My wife and I have been together 10 years, married 4. This summer she started an affair with a guy she met in May. Talked to him for a month on the phone, and started flying to see him in June. By July she was planning on leaving to be with him. I found all of this out mid July. I confronted her about it and she said she was sorry, that we will work on our marriage. Things were going well but she was still planning on leaving. Then Early august she left state to live with him.
I told her parents. our close mutual friends know.
For the first 2 months I tried really hard to heal past hurts. Really went out of my way. Then I realized that everything I said was not enough, that no matter what she just wanted more and more. Even brought up petty things from many years past. Like they had happened yesterday.
We don't talk on the phone, just text or email. She is constantly saying how she doesnt know what she is doing, how she is confused.
She is acting like she has done nothing wrong and often asks me if "I am mad at her or something"
On FB she still says that she lives in Florida where I am. Has her privacy settings so that when I look at her page I see pictures of us and that we are married, but to everyone else it says nothing about me.
I wrote her a long letter and mailed it to her. Stated that I didnt condone what she was doing. Told her what I would like our life to be like if we reconciled.
She emailed me back and said I was trying to control her, and that she would help me find a psychiatrist and drugs for my personality disorder, etc.
That was a month ago. Since then I have ceased almost all communication with her. Every few days she text me and says that she hopes I have a good day, etc.
2 days ago was our wedding anniversary. She texted and emailed me happy anniversary.
I finally told her that it is closer to their 6 month anniversary than our wedding anniversary, that she needs to start to be honest.
Her next response was small talk. Like almost as if she has no way of dealing with any of this.
She never said she wants a divorce or separation. It wasnt until I updated my FB status did she take notice that we are separated. It's like she is denying anything that she is doing.
Before all of this we had a good relationship, envy of all our friends.
I have read all the books, cd's, audiobooks, etc. His needs her needs. Love busters, if he only knew, after the affair,boundaries in marriage, the 5 love languages, and am now working on surviving an affair.
I did not expose the affair. Only to her parents and my friends. I'm guessing most of her friends know.

I realize that exposure is too late now and that that is my mistake.
She is coming back to FL in 3 weeks. She doesn't say what for.
My guess it is to get her car. She keeps asking if we can talk.
The truth is, I really wanted to see her and work on everything. I still really do.
But I dont know her intentions. It's like I am dealing with a person who i don't know anymore.
I don't want to lose our marriage, and I am pretty certain she doesn't want to either.
It really seems like she want to have her cake and eat it too.

She wants me to wait around for her. i know this because i have went out bicycle riding with a female friend of mine and when se found out she lost it and said that I was supposed to be working on our marriage.

Before all of this she was the most faithful, most loyal, most loving person. This was simply impossible and not in her nature. With all the books I have read I realize what I had done wrong, what we had done wrong.

I know that I have shortly summarized everything. I have been living a nightmare for the past 5 months.

I don't know what my next step is.
I am truly lost.
Some days I really feel she is reaching out to me and things will begin to get better. But most days I feel like I don't know how to respond to her so I have been ignoring most of her texts.
She never talks on the phone to me.
I feel she wants to end all of this, but doesnt know how.
I got her the audiobook his needs her needs. She can read a book a night. She has spent the past month doing a small portion at a time.
I feel like she is trying to keep her thumb on me. That she doesnt want to end the affair but also wants to keep the marriage.
It is killing me.
Ever since it has ahppened I have had zero contact with her parents, they are not talking to her about any of it either and are staying out of it.
I am 37, she is 41.
When she left she kept texting me she didnt know what she was doing, that she wished she could go back in time to before all of this happened.
She now lives with him in LA in a small rent controlled apartment. He is several steps down the food chain in about every way from me, but I understand that affair partners dont make sense sometimes.

I do want to save my marriage, but I really don't know what to do and waiting it out is eating me alive.
I don't have the support of most of my friends, they all say that what she did is unforgivable.
I feel like she has lost her mind.

