Good Morning,

I just signed up here today and am seeking to tell the story of what happened to me, get some feedback, and hopefully hear some success stories and tips on how to survive this and heal.

My D day was June third. I became aware that my wife had been seeing another man but had no real information about him, how long, how serious, etc. After a few weeks of trying to be patient while I gathered information, I just could not keep it in any longer. I woke her up at 1 a.m. and told her I needed to talk to her downstairs. I think she new immediately that I had found out. I asked her "who is Bill?". That began a conversation that lasted several hours. She was very defensive throughout and was withholding a lot at first. Stating that he was just a friend. Then that they had hung out a few times. Then that they had kissed a few times. Eventually, she finally confessed that she had been sleeping with him.

It took a little over a month but I finally got the full and honest version of what happened. Here it is:

He was a former coworker. Shortly after leaving his job (in May of 2018), he began emailing her. It began as friendly chats about work and what not and at some point evolved into more of an emotional affair that lead them to emailing all day every day. In January of this year, they met up. According to her, nothing happened on that day. In February, they met up again and had sex in his mini van in the parking lot of her work. This went on until June 3rd when I confronted to her. She says they would meet up once or twice a month and only slept together 3 times. She has been very honest and open and I do believe the final version of the story.

Once I confronted her, she agreed to end things with him and work on our marriage but it was a struggle. For 2 weeks, she was saying and doing all of the right things but it did not feel genuine. I made an email very similar to the one he had been contacting her from and emailed her as him telling her that his wife had found out, they were getting divorced and that he wanted to be with her. She told "him" that she was unsure if she wanted her marriage to work and was trying to follow her heart. "He" asked her if they could meed up the next day and she agreed. That evening, I told her that the man she was emailing ws not him but me. I also told her that she had made her choice and that our marriage was over. She had a complete breakdown. More emotion than I had ever seen from her before or ever thought she was capable of. She begged, cried, pleaded and eventually convinced me to stay with her.

From that moment on, she has been doing all of the things you're supposed to do and saying all of the things you're supposed to say and this time, it does feel genuine. We are both in therapy and are working hard to repair our marriage.

To give a little background, we are both 37 and have known each other since we were 14. We have 2 daughters, 4 and 7 and have been together for 8 years, married for 7. We had a very hectic first couple of years together with having a child, buying a house, etc. so we really missed out on a lot of our honeymoon phase. That being said, we have had a pretty good marriage. We have had our disagreements and our fights but as a whole, the marriage has been pretty good. Around the time she started talking to this guy, she began to change. She started getting annoyed with me more often, criticizing me more often, becoming more and more distant and our sex life and other aspects of our marriage changed. It got to the point near the end that she had convinced herself she hated me and loved this other guy. I have been a good husband. I work hard and have always taken care of most of the household responsibilities. Not a day went by that I didn't tell her/show her I loved her. I told her all the time how beautiful she is and have been very thoughtful with gifts, gestures, etc. During the year her affair went on, I was being pushed away so hard that eventually, it worked. Though I was still making an effort and asked her numerous times to open up to me, eventually it wore me down and I became a bit distant myself. The only "excuse" she gave for the affair was that she felt like she could talk to him and couldn't talk to me. Her job was a very stressful and toxic environment and I tried very hard to be supportive and offer advice but there were times, especially once I started to feel pushed away, that it was clear I was fed up with listening to it. Given that he had also worked there and was trying to sleep with my wife, he was a more sympathetic ear at the time. Outside of that and an obvious attraction between the two of them, there were no major factors for an affair to occur.

A little background on her: Her grandfather on her dads side had an affair and abandoned the family but eventually came back. Her dad had several affairs while with her mom and eventually, they ended up divorced. He disappeared from her and her sisters life for several years and started a new family. He had been back around for about 4 years now and has done a lot of work to repair the damage he has done. My wife was previously married and their marriage ended when he cheated. She has had 3 serious relationships as an adult. During all 3, including ours obviously, she has shown a pattern of talking to other guys on the side and or cheating. Including talking to me VIA email while with her ex boyfriend. In our marriage, outside of this affair, she has been faithful as far as I know. The only exception being a brief email exchange with the ex husband which was mostly innocent on her part and ended when I found out and confronted him.

