Hi all,

New here... I am the WW. The affair ended almost 3 weeks ago and there has been zero contact since. I confessed to BH the same day I ended it with OM. I guess I am technically still in withdrawal, although it is nowhere near as terrible as I feared it would be.

We have just finished reading Surviving An Affair together (His Needs, Her Needs, and Love Busters, and the workbook arrived in the mail today), and we have a couple of questions... BH knows I'm joining up and posting here.

I understand that there comes a time when the affair should not be discussed any more. Specifically when does that generally happen? BH has asked all of his questions and I have answered them all completely honestly.

The Policy of Radical Honesty says that we should reveal as much information about ourselves to our spouse as we know... thoughts, feelings, etc. So lets say I have a bad moment or day feeling down/sad about OM, as does still occasionally happen. Am I supposed to be truthful and tell BH how I'm feeling? And if so... doesn't this contradict not talking about the affair any more?

Thank you!

Congratulations on taking one of the most important and bravest steps towards honesty you can take. Few recoveries start with a confession so well done.

Talking about the affair should be limited to a one time only revelation of facts for the security of the betrayed spouse. It's not for the naval gazing you're talking about here, as was your instinct.

I'm thinking that perhaps exposure has not been properly done? Who have you exposed to? Who doesn't know?

It's usually quite difficult to romanticize and get wistful about an affair once it's in the light of day. The ugliness of it usually becomes quite clear then.

Oh and if the 'plus one' in your username is OM....thats seriously gross and you need to change it before your BH sees it.

Feelings follow actions.

Hi USPlusOne, welcome to Marriage Builders. Can I ask who the "plusone" is? If it is the OM, I would strongly suggest changing your screen name.

The PORH does not mean that you endlessly bring up the mistakes of the past as you think of them. Bringing the unpleasantness of the past into the present, makes the present unpleasant.

Have you followed the Surviving an Affair checklist in affair proofing your marriage? Can you look at this and tell us what has been completed?

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.

Hi indiegirl and MelodyLane...

Thank you for replying. Re my screen name... I absolutely did not mean the OM!! OMG, I meant our little one (Miss 7) when setting that up!! It obviously couldn't stay as it was, so I've changed it *facepalm*

I'm in Australia so reply timings may be a bit strange.

I'll come back a little later to reply to you both properly in detail. Just getting ready for school now.

Thanks for clarifying!!

Have you read this and listen to the radio clips in What is Just Compensation?

Thank you. Hardest thing I've ever had to do, but knew there was no other way!

Thank you both for the clarification. Got it. You're right, that was my instinct, but I just wanted to be sure that I was also following the PORH!

I'll answer this further down when I respond to MelodyLane and ticking off the checklist


Yes we've read all about Just Compensation. I hadn't listened to the radio clips, although did hear Dr Harley talking about it in part of the videos hubby & I watched from the videos section (we watched them all).

Ok that's hilarious.

Ok so this looks halfway there, but there are some big issues.

- OM is simply blocked? You need an entirely new phone number and email. This way he could simply call you from a burner or new email address.
- The exposure list looks scant on the family front. Any relatives, especially parents been exposed to? Siblings? Your daughter if she is over the age of four?
- Any travelling at all is going to be problematic. I get that 'way less' may seem much better but its going to upend your recovery every time.

At the moment yes he's just blocked. I reeeaallly didn't want to get a new number, I've had this one for a million years. But we've just discussed it and agree it's probably the best idea to change it. So I'll do that. I have deleted the email account that I had specifically for any contact with him (we barely used it anyway). He doesn't know my "normal" email address (that again I've had for a million years!).

Re exposure to family. Hubby's father passed years ago. His mother lives in the UK and we don't have much of a relationship with her. My parents are on the other side of the country, we see them once a year if that, and they are currently battling some very huge personal, health & family issues themselves. They are ageing and under an extreme amount of stress already, and we do not want to put this on them now. I have one brother who I'm estranged from (he is part of the stress they're under).