I'm a successful good looking guy. Before this I only had eyes for her. Since she left I have made a few female friends. They all want some sort of relationship but I told them I am waiting for my marriage, which in turns only makes these women try harder. And to be honest I really don't want to be with them beyond a friendship level. Things got so complicated so quickly.
I would like some solid advice on all of this.

Most everyone tells me to let her go and figure herself out. I am doing that. The hard part is the constant texts form her every few days.
"The I miss you so much I can hardly breathe"
"I hope you are having a great day"
etc.
I used to respond and say the same thing back, but I feel that she is just trying to make me wait around for her or she is getting something out of it.
When I stopped replying her frequency of these texts increased.
Honestly, I love hearing from her. It gives me hope, but at the same time it destroys me from the inside because I know what replying to her does. That and she is living with him.
I don't want to do any love busters, but I don't know how to shake her from her world by being nice constantly.
I know she is very jealous of any female friendship I might have, and I feel that that is my only way to break through to her.
I realize that this is all childish.
I rally am willing to do anything to save my marriage. What I have been doing so far is losing my mind. I have been through all the typical things. depression, 25lb weight loss, began drinking (stopped), etc

Hi MrWalters, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. Do you know anything about the OM? Is he married? What does he do?

The only thing I can suggest is that you need to stop lecturing her and belittling her complaints. Yes, she is rewriting history and exaggerating grievances from the past, but you have to take that seriously. You can't ever lecture her. Be as pleasant as you possibly can.

I would try that for a while and see what happens. You need to start thinking about going into Plan B if your health starts to suffer. Do you have the book Surviving an Affair? I am concerned that you are reading many different marriage books, most of which carry contradictory advice. The book you need to follow is Survivng an Affair.

He is not married. They are both realtors and sell Nerium. Which is where she met him.

I have just begun reading surviving an affair, I should be through it this weekend.

I did stop lecturing her. Since I found out I have done my very best to stop all love busters. In fact even before I knew i stopped all love busters.

She had left him for a week to go home to see her parents. After she went back to him and told me she was even more confused than ever I realized that I wasn't going to win her back by being a pushover.
She told her best friend that she thought I'd put our relationship above this "situation"
her friend told me to pull back, that my wife was not making any sense. Everyone that knows about it says that what she says to me makes no sense at all.
So i have done the 180.(like plan B)
She is trying to contact me more since then. She still will not text anything other than small talk and ask me if I am mad at her, etc.
I can't do plan A anymore. I cried for hours a day 2 months straight.

The 180 plan is about the worst thing you can do. The 180 promotes detachment, which is what led to the situation in the first place. We call that Plan "C" which is most likely to lead to divorce.

We have a completely different approach, Plan A for several months, which means a) exposure and fighting the affair to the best of your ability and b) presenting yourself in the most attractive light possible, promising to work together to create a fantastic marriage in the future.

If the affair does not end in Plan A and the betrayed spouse is suffering emotionally and physically, a completely dark separation is suggested. The purpose is not to save the marriage, but to protect the health of the betrayed spouse and to protect the remaining love the BS has for the WS. If Plan A were to continue forever, the BS would suffer ill effects and would grow to hate the WS. Plan B is intended to prevent this.

Before one goes into Plan B, it is very important the last impression is very pleasant and warm.


Please consider going into Plan B. You will feel 100% better in a couple of weeks as you detach from her. If you stay in contact, you will wreck your emotional and physical health and make yourself a much less attractive person.

Plan B means you cut off ALL contact and that means texts, emails, everything. You would have NO CONTACT. You would find an intermediary who would act as a spam filter and only pass on pertinent information in his own words.

I promise you will feel 100% better in a few weeks and will stop suffering so much.

It is initiated with this letter:

Sample Plan B letter, from SAA (revised edition) pages 77-78:

My Dearest __________,
I apologize to you for my part in creating an environment that helped make your affair possible. I foolishly pursued my goals without understanding my responsibility to meet your most important emotional needs. I was not there for you when you needed me the most and we are now both suffering for my mistake. [Add your willingness to address other complaints that the unfaithful spouse may have communicated prior to the affair.]

