am so sorry, I want to come home now" or else she wouldn't be putting it off for days.

If it were me, strictly from a negotiating tactic, I'd let her know something came up on your schedule for Saturday but you'd look forward to talking next week. This will prevent you from blowing your cover (that you suspect) but it will also keep her in miserable anticipation of a dreaded conversation. She probably wants to "get it off her chest" so she can feel better. Just more unrest for her to experience in affair land.

I would not have any conversations with her until you have your PI information/confirmation and have exposed, so the exposure has the maximum surprise and impact.

An obligation for a spouse to keep a marriage covenant after adultery is not in the Bible; quite the opposite, the Bible gives the innocent party permission to divorce.

Be careful of heaping non-Scriptural obligations upon yourself. I see this type of error in well meaning church leadership advisers all the time. They try to read a cloaked intention hidden in the instructions when the passage is actually very clear as stated.

A classic one is if you are the betrayed spouse but you had SF after knowing about the adultery, the SF signifies forgiveness so now you can no longer have grounds of adultery for a Biblical divorce. They have added some of their "common sense" to Scripture but that's not what Scripture says.

If God intended for a betrayed spouse to have a continued spiritual obligation to make it work, He would have said that instead of clearly allowing divorce in the event of adultery.

Good points, Sunnytimes. I will try to stall her and already need to work Saturday afternoon to make up hours.

Just met with and paid the PI. He's going to try to GPS her today, and watch early next week. Now the fun starts.

The spiritual obligation is more of what I've received in prayer about this topic as well as recognizing my own poor spiritual leadership during our marriage and this episode being a result of that to some degree. She was more obedient in that dept and now she has fallen and I'm trying to stand in the gap.

As much pain as this has been, I feel if I ditch her now instead of trying to lead her back to the water, I abandon her in her weakest moment. She may not want to receive any help at this point and D might be inevitable. If that is to be, PI report will protect me/my assets, as well as giving me closure and the comfort of knowing I exposed the facts about the situation instead of her fallacies she had spun. I went down fighting the good fight.

But in the darkest point of this (night of separation announcement) before I suspected an A, I had a powerful prayer time and felt that I received a promise about this situation, that we would be restored. It goes against what everyone is advising me to do at this point, but the only comfort I find is in clinging to it and pursuing it doggedly. Talking to family, the practical side of me wants to just agree with them about starting over with someone else, but spiritually this just isn't what I am getting and each opened door in this process (finding $$$, finding intel, finding PI) has brought with it a little nudge of the Holy Spirit to continue.

That, and against all reason at this point, I still love her. The more irrational she becomes, the more I am able to sympathize with her condition of being fogged and her reckless actions as being impulse and not intentional.

No contact has been great for getting clarity and I plan on getting report, exposing if my suspicions are correct, and leaving the rest to God. I can't yank her out of the fog, I can only set the best conditions for it to lift and let God finish the story while I Plan A her. The rest for me will just be prayer and focusing on becoming a better person and potential partner for whoever. And who knows, maybe the PI will tell me I'm wrong about the A.

If God intended for a betrayed spouse to have a continued spiritual obligation to make it work, He would have said that instead of clearly allowing divorce in the event of adultery.

Jesus' answer in Mark 10 states that it was only given because of condition of our hearts, not that it's a valid reason to throw in the towel.

Otherwise, a man that lusts at all at women other than his wife is committing adultery in God's eyes, per Matthew 5:27,28.