WC, you can email Dr Harley at his radio show and he will answer your questions for free. Instructions are here: http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi4200_radio.html

He has been recommending exactly what nmwb77 just recommended, to go along with the divorce while the WS is in the affair, because you will get much more favorable terms.

That being said, he will suggest that you consider moving on because this is such a young marriage. You don't have any kids and not much of a history and sometimes it is better to cut your losses. Can you imagine going through this when you have 2 little kids? And I realize you don't want to do that but it is something to consider.

Good. It's not necessarily assets. Any time you have to go in front of a judge, plan on being there for six hours while you wait for the judge to get to your case. Multiply that by $250+ an hour, and you can see that the tab can run up very quickly. The easiest thing to do is have your lawyer draw up a proposal for splitting the assets. If she refuses it, ask for her proposal. You don't want to get into discovery and all that time consuming stuff (unless she's hiding assets).

The thing is, she will get the divorce if that's what she wants. You can't stop it. Ohio has no-fault divorce, so she'll file for divorce on no-fault grounds "or in the alternative" improper marital behavior or whatever. The judge will grant the divorce even if you object. You can drag it out with discovery and stalling tactics, but eventually she will get it.

Oh, and in my case, I said she should pay all court costs since she was the one who wanted the divorce. She agreed and paid all those costs as well (honestly, I have no idea how much that cost, probably a couple hundred). Since she filed, I didn't even have to go to court. So I saved the money for that too, because my lawyer did not need to go, either.

I was contemplating posting this to you but hesitated bc I see that you are passionate about saving your marriage, but there are some things I would like you to consider...

*Feelings CHANGE. Many betrayed spouses are desparate to save the marriage while the WS is in the throes of the affair. It is not until later that the anger, resentment and doubt creeps in. That is the NORM. You will not always feel so eager to save this marriage, even if your WW was to come back to you with open arms tomorrow - trust me.

*It is concerning when a person has an affair this early in the M. It's more understandable when a person starts to associate home and marriage with responsibility, kids, stress boredom after years of marriage - while a coworker starts to look fun, easy, stress free etc...an escape from reality. Your W most likely has some huge boundary issues - please understand this will be HARD WORK for her to change.

*Recovery itself HARD work. Divorcing at this point would probably be much less painful for you than recovery.

*Having a long marital history and kids works in both ways - it is motiviation for the WS to make the changes necessary (implement EPs, possibly change jobs, etc) to save the marriage and it is motivation for the BS to stick it out when the resentment kicks in. This is why Dr Harley often tells people in your position to cut their losses.

*You are still very young and quite honestly you seem like a great young man. The dating pool is huge for you at this point. The opportunity for you to meet a great young woman is really really good compared to someone in their 30s and 40s with children.

**Lastly, I see the issue with your in-laws as problematic. The fact that they are enablers is not good in several ways. First of all, that's going to keep your WW foggy. Secondly, that is going to be an awful lot of resentment for you to have to get over should you guys ever get to a point where recovery is possible. My in-laws threw me under the bus and had my ex done what needed in order to get me on board with working on recovery - I really don't know that I would have wanted anything to do with his parents ever again. To this day, I still feel hurt by their actions, maybe moreso than my ex as strange as that sounds.

This is probably going to be very tough to read. At the very least you can come back to read this if doubts about wanting to recover this (which they will) start to creep in.

WC,

You are doing great. I echo what the others have said about considering and being prepared for a divorce. Have you split your finances yet or does your WW still have access to your bank account? She is very dangerous right now.

Your FIL is probably a weak man who is out of his depth with regards to parenting in this situation. I am guessing he probably doesn't want to take a side or step on her toes. He has no idea what he is doing and he will end up losing both of you unless he gets a backbone. Not much you can do about that but I've seen this happen before up close and personal. Sorry you are dealing with it, I know from experience it is extremely frustrating.

Keep fighting this affair hard. The more decisive and prepared you are the more it will put the ball in your WW's court to decide, and that is a good thing because it will mean less waiting for you. The limbo is probably the hardest part of this whole process, IMO. I'm much happier now that I am OUT of it.

Good to see you are thinking of a timeline already for your Plan A. Stick to it. I am predicting your wife will probably talk a LOT about divorce and not lift a finger to make it happen. That's usually how it goes, so this could get drug out for a while. That's where the timeline helps.

