And he never will as long as you protect his secret. You enable him by keeping the secret. He won't get the gravity of this situation until you bring it out into the open and hold him accountable. You harm him by keeping the secret.

He is depressed because he lost the 2 greatest loves of his life: the OW and alcohol.

And is he is lying about the Meet Up text. He has likely been hooking with women there. But you can make an appointment for a polygraoh and give him the opportunity to clear himself.

Are you having the PI tail him? Because it sounds like he has led a very, very secret 2nd life for years.

Ok, I will do it. I will expose this to the OW husband. That is as far as I will go tho. Thank you...you are right that I am listening to useless rantings from a desperate man who only knows how to wreck a marriage. You are absolutely right. My WH and his OW have ruthlessly stabbed us in the back for years and now have to face the music. Thinking back over the last 15 years of our marriage, it really hasn't been great...Very little support from him on any issues... I do love him but perhaps it is time for me to fly...Thank you...I will post after it is done. He has a friend visiting for the week so I may wait til he goes home , then expose...just a few more days....I know he has been wondering why our relationship has cooled. I need to get back to my moral high ground...something my WH just scorned me for....GAWD....it is so necessary to have an objective observer. Thank you again.

You need to tell everyone . then they can help him discover how awful he is. You can focus on the recovery.

he is right about 1 thing. You should not Wake him up to discuss problems. Nothing good happens after 10 pm

I'd say he doesn't have time to discuss anything anyway. He does your conditions, he does not discuss them. He has an awful lot of making up to do and no time to flap his gums or have any opinions on the matter.

The best thing for his depression is to get going making a worthy life he isn't ashamed of.




This is why you don't discuss the affair. He has nothing to offer but very poor excuses which will only encourage you to believe him a hopeless case who will hump table legs if you so much as turn your back. Exhausting!

I would encourage him into more doing, less talking. More checklist, less excuses. More future, less past. More Former Wayward Spouse who is open and protects. Less WS who blameshifts.

"I'm not impressed when I hear the excuses you made to yourself back then brought into the present when all that should be over. I want to see a completed checklist giving me renewed hope for our future. Talk does not impress me"

Then your exposure will not work. Limited, timid exposure does not work.

Your husband needs to see you have a zero tolerance for his secret second life. That any time he attempts it, you will tell the world all about it. You will ask everyone to keep both eyes on him.

He is counting on you to take all the responsibility upon yourself, to tire yourself. That will give him plenty of opportunity to sneak back to his secret second life once you are worn out with holding him accountable all by yourself.

Your husband doesn't want you to get any help with this. He doesn't want to consider how very unacceptable everyone will find this (it's perfectly acceptable when no one knows).

But more than anything he wants you to behave embarrassed, and ashamed, like you are the guilty one. (His classic line was telling you only to confide in a therapist as though you are ill. You do not need therapy, you need a lot of watchfulness and for him to QUIT it!) A lot of his fantasy rests upon blaming you, and treating you like an unreasonable wife.

If you are unashamed, brave, proactive in asking for help and have zero tolerance for his secret, for the hidden evil world he moves in,you will cure that mind set forever.

There is no other way. You either approve and condone his secret life or you expose it.

One way continues it, the other way ends it.

Your husbands reaction to exposure is a very important sign of how recovery will go. If he has any conscience left he will be very ashamed and embarrassed. If he has any of the right stuff in him he will start working towards a better reputation.

Limiting discussion in night time is not MB advice, but a personal opinion. While one should avoid love busters, that doesn't mean giving waywards free passes to use for stonewalling. I know people are functioning just fine after 10 pm. It is not beyond this guy to use any excuse, so I would not call waking him up a mistake without better understanding the full context.

Is there some reason you feel duty bound to help your husband do scuzzy things by automatically covering it up for him?

Do you think he expects/takes for granted your help in keeping his SSL secret?

It's not part of any vows I ever heard. I would blow up this SSL and assure your husband he should have known you would never help keep such things secret.

Dr H says affairs would never happen if people expected exposure immediately afterwards.

First big mistake is you did not read melody's guide to exposure.

If you did you would of not warned your WH that you are going to expose the affair.

Second big mistake is that you are not doing the exposure today. To delay exposing is only going to comeback to hurt you.

At 3am to tell at him?

hmmmm...yes, the OW told me her husband slept with her best friend...maybe that was just a "decoy" so if I ever found out about her affair with my WH, i would have empathy...interesting ....thanks.i will consider that statement a LIE cause yes, she is full of them!!

That is a good first step! But you can't stop there. Don't be an enabler by keeping the affair a secret because your marriage won't survive. This is a very long term affair and it will take a major exposure to kill it. You must also make sure that they never run into each other again unless you want to deal with an on again, off again affair for years to come. Do you?

Exposure is the most therapeutic thing you can do for them and for your marriage. Here are the words of Dr Bill Harley, clinical psychologist and founder of Marriage Builders:


here

Time to fly?? I am not suggesting that you leave! Your plan will result in the death of your marriage because your H will not change by enabling him and sweeping this under the rug. The plan I am suggesting is designed to give you the best chance to SAVE your marriage.

