Please stop the opinion shopping. You will continue to be confused by conflicting advice and will get nowhere. You have been here now for almost 2 weeks and are still no further along. I have been here every day for 18 years and it is my observation that people who are opinion shopping are typically conflict avoiders. They rarely will take the necessary action to save their marriage. Rather, they "shop" for opinions that advocate doing nothing. The longer the person does nothing, the more entrenched the problem and the harder it is to resolve.

I am sorry to sound harsh, but I am concerned about your lack of action and really do want to help. I don't think your situation is hopeless but it will be if you won't take action.


We know your wife's state of mind, she is a fogged out wayward. They are all the same. She is not "done" until you are both divorced. We have heard "I am done" a million times. It is meaningless in relation to the outcome. I would wager that the majority of recovered marriages heard the same thing.

Thanks for hanging in here with me.

So exposure is the first step of my new plan. I will get to work reviewing and revising your templates and have something posted tomorrow.

Am I a plan a or plan b candidate? I am awaiting delivery of the SAA book. Until then, how do I interact with my wife?

Good man!


Plan A all the way! Plan B is for when you are separated and need to completely cut off all contact. You are not even close to that point. For now, be as pleasant as possible and look for opportunities to meet her needs. If the issue of the divorce comes up tell her that this wlll lead to divorce if she doesn't end all contact with the OM. Tell her that her continued contact with the OM is hurtful and disrespectful to you and your children.

Any advice to transition from what I have been doing (180 and detaching) to trying to meet her needs? It would be an abrupt change on my part and I'm afraid that she'll just see it as another instance where I withdrew and then came back...you know, the usual cycle.

Also, we have mediation scheduled for October 14th. Should I be thinking of cancelling it? Or let that move along?

I wouldn't be abrupt about it. Just start being friendly. She likely won't let you meet any of her needs anyway, but you can be friendly and inviting. Small talk is really good.

Interesting development last night - saw an email from my wife to the OM indicating that she would respect the request for no further communication. I didn't see what prompted that reply.

I suspect that getting together with the OMs wife and one of my wife's friends this past weekend may have played a role since we discussed what no contact would look like and getting over the OMs wife's thoughts that insisting on no contact was too controlling.

I do think that is interesting and I want to applaud you for snooping. I hope you are doing some in depth snooping to protect yourself. I would plan on doing your exposures and include a call to the OMW to find out what happened here.

Yeah, but I'm worried that she didn't break contact out of respect for me or our marriage, but at his request. Certainly doesn't signal anything good relative to my goals here.

It really doesn't matter why she broke contact. Just know that it probably won't last and don't get your hopes up. Exposure will help ensure it does last. I think you might be expecting remorse and a change of heart and I would not expect that from a fogged out wayward. Very, very few waywards wake up and suddenly see the error of their ways and change their behavior. Rather, they are much like alcoholics in that they have to hit bottom in order to change. If you go to AA and speak to successful sober people, most will tell you how they were FORCED in some way to get sober. Adulterers are the same way. They have to hit a bottom where it is harder to cheat than it is to not cheat. Exposure helps bring that about.

Have you read the Jon and Sue story, in Surviving and Affair?

Maybe and I may have forgotten...link?

I talked to my wife's sister last night. Found out that my wife's mom, both sisters, her dad's wife knew about the OM and knew that my wife had developed romantic feelings for him.

Also found out that they knew we were separating but also working on the marriage. I understand that the sister I talked to and her mother both explained that she couldn't work on the marriage with the OM in the picture. The sister I talked to wishes she had come down harder on her but didn't want to wreck the day they were having.

Concerned that none of them reached out to me.

Reminds me that while in marriage counseling (both pre-separation and until I found the I love you and shower texts) that my wife would talk about reconciliation and it being a possibility. The marriage counselor explicitly confirmed this with my wife. However, as soon as I confronted about the EA, reconciliation disappeared. I wonder how likely it is that reconciliation was never really an option for my wife and that it was a tactic to keep be blind, dumb, and compliant...

Maybe all of that doesn't matter at all?