So here we are now. Nearly 3 months in and trying. I have a therapist and am making decent progress. She had began therapy but it was not a good fit and she is set to see another therapist beginning today. She has since quit her job and is now a stay at home mom and has assumed most of the household duties. She has shown me so much love, support and patience and has been doing and saying all of the right things as best as can be expected. I am still plagued with thoughts of them together, anger sadness and some days, deep depression. About a month ago I confronted his wife and told her what had been going on. I also confronted him and told him how bad he had hurt me and made it clear he was to stay out of our lives. They have had no contact since.

I love my wife. Very much so. And am committed to giving her another chance. However, on a daily basis, I question whether or not I can do this. Will I ever be able to move on? Will I ever be able to forgive her? Will I ever be able to trust her? Will she ever do this again? It's a constant roller coaster of thoughts an emotions that is unbearable at times. The added stress of having to work full time and raise two small kids has really proven to be a lot to handle to the point where at times, I feel as though I will have a complete breakdown.

I'm looking for any and all feedback on my story and to hear from people that have been through similar and made it or didn't make it. Any tips, advice, thoughts, suggestions, etc. would be greatly appreciated. And for anyone who made it through reading all of this, I greatly appreciate your time. Just getting it out there has been helpful.

Hello d313, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here, but you are in the right place. Many of us here have fully recovered our marriages using this program. Marriage Builders is completely different from other marriage programs in that it a) teaches you how to affair proof your marriage so this doesn't happen again and b) teaches you how to create a romantic, passionate marriage. The latter is a critical point to understand because if you don't create a marriage that is HAPPIER before the affair your resentment will thrive and grow as time goes on. If you are happy in the present, the mind does not tend to wander to the unhappiness of the past. Marriage Builders is the only program I know of that believes romantic love is possible and has a plan to create it.

Most marriages do not recover from infidelity. They may stay together, but since they have no plan at all [and therapists do not have a plan for recovery] they limp along in a crippled state of the pre-affair marriage. Here is an outline of the steps we took. In the next post, I will post the checklist of extraordinary precautions that we all used.

The reason your wife had the affair is because she has poor boundaries around men. Affairs start with opposite sex friendships. So unless that changes, this will happen again.

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.

Some great resources would be the book Surviving an Affair [they sell it here cheap or on amazon] and the daily radio show. It is free and you can download the app to listen on your phone. https://www.marriagebuilders.com/marriage-builders-radio.htm

Thank you for the welcome and for the advice. I have been doing a ton of reading online as well as some books on the topic as well. My wife has been doing the same. I will pick up a copy of the book you recommended and will take advantage of the online resources you suggested.

Yes, it is a very, very confusing field with lots of bad advice out there. Marriage counselors, for example, have an 84% failure rate so you have to very selective where you seek help. If using a therapist, for example, I would ask for their own personal history and their track record of success following their plan. Typically, therapists have a higher personal divorce rate than the general public. If you have questions about the Marriage Builders program we would be happy to help. Good luck in your recovery!

Agreed. I have come across lots of great advice and quite a bit that just made me shake my head. We are both in individual counseling at the moment. We are going that route for now and plan on couples counseling down the road once the dust settles a bit. As I mentioned in my original post, she has a long history/pattern of this type of thing. Not only in her relationships but dating back to family history even before she was born that has continued through the generations. I have asked her numerous times over the years to get into therapy so the fact that she is actually going now and seems to be truly interested in getting helps and stopping these behaviors is a huge first step.

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What exactly is the purpose of counseling, though? One does not have to go to therapy to break bad habits. It seems like a distraction at a time when you could be focusing on repairing your marriage and finding solutions. Your marriage is in big trouble NOW and waiting to fix your marriage could be detrimental to your recovery. This seems like a distraction and a waste of time.

Does she have some type of serious mental disorder that would require "counseling?"

Dr Harley is a clinical psychologist and here is what he says about this subject:

The solution is to stop it. That's all she has to do. Dr. Harley's father and grandfather were adulterers with poor boundaries. My parents were too. Counseling is not necessary to change behavior. She can decide to change her behavior today and do it. Did you see the extraordinary precautions check list I posted? That is a good place to start.