Do you want to save your marriage?

Today would be an IDEAL time to expose. The OW husband has a friend visisting and this friend can give him support.

She asked herself, on the previous page, if she really wanted to save the marriage. Either "yes" or "no" is a reasonable answer to that. I believe Dr. Hartley would say the same. But from a 67-year-old woman to a 64-year-old, let me ask you to think about this: How do you want to spend the rest of your life? Maybe it's just those 3 extra years I have on you, but I would not have it in me to be the enforcer, the shepherd, the investigator, the one at fault (not true, but it's a hard label to live with)...and if you don't have it in you, either, it's not because there's something wrong with YOU!

tl

The reason she is suggesting "flying" is because she is under the false impression that exposure will end her marriage when it is the opposite.

No one would fault her if she left the marriage, but she clearly stated she WANTED to save this marriage on the previous page; that is why she is here: Dr. Harley [not "Hartley"] would certainly want to help her if she chose to save the marriage and she has expressed her desire to save it.

This program does not require her to become an "enforcer, the shepherd, the investigator, the one at fault;" it offers a program that creates a great marriage if done together. If the WS does not get on board, then separation is advised. Within 3 weeks!

Even so, whether or not she decides to save it, the exposure steps are the same. The affair is still exposed.

Good morning friends,

I have slept on my conversation with WH yesterday where he told me what was wrong with me that i didn't have an affair cause my needs were not met.
he hadn't been talking to me since i confronted him about the hook up text record at 3am..he thought i was over the top
he has quit drinking and needs my support
he said he is so depressed he thinks about killing himself
he said he will start working on the marriage when he is ready but needs more time
he said he doesn't know why we should be together

sooooo.this is where i am at this morning:

i will do the exposure to the OWH
i am going to reiterate to him that he needs inpatient treatment...(he reminds me of my friend's husband who went to jail for child molestation and continued to say it was the child's fault..that is when my friend finally divorced him)


my question to you is:

our 15 year marriage has never been great....it is always my fault tho he is seeing his part of the problems early on now...he has left 2 wives and cheated on a long term girlfriend before me. he is 71 yrs old and figures he has 10 good years left and wants to be happy.


before outing him to his 3 adult kids (one of whom is a serial cheater)just like good old dad,

i assume the exposure will kill any chance of us staying together soo....with that in mind
do i just tell him i want a divorce now and let him keep his dirty little secret.....that way he is happy and maintains his illusion of being a great upstanding guy.

quite frankly, i don;t think our marriage has a hope in HELL....and I don't need to expose him to get back at him.....for revenge or anything. at this point in his life i really don't think he wants to change. he just wants to be happy,this rebuild takes minimum 2 years from what i can tell on this MB site!! (BTW, during this time he had another gal on the hook on FB......her husband is sick with cancer right now but he managed to send her a message saying the only thing missing from his hike a few weeks ago was Her.....not a word about her sick husband...I have banned him from seeing her as well....)

i am going golfing now and i am looking forward to hearing your very excellent comments. this forum is absolutely amazing....your comments are becoming my guide and keeping me sane.

thank you for your support...i am beginning to see the light.

Exposure has nothing to do with revenge. If you want to be married, you will need to follow the steps outlined previously. If you want to divorce him, then do so. But there still needs to be exposure of the infidelity, significantly to OWH and the adult children.

Why are you having such a problem in recognizing this? Were either of you married to other people when you met? Is this a 15 year affairage? Just asking....

No, it is the opposite, NOT EXPOSING will kill any chance of you staying together. You WILL end up divorced if you help hide his secrets. Keeping his secret for him and his OW only serves to enable the affair because it fuels his fantasy and makes it easier for the affair to resume.

Even if you decide to divorce now, you should proceed with widespread exposure as an act of kindness unless you want to go through divorce with a fogged out wayward. Exposing the affair bursts his fantasy and makes it much likely he will remain fogged out. Exposure is like chemotherapy for cancer, it is therapeutic.

And honestly, we don't CARE if you are doing it for "revenge." What matters is that you expose and reap the benefits. Your feelings of "revenge" are irrelevant.

And I agree your marriage probably does not have a hope in hell. You have so much going against you, alcoholism and a history of cheating. He is also probably picking up prostitutes on the website you mentioned.

I would strongly urge you to get STD testing. Do not have sex with this man.

Personally I think it would be very uncaring to leave his poison bottles undisturbed and to close a curtain of secrecy around him and his destructiveness with no intervention or exposure targets to help him free himself. I think that would be the best revenge, actually.

But it's his problem if you don't want the marriage. In that case I would just tell as many people in your own circle as possible so they can support you through a personal recovery. Leave him to his own secret hell with no help getting out if that's what you want.

Most recovered former wayward spouses count exposure as their rescue ship. But you are under no obligation to rescue him.

Nor could you recover without it.