I'm fairly new to MB and this site (having been on a few others with awful advice), so forgive me for my ignorance. I plan on digging into this board pretty deep later on. For now, here's my details:

I am 8 months past Dday. Found out through texting, busted her through phone bills. She was remorseful and near suicide for two weeks - she moved out at my request while I tried to sort out the cesspool of emotions in my head. She went into therapy and dug deep into the reasons for her straying, came clean with me about several past infidelities and committed to me and our marriage. Attended MC and IC. I am also in IC.

She wrote a NC letter to OM. The reason I know is I bugged her car. She never told me. I got tired of listening to her private conversations about him - she admitted to her sister in one conversation that OM still hits on her but she told him to get lost and she's rebuilding her marriage. She is learning boundaries in therapy and I believe the affair to be over. She has allowed me complete and total transparency to her phone and emails. There is no work email.

She still works with OM. Both my IC and MC believed it would be terrible to reveal the affair to the OM's wife and boss. In one of our MC sessions last week, I was having a hard time and said to the MC, "I believe the BIGGEST mistake was not outing this affair to his wife and boss. Now how do I know what is going on at work?" The affair happened at work. I can no longer visit her at work, because it triggers me. She understands.

My wife knows my concerns and texts me daily to reassure me. I track her phone and she leaves when she says she leaves, quit the night shift at work (when it less populated so the likelyhood of the affair could carry on). During the day the boss and lots of other employees are there, so it would be hard to keep any shenanigans from going on.

I exposed to her family and a few of her close friends when I first found out. They were all aghast and in shock - I also let my work know so they would be understanding about any days I would be needing off. I got complete sympathy from them. When she found out her family knew, she was destroyed. She moved out at my request and holed herself in a hotel room for a few weeks, not bathing or eating. She looked like a shell of herself. I had to rescue her. I brought her dinners and sat with her while she cried herself to sleep. HB was there as well.

I missed her. She wanted to come back home after two weeks and we tried. It was awful. We fought constantly. I threw it in her face nearly every night. She said she wanted a divorce due to my emotional abuse. I got bad advice from other forums and think I found my answer here. I decided to stop bringing up the affair as much as I could, only talking about it during MC or my IC. Some forums told me to ignore and do my own thing, some forums told me I had the right to call her a cheating slut every day. I now realize how wrong that advice was. Once I started spending nearly every free minute with her and reassuring her I will try to help her through her emotional mess, things started to work. We began to get close.

Months passed. I stopped counting the weeks, and now I'm counting the months. But its still hard. We're both in MC but every 2-3 weeks now. IC for me is every week because I'm still having a hard time dealing with the affair.

However, we've bonded like no one ever. Our old marriage is dead and our new one is blooming. Spending weekends at retreats, going to church together, bonding sexually, its like we're newlyweds at 30 years together.

The problem is: They STILL work together. I have fantasies of telling the OM's wife, but IC strongly advises against it. MC says it will destroy any chance of recovery and why blow it now since we're recovering so well. Wife does not know I know OM's wife phone number. I worry about losing my temper one night and calling her. Wife continually reassures me that it is done and over and he's actually moved on to another woman.
Bringing up the affair really hurts her. She wants to forget about it and move on. She knows the damage it did to our kids, to our family and wants to focus on the future.

I've changed dramatically from this. Last year, during her affair, I was a housebound agorophobic who could barely function. I had pretty severe mental health issues. I blamed her and really took it out on her. Now this isn't a reason to have an affair, but she would go to work crying every day and OM became friends, then moved on to play her. She was smitten, became attracted to this ugly dork. He said all the right things, and based on her poor boundaries and family history of infidelity, it was a recipe for disaster.

Now, I've recovered and travel extensively. I've lost nearly 30 pounds, we go to the gym together, I'm a guy that she's incredibly attracted to. She calls me out on my BS, which she never did before, and I believe it has made me a better man. I've stopped all medications and life has never felt better.

I feel like I'm stuck though. We had an argument the other night and although it had nothing to do with the affair, it had to do with boundaries. The argument led INTO the affair, though, and bringing it up during the fight really hurt her and we were both in shock for a few days. It takes a while to recover from our affair talks. I nearly called OM's wife that night.

Anyway, this is a brief synopsis - I'm sure there's a ton of questions more I have, but the main one is:

We are 8 months past BD. Moving on. Is it too late to expose to OM's w? I know if I do, it could cause havoc at work, as well as possibly my recovery. I do not know my W's opinion on this because I'm afraid to bring it up to her. MC and IC advise strongly against it. I want to separate them so desperately and letting his wife know could probably do that, but I really don't know if I'd be dropping a nuke here.

Thoughts?

Your IC and MC are enablers and have no idea how to save your marriage. I stopped right here because there is no need for me to read anymore. Recovery is impossible under these conditions. This is like sending the alcoholic into the bar every day to drink and pretending he is sober. Your wife can never withdraw from the OM and you can never heal under this condition. Every day she goes to work and sees her OM, she is triggered and you are triggered.

That is your first biggest mistake.

The second mistake is helping them hide the secret. Affairs thrive on secrecy, so keeping the secret helps it thrive and grow and prevents the fantasy from ever bursting. It is also highly unethical. You are actively contriving behind the back of this man's wife and the workplace. They are both in danger and have no way to protect themselves from your wife and the OM.

The advice we give here comes from clinical psychologist, Dr. Bill Harley, founder of Marriage Builders and author of best seller book Surviving an Affair. Most of us here have saved our marriages using these concepts. It is very obvious that your counselors have no earthly idea how to save a marriage and are hurting your chances of recovery. That is not surprising since marriage counselors have an 84% failure rate. They have no idea what they are doing and you are more likely to end up divorced taking their advice.

Do you want to save your marriage? If so, stop going to counseling. Expose the affair, demand that your wife quit her job immediately and follow this checklist to affair proof your marriage:

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

This is a lie. You can refer this MC to Dr. Bill Harley, clinical psychologist, and author of Surviving an Affair at his radio show at mbradio@marriagebuilders.com. You have not even begun recovery.

Appreciate the 2x4.

So, basically how should I expose? Should I let our MC or my IC or W's IC know? Or let my W know?

Or just do it and wait for the stuff to hit the fan?

Please go read the thread in my signature called Exposure 101. Please read and come back and we will help you develop a strategy. We will help you!

Also, while you are preparing to expose you need to find a job that you are home every night. Will you find a job that keeps you home at night?

Also read this.
Beware of Bad Counselors