Apologies in advance if I break any protocols, am a newbie and this is my first post. I'm 54, wife is 41, we have a 6yr old son.
D-Day for wife's EA was Christmas Eve 2014. Refrained from any displays of anger but quietly removed myself from the household (we had 14 family members in our house)and shortly thereafter had to return to my work abroad.
Her family discovered the truth over Christmas and have broken off all contact with her.
Only a ten minute conversation with WS before I left, which was simply the 'Love you But' conversation. The dilemma: I am an expat worker, spending 6-7 weeks out of country and then back for one week. So the normal state of affairs for the past five years is periods of separation with daily texts, emails and Skype calls.
After a few weeks of non-loaded calls texts and messages (in which she called me 'darling' and signed off with kisses, we had our first meaningful conversation two days ago.
It was replete with the usual WS clich�s (haven't loved you for four years, should never have married you etc.)
After a gap of a day the texts started up again with the adventures of our household cat and more kisses.
I'm meant to return home in a couple of weeks when she is going to take time off from our child to have a 'thinking week' (or more likely turn the EA into a PA). Having been in limbo for all of Jan, and unable to use Plan A or B with complete effectiveness due to my work circumstances I'm kind of stalled!
Would be grateful for any advice on the best way forward. Thank you again and hello to my fellow Board members.

I hate to tell you this, but your marriage has no hope of recovery if you stay abroad.

If you want to save your marriage, you are going to need to get home ASAP. You will need a new job that can have you home every night, and you will need to start spending 25-30 hours alone with your wife every week on dates.

Will you go home?

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.

Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

Hi Prisca - absolutely! Have stated my intent to return home already. As the sole breadwinner for our family, I will have to find another job, which could take 2-3 months. Am praying this is not too long. The only other option is to request a sabbatical in the meantime, which would be unpaid.
Feeling trapped between responsibilities to keep earning to feed our child and pay our mortgage and to try to rescue our marriage!

I don't think your marriage can endure another 2-3 months of this kind of work schedule. You can bet that the affair is still on, and it will continue as long as you are not around and are not in Plan A. It becomes more entrenched every day.

And even if that affair dies, another will be on its heels.

If you are wanting to save your marriage, then put your marriage first. If I were you, I'd take the sabbatical and get home. I'd also get on antidepressants, because the next several months are going to be hell.

The importance of never spending another night apart from your wife can not be overstated. If you want your marriage to survive, you need to put the other concerns aside and get back home right away.

Welcome to MB, and I'm sorry to hear of the events in your marriage.

You said: "I am an expat worker, spending 6-7 weeks out of country and then back for one week. So the normal state of affairs for the past five years is periods of separation with daily texts, emails and Skype calls."

This means that in a year, you spend about 12 weeks at home (allowing for holidays - or less if you're doing this for tax reasons), and 40 weeks away from your wife. Well, as you can probably see now, from her point of view this isn't a marriage. Skypeing every day is no substitute for enjoying sex and affection with a warm, flesh-and-blood spouse, who is in her own bed every night, and talking for a fixed, scheduled length of time to a screen is not the same as being together all evening and all weekend. She has no excuse for having an affair, but you can see how the huge gap in your meeting her emotional needs made an affair very tempting, and very easy, for her. And the same could have happened to you.

"D-Day for wife's EA was Christmas Eve 2014." Please tell us what you know about the affair, and how you came to discover it. What makes you think it is an EA? There is hardly ever any such thing as an EA, unless the couple has not had the chance to meet in person. If this was not an Internet-only affair, then it is already a full-blown PA.

Who is OM? E.g. is he an ex boyfriend, or a neighbour, or someone from Church? How do you know it has only been going on for 6 months? Where did they meet (and have sex)? Is he married? Has the affair been exposed to his wife? Does he have children?

"Her family discovered the truth over Christmas and have broken off all contact with her." Who in "her family" has been told, personally by you, about the affair? Have you told your son about it?

"I'm 54, wife is 41, we have a 6yr old son." That is a big age gap, and a late child for you. Has either of you been married before? Are there any children from prior relationships?

