I have been lurking around here for 3 months, never posting, always listening. A lot of what I have read on the MB site and the compassion I have seen in these forums has amazed me and helped me realize what type of partner I have been for 7 years.

Some quick background before I ask my question:
D-day was 4 months ago yesterday. The OM was my best friend, and it had been going on for 9 months. Major EA with occasional PA, when time permitted (he has two high need children and a wife, but they worked together for 4 months during the affair.) I kicked her out as soon as I found out. I kicked myself out as well and moved into my parents for a while because I could not stand being in our home. The betrayal I feel (still) by the two closest people in my world was quite debilitating, and occasionally still is, though with therapy I am getting better. His wife to my knowledge still does not know, or does not want to know.

When we started talking a week later she gave me some hope. It turned out to be all fog talk when I found out she was still talking to and occasionally seeing him. D-day #2 was 3 months ago.

This all occurred before I found this sight. On D-day #2 I insisted that she send him her goodbyes and end it for good with him or that it was over for us. She did. 9 letters to him that I insisted on reading which brought to light the extent of the affair. She had been shielding me from the truth. I found everything I had been waiting to hear from her for over a year and a half (we were having some bad times) in the 9 letters she sent to him. That was the day she moved back into our house, though she still has an apartment.

In retrospect, if I had known of this sight I could have handled D-day #2 better. I could have plan A'd or plan b'd intead of forcing an end with a metaphorical shotgun.

It has been three months of counciling and very slow rebuilding for the two of us. I have done some incredible soul searching and have begun to change the things within myself that needed changing. I have started to look within myself and see where I messed up the relationship, and in doing so I have become a better person.

Her own introspection has been much less than mine. I chalked it up to a lot of factors, ultimately the fog. It was not until the past few weeks that I could say that we were rebuilding the relationship together. Things have actually been quite good for us, and I had a lot more hope for the future in what I saw.

Then I found out that the OM, my former best friend, and his family are moving to another state about 4 hours away. I brought it up in therapy, and nothing has been right since.

She insists that she needs to see him one more time. She has to say goodbye. My own emotions are off the charts, hence why I am ditching my lurker status to post today.

I am not ready to trust her to see him again, especially when she thinks this will be her last opportunity (though his parents and in-laws live in our city.) She tells me it is about closure, that this is something that she has needed and was waiting to ask me for, or waiting for a chance run in with him to have.

I have most of the e-mails they sent each other over the affair up to D-day #2. Included in those e-mails are the ways the two of them deceived me to see each other. My trust is not where I can just forget that deception and let them have their conversation. Or can I?

That is what I am coming here to ask advice on. Can I trust her that this is closure and not just another attempt to have a double helping of cake before he is gone? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Sorry about the length of the post.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">She insists that she needs to see him one more time. She has to say goodbye. My own emotions are off the charts, hence why I am ditching my lurker status to post today.

I am not ready to trust her to see him again, especially when she thinks this will be her last opportunity (though his parents and in-laws live in our city.) She tells me it is about closure, that this is something that she has needed and was waiting to ask me for, or waiting for a chance run in with him to have.

I have most of the e-mails they sent each other over the affair up to D-day #2. Included in those e-mails are the ways the two of them deceived me to see each other. My trust is not where I can just forget that deception and let them have their conversation. Or can I?

That is what I am coming here to ask advice on. Can I trust her that this is closure and not just another attempt to have a double helping of cake before he is gone? Any help or advice is greatly appreciated. Sorry about the length of the post. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">According to Dr Willard Harley, there can be NO marital recovery until the WS ends contact with the OP FOREVER. Your WW is going thru withdrawl very much like an addict that has stopped using drugs, but in her case her drug is the OM and any renewed contact with him will only take her back to square one, thus negating any positive steps she achieved since the last time she saw him. So to answer your question, NO there is no such thing as closure if she contacts the OM for supposedly one more time, in fact its quite the opposite.

Unfortunately you can't use a love buster like a 'selfish demand', even if its for a good cause like saving your marriage. You could ask her if she is willing to risk losing the M for such 'closure' because the OM certainly doesn't seem to want to do the same with regards to his M.

If she must say goodbye to him then make sure you are with her. I would have contacted the OM's wife as well. Wanting to see him alone after all of this is the ultimate in disrespect to you and your marriage.

whysper,

Welcome to the forum....sorry your here, but happy to have you.

Don't you DARE let this meeting occur. Oops, did that sound to strong???? <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" />

Truthfully, this closure she is asking for, will completely derail your efforts to save your marriage. It will stir up old feelings, make withdrawal longer....it would be a disaster.

Do not allow it. Be completely honest and tell her straight how this meeting will make YOU feel. Betrayed all over again. This is just more fog talk and fog reasoning...don't fall for it. She is the one who should be feeling guilty....NOT you, especially not for preventing her from seeing her lover.

The next thing I'm going to tell you is going to be hard for you....but if you've read this site, you will know the truth of it and the logic of it. If you want to really end this affair once and for all, and do the moral and ethical thing...tell the OM's wife. She deserves to know, and deserves to know that your wife wants to see him again. Exposing affairs ends affairs. My guess is that if the OM's wife knows...this meeting will NEVER occur...and it never should. Honesty all the way around is the only thing that is going to get you guys out of this mess.

Your wife needs to step up to the plate and make a decision about what she wants to do...see the Om or work on the marriage....she can't do both, and you shouldn't let her.

(((((((((whysper))))))))))))))0
sending you sunshine <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Whysper,

I concur with my MB friends. DO NOT let this meeting take place.