I am willing to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past and create a new life for both of us that will meet your needs. But I cannot do that until you end your relationship once and for all. Living with you under these conditions has been the most painful experience of my life, and I can no longer endure it.

Until your affair ends, and you are willing to follow a plan of reconciliation with me, I will avoid seeing you or talking to you. Our friends, ________, have agreed to help make arrangements for you to see our children on schedule that is mutually convenient. They will provide transportation. If you want to communicate about the children or any other mater, it will have to be through them.

I ask that you respect my decision to separate from you th is way. You must know about the suffering I have endured because of your relationship, and I simply cannot be with you any longer knowing that you are together. I still love you but I cannot see you under these conditions.

As soon as you are willing to permanently end your relationship, follow precautions to avoid absolutely any contact with the other person, and join me in a plan to restore our relationship, I will be wiling to discuss our future together with you.

I hope that we will be able to rebuild our marriage some day. I want us to be able to meet each other's emotional needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other. We can build a new lifestyle together in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never be a reason for us to be separated. I want to be your best friend, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you to be my best friend.

I cared for you when we married and I continue to care for you right up to this day. But I cannot be with you or help you as long as you are in this relationship.

With all my love,
(signed)

This letter should be delivered by your friends to the unfaithful spouse, and a copy sent to the lover with a note at the bottom saying:

I love ______ with all my heart and am willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy. I will wait for that chance.

Ok. Maybe plan B is what I have been doing then. I have ceased all contact. The previous few months I have been really good about making sure I let her know we could get through this.
The last contact I had was a long hand written 12 page letter telling her in detail what I could envision our future to look like if we worked it out. Stated that the affair was a deal breaker, and it was up to her to decide.
Thats when she told me she was going to to CA to see him and that I was trying to control her, that I needed meds, etc.
Once she got back to CA and she tried to continue the small talk (one sentence texts) I stopped replying to her.
I have since stopped groveling.
I ceased all communication except for 2 days ago on our anniversary when she was angry that I still did not talk to her. She said "you're not going to talk to me even on our day?!"
which makes me wonder why she is still trying to make me hold on so much. I really don't get it.
I finally replied and said the following
"I'm writign this to you in advance of whatever you are going to say to me on 11-5-15
i could write a novel but it won't do justice
i will tell you i love you, I always have
you said you are coming to FL. Normally I'd ask what the purpose of your visit is. But I dont't need words, words mean nothing without honesty behind them
I must go by actions

I will say this
The person you were to me was wonderful. i trusted you with every last detail of caring for me, down to my very fiber.
It hurt losing all of that in what felt like a blink of an eye, but in hindsight was longer

I miss that person from my memory. tell her all of this for me if she is still in there.
I am doing my best in spite of it all. i have learned so much about who I am. I am certain that if you met me for the first time today all over again taht you would be proud of me.
I hpe you take good care of yourself and that you find your way.
I hope for that, but I am preparing for a life where I can find a place to keep my most cherished memory and make new ones too.
I wish I didnt have to separate the two but the choice is not mine, it has been yours all along and again, actions speak loudest.

In my mind there are two of you. The one I knew, and the one you have become through all of this.
The cheating, they lying, the affair, the betrayal, and ultimately leaving. I dont want to taint whatever memory i have of you so I separate the memory I have of you from the past 6 months.
That being said, be sure to tell her that in spite of it all i cherish her.
I am afraid to hear from her. I'd like to think that that person still exists but I really have no clue anymore.
It may be you who replies and I can't tell the difference."



I know this is a lot to disclose, but I think it is important as we dont have much real communication.

Her reply was "have you started looking for a real estate, I can get you a list"
and
"I miss you so much"

SO yea...

Like I said, you need to go into Plan B. Plan B means no communication. You won't read her texts and you certainly won't reply. You would have to either change your phone # or somehow block her texts.

It is critical that there be NO CONTACT WHATSOEVER in order to reap the benefits of Plan B, because any contact, such as reading her texts will keep you in a state of suffering.