Our "family" support is our close friends over here who are like family, and that's who we've exposed to. It's not as though I'm opposed to or trying to avoid exposure.

Re our daughter, she's only 7, and a very young 7. She wouldn't understand this and we are both in complete agreement that nothing can be gained from trying to explain this to her. We REALLY don't want to tell her... unless there is some solid reason as to why she has to know that we don't know about???

Unfortunately we simply can't completely eliminate all travel, and I know from reading the book "Surviving an Affair" that we don't need to either - there are ways to work around it. He's going from being away every other week, 50+ flights a year for the last 6 years with the old job, to 4 trips a year (once a qtr) with the new job, at least one of which I'll go on with him, and then local trips that I can definitely go on with him. He is home based otherwise, so doesn't go to an office every day, which dramatically increases the time we spend together as well. I only work a small amount of casual hours.

I understand that you and others are likely to read the above and just see excuses, or that I'm trying to "cherry pick" my way through the necessary steps... I'm sincerely not trying to do that. I'm completely owning this.

Hi Us, it's great that you are committed to making all the necessary changes. But I think you need to change your mindset a bit - it is not just about not contacting OM but also eliminating all the aspects of your lifestyle that made the affair possible and holding yourself accountable.

Exposure holds you accountable. When people know what has happened, they will pay more attention to your life than they did before. And that is good for your marriage and good for you.

7 years old is grown up! I have three boys of 8, 7 and 6 and they had no problem understanding my husband's cheating. Actually, it is a pretty simple thing to explain. Discussing it with them helped them to understand the reason for the tension in the house - which they are 100% aware of, even if you think they are not - and it stopped them from being confused about subsequent events. It was also an important teaching point about what marriage is and how you are supposed to behave when you are grown up. Your daughter will definitely have questions about what has happened, but she is probably keeping them to herself, feeling that she can't ask her parents. The disapproval of a child is also one of the most powerful motivating forces to make you be your best self. Don't deprive yourself of that!

If you were able to set up a separate email account to communicate with OM, what's to stop you doing the same thing again in the future? How can you close that hole so that you CAN'T hide communication with a man outside your marraige again?

Hi Chalk,

Thanks for your response. Yes, I know it isn't just about not contacting the OM again (of which I have ZERO desire or inclination to do). I know it is about changing my lifestyle so the secret second life is not possible ever again. That's what I'm in the process of doing. We have discussed how my secret second life was possible. Engaging in independent behaviour, and not following the PORH or POEA has been part of marriage for years, but won't be ever again. It will all change. It already has changed.

I understand exposure holds me accountable. As I said, I'm not opposed to exposure. BH chose to expose to our snr martial arts instructors - both extremely well respected by us and within the community. I've experienced how it felt to know that they now know what I did. I saw them yesterday.

I'm still not convinced re our daughter though... but will think about what you have said and discuss it with my husband.

Is that a trick question re the email?! There is nothing to physically stop me setting up another private email address is there?! But I sure as hell am not going to. And if I did, I would have to tell my husband. He knew that email existed because I told and showed him it, and he knows I've now deleted it. I have committed to telling him the absolute truth and we have agreed to follow the PORH and the POEA. I have been brutally honest about this whole thing from the moment I confessed 3 weeks ago.

We are thoroughly immersed in all of the information and resources. We've read and watched. We continue to read and work through the questionnaires and books, etc. Not sure what more I can do right now?!!

I would strongly encourage exposing to your daughter as covering this up for her will simply mean a skeleton in your closet. It's a simple thing to do in an age appropriate way. My five and four year old nieces and nephews had to lose their best friends over the affair and they were hands down the sanest responses to affair exposures I experienced.

Some people who skipped this back when exposures were not pushed on the site had it smack them in the face a decade or so later.

Dr H strongly recommends it.

Just tell her you had a boyfriend which married grown ups aren't supposed to have. You told lies about it and hurt dad really badly. You can assure her you're sorry and then just tell her she can ask you whatever.