BrainHurts is referring the book "Surviving an Affair" by Dr. Harley. Jon is the betrayed husband and his wife Sue had affair. Jon had become neglectful of his wife Sue, helping to create the conditions that made the marriage weak. Because his wife had poor boundaries around men, she and another man in her neighborhood became very friendly with each other, ultimately resulting in affair which was devastating to Jon. In time, the affair ended, but the entire process was very hard on Jon. By following the steps in Surviving an Affair, they were able to recover their marriage, creating a marriage that was better than it was before: passionate, loving, and safe.

How are you doing on correcting the problems you had in your marriage with your anger and being withdrawn? It's very important to become a much better husband to your wife. Plan A is about meeting any emotional needs she will let you meet AND eliminating all your love busters. Anger should not be a part of a marital relationship, because it's so destructive. Have you stopped this?

Ah, SSA is arriving this week.

Jon and Sue sound different than my wife and I in that this might be an exit affair, ie, she was done no matter what and the affair was just icing.

Re correcting problems... Angry outbursts have been dramatically reduced over the last several years and those that did arise in the last year were typically associated with my 10 year old at bed time...grrrrr. The withdrawal and isolation, well, that was a relatively new thing (compared to the anger which dominated the early years and midterm of our marriage) and was particularly bad the last 2 years. Once my wife told me on fathers day that she wanted a separation the isolation and withdrawal from the family has ended. She acknowledges my increased presence and attentiveness.

I'm active in IC directly addressing both the anger and withdrawal issues.



Of course, she has seen this all before. I have cycled many times through this.

Good news, Dr. Harley wanted to study mechanical engineering, but the university was not in a city his wife liked. So he studied psychology instead and engineered marriage builders. If you learn more about the program, you will understand how logic it is. Also, it is optimized to reduce your pain and maximize chance to recover your marriage. Also, if there is no hope, MB protects you from suffering unnecessary.

So either you trust "us" and start implementing MB advice now, or you will understand later and implement later.

Save your precious time and start now.
/commercial

That would be a great first start in your EXPOSURES. Have you contacted them yet? When are you planning your exposure? As you read from my thread, it should all happen on the same day,. What is your D-Day?


You are not separated, so talk of "reconciliation" makes no sense.

First off, there is no such thing as an "exit affair." An affair is an affair. Secondly, your wife is not "done." Jon and Sue were in a much, much worse situation than you. Sue was more than "done," she moved in with the OM and then she filed for divorce and got the betrayed husband LEGALLY KICKED OUT of his own house and moved in the OM. The OM essentally took Jon's place in the home. [yes they had children] Sue was "done." They are now happily reconciled in a fully recovered marriage for years.

Just a tip that will help you understand your wife better. Judge her by her ACTIONS, not her words. She is in a fantasy fog. You can see by her actions that she is not "separated;" therefore, does not to "reconcile." She is a married woman who lives with her husband. She has not filed for divorce.

This is why exposure is so critical and so very belated here. Your wife has been free to lie and spin the story to others when they could have been helping your marriage all this time. Rather, she was free to spin the story with some watered down version, "Dr Detroit and I have decided to get divorced and are 'separated.' In the meantime, I have been getting help and support from my good friend and his wife, OM and OM wife. DrDetroit is insanely jealous and doesn't want me to have any support."

I assure you they don't have any idea that she is having an affair and this is the REASON she wants to get a divorce.

When the family and friends know the truth, they can step in and try to use their influence to persuade her to end all contact. That is what the objective is here. But you need to hustle up here and get this done. Will the sister talk to your wife?

Seriously??? DrDetroit24?

Not to be harsh but just trying to help here...

But you have not exposed and you are expecting this from them?
You are the one who has not reached out to them.
If you can blame(for lack of a better word, many words/phrases can describe what you just said above in quote) them like this don't you think you should be the one to get blamed for not reaching out?
Have you ever thought that they are thinking why is our son-in-law not reaching out to us.... Oh, he does not care?
If you have not asked for help you expect them to get the courage to reach out to you?

Aren't you getting advice to reach out to them and more people?
Do you expect people to help you when you are not helping yourself?
At this point you have to look into yourself and be responsible and take action.

My observation from the thread: Instead of writing and writing expose right away and you will get the fruits of the advice from the experts on this forum. If you expose it will not be another day wasted like yesterday and two weeks. Are you going to have another day where you are just going to write and write(blog) and NO ACTION? If you had exposed you probably would have had a better chance of saving your marriage considering that no contact has been initiated.

Sorry veterans, I could not resist to let my thoughts skip this.