Is there any help here for those who are newly divorced yet want to reconcile with thier ex? Does any of Dr. Harley's experience relate to my situation?

Have you read these? Should I Remarry My Ex-Spouse? If Not, How Can I Just Let Go?

Welcome to MB.

Would you mind telling us the circumstances? If you are only recently divorced, yet want to reconcile, was this divorce against your wishes? What happened?

I have read these. I guess I should give a brief overview of my situation. My wife of nearly 14 years told me that she wanted out. Shortly after I discovered she was having an affair with an old high school boyfriend. I did all the things they say not to begged pleaded anything I could think of to get us to work on the problems. She refused saying it didn't work with the first husband. I told my family about the affair I told most of her family, our friends and colligues at work. Then I found one of those other sites and stepped back. She moved out in April then we began working on the divorce agreement. we have stayed amicable about the whole thing with me even agreeing to let her board her horse and trailer at our marital home. She still has personal belongings and furniture in the house but, will not come to remove them. I have not seen or talked to her in over a month. The last communication was about moving things out and she had excuses why she couldn't . She has continued the affair and is basically living with him for the summer. Our divorce will be final this week.

What does she mean that it didn�t work �with the first husband?� Has she been married before? If so how did that marriage end?

I am her 2nd husband the 1st husband had an affair on her. They went to therapy but it did change how she felt.

Welcome to MB.

Have you read about Plan A? It is a plan where you do everything you can to kill the affair (such as exposing it), while simultaneously working to be the better option to your spouse. You do this by meeting her needs and avoiding lovebusters. Dr Harley recommends that men do this as long as they are able, up to 2 years. As you can see, this is in direct contrast to �stepping back.� This obviously did not work for you.

Do you have kids together? How did you expose the affair? Is the OM also married and did you expose it to his side?

How do you know her first husband had an affair, and not the other way around? I am just making sure that this is not a pattern for her, as it might change the advice you get here.

Have not heard of plan A.
We do not have children.
The OM is not married, but has 2 grown children.
I dont know for sure but, her family told me how worried they were about her at the time. She told me that her dinner would be a glass of wine and popcorn. We started dating 6 months after her divorce.

Need to add that I do not know any of his friends or family. I did find his daughter on facebook but have not pm'ed her about it. He does not do facebook and lives 30 miles away. As my ex is a teacher she has time off durring the summer and has been staying with him at the house he rents.

Hi, DNF, welcome to Marriage Builders. There's an enormous amount of help and information here from Dr. Harley, and I encourage you to dig into it and get educated so you can make the best decisions and plan possible for your situation.

With no children involved you might ultimately decide you want to move on and recover from all this trauma alone. Dr. Harley's got good advice for that.

Or you might decide to keep trying to win your wife back for awhile. Dr. Harley's got good advice for that, too.

The reason I bring all this up is I see your comment from a day ago that you haven't heard of Plan A. I encourage you to start digging and reading the articles and Q&A columns here on the site, as well as to install the Marriage Builders app so you can listen to Dr. Harley's daily radio show. Learn how to have a good marriage and how to recover a marriage from infidelity so you can make the best decisions possible for your situation.

I think exposure would be a good place to start, regardless of what you choose to do, because it will give you much needed support and help with everything you need to do next. She needs the intervention too; I'm sure her family are worried.

I would also guess that it will float up some skeletons that shes been hiding, because theres no way she was the betrayed wife in her first marriage. BWs don't go to to counselling with cheating husbands that they dont love. That is just the sort of nonsense a wayward would say.

I imagine if you speak to her ex husband (you never did, im guessing?) he will tell you that the high school boyfriend broke up his marriage, but he's only interested in her when she's unavailable.

