Hey Wex,<P>You say you still want the possibility of her choosing you... don't you think "getting in the muck with them" for "payback" kind of defeats that purpose?<P>Why not get the proof you need and do the Plan B thing or file for separation or divorce... wouldn't that get it out and in the open and put the ball in her court? Maybe she'll end up choosing to leave anyway, but in the meantime you've upheld your dignity... you won't beat yourself up as much later??<P>Just a thought... take care

Wex and RWD -- This kinda stuff may come back and bite me(for what I did), but I think the main thing in your reference, RWD is "Ex-girlfriend". That might be a key. I heard that the feds often look the other way when the tapping is done in a domestic situation(involving marrieds) like adultery. I don't know this is true, but hopefully it is.

RWD - I think attaching a tracking device is not as bad as tapping a phone, but I don't really know. I plan for it to be untraceable if he does find it, so am not too worried. Touchy part is actually planting it on his car.<P>yy - Looks like I'm headed in the direction. I've told my W it's put-up or shut-up time for her, and that, if she wants to leave to leave. I've left it at that. It's up to her to change the what she needs to change. I think I'm basically in Plan B right now, as I'm only communicating with her when I have to.<P>heartpain - The real trick is not to get caught.<P>R & B,<P>--Wex

Wex, <P>First, I have to say I really enjoyed your movie plot in my thread. My stomach hurts from laughing. Nick Nolte, huh. That gives me some perspective on who I'm talking too. It's always nice to put a face to a name. <P>Question for you. What if you find out your wife is only in an Emotional Affair with this guy (John Lithgow)? (don't mean to minimize the trauma of emotional affairs) Will you still tell OM's wife and what will your approach be to your marriage?<P>Tom Hanks....I mean SHA

Don't burn any bridges buddy...

Wex -- You are so right. I'm at a point that by Friday night, a couple of things will be known that could have only come from that type of activity. However, the hardware is completely gone and out of the house and has been for over a week.

Hi, Wex. I need you here helping me find out about PT!!!<P>I knew you'd get to the bottom of it.<P>Good luck to you in whatever you decide to do. Just keep a level head. <P>Good Luck.<P>lori

Wex,<P>Regarding the OM's W,,maybe telling her what you suspect is not a bad thing. Sure, if she doesn't know, she'll be hurt. But I only wish someone, anyone would have informed me about the OW. <P>And about your future career as a PI...good idea. You'd be great! Just don't charge by the hour!!LOL

Nerlycrzy -- Good lord!!! LOL at that one(hourly rate)!!! We will just make an "educational allowance" here for Wex...I would hire him, he's tenacious that's for sure....He started from scratch, that's why we have to give the allowance....

<BR>Wex,<P>I emailed to your hotmail account maybe an hour before you started this thread...I'm a day late and a dollar short, I guess. I'm glad that you've ID'ed the OM. And onto the issue of telling the OM's W. I must be in the minority here, because I think its the thing to do. Why?<P>Well, for starters, the status quo isn't working. You can't Plan A her forever, because the denials are driving you insane. Plan B, IMO, will only make the affair [b]easier[\b] for her to contine, and because she hasn't shown any response whatsoever to Plan A efforts, I just don't see an upside to Plan B in her case, either. There's always the possibility that telling the OM's W will backfire, but Plan A and Plan B aren't going to work - so what else is left?<P>I waffle on the ethics of it. It seems that most people frown on telling the OP's spouse because it reeks of revenge. On the other hand, the betrayed often say, "If only someone had [b]told me[\b] about my spouse's infidelity!" So I'm torn on the ethics of it, but I don't see that you have any choice.<P>As for planting transmitters, all I can say is be careful. That kind of stuff is illegal as I understand things. But you could closely look into the legalities of a GPS receiver. It might be okay if you "just happened" to leave a powered-up GPS in your wife's car. Did you know that the Garmin 12-XL has a "bread crumb trail" feature that you can set to record up to 1000 or so positions at time intervals that [b]you[\b] specify? Set to record a position every two minutes or so, you've have a very accurate record of everywhere she'd driven the preceding 24 hours, which just happens to coincide with the battery life of 4 alkaline AAs. Obviously, I'm not condoning this, nor am I suggesting you do anything illegal. But its possible that a GPS receiver falls outside the wiretapping/bugging laws.<P>Bystander

Latest update. I just discovered a site that will do what I need to get 100% certainty. I have what I THINK is the guy's license # and if this turns out to be registered to my prime suspect, I'll know for certain it's him. I wasn't able to run it before because I could find only two sites that ran plates and one of them was so incredibly anal that you have to be a corporate representative of some kind to use it, and the other didn't have converage of all states, including the OM's. But now I've found one that does all 50 states for $25 a pop. And you can give them either the plate or the person's name/address. Plan to do this in the next couples of days.<P>Bystander - Unfortunately, I've forgotten the password to my Hotmail acct., and Hotmail doesn't seem to want to give it to me. Sorry. Either I've got to remember it or set up a new acct. Yeah, I worry about the ethics of telling OM's W too. So I appreciate people letting me know that if they were the OM's W, they'd want to know too. I'm really not doing it for her sake (not completely out of revenge either, but as the only way I can think of to possibly bust up my W's affair, or at least make it harder to keep up). But if she gets some benefit from it (better to know than not to know) that does take some of the edge off the ethical part. GPS is something I've looked into but found mondo expensive. Probably worth continuing to look though. Maybe just a receiver that logs positions isn't so expensive. Problem is, what my W apparently does is she drives to a rendevous point (where she supposedly has an errand), gets out of her car, walks some distance away, and then gets picked up by OM in his car. So it wouldn't show me where they're going to do whatever it is they do.<P>Nerlycrzy, heartpain - All right, all right. If I charged what the one P.I. I consulted charges ($50/hr several years ago), I'd be rich by now, considering all the time I've put in on this! BTW, HP, that's one cryptic statement about "the hardware!" (Think I know what you mean.)<P>lostva - I've been thinking about PT. If you know her name and/or her address (sounds from your description like you do), then you can do a background check on her online. (There are lots of sites that do this. The one I used is U.S. Search, which does a fairly thorough check for a reasonable price (~ $40). They can do even better if you have her birth date. (Tell her you want to throw a party for her!)<P>SHA - Glad to give you a chuckle. I know you can use one. As to emotional vrs. physical affair, don't know how I'd tell which is really the case. As I've said in other posts, I'm not even sure how much I believe betrayers when they say it was "just" an emotional affair. I can even imagine my W telling me this, but knowing her, I'd be inclined to doubt it. She's known this guy for at least 5 years and I suspect she started her affair with him while we were still courting. It may have been "emotional" to start, but I doubt that it still is, especially given her sexual withholding and complete lack of interest. (Boy, I really sympathized when I read your description of how your W behaves towards you in your other thread. As you know from reading my stuff, my W's exactly like that too.) So to answer your question, yes, if I find out for certain it's him, I am going to tell his wife, whatever the other circumstances. (It's even dicier because I'm fairly certain his W knows my W.)<P>R & B,<P>--Wex

