Hello,

This is my first thread on this forum. Recently I found out that my wife was having an emotional affair with an old childhood friend. This came at a time when she was staying in her home town for a month due to her father passing away. Anyway, we have gone through all the stages that any couple would after an event like this. She seems to be coming around and told me last week that she is "over the affair" but i know she is still talking to this other guy on the phone. We live together and have 2 small children (3 and 6) I understand the concept of letting her go to get her back but it is difficult to do so when we live together. I dont want to be completely cold and distant but i need some tips or advice on how to "let her go" while living together. She gave me a little glimmer of hope last week when she sent me a meme to my phone saying: "as successful marriage is about falling in love more than once with the same person." and said "i'm all yours." That kinda showed me that she is coming around. I made the mistake of getting excited and showing some affection back and now she seems distant again. Please let me know what i can do to get her back by letting her go. Like i said it's difficult to be tactful when we live together and have to share conversations about kids and the future upgrades, plans, and renovations for our home and other everyday stuff.

Welcome to MB, jakeskate.

I wonder why you want to use the approach "letting her go to get her back". Where did it come from?

Have your read anything about Dr Harley's approach to recovery from an affair? Have you read the free information about Marriage Builders, on this website?

i have read several books about recovering from affairs but i have not read anything on this site yet. I've just seen recently that the "let her go" approach has worked the best it getting her to come around. just looking for advice on how to act and behave while we are living together. it's tough to give her space when we share everything together (conversations, children, house work, etc..)

If you post to this site, you are only going to get Marriage Builders advice - those are the Terms of Service . You signed those, when you registered.

"Letting her go to get her back" is not a Harley concept, and indeed, it goes against Dr Harley's approach to fighting and recovering from an affair. Please read the article How to Survive an Affair, making a note about what Dr Harley describes as Plan A. Please then read the articles in the Articles section that address the issue of affairs.

You will see that there are a number of steps that you need to take to get this affair to end, including exposing the affair to close family, including your kids and both sets of parents and siblings. If the affair does not end immediately, you will then need to enter Plan A, which involves further tackling the affair while showing your wife that you are willing to rebuild the marriage and make it better than before.

Leaving her alone will only allow her to carry on the affair in peace. Should it end, your wife is not likely to see you as the loving husband she can return to - quite the opposite. She is likely to see you as someone who did not care. How can you tackle something by not tackling it? That is illogical. You should drop that strategy and use Marriage Builders.

Jake, in Dr. Harley's experience, "Let her go to get her back" does not work. It's that simple.

Dr. Harley has been specializing in helping couples recover from infidelity for decades. He knows what works and what does not. You should read his article on how he learned to save marriages.

That is about the worst thing you can do. Are you here to get help from people who have saved their marriages, or are you here to blog about failed approaches?

Complacency reflects a lack of caring on your part. Are you trying to demonstrate that you don't care? Because that is how you are coming across. VERY unattractive. I seriously doubt her boyfriend is complacent. I doubt he is "giving her space."

IF you want to save your marriage, you are going to do some work. Sitting around doing nothing will lead to..........nothing. Now is not a good time to take a nap.

i am not being complacent and not taking a nap. I have tried the affectionate and loving approach to find that only pushes her away. she accuses me of shoving it down her throat every time i want to talk about things. She was planning on going back to her hometown to take care of her dads estate where the OM is. I told her i am going with her and my mom will come watch the kids so we can both go. She didn't like that one bit. she said she knows i want to go with her because i dont trust her. Can you blame me? After a week of not talking about things and things seeming like normal i adopted the mindset that i am done. She refuses to seize communication with this guy and get upset because i'm trying to prevent the end of our marriage. I told her she can go ahead and go by herself and that i dont want to stand in the way of her happiness but that i am done. Thats when she said she is over the affair and it was just a pipe dream that will never happen. She has been more affectionate and seemed to be coming around until i started being more present and caring. Now i see by looking at our cel phone records she continues to talk to this guy and is clearly not "over it"

Thats the really confusing part about all this. its when i am aloof and unavailable (seemingly uncaring) she wants to reach out to me. But when i reach out to her she gets pushed away again.

Have you read the articles I linked?

I am very sorry to tell you that this is not an emotional affair but a physical one.

This is very typical stuff - a cake eating wayward spouse who wants to continue getting their EN's met by two different people.

The problem isn't her waffling - it's that the affair hasn't ended.

You need to read through the Exposure 101 thread and develop a comprehensive and thorough exposure plan.

