Yes, it was very easy for your husband to have a secret second life. He didn't have to lie much, just not tell you what he was doing.

In a successful marriage, the couple commits to providing extraordinary care for each other. There is no way to do that when one of you is away in Europe for several months.

AM

Come on! We are almost in our mid 50s. I thought the philandering [censored] was done back in 2011. I guess it is never enough for him.

Not when he has no accountability. It doesn't matter the age, we've had 70 somethings come on here and be in an affair.

If you are willing go put your school ahead of your marriage and are going to be apart from each other, then you might as well get a divorce.

Is this "no nights apart" mantra applicable for the rest of our lives? And if so, how can this be practically addressed?

Yes, and its very easy. Never make plans for any trips that don't involve your spouse being there as well. Period. Ever.

You are the chicken player who gets hit by a car and decides to go play in the road again because you are "beyond this accident fiasco." You are right, "it is never really over" when you NEVER take extraordinary precautions to prevent another affair. When you play in the road again, you get hit again.

That mantra is only applicable as long as you want to have an affair proof marriage. Is it "practical" to get hit by AFFAIR BUS #2, because you don't learn from your first mistakes? I don't get that.

That is like saying you are "strong" enough to go drunk driving.

What made you think you had a strong marriage when he had only recently had an affair?

What kind of marriage do you think anybody can have when one spouse lives in Europe and the other in The USA? Is living thousands of miles apart a real, effective marriage in your view?

It seems you did not listen to what was said to you last time. Once that affair was finished and no contact was established with that woman, the crucial thing for you to do was to ensure that the conditions that led to that affair were changed, so that no such affair could take place in the future. You would not be in recovery unless you dealt with those conditions. The conditions that invited an affair into your marriage were your husband's living apart from you.

Instead of blocking that avenue, you chose to make the conditions even more favourable to an affair, by moving a continent away from your husband.

Dr. Harley's very basic premise for trustworthiness is that everyone can be trusted under certain conditions and no one can be trusted in other conditions. It's very easy and very tempting to create a secret second life when the conditions allow it. Every single condition that helped lead to the affair must be eliminated as the first step in recovery.

A spouse who has had an affair is a prime candidate for having another; that's why extraordinary precautions are SO important and an absolute requirement for recovery.

Thank you all for pointing out the failure on my part to preserve the relationship. I guess I will shift over to the "divorcing" forum. I guess my marriage is beyond repair at this point.

Will your WH agree to live by extraordinary precautions for life, including no nights apart?

Its not beyond repair.
the forum posters are merely pointing out that you have failed to follow Dr Harleys program for surviving an affair.

This marriage and every marriage you will ever have will fail if you insist on spending most of your time apart.

Even in a marriage not subject to infidelity you cannot choose independent goals once married.

Living apart is not marriage!

Anything that comes before your marriage will be its undoing. The marriage has to be the first and total priority.

The Harleys continued to be educated after marriage but they had an integrated, married lifestyle which involved being together every night.

Nobody can be in love with someone they do not see.

It is not your complacency. Even if you were in a coma, he could choose to be by your side and not allow other women to meet his needs.

What you can do now, is to insist this is the lifestyle you expect him to follow.

Of course you don't have to - perhaps you are just done?

I don't have any 'hard' evidence except I know he chose not to disclose a meeting with a female colleague over coffee while on a business trip. I had asked him specifically what he was doing that day and he didn't mention this meeting. Later, based on a credit card records and phone records I was able to figure this out.

Had he disclosed this to me, I would have found it acceptable - after all a coffee with a colleague should not a big deal. But the mere fact that he lied to me about it is what has made me explode. I confronted him and he told me that this was precisely the reason why he didn't tell me -- because he knew I would go ballistic.

Now, I question everything he says or does. He has provided the password to his work email (I do have access to his other personal account) so I could verify that he hasn't been engaging in any objectionable exchanges. I am home for the next week and leaving again for another 5 weeks before coming home for good.

Not sure what plan, if any, I should implement at the moment. Unlike 2011, our child is out of the house in college and proceeding with Plan D does not appear to be unreasonable even though getting used to this idea after 20+ years together is quite scary.

So, to be clear:

You found credit card evidence of spending that he had not told you about. What did the phone records show? How did they point in the direction of female companionship?

Once you confronted him about the spending, he admitted to going for coffee with a woman. You only have his word that the time they spent together was only having coffee. Is that correct?

There is nothing here to save unless you both make a radical change in your lifestyle. The problem is not his "honesty" about going out with females, but that you don't live together or practice any semblance of extraordinary precautions. Unless you are both willing to make those radical changes, you are wasting your time because your lifestyles won't sustain a marriage.

If you want to save your marriage, he should quit his job and you should never spend the nights apart again.

True, unless one of the colleagues is a married man and the other is a female. Then, it is a big deal and should not be occurring. Did you read anything about how to recover after an affair when you were here in 2011? You seem to have little or no understanding of how to recover from an affair and how to build a passionate marriage.

AM