Do you have a person who could act as a neutral intermediary who could pass on PERTINENT communication from her?

I would start planning and working on your letter. Did you read the letter I posted? You can use that as a template. You should also read this thread: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2482787#Post2482787

It's such a pity that you have mixed and matched approaches, and ended up with this messy situation, where you say you are detaching, or maybe in Plan B, but you are still in contact with her and sending angry messages to her.

"I ceased all communication except for 2 days ago on our anniversary when she was angry that I still did not talk to her. She said "you're not going to talk to me even on our day?!"
which makes me wonder why she is still trying to make me hold on so much. I really don't get it.
I finally replied and said the following..."

...which is not being in NC by any definition.

Since she has been living with OM for some months now, I agree with MelodyLane that you should be in a proper Plan B. That means that you write her a letter letting her know that you will consider rebuilding the marriage if she ends her affair and agrees never to have contact with OM again, and then you block all contact from her. Being in NC does not mean that you do not reply to her contact, as you seem to think; it means that she cannot get through to you directly, until she has ended the affair.

I read this from a woman whose H did the 180. it confirms that the 180 sends out the wrong message to a wife who has been unhappy in her marriage, as most women say they have been, when they embark on an affair.

"I knew the DB rules/guidlines, and tried to follow them, but often gave in when my W accused me of not checking in, or leaving "to party" when in fact i was just detaching as part of GAL.

My W claimed I wasn't fighting for her. Not in the way she wanted....

...What I question:

In my case, my W has said, "through all of this i didn't feel like you fought for me" This goes against detaching, and many of the DB principles. However, I can't help but wondering, should I have gone "all in"? Who knows."

Well, Dr H knows. Detaching, not exposing, and not fighting the affair sends out the message that you are indifferent to her and the marriage. That's okay if you really are indifferent, but if you want your wife back, you need to fight for her.

Your wife told you pretty much the same thing as this wife above.

This is so true. The 180 is a complacent approach that conveys a lack of caring. Women who come back to their betrayed husbands are always grateful that their husbands fought for them.

We have a couple mutual friends. However since this has happened she has stopped speaking with them entirely once they did not support her.

I doubt she would communicate through them.
As far as ceasing all contact I think I will wait it out for a couple more weeks. She is headed back to FL. I figure if she comes to get her car then I have my answer.
She'd probably going to act like she doesn't know what she wants, but that has not been acceptable for some time now and whether we call it the 180 or plan B, I'm not going to put up with it.Thinking about drawing up a seperation agreement so she knows that I mean business.
I'd love to have the old her back. Its very unfortunate this all happened.

So what is your question for us?

So new update.
My wife is still in California.
She text this to me yesterday. I have not replied.
I'm not sure if I should continue no contact. She is coming back to FL after thanksgiving. She sounds remorseful, however no where did she talk about salvaging the marriage.
I figure that this time back here may be my last chance to speak face to face. We have never discussed the marriage, ending it, or anything like that.
I figure that she is leaving it up to me.

This is her reply to me stating if she was having her car shipped to California. I don't quite understand what she is saying, or that she wasn't planning it. Etc. but here is it.
Need some advice on what to do next.

"I know it doesn't matter now - but I wasn't leaving. I was checking on prices and I was talking about the possibility but I didn't have any actual plans of leaving. I knew I had to tell you (which I thought would be over the phone) and I knew it would be either "work on it" or "it's over". And I knew those choices would be up to you.
I wish a lot of things and the one is that I wish I felt like I could have talked to you. I wish I wasn't so broken when you showed up.

My biggest wish is that the affair had never happened.
That we would have been stronger. That we would have been together more. And that we had acted like best friends instead of how we acted.
I am so sorry for my part. I loved and love you so much and I'm so sorry for hurting you. I was and am hurting. I think about us every day. I think about everything that ever happened. I'll be in Florida at the end of the month. Leaving for Michigan soon. I'll be in Alaska for Christmas. Not sure how long I'll be in Florida. Might stay until Alaska - not sure. "

So she is not certain on what she is going to do. Though her tone is different than before. Before she blamed most everything on me. She talks about the affair like it is past tense, always had which I don't understand.

