James; you were too indirect with your exposures. Had you used the exact words that Mel gave you with your child, there would have been no doubt in your daughter's mind. When you get a chance to clarify this with her, do so. She does need to know right from wrong or else this is going to cascade down yet another generation.

I suspect also with OM's mother, had you asked directly for her intervention you would have had a more positive response. She had been already fed a pack of lies by her son and so nothing short of a direct hit was going to work.

You need to be both fighting to the death for your marriage and doing plan A with your wife. It is a very tricky juggling act but it sounds as if you are making progress as being torn is a good sign.

As MRS. Slocum use to say at Grace Brothers Dept Store: he's weak as bath water.

Or as we say in England; faint heart never won fair lady.

Tell your children the true facts. Like we told you, if you don't tell them the truth, your wife will tell them lies. You don't use her as a pawn, but you tell her the truth about her life.


And that is the problem. Most marriage cousnelors are not pro marriage and will help your wife pursue her affair if that is her "decision." That will be the worst decision of her life and most counselors will help her achieve that. Is that what you want?

The reason we discourage counseling is because it is destructive to marriages, and a downright disaster when there is an affair. Marriage counselors have an 84% failure rate and have a higher personal divorce rate than the general population. Most are little more than divorce facilitators. They have no earthly idea how to save a marriage and as such, tend to give marriage wrecking advce. They don't understand the mentality of a person in an affair and as such, tend to validate marriage wrecking ideas of the wayward spouse. They give validation to bad marriage ideas.

For example, it would not be uncommon for a MC to advise you to move out and try and trial separation. What will you do then? Such advice would destroy your marriage and leave an opportunity for the OM to move and take your place.

Dr Harley does not give marriage wrecking advice; he specializes in infidelity and saving marriages. His ideas work.


Clear up the facts wiht your daughter and inform your wife that you have told the OM's mother.

]
SHE HAS MADE A DECISION!! What are you talking about?? Making a decision is not the problem. Having an affair is the problem!

Her decision is to have you at home taking care of her and the children while she has an affair.

She doesn't need "counseling" to make a decision, for crying out loud!! She needs to end her affair!!

Well as I suspected there was a calm before the storm. She has now told me the affair is not going to end but we are. As you will all expect, it is all my fault for the exposures over the last week, not the affair!

She now wants a "separation" where we live together whilst we work out the finer details. I say "finer" details but she has not considered any detail yet. She wants us to be friends forever and in time have christmases all together etc. So I am going to take from that that she still needs me.

Obviously we had a long fairly heated discussion and that got us nowhere. But I did leave it with an I do love you and I am here for you. I have to say it is odd posting this because it makes you feel as if it is just a lie to facilitate a plan, when of course it is entirely true.

So I suppose the positive takeaway is that we will be living together for the next however long so I will continue plan A. In a way it is a relief that a "decision" has been made as I can now go ahead with this without waiting for the sword to drop.

On the point about telling my daughter, believe me ahe was very clear about it when I told her. She was in floods of tears. However, her mum was able to "persuade" her with a simple lie and of course she believed her as I was not going to get into a row there and then. Given the above, she does need to be told again.

Any other thoughts?

Sorry meant to say:

What should I do about contact with him from here. I cannot kick her out of the house so I will try to limit possbilitiea. I will refuse to babysit for example if they want to go out. In fact I am thinking that I should insist on only allowing her parents to babysit for such occasions.

How else can I deal with this?

That is great!! Just be sure and tell her you are not separated, you are married. Let her know that if she does not end her affair and this moves to divorce, you won't be "friends." Be sure and express this to her. The request to be "friends" is a classic tactic that is designed to alleviate her guilt. You should not help her in that regard.


I would strongly urge you to avoid any fights. It will get you nowhere. It is like debatig with a falling down drunk.


She is confused and scared and doesnt know what she is going to do. Of course she is not going to move out because she has no place to go. The only decision that has been made is she will continue the affair but do so from your guest room.


Absolutely. Don't allow your wife to lie to your kids.

Sounds like the exposure was very impactful and was a huge hit on the affair!! I would also make sure she knows you have exposed to the OM's mother.

