ok...does this work..i have clicked on quote and am typing ..fingers crossed cause i am so needing to hear what you have to say to me.

Well done. You are a smart lady. You can do this.

You REALLY need to expose this. Keep his dirty little secret enables him to continue the affair at a later date. It also prevents you from getting support during this time.

WH is going to counseling to talk about things that happened in his childhood that he needs to talk about. I think it is related to why he needs to drink every day. He has quit drinking now that he has "confessed" but I told him it would not stick unless he fixes WHY he is drinking. He says he can quit. He has done it before. He decides when he quits and he decides when to start again. We have been married 15 years BTW.

i have printed out the sheet, we have made a start on the list. He says I need to get a new phone cause his is now trashed but i want HIM to go and get a new phone ..i will not set things up "nice" for him so he can blame me for controlling him..he will have to do the leg work on being accountable...thx for your strong urgings...i need it.

Can you go to get new phones together as an outing? Have a nice lunch or dinner and go to the store?

Listen to Melody; she hasbeen sober for 30 years

What is counseling supposed to fix about a childhood that ended 50 years ago? Counseling is usually an expensive time waster. He needs to take action about the problems of today.

Exposure is when you ( not him) tell all your/his friends and family as well the affair partner's friends and family about the affair and ask for their support of your marriage. Please dont let a cheater talk you into keeping their secrets. Affairs thrive on secrecy. Exposure kills the fantasy.

He won't be improving from sitting in a counseling office flapping his gums. The only person htat helps is the counselors bank account. It has nothing to do with his childhood, it has every thing to do with his adult choices. Talking about his "childhood" is a needless distraction that takes time away from resolving his drinking problems and his marriage problems.

He needs to go to a mens only AA group and get a sponsor to hold him accountable.

So please encourage him to stop this counseling nonsense and address his problems. If he doesn't, he won't have a marriage left by the time he is done wasting his time sitting in a counseling office.


Hand him the checklist and tell him this needs to get done NOW if he wants to stay married.

Hand him the checklist and tell him this needs to get done NOW if he wants to stay married. [/quote]

ok. i have the checklist in hand and as soon as he comes home from golf i will give it to him.

we have done everything on the checklist except expose the affair. i have confided in my sister only. i know the husband of the OW is a womanizer and has a reputation..his wife(my so called best friend and now known as the OW) told me that her husband slept with her friend several years ago.

my sister and i talked about telling the husband of the OW but we both figure he might not care as he is a cheater too. hey, it gets better, a few years ago the OW announced she had a son from an affair she had with a married man..she gave up the son but they found each other a few years ago.

AND, this is not my WH's first affair with a best friend. He was living with a gal for 14 years and had an affair with her best friend,,,but he figured it was ok cause she had affairs on him.

WTF is wrong with me..I have a moral code that apparently is out of date. I could have had affairs with most of my best friend's husbands..they certainly have hit on me...BUT...i have always thought how selfish it was and how many people would be hurt and never went there. There is love around every corner if you want it..but GAWD, one has to have some personal control don't they??????

At any rate, I am really struggling with the expose situation. He is afraid he will be the laughing stock of all his golf buddies and he won't be able to show his face with all his golf buddies....about 15 of them!!! which means we won't be coming to the USA in the winter any more from up north. I asked him how he could actually golf and be friends with the OW husband and he said he would have to think about that....Good question was what he said..tho he hasn't yet told me his conclusion.

This is so sick. The OW is not here in the USA right now but her husband is and we see him socially. The OW is planning to come down to the USA in the new year..Jan 1..but now that she knows I know and the BH has ended this, I don't know if she will still come down here. We live about 10 blocks apart and there is a lot of chance they will see each other. I told my WH if he sees her anywhere such as grocery store or on the street then he is to turn and walk away and not speak one word to her.

So,,,,I am so reluctant to expose to her husband. All 3 of them are serial adulterers and liars. Why the h... do I even want to stay in this situation??? My WH says he can't imagine life w/o me and has begged me to stay. I wonder if it is just because he doesn't want to look like the fool he has become and be embarrassed in front of his friends. I really can't believe anything he says any more. Should I even waste time on the program? And yes, he needs to go to AA, which he says he doesn't need either., He will just quit on his own. At a loss,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,so sad, so mad, so sorry,,,,I get it that we had issues but he was impossible to talk to and I always said if we didn't work things out as they came up there would be no hope for us and I guess i was right....And so ends my journal...thx for listening...I am so grateful for Marriage Builders..it really makes sense to ME....