Also, if you have a joint credit card with her (since she's already paid for a consult on one, I'm guessing it's joint), I would freeze/close that. Don't put yourself on the hook for any divorce-related expenses that she causes.

She is temporarily insane while she is wayward and she will not be frugal with your money.

I understand this sentiment completely.

Oh, you are missing out on a great opportunity - get into listening to the radio show, daily!

Wow. Certainly a lot to digest here from you guys. I have a free consultation with a lawyer tomorrow to evaluate my options. I don't care about what I get - if I got 100% of what we own I'd just sell it all anyways and start over... I want to stall and delay as long as possible. I know Ohio has no fault divorce but it takes a substantial time to finish with one party not in agreement. I am not divorcing her until I know without a doubt she is "unsaveable." And I won't know that until the affair ends, if it doesn't end in 1-2 years I will assume its "unsaveable"

Some other friends I have talked to have also said that the divorce process sometimes breaks the fog for a WS. The way divorce attornies handle it just overwhelms the WS with guilt.

Like I said, I am meeting a lawyer tomorrow. She has no grounds to divorce me on in a way that would conclude this quickly.

I was going to say a lot of people have reached out to support my marriage after the Facebook explosion yesterday - but a lot have people have said I should take it down or I "have no chance at saving this marriage."

WC, you do what you feel you need to do. I did Plan A for 1.5 years(including 6 mos. after divorce was final). I exposed the affair far and wide and did everything I could possibly do. I'm divorced, but I have no regrets, because I did everything. I've heard it said that you regret the things you didn't do more than the things you did. I believe it's true, so I went the whole nine yards.

If you feel you want to drag it out, then that's what you should do. It's just money. And I don't mean that in a sarcastic way. You can always make more money. Just weigh your options and protect yourself.

I never exposed. Admitting this, I saw so many marriages on MB restored by exposure.
If I were you, I would not listen to people telling you to take down the posts. That would be like stopping penicillin after taking it a few days just because you're feeling better. Let the medicine work!

A quick note about the "unsaveable" - that's kind of beside the point. The chances that affair will end and your WW will come back to you are actually pretty good.

However, the chances that she will really affair-proof your M (like I said, I am seeing some red flags, her enabling family being one of them) and that you will be able to withstand the hard work needed in recovery is an entirely different thing.

This is going to be a rollercoaster and you are going to get to the point where you feelings about your situation will change several times in one day. I would echo the advice to write to the radio show and talk to Dr Harley.

Hang in there.

If she comes back, and I have the training, plans and strategy and the advice from Dr. Harley and company I think I can restore this marriage. I think we can affair proof the marriage with proper guidelines etc.

If she came back four / five weeks ago after the affair was discovered - and I never knew this site - then yes I would agree destined to fail again.

I have always been someone who is extremely forgiving. IRONICALLY she has not been. This may be a hurdle to overcome where she finds it impossible to ever forgive herself.

I will write to Dr. harley sometime this evening when I can put together a well thought out email.

WC, one of the things you are going to learn around here is that in our western world we have two parallel cultures side by side.

One culture has good marriages. The other culture has exceedingly bad marriages.

Everybody has cultural viewpoints on how marriage should work. But on one side, their view points do not, in fact, work.

You're swimming in a sea of bad marriage culture. Your wife is obviously a part of it; we can tell by her lifestyle. This is also why so many of your friends are telling you stuff like this.

Your friends HPB and SMB - they are part of good marriage culture, and we try to hold up good marriage culture here and get people integrated into it.

60% of marriages will go through at least one affair.

40% of marriages end in divorce.
20% of marriages end in permanent lifelong separation. They are still legally married but they hate each other and live away from each other and die away from each other.
20% of marriages stay legally married but are miserable and hate each other.

Only 20% of marriages stay together and are happy. Only 20% of marriages are successful.

(For what it's worth, these statistics are no different inside of churches or outside of churches. Not sure if that matters to you but that fact is of great interest to many people. Churchgoers and ministers don't know any more about how to succeed at marriage than non-churchgoers and non-ministers.)

Only 20% of the people in our culture have a good marriage. 80% of people know only how to have a terrible marriage. They write scripts for TV shows and movies; they advise friends; they raise children. It propagates. Of the 20% who have successful marriages, many haven't spent a lot of time thinking about what makes it good, and if they say anything about it, it might be akin to the 101 year old who says he is so long lived because he smoked cigarettes every day.