What about the OM's contacts? Did you hear from any of them?

Surely you jest. She plans on conducting her affair in OPEN?

I would ask her right in front of the kids if she intends on carrying on her affair with this married man right in front of her family. If she is going out wtih this rat, you all need to be very open about it.

Will her parents try to intervene and help you and the kids?

Yes the problem here is that it is an "affair" from now on but she is likely to see it (at least as of today) that it is out in the open now so she is free to do what she likes. Unfortunately her parents are a bit weak and have not questioned her. However, forcing them to be the ones that babysit to facilitate it further would have an effect on them especially when they see our children. I am certainly not going to let her be in it easily.

You are right that she is still scared. She has told me that she has had a knot in her stomach for the last few months and the last thing I said to her tonight was "your knot hasn't gone has it" and she cried.

You have done a great job, James. All you can do now is sit back and watch the affair crumble. Look for opportunities to create conflict in the affair, such as confronting the OM, telling your wife you have spoken to OM's mother and told her that she is a married woman committing adultery and tell your older child the truth.

I am sad that your inlaws are not taking a greater role here, because you would think that they might care for their own grandchildren even though they care nothing for their daughter. Can you approach them and ask to use their influence to run off the OM and persuade their DD to end her affair? For their own grandchildrne??

If they say something stupid like "we just want her to be happy." Ask them if they would be saying the same thing if she were a serial killer? You can point out that happiness is the result of being good, not being bad. Adulterers are NEVER happy, because the traits that made the affair possible always find their way into the affair. Your wife will wreck her life with this faithless, uncaring piece of crap. Surely they care enough to try and prevent that?

Here.
"I Encourage BHs to Confront OM" Dr. Harley

Quick update on this.

The disclosure to work resulted in a mild slap on the wrist for technical breaches of company policy. The affair itself is regarded as a personal matter. Obviously this is all what she has told me anyway.

She is however more active in looking for a new job.

The facebook exposure worked and he was furious. It also affected his wife and she is apparently threatening legal action against all 3 of us if she is not left alone.

I have continued with a plan A and tell her I am still here for her. We are doing our own "counselling" ie talking about where we think it went wrong rather than the affair itself. This is quite revealing. She said I had "floored" her with some of my responses to her perceived issues, in the sense that she had built up an expectation of the "why" and could not believe that my response was completely different.

But at the end of all of this, he continues to contact her on a daily basis by email/text and she probably does the same. Plus they then see each other at work.

Hi JAmes, thanks for the update. I would make certain that your discussions are pleasant and focus mostly on creating a great future marriage if she will end her affair. I would paint that picture for her but continue to object to the affair.

Did you talk to your child again to make sure she knows the truth about the affair? Does the child know the name of the OM?

Outside of that, the best you can do is hold on for few months, doing the best Plan A you can. If her affair doesn't end in a few months, you should plan to separate.

Hi again. Quick update.

I raised with her at the weekend how a divorce/separation would look - quite detailed overview of financials, kids etc. That seemed to hit her quite hard. She said she had not done any of this. I told her I did not want a divorce. She said "I am not sure I do either". Who knows if that is true or just another lie to allow her to control the story.

She does however still live with me and we share a bed even after several discussions on her sleeping elsewhere. And she always give me hugs before we go to sleep and a few random hugs, touches and occasional kiss during the day. But, for example, we do not hold hands when walking down the street.

But she is still at work and he is still in contact.

One question therefore that has been bothering me. If I continue to in this way, where is the line between Plan A and enabling the affair?

Enabling the affair would be to do things like keep it a secret, cover up for her, etc. What you are doing is hanging in the and fighting for your marriage. But you should only do that as long as you can stand it. If you find yourself getting sick, losing weight, etc, you should make plans to separate.

Also it would be enabling if you're financing anything that helps her facilitate her affair.

Thanks.

On financing, I suppose that depends on your view. She earns a good salary, so can pay for it herself but we also have a joint account etc.

And what do you mean by cover up? My gut tells me she is seeing him today. I have no proof. Should I confront her about that? And tell others?