Do you think I should try to enlist her friends to try to contact her again? She said it really upset her when she hears from them from my Exposure list. Would that help add a dose of sanity and reality to the situation? I think previously you told me to Expose then let the Exposure sink in. But most of her friends have not been able to talk to her about it, since she told everyone of them (except the Enabler friend) that she will "tell her side of the story when she is ready."
The risk in doing this is she might turn the friends to her side, like she did with her Enabler friend, which builds her own idea in that her Affair was justified.
She hated the fact that I contacted "her" friends behind her back. I'm wondering if the positives outweighs the negatives in this equation.

Once again, you guys were right. Overheard her phone conversations as she contacted the OM! It was so disheartening to hear their half hour long conversation, but confirms that I've been gaslighted all this time! Her interest in remodeling was just an act. I also found that she paid the $6K retainer (actually the MIL funded it). I asked MIL if she knew that WW is still in contact with OM, she was stunned and didn't know what to say.
It looks like D is inevitable. My attorney urged that I file first to get on the offensive, and establish the venue. All of this is cold water splashed on WW's face, she has not had to deal with finances for 18 years, she doesn't know how to fill out the support forms! What do you guys think, should I file first? Reconciliation is a long shot and at this point I think. Who files first is a technicality, since it's a matter of time.
WW is having trouble getting an apartment as she cannot qualify with lack of income and credit history to get anything around here.
What a disastrous weekend.
:-(

I'm so sorry to hear this. I know how much it hurts. Hang in there!

Can you cut off or remove her cell phone from your acct so that you're not paying for her to engage with the OM?

No, it's a prepaid phone her enabler friend got her

Awwwww that is terrible. I'm sorry.

I sure hate being right sometimes and this is one of them, but I felt sure that she was still in touch given her high fog level. I would do what your attorney says because her only hope here is to wipe you out financially. File for D but continue to tell her that you don't want a divorce but are only protecting yourself financially. Get financial protections in place and then drag out the divorce.

I want to emphasize that this is FAR from over, though. This affair has gone on for a very long time and has been bolstered by a lack of reality. Reality is now starting to intrude. If she moves out, I predict her little fantasy will die very quickly and reconciliation will be possible.

Stick to Plan A, which means being as pleasant as possible while causing as much trouble in the affair as you can!

Are you sure the OM is divorced?

Also, this was not a disasterous weekend, it was a GREAT step forward because you know the truth now. The affair never ended and you have uncovered this fact.

Please tell me you did not tell your MIL how you know this? I would not tell anyone how you know. If MIL asks you, just say you are watching everything your WW does.

No, I just told them I "overheard" their conversation, without getting into specifics.

Talked to WW's cousin as well, she is shocked that WW continues to contact OM even after cousin's intervention last time. She was upset at me at first about the Exposure but I told her we are way beyond that now. I just want her to know if she helps WW with the D she is helping someone who has repeated lied to her about NC with OM!
Hope this will cause major disruption to the A but at this point the fire in my heart is very faint... I'm not sure if I can still do the Plan A after hearing their conversation.

You handled this perfectly and no one would blame you if you decided to walk away. That being said, you don't have to make that decision today. You can move forward and file for divorce to protect yourself legally. The situation may change and your feelings may change. If that happens and you decide to try, you can always change your strategy. But regardless of what you decide, I would protect yourself legally since your wife is behaving in such a destructive manner.

PERFECT!

What are the statistics around Plan A succeeding? And Plan B?
I believe reading about them being both very low

I would give Plan A about a 50% success rate if the affair is exposed early on. The longer the affair goes on without being exposed, the harder it is to bust up.

The objective of Plan B is completely different, though. The goal is to protect the mental health of the BS. There are many situations where divorce is the definition of success; keep that in mind. All marriages should not be saved.

I depends on what you mean by success, now doesn't it?

Being the BS in an affair situation is the epitome of the proverbial situation of being between a rock and a hard place. So, while I am very sorry that you find yourself in this dreadful situation, there are no guarantees in anything you choose to do. If anything, you want to do the sorts of things that make the situation better and stay away from doing things that will make it worse.

So what are Plan A and Plan B? They are the result of Dr. Harley's accumulated experience with thousands of couples over decades of time. They are the course of actions that will give you greatest likelihood for the best outcome you will be able to get.

And in all fairness to the criticism that the odds of success appear low, one must realize that most of the advice you will find out there doesn't just deliver poor odds for success, but actually hurts the chances and leaves you in a worse state than if you had simply done nothing at all.

Oh, I would definitely say that Plan A gives one the best chance of survival in a bad situation. I don't know of any other plan that would come close. It isn't a guarantee, but it definitely increases the odds. At the end of the day, there is no such thing that will force a wayward to do anything against her will. But if anything might turn a bad situation around, Plan A will.

Like Mr.E and Melody mentioned before, there is nothing that guarantees success - and they have been around this much much longer than me. The same criticisms get placed on exposure. "SO if I expose, the affair will end and my marriage will be safe right?" Quite the opposite in fact.

All these terms/strategies, Plan A, Plan B, exposure, etc. Its all for the Betrayed Spouse's well being. You are dealing with an extreme trauma. I am sure in some cases the success rate of doing nothing and following MB principles were about the same, that is, the wayward was just too far wayward.

Take my situation for example. I have no idea if my wife will ever come back. It sucks to say, I still do not like the idea of losing her for ever and think about a future without her. But I have been suicidal several times throughout my situation. Without the exposure step, I would have virtually no support group. While I believe I have given myself the best chance to save the marriage, I still cannot deny that statistically I am doomed to fail regardless. At some point Lost, you will realize that its about saving you more than saving WS.

These principles, while having better success rates than any other methods, are by far the best in terms of helping the BS's well being....

At least in my experience so far.

Typically, exposure will end the affair which gives the marriage a much better chance of recovery. It is like taking the crack away from the crack head, he sobers up which makes recovery much more possible. Exposure is like bringing a crowd of people into the crack house to watch the crackheads get high; it ruins the high!! It is no fun to get high with people watching.

Dr. Harley says this about exposure:
So yes, exposure does give much needed support to the BS, but the major benefit can be the death of the affair with the added benefit of a more motivated WS. Most recovered marriages on this site attribute that to exposure.

Unfortunately, in my case the Exposure gave me temporary allies for a few weeks. But WW managed to turn her mother as well as her Enabler friend against me, using Exposure as the reason. They are accusing me of being controlling and vengeful and they are using it to justify supporting WW leaving me. Even with the information I gave MIL yesterday that WW is still contacting OM it doesn't seem to faze her support of WW's move. All of them say WW leaving me will be her mistake, she's a grown adult and we need to let her make her own mistakes.
I feel so down these days...

Your exposure has brought her affair out into the open so it is really much harder for her to keep it a secret. Once the affair is in the open, it starts to crumble. The reason her fog has persisted is because she just took the affair further underground.

Surely you have allies on your side of the family, right? In every exposure, there are family/friends who enable the affair, but there are usually folks that will support the marriage.