Hello Friends. I am new here and I am so in awe of all of you. You have incredible strength and courage.

I'm writing today because I am a therapist and I want to make a "care package" for my clients who have just discovered their spouse is cheating. I'd really love your help figuring out what should be in the care package.

I have had these ideas, but wonder: what did you most want or need when you first discovered the affair?

I thought maybe these things:
-A script of what to say to confront your spouse
-A quiz to see if your marriage is worth saving
-A checklist of things to do to stop the affair

If you have a moment, please let me know your thoughts. Thank you so much.

Warmly,
Kathy

When an affair is discovered, the BS suffered tremendous shock and pain. What I wanted was a plan. I looked on the Internet searching through forums until I discovered MB. I liked it at first, because, after reading through Dr. H's Basic Concepts and articles and seeing how most of the posters here post his guidance, it seemed the place to get the kind of help I was looking for.

Have you read through the Basic Concepts? Have you read through the sticky thread at the top of the SAA forum?

Here is a checklist from SAA:

Hi Kathy, welcome to Marriage Builders. The steps for recovery are very specific and unless they follow these steps, most do not make it. The goal of this program is to a) affair proof the marriage and b) create a better marriage than before by creating a romantic relationship. While most marriages do not end in divorce over infidelity, few thrive and grow after an affair. It has been our experience that if they don't follow these steps, they are a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage and are more vulnerable to an affair afterwards than before. We have seen many cases of repeat affairs when couples don't follow these steps. Dr Harley describes it thusly:

continued here

You are well positioned to help others save their marriages if you are a counselor. We believe that most marriages can be saved unless there has been physical abuse or a substance addiction. Many of the latter can be saved. In order to save any marriage, of course, both spouses have to be on board. In most situations, there is one reluctant spouse, but as long as that spouse is willing to go through these steps, we can turn that around.

Marriage Builders has a completely different goal than most marriage programs. The goal of MB is create romantic love. Couples who are in love do not get divorced. Betrayed spouses who are in love don't tend to grieve over the past.

I would strongly recommend that you get the books Surviving an Affair, Effective Marriage Counseling and the workbook, Five Steps to Romantic Love. The workbook has all of the questionaires necessary to go through this program.

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.

Put a voice activated recorder in the basket, ostensibly, with a wink, so they can record "their" thoughts and feelings between sessions with you.

Your betrayed clients need to snoop on their current and/or former wayward spouse such that you can help them best deal with the reality of their situation versus what they are guessing or hoping is going on.

I hope after reading on MB you'll come over to more tough side of counseling. Way too many counselors want to talk a wayward into ending the affair and/or behaving better. Too many presume the wayward is a good person acting bad that can somehow be logic'ed into behaving better versus a bad person based upon their behavior who could change (repent) and become a good person who also behaves well.

In essence, you have to break the affair addiction FIRST before any productive counseling can be undertaking. They are wasting their money and your time counseling while an affair continues. I know it's tough to do in person. My wife and I have experienced that trying to help other couples in person in our real life versus helping as an anonymous poster on the internet. If you have trouble with that....with being tough....then WHILE you counsel them and the affair continues....secretly send the betrayed spouses to us to work with them between sessions. I guarantee your success rate will quadruple and, those that do divorce will be ready to do so much quicker after having exhausted these concepts trying to bust up the affair. More success and quicker resolutions...a win - win.

A quiz could be a disaster especially close after Dday. Emotions are crazy and a WS is usually willing to blame the BS for everything under the sun including the affair...and some BSs are in such bad shape they will accept the blame and beat themselves up more.

I don't know what kind of quiz you had in mind but taking the marital background and looking for individual red flag behavior is all you need but I would never put it out there to your clients as a measuring stick of "if your marriage is worth saving." Too much can be subjective. If there is physical abuse, substance abuse, serial cheating, bad behavior for the entire marriage, criminal behavior, etc. - those are definitely things that would be considered anyway.

Welcome to MB

Confrontation of the wayward spouse is pretty useless. For a start, they know they have been cheating (so there's no point telling them something they already know!) : they've also got a prepared script for such a confrontation. Oh and confronting a spouse (demands, anger) also withdraws lovebank units at a time (Plan A) when you want to look your strongest and best.

Dr H instead encourages exposure. Few waywards have a script prepared to justify such an action for their whole world. The BS should keep it very short and sweet after exposure. Such as handing them the checklist.



If there are logical reasons to save the marriage (kids, long marriage, finances) and the checklist is agreed to, then it's a goer. Young marriages, no kids = not so much.

If anything on the checklist skipped = definitely not.

Serial cheats pose a much greater risk, but Dr H has worked out a more stringent plan to even help in that situation. However not everyone would be up for it.