I have to say that since I changed my demeanor and stopped responding to her craziness and taking all the blame, groveling, that she sounds way different lately in her messages.

I realize that a lot of this is old news to you. And that some of your affairs have become a huge part of your life. I'm hoping that this is not my future. I appreciate any advice. I will take it all into consideration on my plan.
I want to save this, and I realize it is an uphill battle. I still don't see a way out of all of this.
She said before that she wants to come home, but she doesn't know how.

Did you read our posts? I spent alot of time and thought giving you advice and it doesn't seem like you read them. Instead you are blogging.

She has pretty much decided to keep you both around, which will just keep you in a state of devastation. That will get worse, not better. It sounds like you are not doing well at this point so staying in touch will just make you sick and make you a much less attractive option when her affair does end. Her affair is far from over.

Secondly, your marriage can never recover as long as she travels for a living. Your best bet is to go into a dark Plan B and send her a loving Plan B letter giving her your conditions of reconciliation. That should include a) end of affair, b) end of all travel and c) commitment to a program of recovery.

That needs to start with a Plan B letter that designates an intermediary. It can be the friends you mentioned as long as they can agree to be a neutral spam filter. Its ok if your wife doens't like them; that is not a requirement.

I feel strongly she is going to string you along forever and if you don't shut this down, your emotional and physical health is going to get worse. You don't want to get so sick that you damage your health forever.

She doesn't travel for work. But she did meet him through traveling.
Yes. That's what I am thinking as well. She wants to have her cake and eat it too. Seems like such odd behavior.
I realize that it sounds like I am blogging. But I am not. I really want to convey what she has said so it is not misinterpreted.
I'm feeling that her coming back home to fl will be a turning point.
If she decided to go all the way back to ca after that then something will break in me completely, and at that point I don't know about any plan b, etc.

I do want to salvage my marriage, but to be honest it has been 6 months since this has begun, and it has gotten worse and worse and I can't envision an end to this.
It'd be nice to know what my odds are, if something like that is possible to even say. 50/50. 99/1.
What are the successful plan b success rates? Just to know what I'm up against.

Regardless of WHY she travels, your marriage will never work if it continues. It is ok to travel as long as you are together when it happens.


I agree. And the reason I am suggesting Plan B now so that something doesn't break. Plan B is intended to prevent that. She is not coming back to resume your marriage so it will just hurt you more.


Successful Plan B rates are 100%. The goal of Plan B is to protect the betrayed spouse from the emotional and physical damage of an affair. IT is always successful.

Well if it is intended to save my sanity then that sounds good. However if I have survived the past number of months and then I have this one opportunity to at least make a go at it I'd have to think I'd be a fool to not try. If it doesn't work then I will know that at least I tried face to face after she had left and then came back.
It will hurt. Probably kill me inside to watch her leave again. But that would be closure. Having her come back and then not responding to her will make me forever wonder.
I do agree with you. It will be very tough, and you are probably right. She will most likely leave again.
I have surviving an affair on cd. I got through 2 discs and I will try to finish them by tomorrow.

Since this is the route I will probably be taking I'd like to have some advice on what I need to do to make the situation best.
I want to appear strong. I have about 20 days to prepare.
If I have read it right. I need to avoid love busters.
That will be tough since I have no answers from her. I will just have to roll with it.
I'm wondering if I need to give her separation papers. Maybe that will jolt something out of her.
She absolutely has not ever once mentioned divorce or anything. She avoids talking about our marriage and the affair.
I realize that you have went out of your way to I've me solid and helpful advice. I mean no disrespect when I question things.
This is all so new to me. And to me, it is nearing the final days.
She has been gone for 3 months.
I really do believe she wants to keep the marriage, but she also wants the affair.
I thought I could stop it.
I'm beginning to realize that there is little I can say or do. But if there are some things out there that may be suggested I am very open.