Very very few people have successful marriages and know how to teach how to succeed at marriage.

I got all of the above statistics from Dr. Harley, who has been happily married to Joyce Harley for fifty years as of December 2012. And for several of those decades he has been teaching people how to survive affairs and how to have successful marriages.

There are a couple of reasons why this doesn't make sense - but I think at this point rather than me continuing this conversation with you, your best bet is to talk to Dr Harley.

We have had many WS's express extreme remorse and anger with themselves, etc (mine included) and continue marriage wrecking behavior. It's completely irrelevant to whether you can recover the marriage (and this works both ways, a WW can express zero remorse and end up completely on board with MB).

Great! Just want to add that you don't need to write a well thought out email. Just a run down of the stats and summary of where you are now will be enough. You can always follow up with them - they are great like that. I have been on the radio show many times and the time I called asking for help regarding separation was probably the most helpful/reassuring.

My attorney said that if I am smart about it I can postpone the divorce for a maximum of 1 year since she moved out (Oct. 5th?). She will try to file on some grounds but the only appropriate one is "Incompatible"' which I simply disagree to. He said her charge from earlier this week was more than likely a filing fee, so paperwork is on the way.

I just keep telling myself, 1 year is a long time for God to work. 1 year is a long time for her to defog and see the mistakes. 1 year is a long time for me to gather knowledge to make very specific guidelines to insure a successful marriage if we get to recovery. 1 year is a long time for me to change all my faults I had in this marriage up to now. And finally...

1 year is a lot of days of pain incoming.

But I am relentless, I will fight for my wife. I believe in what I (you all included!) have done to give my marriage a fighting chance.

I sent Dr. Bill & Joyce an email.

Let us know when you hear back.

I'm an attorney. A tax attorney but I know a little about this stuff too.

"Up to about a year" is a tricky proposition that can get expensive real quick. In order to delay the divorce you can't be seen as the one that is trying to delay it so you try to bog down the case with legal technicalities and lots and lots of discovery. You may get a judge that really move his/her docket along who is very resistant to common delay techniques....he/she will eventually see through your facade and you'll be faced with either settling and signing off on the divorce OR being punished (financially) by the judge. That could be daunting after spending a ton of money on your attorney delaying it much as you could already.

If cost is not the concern...you can run up lots of fees dragging this on and on and making it LOOK like she is the hostile party. Demand to sign medical releases (including any psychologist/counselor she's seen). She'll refuse and you'll file motions to try to get the judge to approve it.

My point is...there is a balance in there somewhere. You hire an attorney that appreciates you aren't delaying in an effort to punish your wife and to use the court system to extract your revenge. You simply hope time will give you a better chance at reconciliation so he/she (your attorney) should delay the case as much as possible while also trying to keep the proceedings civil and relatively cost effective. Your best delay weapons most likely are expensive weapons (motions and court hearings cost huge money)....so the longer those can be put off the better, then you try to settle them last minute and flip to some other delay method.

Finally - like my friend above...a bonus of delaying is often a favorable divorce agreement in situations where the wayward will basically pay anything to get it over with (and not have to stand in a courtroom as the despicable wayward adulterous wife). You can recover your marriage in the same about of time whether you are married or not - so at some point you probably can't be a fool and turn down a very favorable settlement agreement and risk delaying further and getting punished by some judge. In other words, if she's hardcore and won't roll over, you'll actually have an easier time delaying the case but once she waves the white flag...money spent thereafter trying to delay likely just isn't worth the return.

I was clear in my intentions to the attorney. He said if that was the case (I am trying to drag it out to give my marriage a chance to get reconciliation) he said he would be really affordable because he really is not doing too much legal work. His exact words were "About four hours of my time." (My guess ~$1000).

I will have to wait and see what the paperwork looks like. If she is asking for a dissolution, I will comically shrug it off. I will certainly keep in mind the favorable terms timing. I never thought about it from the perspective of recovering WHILE divorced... We could get remarried.

I just feel like staying married helps my cause... Because her name she signs everyday is mine, etc. All things that might remind her of what we had.

I don't know. Thanks for the thought provoking insight as always MrW.

I changed the locks on the house. I have renovations being done on the basement and don't want her to maliciously mess anything up.

Anyone here against changing the locks?