Most people are surprised to hear the kids already noticed something and often have been blaming themselves.

Work travel could work if you are going too.

I would just get parental exposures over with. No need to make a meal out of it.

No trick questions here. Just a lot of knowledge on affairs. They are highly addictive and (unfortunately) there is quite the risk of relapse.

Revealing all information about the affair to the BS also means revealing all the circumstances how the affair started, so you know what to change to prevent it from ever happening again. Under the wrong circumstances, everybody is at risk of having an affair. It is very important to avoid circumstances that have led to your affair. It also means disclosing what made you fall in love with the other man, what emotional needs of yours did he meet and how to prevent these needs being met by anyone besides your BH in the future.

It is best to be thourough and to reveal all in a short amount of time. In many cases not everything is disclosed (to "protect" the betrayed spouse) and details come out at a later moment. "Trickle truth" ruins the progress of recovery. Telling the truth will hurt, but it will be worse if not the entire truth is told.

Changing your phonenumber is inevitable. You have blocked him on social media, but you need to delete it. Chances are your affair partner looks you up on Facebook/Linkedin/... with another account and you don't want to be triggered by seeing his name under "people you might know" or friend suggestions. Eliminate possibilities for him to contact you.

His BW left messages on your voicemail, how did she find out? How/why did the affair end? How long did it last?

I have read SAA many times and there are not any ways to work around it unless you plan to go with him. Can you do that? Traveling jobs are devastating to marriages. if you are not together every night you won't be able to create a integrated, romantic marriage. Nor will it be affair proof. Do you know that even Dr Harley and Joyce don't spend the nights apart? And they have never endured an affair. This is a huge gap in your plan.

Does the OM live close to you?

Read this Dr Harley on telling the Children

Assuming your manager is male, how many male friends do you have and what is your view on friendship between men and women?

I really think exposure is the nub of the issue for you. It�s also what you came here to ask: �How do I be �radically honest� without being a jerk and rubbing my issues in other people�s faces!� Well exposure does not do that. No matter how old/young or British they may be.




Ah ��� the kind of honesty that seeks not to hurt others. As a former betrayed spouse, I spit on that to be honest.

Your reasoning struck out at me, because it�s the very mindset which creates deceptive habits. The way Dr H's daughter Jennifer Chalmers describes it is avoiding inconvenience to oneself and others through dishonesty:


Deceptive people aren�t bad people and people who have affairs aren�t bad people.

But people who have affairs ARE deceptive people. They are the kind of people who would never EVER go home and say �Gosh honey, I have built up such a rapport with co-worker that I think I am actually attracted to him! And I think it�s mutual! But there�s not much I am willing to do about avoiding him because it�s my job to see him daily! So either our marriage suffers or our finances! How do you feel about my honesty at this point?�

They don�t do that. They just proceed deceptively and hope that they have the strength to sort it out on their own without hurting anyone else. Surprise ending: they don�t.


This kind of honesty appears to make sense. You avoid hurting someone over something they can�t do very much about anyway. You get to maintain the illusion that you are perfect and never make any mistakes.

You are totally missing the point that just *BEING* honest is a protection in and of itself. You don�t actually need the recipient of the honesty to understand where you�re coming from, have the emotional or physical resources to help or support, to be physically close by, or anything else. In fact it could be the worst exposure response ever and it is still good for you. It doesn�t have to be convenient and easy and non-awkward. It�s best if it�s not actually. The best exposures are ones where it�s not easy.


I know you want to learn more about this stuff because it is the very question that brought you here: �How and when should I be honest when honesty is hurtful?� The answer to your question is exposure and exposure will cure you of the last of your foggy thinking about OM. It will have other beneficial surprises too, such as that your parents and daughter wouldnt actually appreciate this patronage. When big stuff goes down, they want the facts.

I'm curious about what ways you've read in Surviving an Affair (SAA) to work around it?

Then tell your daughter.