Please help me in finding closure after my wife's affair.

We are both in our 40s, have been married for 20 years and have three young children. Two years ago I was broken after discovering my wife's affair. I initially found a semi-intimate chat on our computer and then made further discoveries bit by bit over a one month period by tracking her communications.

We both had permitted our marriage to go stale, and my wife was experiencing low self-esteem and depression. After befriending the OM in a community theatre production and later during the filming of an independent film, she received self-assurance from him and asked him for marriage advice. As the relationship developed, they communicated online and via phone multiple times a day, shared intimate talks including comments of a sexual nature and met privately. Their physical contact included touching and kissing. In her fog, my wife fantasized about being married to him. She was conflicted about having to to give up OM in order to choose me.

After the first discovery, I intended to confront OM but he did not answer me at the door. My wife and I confided in a friend who arranged mediation between my wife, OM and me. As a result, I agreed not to disclose the affair to OMW, and he and my wife agreed to NC. However, the contact continued, and I met with OM to obtain his explanation and to force him to stay away from my wife with the threat to disclose to OMW. In my mind he did not show genuine remorse and justified his actions by wanting to help my wife out of her dark place. The OM is 10-15 years older than my wife and disclosed that his wife had been unfaithful at an earlier point in their marriage. He feared that disclosure would shatter his marraige and estrange his family. My wife feels great guilt about the pain that her actions have caused and has since declared unequivocally that she is choosing me. Nonetheless, I believe that she is also cherishing the memories of the affair as a time that helped her grow in self-confidence and independence.

One challenge with NC is our tie to our community. Moving is out of the option because my work is highly specialized and cannot be found easily in a new place. We also do not want to uproot our children. Another complication is my wife's identity as an actor. The circle of actors in our area is small, and without giving up her identity, my wife is bound to run into OM on occasion. During the past year, I thought I had moved on and agreed that she could pursue parts in plays without concern about his participation. They jointly participated in three plays and two other theatrical events. She disclosed all activities to me and limited contact with OM to those on stage. However, each time I felt that even the mere nearness of them was prolonging a state of their connection. I have forgiven her but my anger towards OM has been festering throughout this time, resulting in nearly daily triggers of the affair.

My wife and I have disclosed the affair to a small circle of friends. We have gone through counseling, both together and individually, and we are re-building our love and trust. In many ways our marriage is stronger than before. But the affair continues to come between us. I want to find a sense of closure and release, to fully support my wife in her identity and passion as an actor and to rid myself of the concern that he's always in the shadows. My wife has agreed to write him a letter of NC with the solution to withdraw from any productions in which he is also performing, yet we know that their paths will ultimately cross in other events.

I don't know how to handle this continued contact and my simmering anger.

Please advise.

HI MarriedFool, welcome to Marriage Builders. The only way I can suggest you handle your anger is to take large amounts of narcotics and alcohol. Alcohol will deaden the pain for a while. When that stops working you can enhance it with narcotic pain killers. You will be so numb you will no longer feel anything after awhile. That will work for a while.

Since you wont' take any steps to recover your marriage, this will get worse and the resentment will grow and grow each year until you come to hate your wife. I would suspect that the contnued affair has had a tremendous toll on your emotional and physical health.

Enabling comes at a very, very high price as you have personally discovered. It is sad when a spouse chooses to be an enabler, but that is your prerogative. If you ever decide to save your marriage instead of protecting the affair, let us know and we can help.

To answer your question about how to get "closure," you get that by closing. You won't do that, so you will never get closure. Welcome to your future.

p.s. your thread does not belong in this forum because you are not In Recovery.

You are going to have to decide what is more important: Your career and her identity as an actor, or your marriage. As long as your career and her acting come first, your marriage will not survive.

You will not be able to survive continued contact. You will never get over the pain or anger. If you want to heal, you will need to move and No Contact will need to be firmly established.

Passing out fake, unwarranted "forgiveness" does not help your anger, as you can see. It doesn't feel good and it sure doesn't help your marriage. As you can see, saying "I forgive you" when there is nothing to forgive does nothing to alleviate pain, anger or resentment. This is why just compensation is so important. That has never taken place.

If you decide to save your marriage, let us know and we can help. However, if you choose to continue to enable your wife and her boyfriend's destructive, cruel behavior there is nothing we can tell you to do that would overcome your ill advised actions.

I absolutely CRINGE when I hear a BS who is throwing another BS under the bus like this, in order to keep the infidels happy and to enable the affair.

Not only is this a crucial step in order to bust up the affair, but what about basic decency as a human being to alert the BS to the damage being done to her and her family...behind her back...since you have knowledge of it??

You have no become a party to the crime that is being commited against the OMW by keeping silent.

^^^^^

Imagine that the other BS knew and you were the one in the dark and living a lie because the other BS didn't think you should be told???

That poor BW!!

First problem is that you believe liars and cheaters.

With the evidence you have told us dollars to doughnuts they had sex, a lot of sex, lots of times.

How can you believe a lying cheating man? Yes OM told you about him fearing his marriage will go down because back when his wife had an affair. The truth is the OM had the past affair and this time he is afraid what his BW will do when she finds out that he had another affair.

This affair is still on going because their is no NC. Also proof is that is on going is that your WW worked with the OM to protect the OMW from being exposed to the affair.

Expose this affair to the OMW then tell your WW that she has to take a polygraph test. Along with 100% NC. No more acting with the OM.

Every time they do they are laughing at you for not being smart enough to catch on that you are being played.

1. His wife probably hadn't been unfaithful before but that's the story he told your wife to gain her trust and sympathies.

2. Why would disclosure shatter his marriage when his wife already cheated on him and it didn't shatter?

3. Why would you trust a known liar just trying to protect himself and continue the affair unimpeded by his wife.

Exposing to the OM's wife is the first thing you must do. Don't discuss it with your wife. Just do it. If you are breaking an agreement you made not to tell..just break it. You changed your mind and will no longer enable their continued contact and affair.

MAYBE the OM's wife will be more firm in making her husband stop acting and they will leave town (saving you the bother).


It is extremely cruel for your wife to continue to go and spend any time around OM and expect you to be OK with it. It'll be the death of your marriage by a thousand cuts. She is abusing you and you've got children that need to have modelled for them by their parents how to respond appropriately to abuse. That you (they) don't have to continue to put up with being abused just to keep the peace or swallow the abuse for the sake of the family. Plan appeasement is teaching your children that someday if and when THEY are ever abused that it's right to put up with it. That your (their) happiness and feelings matter less than the everyone else's. The point is.... you matter...just as they matter (don't they?, would you want your children to grow up and do what you are doing in your marriage???). Be stronger, if not for yourself, for them too.

Spending your life looking over your shoulder and trying to avoid OM is no way to rebuild the trust or recover your marriage.

It only keeps the affair and OM in both of your heads.


How is this working for you after two years?







Oh sorry. I see you already answered the question.

MB can help you...but you guys need to put your marriage FIRST above everything else. Right now you have signed up for a death of a thousand cuts.

His wife deserves to know the truth.

It is criminal that you have chosen to protect the OM by not informing his BW. That is wrong on every level.