When will you be telling the OW's BH???

Have you read this? Exposure 101

The OW's BH is your most important exposure target and it needs to be done now.

well. it sounds like the sooner the better. i am reading on this blog that there is a better chance of saving our marriage if the OW's BH knows. So, he is a friend of both of ours...THEY WERE OUR BEST FRIENDS....do I tell the OW's BH or does my WH tell him or do we both do it? I had agreed with my WH NOT to tell the OW's BH.... but maybe now i know better and have to go thru with this...I am shaking as i write this. I am sure my WH will threaten divorce if I say this needs to be done. He likes to throw that out every time i do something he doesn't like.

Dont tell him. Just do it. Read the exposure 101 because you want to expose it to everyone at once.

So there you go. The Ow's husband should be the FIRST person on your exposure list. Go to the OW's facebook page and see if you can find her parents and family members. They should also know all about the affair. You should expose the affair to your family and close friends. The more people who know, the more people to hold your husband accountable.

Go read the link in my signature Exposure 101. It will tell you how to expose.

Affairs thrive on secrecy, so keeping it a secret only helps it thrive and grow and keeps the fantasy alive. As long as the OW's H does not know, your H is free to continue pursuing the OW. He will RESENT that you didn't tell him, so you need to tell him right away, without forewarning your H.

Exposure is the most EFFECTIVE you can do to recover your marriage. It effectively kills the affair, and kills the fantasy.


Yeah, he is just afraid it will ruin his affair. Period. And he should be embarrassed. Nothing wrong with that. Maybe he will stop doing embarrassing things.

The OW husband needs to know NOW so he can protect himself from your hhusband. The OW H won't want to have anything to do with your husband when he knows.


Yes, it is SICK. And cruel and manipulative. Don't be part of the cruelty and manipulation by keeping this dirty secret for the cheaters. Don't protect them, protect the OW husband.


That is not a solution. the solution is to MOVE AWAY. You are facing a long term affair. You won't be able to recover if he contirnually runs into his lover. If you don't expose and move away, THE AFFAIR WILL NEVER END becasue he will be perpetually triggered.

Do you want to recover your marriage? Or do you want to spend the next 10 years dealing with an active affair? The choice is yours today. If you don't take very strong action NOW, you are damning yourself to a life of hell.

Of course your cheater husband does not want you to tell the OW's husband. IT WILL INTERFERE WITH HIS AFFAIR. You should call the man on your own without telling your husband and tell him all about the affair.

But don't stop there. The affair should be exposed to everyone, family, friends, children, the OW's family. Without warning the cheaters.

Your husband is NOT the best friend of this man. He is his ENEMY. And the sooner he knows, the faster he can protect himself.

Also don't believe any thing she said about her H. Cheaters lie.

Intuition, I hope that you will do this. Please take an hour or two and gather all of your exposure targets, and then get it done in one fell swoop. Do NOT be tempted to just do a couple and "see what happens". Do it ALL. At once.

Yes he may be very angry after exposure, and he may threaten divorce. He may even sound like you just lost the prize...he WAS going to stay and work it out with you, but he "can't live with someone who betrays him like this" <---do you see anything wrong with this picture?

If you read enough threads here, you will see that many WS threaten divorce and very few follow through. They are all talk and no action. Their affair high has caused them to be too lazy to do the work.