Wex -- I'm sure you've figured it out, but just in case, think "Nixon"...

<BR>Wex,<P>Whatever happens...please do us a favor and post the details of your saga. My goodness, it does have all the elements of a good spy novel. But Nick Nolte? C'mon! <P>Sorry to hear that the GPS idea wouldn't work. Gee, and I thought I was being clever! <P>Bystander

bystander - actually I AM going to look into the GPS thing again. I'm even going over to radio shack tomorrow and see if they have those gizmos reasonably priced. I actually thought more about it while driving in to work this morning and thought after all, it might work. At least it would show me where their rendezvous points are. Because I do want also to try and get photos of them together if I can. As to N.N., the resemblance never occurred to me until a woman propositioned me in an elevator a while back on the basis of the resemblance. (See SHA's "Marriage Builder, the Movie thread.) But think Nick Nolte in "Down and Out in Beverly Hills.<P>heartpain - Gotcha.<P>--Wex

I admire your patience. I lost my cool one time too many and I was never able to determine who the OW was before she dumped him (I don't know this, but as weird as he was being over this person for so long and then suddenly "nothing" when he doesn't love me makes me believe this is the case). I have always been slick and a good detective (raising teens). It really bothers me that I wasn't able to find out. I know it would have been a piece of cake if I had just taken a couple of days off work and borrowed a car. He was really not good at covering his tracks. Man, I'm getting pissed all over again just writing this down. Better quit. Take care and best wishes.

I agree with Cndy, anonymous is the way to go. OM's W deserves to know. Whether or not this will help you is unclear.<P>Good luck,<P>cjv

Wex,<P>I did go to OM's wife. She woundered why it took me so long to do that. She had thought about doing the samething for so long.<P>Has it helped? I don't know. We talked about a lot of the samethings and I let my wife know what we talked about. I never told OM's wife any of the stuff my wife and I talked about. I just let her talk. We have not really talked much over the last 6 weeks. Yesterday she did call to tell me that they are still talking based on her phone records. <P>So what are we doing? We are both into Plan A really hard trying both to be the best people that we can be for our significant other. We figure that it will drive them back into their respective marriages if we work together to save our marriages.<P>Don't know if it will work. But it finally nice to have someone on myside working to save both of our marriages. So I say go for it. The OM's wife knows something is going on.

<BR>Wexwill,<P>If you're serious about the GPS approach, I'd look into the Garmin 12 unit. I *think* its got the breadcrumb trail feature that you can set by time. I *know* that Garmin 12XL has this feature - after all, I own one for backpacking. The definitive GPS website is here:<BR> <A HREF="http://joe.mehaffey.com/" TARGET=_blank>http://joe.mehaffey.com/</A> <P>Someone recently told me that Sports Authority has Garmin 12's for $120 right now. I don't know where you are, Wex, but you should be able to match that price with some shopping.<P>Hang in there, you WILL get those photos.<P>Bystander

Bystander - Thanks for the added info. That really made my day. Way cool! I visited the site from your link and read some reviews. Also did a search on Gamin and went to an online electronics store that sells them. Gamin 12XL is ~ $250, but is probably overkill for what I want. All I really need is the "breadcrumb" feature with programmable time intervals for the log. This is something I'm definitely going to look into, because I've been trying to think for over a year how I could follow her movements when she goes out without actually having to tail her around. I'm going to keep looking and see if I can find a cheaper model. $120 is certainly doable and worth it.<P>Zip - Interesting. Hadn't thought of it in that light. My plan though (initially, anyway) is not to contact the OM's wife directly. (My W would be livid if she knew.) But to write her anonymously. We'll see what develops from there.<P>cjv - Thanks, your vote is noted.<P>Janie - The reason I'm trying so hard and really doing something about this is because of my experience in my 1st marriage. W1 actually volunteered a confession about her 1st affair with a woman friend because the friend and her H were interested in swinging, which we actually ended up doing. Then she had an affair with her mixed doubles tennis partner that included going on a week's sailing cruise in the Carribean with him. I made a few noises, but pretty much looked the other way during this and later affairs of hers. The result was, I ended up with a miserable case of low self-esteem. I'm determined not to let that happen again!<P>--Wex<P>

Hire a private investigator. It will get you away from charges of stalking, etc.<P>If you need photos and video, this is the way to go. And do it BEFORE they know you are seriously onto them.<P>Paul