Thanks for your questions:
I completely agree with your analysis of the limitations in our relationship. We overstretched and got a lovely house that couldn't have been afforded on anything but an expat salary. As you say, no compensation for warmth and proximity. More fool me.
D Day was the discovery of emails on an unlocked computer - they indicated two months of 'racy talk' mainly around the fact the EA has not yet been consummated.
OM is an ex-boyfriend from 10 years ago, the relationship collapsed badly leaving her saddled with his debts. He appears to have no wife or child. I have personally told her mother and father.
There are no children from previous relationships. I was married for ten years previously until my first wife died in an accident.
We have not yet spoken to our son - this will happen in a couple of weeks time. In that respect, we will be a united and fully cooperative front. Nothing is more important to either of us than his continuing emotional security. Of course he will be impacted, but (with deep irony) throughout his entire life his on/off father has been 'normality'.

I'm sorry to hear of the death of your first wife.

How far away from your home does OM live? Why have they not met in person yet?

You don't seem to know for certain about the wife or child. You need to do Internet searches to see what you can discover about him. It's not very likely that a 40 year-old man has never been married and had children. it's much more likely that he is the typical married man (MM) cake-eater, who has an acceptable marriage that he wouldn't dream of giving up, but who doesn't see any harm in a bit of tail on the side.

If he really is single, and if she is saying that it was a mistake for her to marry you, there is more at risk than in the usual married woman's affair. Usually the married woman (MW) gets into the affair when her love for the husband has run out. There is very little keeping her in the marriage. If the OM is single and willing to take on her and her child, she might well jump. However, if OM is married and runs cowering back to his wife when the affair is exposed, the MW is beached and has nowhere to go. She will try to keep the affair going for a long time, in the hope that MM's kids will grow up fast and he will leave, but eventually she comes to see that she has been used, and she has nowhere to go except back to the marriage.

You'd better hope that he is married. Please search vigorously to find out.

I see you haven't given up the idea of waiting for your next leave to go home.

You need to go to your superiors NOW and tell them that you have just discovered that your wife is having an affair, and tell them (do not ask permission) that you need to leave on the next flight and go home to save your marriage.

As an ex-pat company, this will not be the first time they have had to deal with this issue, and the chances are that they will not want to be seen as uncaring employers. They might be able to consolidate your paid leave while you look for another job at home. In any case, there is nothing they can do if you simply announce that you are going home now.

When it comes to telling your son, the operative word is "I", not "we". "We" do not tell him anything. "I" (you) tell him on your own. The way you have written this screams that you will work with your wife to concoct a story that Mummy and Daddy are having problems but they both love (son) very much. In your scenario, everything will be done to protect your wife's reputation in his eyes, when in fact her love for her son is being placed a long way behind her love for OM and herself.

You are the only person your son can depend upon to protect him, so don't try to protect or work with your wife on this. And BTW, your son needs much more than what has been "normality" for him these past 5 out of his 6 years alive. He needs a new normal, with a father at home every night, and parents who are in love with each other - and who go out on dates, and who kiss and cuddle in person, every day.

This looks very good if you can get yourself home, pronto.

Could you rent out the 'lovely house' for a smaller property?

I agree very much with SC's points (doing a search to make sure OM is not married and exposing to your son alone, etc). Please let us know your thoughts.

Best to leave her out of that discussion because it will just lead to an unncessary fight in front of your child. I would sit down with him on your own and give him the facts about the affair along with hte name of the OM.

More importantly, you need to move home if you want to save this. You can't possibly save your marriage or sustain it with this lifestyle.

My H almost took an expat job in another country. We never once thought about him moving there on his own, it was going to be a family move overseas. We discussed it with our children, looked at international schools and real estate together, and talked about all the couple and family time we would have as new people in a foreign land.

Is there a reason your wife and child did not move with you on this expat work? I know loads of people who do expat work and their families always go with them.

If I were your wife, I would have felt very uncared for to have you take a job like this and leave me behind.

Don't do this with her. You need to step up and be the foremost parent at this time.

She isn't even ready to end her affair and has no plans to fly straight with her son. She would give him a white wash. You can give him a pledge to fight off OM and encourage him to tell you all the things he has seen and suspected.

He can appeal to his mother and talk it over to her AFTER he knows you have his back.