I would also advise you to STOP trying to "talk" your WW out of her affair. I would just stop asking her about it and her "feelings" all together. Waywards lie, lie and then lie some more. As you can probably see now looking back, it doesn't work - and most likely you are just lovebusting your WW during these conversations.

When it is time to have a discussion with her about what needs to happen, we will surely let you now. But for now, you need to focus on Plan A (avoiding lovebusters, making the home pleasant, focusing on your children) and most importantly, exposure.

my question is do i ask her if she is still having the affair/ talking to OM or let her know that i know she is because i can see her call log? She lead me to believe her affair is over but if it is not how can i execute plan A. Plan B cannot happen in our current situation. based on other threads on this site I will not leave my home. Exposure is all fine and dandy but i see that pushing her further away.. I dunno. It's all really tough to swallow and execute properly based on my situation.

"Giving her space" and "letting her go" is taking a nap. And so is showing her affection without fighting against the affair. You are doing nothing to fight for your marriage.

I would go read my exposure 101 thread and expose this affair. OM are punks and cowards and are easy enough to run off. Your best chance lies in exposure.


Let me get this straight. Your wife is in constant contact with her lover and is planning to go see him and you feel she wants to "reach out to you?" REALLY? She is having an active affair and this is your definition of success?

How is that working for you??

Would you like to consider another approach?

Put aside your wrongheaded ideas - that are not working - and go read the Exposure 101 thread. Make a plan to expose and come back and lets discuss.

Your wife is already "pushed away" due to her affair. The solution is to kill the affair. Killing the affair provides the best chance to bring her back.

Keeping her secret only ENABLES the affair. That is wonderful for the OM, but it doesn't do a damn thing for you. STOP HELPING THE AFFAIR AND START HELPING YOUR MARRIAGE.

Don't you think Dr Harley has considered that in his DECADES of experience dealing with marriages affected by infidelity? Of course he has. However in his experience exposure is the #1 most important thing that you can do in order to recover your marriage.

And that's what we see EVERY DAY on this forum - with people who show up and don't make any progress on fixing thier marriage until they expose and end the affair.

Your marriage will survive your WW's anger over exposure. But it's not going to survive this ongoing affair.

The only situation I see here is a BH who wants to avoid conflict. Because every BH that is terrified to anger their WW uses this excuse.

Jake, I'm in the exact same boat you are, except a little farther down the river in that my WW has filed for D.

Plan A is designed to help pull her away from OM toward you. I have read up on the "Detachment" theories as well. I think it is all relative to your perspective. When you are not trying as hard to be the model husband to her, you get a sense of satisfaction and any move she makes toward you feels like detachment is "working."

But if you read through the threads on those Detachment forums, you'll find most of them end in divorce. I guess it goes with the territory as those marriages were already in trouble. But I think those theories are attractive because if you feel detached, you are not as personally invested in making sure the marriage stays together since you accept that it is over. So in the end if it fails, you weren't as invested emotionally in it anyway. I find a lot of references by the posters to finding "personal inner peace" but not many success stories where the marriage is recovered.

Also, trying to execute Detachment is easy on paper but hard in real life. If it were that easy, neither you nor I would be on this site right now! We'd be happily detached and counting the days toward the divorce being final! It is hard because we have spent years in the relationship with WS and now to flip the switch and leave them alone is very difficult.

Just my observation after four months in purgatory.

I have always scratched my head at the detachment theories because it makes absolutely no sense if it is a betrayed husband with a wayward wife. Just think about it for a minute. The marriage is falling apart due to emotional detachment so the solution is MORE emotional detachment? This belief is embraced in the face of evidence that the WW is madly in love with the OM, who certainly IS NOT practicing detachment.

What does detachment do? It makes the OM look more attractive!!

We have had many people come over here from a forum that advocates detachment. The affairs lingered on and on for years. One such lady came here and tried exposure. It killed the affair very quickly and saved her marriage. Exposure is no guarantee, but it gives the marriage the best chance at survival.

I suspect that detachment theory must have been concocted by a MAN because that tactic DOES WORK on a man. So he probably thinks it works with women too, not realizing that women are wired completely different.

Actually, it turns a woman OFF and just gives an already detached female justification for having an affair. "he neglects me, hasn't loved me in years" blah, blah, blah" So I guess if you want to hand your wayward wife some more ammunition with which to shoot you, that is the way to go.

I can see how a WW would appreciate the detachment because it helps her get her husband out of her hair while she is having an affair.