I read to catch up just now, and I'm so happy for you that you are posting to the forum and also obviously beginning to learn Marriage Builders. But I have to say that I about lost my dinner when I read that you were worried about what your husband's 15 golf friends will think of him. You NEED to be concentrating on exposure right now, but just in case you are wavering about doing exposure, please have a read here: Marriage Builders False Recovery Thread

You do NOT want that ^^ to be you in six months from now!

okay, i need to ask you if you have heard of anything like this. D Day was Nov 21 and my WH called the OW Nov 27 (while I was there and listening) and said he admitted the affair and that neither he or I would have any contact with her. she agreed to respect that. It started about 3.5 yrs ago. Later that night, after the mid day call, i was up getting water and the WS phone was lit up with a text about a local [censored] UP site indicating people available w/in 10 miles with a half naked woman picture shown. I took the phone to him and asked him about it. He said he didn't know anything about that and threw the phone on the floor and broke it. He has had this phone for a month and it is prepay , recycled number so a private eye I called said it COULD be just a leftover from the prior phone holder. My WS had insisted he had nothing to do with it....Of course I was suspicious and reacted wildly to the text as I was reeling from the final A admission just days earlier. I had suspected the affair for 2 years and was lied to all that time when I questioned him. The OW was my best friend and her husband is our best friend too.

So, we had a few nice days between D day Nov 21 and the call to end the affair Nov 27. Since the [censored] Meet UP text came Nov 28...my WH has been depressed and barely talks to me. I finally asked him about things today...why is he behaving this way? Today I also got a lot of feedback from this blog about needing to do the exposure. I have only confided in my sister.

Here is his response, pretty much, as far as I understand things.

He is "depressed and sad" because of the way I responded to the [censored] MEEt up text that he had no idea about. He said I was over the top the way I reacted and I should have calmly asked him about it and not come in to challenge him about it in the middle of the night...(it was 3am). He just can't come to terms with my over the top reaction.

I suggested he is using this to deflect the 3.5 year affair thing...all of a sudden he has turned the tables on to me.

I told him I confided in my sister and he was disappointed that I didn't confide in a counsellor. I said he had his OW to confide in for 3.5 years and I just told her and based on the info i am getting from MB, i need to tell the OW's husband at a minimum.

Again, he said if everyone finds out he won't be able to come to the USA in the winter and golf with his buddies. It will affect us in both Canada and the USA. I said well maybe I should be part of that decision.

He said he ended the A in Sep 14 and there were just a couple of encounters after that..no big deal, let dead dogs lie..don't tell the OW's husband...who he golfs with.

He said there were problems in our marriage and he hung in for 10 years then strayed (now married 15 years)..and why didn't I...? He thinks I don't like men cause I basically said they are all the same . He said,,so what is wrong with you that you didn't have an affair,,cause of your high moral standards? your's are way up there while mine are way down here? You think you are better than i am?

He said not to follow the MB typical information as everyone is different and labels don't fit everyone the same. I guess he doesn't like being called the WS..he is just a man whose physical needs were not met and he did what anyone would do to ensure he was looked after.

so, friends, i don't really know if this is worth moving forward....i guess i will tell the OW's husband and let the chips fall where they may. My WH is 71 years old...can he change? He has given up drinking since the phone call to the OW as a lot of his phone sexting was done at night when he was alone and lonely. I was at Yoga working my [censored] off to look and feel good...

Heard any of this jibber jabber before??? He has admitted that early in the marriage he could have worked harder at things..I know I have made mistakes too and I am willing to work on this...I told him it will take at least 1-2 yrs and if I see another text like that or hear of him in contact with the OW, yes, I will go back to square one just like I did when I saw the [censored] MEEt up text.

I don't think he really gets the brevity of the situation. He really thinks cause it was over Sept 14 it s/b forgotten. Well it was NOT over and I saw the proof of that just a few weeks ago when the Ow was out with us....the LOOK OF LOVE.... ever since that I put my foot down and refused to be with him unless he told the truth..and here we are one month later dealing with the truth..finally....
Sorry for being so long winded but I hope it is clear anyway...wondering if you can give me some perspective on this. I am really not sure why i want to stay in the relationship..I always seem to be the one doing the work..initiating the discussions.figuring things out..FIXING FIXING FIXING....but...sooooooo darn tired out....

GMH, your marriage can be saved if you will change your focus. Your focus is on the irrrational rantings of a wayward husband when it should be on recovery. The comment above is particularly insane given that your H has no earthly idea how to save marriages. He only knows how to wreck them.

You have a small chance at saving your marriage if you can follow the advice here. If you won't follow the advice, then I view this as a hopeless case.

Your best chance is to expose the affair wide and far just as we instructed. That is the only hope.


You are not his friends. Your husband has been stabbing him in the back for years. Dont' become an accessory to his crime by helping your H trick him.