Your wife just took a wrecking ball to your marriage and your children's family. It won't be easy to fix but it is very fixable, but the longer you wait to START the harder it will be to fix. Please don't waste your time in unnecessary steps that won't help your marriage. You can start affair proofing and recovering your marriage TODAY.

Thank you again for the advice. For the most part, I agree. My therapy has been focused on getting me back on track and developing a plan going forward. Not sitting there and dwelling on what happened. I did not want the affair to be known by my family and friends so I had nobody to talk to other than my wife. So my first few therapy sessions were getting it out and her helping me manage all of the thoughts and emotions that come along with it. Once I started getting me feet back under me, we began to focus on what needs to happen now and what needs to happen in the future. My therapist recommended the one that my wife will be seeing today and it sounds as though they will have the same battle plan.

As far as our work at home, we have both been focused on what we need to do going forward to insure not only that this does not happen again, but also that we are both happy and satisfied with the relationship going forward. A big part of our past conflicts have been her not being emotionally healthy due to the events in her past that she needed help with and never got. Though her immediate focus in therapy will be on getting over this huge hurdle, I do think that resolving her self esteem issues, self worth issues, anger issues, etc. that were always present in our marriage will be essential in allowing us to have a healthy marriage moving forward.

Thanks, did you have a question about Marriage Builders?

MelodyLane saved my life 10 years ago, and has only gained experience since then. Please pay attention to what is posted and carefully consider it. 'Head scratching' stuff is not posted by MelodyLane in my experience.

Good luck.

Also, more experienced people than me should weigh in, but on radio show this AM Dr. Harley talked about the importance of exposure and how to do it right. The point that matters I think is that you said you didn't want to expose it at all.

Every time I have tried to short cut marriage builders stuff, disaster. I wouldn't recommend short cuts.

Does your wife already know you are posting here on MB??? If not, then hold off talking about it and read and learn so YOU can lead your marital recovery and, you probably need to continue monitoring for contact. At this point, she should agree to being an open book and expressly telling you (in writing) you can monitor her any way you want. It might feel intrusive but really you are just being a good accountability partner saving her from making the biggest mistake of her life.

If she knows, have her register and post. She could MOST use advice here and really it's a great distraction to redirect her energies towards and the fine people here will help her feel accountable. If and when she has the urge to talk to the other man (it's a habit)....she can come post and someone will be here to talk her down.

At this point, if the affair is truly over, we can better help you both if you both post. My wife and I posted as a couple in 2005 after her affair. It's 14+ years later...kids off to college...life is good. This program works best when you both buy in and learn it TOGETHER. Personally, I/we used the His Needs Her Needs audio cd's and we took a road trip and listened to hours of the book, pausing and talking the whole way. It was like neither of us knew how to be married (pretty obvious when your marriage is in a huge ditch) so we were both enthusiastic to learn.

There is a path out of this. It will be ok. What satan meant for evil, you and your wife can flip it and make your marriage an awesome example of faith, repentance, forgiveness, perseverance and, ultimately, love.

Thank you very much for the reply. It is comforting hearing the success stories of other people. Just a little over 3 months in, I'm feeling much better but it's still hard to believe that things will be "ok" some day and the pain will completely go away or at least get to a point where it's easier to tolerate.

She does not know about my posting here. It was more of an outlet for me than anything. I do think at some point, having her join in the discussion wouldn't be a bad idea. At this point, I know for certain the affair is over and have no fear at all of it starting back up.Our marriage is the best it has been in years. Maybe ever. We are both reading up on lots of programs like this and books, etc. Having multiple sources of good information that we are sharing together is allowing us to formulate a solid plan for moving forward.

The one area that you mentioned where I feel like I/we made a mistake was exposure. Had I came across this site 3 months ago and read about it, I think I would have immediately told everyone. As it stands, a few of her family and friends know and one of my friends knows but it's not someone I have been able to really dig into it with. So my thought is that at this point, I'd rather not have my friends and family have a negative opinion of her going forward. It would be a huge help to me to have the support system but I am confident I can get through this on my own and think the risks of doing so aren't as bad as having her shamed more than she has already been.