Do you have a copy of SAA? Have you read the concepts pages? Do you understand how an A occurs, how it ends?

It is imperative for YOUR M that she NOT see him face-to-face.

To have "closure" all she needs to do is write him a NC letter. It's all in SAA. Please order a copy......you'll have it in just a day or two.

BTW - is your W doing all she can to help w/recovery -- for both of you? If so, then she should be willing to hear you out about this issue.

BLessings,

<small>[ June 21, 2003, 06:48 PM: Message edited by: lupolady ]</small>

Thanks for all of the quick responses. I appreciate the advice.

Unfortunately for us though, I do not think I can stop her from doing what she wants to do. She has already gone looking for him once while I was at work. OM and his wife are out of town though so she had to make do with a former coworker. This former coworker, along with at least one of her sisters is telling her that she needs to talk to him to have closure. Right now, I am LB like crazy on this topic, which does not help at all.

What also does not help is that our therapist, while he did not come right out and say it, deffinately implied that it was alright for her to see him to say goodbye.

As to telling his wife, at this point in time I am content to be silent. I want her to know, but I really do not see that it will do me any good at this point in time. Enough people already know that if she wanted to see that it happened, she would see it, just on the basis that most of our mutual friends are not talking to him anymore. She has also had at least one affair of her own, and possibly more, or at least that is what he had told me in the past. Their marriage is now irrelevent to me, and I do not think that it is worth risking the peace of mind that I will get when they are gone. They are moving so that she can take a new job. If she does something drastic, he may not go with her, and then the direct competition may begin again. I do not want to go through that again at all.

I do feel that I have to clarify something before anyone else posts. We are not married. We have been a couple for almost 8 years, but circumstances in our lives and my past history (I have never had a serious relationship where my significant has not cheated, and it subsequently ends) has put marriage on the "to do later" list. She moved in with me after we spent over a year 100 miles apart about a year and a half ago. I had every intention to marry her soon after that, but our relationship derailed quite a bit when she fell into a deep depression after she moved in. I lost faith, and sat on the couch watching T.V. and playing games waiting for her depression to lift before taking that next step. She fell in love with my best friend.

My therapist right after D-day #1 told me that he would treat my depression and other problems as if we were married, and that stuck with me. It did not dawn on me until I started reading responses to my post to even mention that there is no legal document between us, just shared memories and possesions, and a history which until she moved in with me was for the most part wonderful. I have read the Living Together article, and in retrospect I can see that it was the wrong order to do things in. I apologize for all of you who may be insulted byy my ommision.

whysper,

It takes more than that to insult me LOL <img border="0" title="" alt="[Razz]" src="images/icons/tongue.gif" /> But is that the only motivation behind your omission? Ya got me wondering now.

And this does change the advice. Married means married before God....and those vows, make that union sacred and worth saving at almost all costs. If you are thinking of marrying this woman, perhaps she does need closure. Your may feel married...but you aren't...and the truth is that you don't want to be if she can't get this out of the way. I personally, might let her go, but there would definitely be conditions attached. She sees him and decides once and for all, what she wants. She agrees to no further contact. She agrees to put your relationship first and start contributing to it. If not, I'd say you're pretty lucky you haven't married her yet. Would you marry someone who would do this? I sure wouldn't.

star*fish-

You ask a lot of questions that many others have asked as well. The best answer that I can give is that when things are good between us, I am amazed by how good I feel. There is a "rightness" to our relationship that I have been amazed by countless times.

I do question constantly why I am still with her, but I keep coming back to the same thing. If I had known the attitudes and actions I had taken towards her depression were subtracting from her feelings of self worth, and her willingness to remain monogomous, I would have acted differently. I see where I failed the relationship.

Right now, with her need to talk to him one last time, I am wondering if she sees where she failed. The cycle of doubt and revisionist history begins anew. I am sticking to my gut though, that it is right.

To answer your question, it was the only reason for my ommision. As she puts it I have a tendancy to see only black and white. When MB was recommended to me, I came into it with an attitude that I should be seeing my relationship as a marriage, and that is how I have read all of the posts, until I got replies to my own.

You are right that I do not want to marry someone who has done this, or who cannot get over this. I love her though, enough to forgive and move on, with the proper encouragement, contrition, and assurances from her that right now really do not seem to be coming.

whysper,

Saw you were here....how are you doing?

star*fish-

I guess i am doing okay, thanks for asking. She had a bad day at her job yesterday, and we just avoided the topic until we were going to sleep. She was laying next to me and I told her I did not want to feel this bad anymore. Nothing was really said after that, but a lot of tears were flowing for a while.

She had to get up early for work this morning, but was home by the time I came home for lunch. Her bad day from yesterday became a worse day at work today, so I just listened to her and tried to be there for her, instead of bringing up our problem. I went back to work assuming she was going to take a nap. She has now been sleeping since I came home (about an hour ago,) and I hate to wake her.

I guess you can say I am okay because we are avoiding the situation. From what I understand, or perhaps just what I want to hear, she is going to write some letters and call some people before she does anything else. Then again, she has locked her two e-mail accounts again, so she may have already slipped.

whysper,

I think you need to be honest and tell her that you see the locking of those accounts as a license to cheat. She's got to make up her mind.

That comes tomorrow, along with a discussion about the love letters contained within. Her reason of course for changing the passwords being that I keep going back and reading the letters from my supposed best friend and getting angry over them. Well, she could delete them, and it would not be a problem, would it.

Tomorrow though. She has had a rediculously bad two days at work, and I tend to cave too easily when I see her stressed.