Exposure is a strong loving way to draw a line in the sand as to what is tolerable and what is actually true. It's an important part of plan A. As well as the articles I would recommend this thread by a site vet:

ttps://forum.marriagebuilders.com//ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2566583

I find it hard to believe that the boyfriend broke them up unless it was because she never got over him and always wounders what if. He has been divorced since 2009 and as far as I know she is the one who made contact with him last year. I wounder what Dr. Harley would say about this. I did a lot of the things they say not to do before I found the other site and backed off from exposure and even let her believe that I believed her that she had ended it with the OM. Have I waited too long to really do something about this. As much as I want to reconcile I don't want to end up stuck and never letting go or moving on. I continue to work on my issues and becoming a better man going forward. I worry so much about comparing anyone new to her.

I have seen many affair partners described on this site and they always fall into the category of 'hard to believe'.

Possibly my favourite example is the woman who left her surgeon husband (who would have left his career for her) for an abusive man who lived in a trailer and sold his blood for a living.

There's two criteria which are always met:

1) They are always 'hard to believe', either they are an extremely poor choice or it was someone they dumped/were dumped by/actively disliked/mocked in the past/ would normally be viewed as unattractive.
2) It's someone they have time/history with. There's been an opportunity to create lovebank deposits. This is either happening at work/through friendships/through family relationships.

As an old boyfriend, there was an existing lovebank account from the past. It was dormant while they were not in contact and reactivated when pleasant contact occurs. Some people are social media stalkers of their exes and therefore never cease contact. Dr H strenuously discourages contact with exes because this phenomenon of reactivating the lovebank is so common.


She might have done this simply because she has generally poor boundaries with men and doesn't understand that she would trigger a lovebank response.

Buuuut... since her story about being cheated on has a lot of holes in it, I'd be willing to bet that she is the cheater, the affair was unexposed and went far underground, he had no interest in continuing once she was free and she's trying to recapture his interest with a rival and the same affair-style setup which worked initially.

Maybe this isn't the right place for this but I need some clear answers on a few things. I have a question in to the radio show but wanted to see if anyone has advice here also. My divorce is just final and my ex and I have had no contact for a month. My question is is Plan A and exposure still a viable strategy or would exposure at this point just be viewed as vindictive and getting even or being spiteful. I guess I am trying to figure out if I should just give up on her and move on with the rest of my life. I know I am the only one who can make that decision. I just want as much information as I can have to be confident that I am doing the right thing.

I would probably still let people know there was an affair. A lot of people make wrong assumptions otherwise. And it gets you needed support.

You will only be viewed as vindictive or spiteful if you behave or speak in a vindictive and spiteful way. If you follow the exposure guidelines and proforma letters you should be quite safe since the language is very civil etc.

If you're worried about appearances, then you should certainly expose as it is typical for waywards to spread lies about what happened, often truly believing the BS to be 'abusive' etc.

I chose divorce and exposure was still crucial for me. Without the support I gained I would not have been able to maintain residence in my property, successfully block his attempts to re-triangulate me with his mistress, leverage a good settlement or generally heal at all.

My former in laws remain grateful to this day because they understood what was happening at the time of divorce and got the chance to intervene with their son. They regret losing me, but do not regret hearing the truth.

Even OWs family apparently benefitted. They were defensive at the time of exposure but I later heard they were already worried about her friendship with XWH and baffled by her personality change (I personally heard her screaming abuse at them one time when they were not free to babysit). Apparently they were worried it was a mental illness, when it was just the stress of an affair.

It's your decision but I heartily recommend.

I waited 6 months past my divorce finalization with my ex, and over 18 months past d-day. Never heard a peep, and some betrayed partners on here who are waiting end up waiting for years for crumbs from their wayward spouses, even when they have kids together.

Without kids, there's not much to bring her back. I understand if you want to Plan A, I did, but have a timeline with a cutoff date, after which you move on (especially since you're already divorced). There are many good women who would be Buyers and take care of you in a solid relationship. If you do a solid Plan A, you've given her more of a chance than most men would.

Agree with the others on exposure. Read the many guidelines here so you know how to do it right. You don't want that hanging over your head going forward. Many people will ask you what happened regardless, and they will be less surprised than you might imagine by the true story. Most everyone knows a wayward spouse or two.

It's not a small deal to draw that line in the sand about honesty and truthfulness. The regret of being too timid to speak up will hang around your neck like an albatross going forward in life if you don't.