Thanks so much, everyone... this is so helpful. I really appreciate your kind responses.

This video might be helpful too:

Dr. Willard Harley from his infidelity video

When I first started doing this, I could not imagine anybody getting over it. Now, there are a lot of people that have told me that they haven't gotten over it. Thirty years has gone by, and they haven't gotten over it. But they haven't gone through the procedure I recommend, either.

The people that have gone through this procedure that I recommend HAVE gotten over it. And to me it's the most amazing thing that you can go through the worst experience of your life -- somebody hurting you in the worst way possible -- and, two years later, you love the guy, you trust the guy, you forgive the guy, you never wanna lose the guy.

To me, that's amazing.

It's what love is all about. It's what male-female relationships are all about. And when you do things the right way, you can restore a relationship even when a professional like me looks at it and thinks it's hopeless.

I got a procedure that works even when I think it's hopeless!

Even when I don't think... "I think you oughtta' leave the guy! What a jerk!"

"No, I don't really wanna leave the guy. Tell me what I can do to save the marriage."

"Well, OK, I'll give you some help."

So, you know, this is what I do. I do this for a living. I help people solve problems where I'm not always convinced that they oughtta' be solved.

But I know how to solve 'em. This is the way... this is the way do it.

If a person says "I don't want to save my marriage", I'd say "I agree! You have no argument with me! Your spouse did something that, from my perspective, is the most disgraceful thing imaginable. If you wanna leave him for that, you have my blessings."

But people have come to me and said "I want you to help me save my marriage."

"OK, I can do that, too. This is how to do it."

But it's a very narrow road, and I don't know of another way that can be accomplished. I don't know of another way. You can never see or talk to the [affair partner]* again, you're gonna go through a period of withdrawal that's, that's, that's a little bit ugly, and then you're gonna have to learn how to achieve these three goals in your marriage:

You're gonna have to learn how to make all of your decisions with each other in mind.

You're gonna have to learn how to avoid being the cause of each other's unhappiness.

And you're gonna have to learn how to meet each other's emotional needs.

*Dr. Harley says 'spouse' here in the video, but it's obvious he means the affair partner, who most often is married him or herself

BulldogMama, do you listen to Dr. Harley's daily radio show? It's a fantastic resource! The daily broadcast is free, and there are paid archives going back nine years.

Listening every day eventually enabled me to save my marriage. Dr. Harley covers nearly every marital situation conceivable.

Thanks so much for your super helpful reply, Melody. So a question...

Let's say you've just discovered that your spouse is cheating. It's the middle of the night, he's on a business trip, you've hacked into his email and know what's going on.

What do you do? Do you start exposure immediately or do you start with talking to your spouse?

Thanks for the clarification.

Have you read this? Exposure 101

Also we would ask if you have researched who the affair partner is (OW/OM).

Confronting your spouse is the last thing you do because they already know they are having an affair.

You get everything ready for exposure.

Not Mel, but why would the BS need to talk to the WS? Talk about what?

The BS should print off the emails as evidence and even forward them to her own email. Delete the sent emails and empty the trash if he/she doesn't want the WS to see that the emails were forwarded. A BS should have (and keep) any and all affair evidence.

I exposed my WH's affair with OW1 while he was out of town for work. It rocked his world and was beneficial to me that he was out of town while I exposed.

x 2

You never, ever confront the wayward spouse! Exposure is best done without any forewarning at all - but you need proof and a strategic plan of who to expose to - and contact them all at once. It should take the WS totally by surprise. The exposure targets should be the confronters.

It takes a village!

Also BDM, if you are going to counsel affair couples, it would help you to know that I don't know of any - even ones with very remorseful spouses - who don't physically suffer with the pain.

Hard to describe. You don't eat, you can't sleep - you can't move without feeling a rusty knife in the gut. The memory is dull for me but I remember screaming because of the pain.

This goes away with care over time but triggers can brng it back - like PTSD. Lots of people have to move away because their home is so close to so many triggers from the affair. Seeing the OP ever again is an absolute no-no.

Since my spouse is in a fog, I would start exposure within a couple of days. It typically takes 12-24 hours to organize an effective, strategic exposure. When my exposure targets call my spouse and ask him to end his affair, I would expect him to call me. At that point, I would demand that he end his affair immediately.

Talking to him AFTER exposure is more effective because the exposure hopefully a) penetrates the fog and b) wrecks the affair. Talking to him then is not very effective because of the fog. It is much like attempting to reason with a falling down drunk, a waste of time. The exposure puts enormous pressure on the affairees to end their affair. Once the affair is ended, then talking about a course of action can be productive. But the first step is to kill the affair. Once the affair is killed, recovery can begin.

bump