Can someone give me some good advice?<P>I found out a week ago that my partner of 3 years had an affair. She has come clean about everything (to the best of my knowledge), and says she is very sorry and we are trying to work things out.<P>My problem is this: In four days I leave to return to my hometown where I am to start a new job. She is going to remain here, in the same town where the OM lives. We called OM last week and he bowed out gracefully...almost TOO gracefully. How am I to know that she is not going to start the affair up again once I am gone? She says she loves me and is never going to do this again, but I don't trust her.<P>She also has been talking to a lot of men online and searching through the Personals ads at a major portal site. I have told her that this HAS to stop and that all communication with ALL of these men has to stop completely. I have a program on this computer which records everything she does (which is how I discovered the affair to begin with), but she is aware of the program now and may try to circumvent it. At any rate, I have no way to verify who she might be calling on the phone or who she might have in the house here while I am gone. <P>I want to believe her sincerity, but she has a self-esteem problem, and once I am gone, who knows what she will do? And is it wrong of me to insist on the computer safeguard in order to protect myself in case it happens again? I suspect she will resent my insistence of being able to intrude on her "privacy".<P>I don't know what to do here. Any advice would be greatly appreciated, especially from those of you who might have gone through this before.

I just read what I posted a little while ago, and I think I need to point out a couple of things. First, I am eaten up with paranoia. I don't think I got across in my first post the amount of pain and grief I have suffered in the past week. I told her yesterday that I forgive her, but I still feel the pain.<P>Second, I leave in four days and I am not sure how long it will be before we are reunited. She is Canadian and I am American. Our plan is for me to get a fiancee visa for her and the 4 children (one of which is ours together) and for them to join me in the States where we can marry and have a "normal" life.<P>I cannot overemphasize the paranoia I am feeling. Is this normal? Do I have the right to be suspicious and check up on her? She is already beginning to voice feelings or resentment towards me for wanting to check up on her, saying that "I have come clean and you should believe me now". I am new to this site, and I haven't yet read all the advice given here. What do I do, guys? How can I leave her here alone again and concentrate on my new job with all the fears and suspicions that I cannot erase from my mind?

I have been in your shoes but am a little further along. I am the betrayed husband. D-day was 12/00.<P>I too had/have major trust issues. Affairs turn your world, thoughts, ideas and beliefs completely up-side-down.<P>I posted a message to someone else here with some spying techniques. See the second message on this page.<BR> <A HREF="http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000789-3.html" TARGET=_blank>http://www.marriagebuilders.com/forum/Forum29/HTML/000789-3.html</A> <P>If you're interested I have some other ideas I can share.<P>Some might view spying techniques as the wrong thing to do, however under the circumstances I feel that a betrayed spouse is entitled to spy if it helps with trust, especially given your separation dilema.<P>

Thank you so much for answering me. I was starting to believe that no one would respond.<P>We went to see a counsellor for the first time today. It was, shall we say, "illuminating". My W (we have lived together for 3 years, so I might as well call her that) admitted that she does not want to move to the States. She wants to stay here in Canada. She also admitted that her online "chatcheating" is an addiction. She returns to see the counsellor on her own Thursday. I am glad, of course, though I can't help but wonder what other things will come to light then that I may not ever know about.<P>After we got home, we had a bit of a long talk. I told her I am willing to live here if that will make her happy. It is unavoidable that I have to return to the States to work in order to pay off some debts that must be taken care of before I have any chance of success with immigration. I expect it will take me a year to do this. In the meantime, she will remain here. She has made it clear that she will resent me if I leave the monitoring software on this computer. She says she does not want to be spied upon. <P>Here comes the hard part. I have my own addiction, one that I am ashamed of, one that I feel uncomfortable admitting even here where my anonymity is assured. I have been addicted to pornography, online and otherwise, for 20 years. I have come clean about this to her, and although it was never in any way a conscious disrespect to her, I see now that it is hurting her. I am willing to try to end it. My W, using the words "tit for tat", has demanded that I give it up if she is to give up talking dirty to men online. Fine, I will give it up. She means that much to me. I did not want it to become the situation it has become, where we feel like we are each making demands of the other. I had hoped she would willingly and freely give up her addiction, and then I could respond in kind. But, no, it didn't work out that way.<P>Bottom line is this: I feel that things are really no better off for me now than when I just found out last week. I am leaving in 3 days, and I have no guarantees other than her word (she has already lied to me about this before, so you all can guess how much weight her word carries with me at this point, can't you?) that she is going to remain faithful to me, virtually or otherwise. She expects me, or wants me, to remove the monitoring software from the computer. She expects me to be able to trust her, even though she knows I don't. I will be gone for a long time. Even the therapist said today that a separation right now would not be a healthy thing and strongly suggested that I stay. Of course, if I stay, I can't work. If I can't work, my self esteem suffers, and she will resent me again (this is a major issue that has plagued us for the past 3 years that I have been living illegally here in Canada, and nobody feels worse about it than I do). I guess I am just supposed to go back and work and suck up all my fears and paranoia and trust that she will remain faithful and that the separation will not break us up. <P>Did I mention that she and I met on the Internet? Did I mention that she met OM the same way? I can't help but feel that if she continues to talk to men online, she will eventually find another one that makes her feel good about herself and that even though she and I can talk online every day, my physical absence will spell doom for us. In a way, I am beginning to HATE the Internet.<P>I feel trapped in my situation (admittedly, partly of my own creation). I am having serious doubts that we are going to make it. I have told her about this site and the wonderful information to be found here, but she has shown no interest in looking at it herself. Right now this site is my only place to get my feelings out, so I guess it is not a really bad thing that it remains my own oasis. <P>I don't know what to do. I am on an emotional roller coaster of pain and doubt. Part of me feels that I should just cut my losses and leave. A bigger part of me wants to do everything I can to save this family. I know that if I leave for good, the distance involved here will make it nearly impossible for me to have any kind of meaningful relationship with my daughter, much less the other 3 children here from her previous marriage who all call me Daddy. I can't even imagine what my leaving will do to them all. Sometimes people stay together for the kids' sake, but I can't do that. I refuse to spend the rest of my life in misery, if that is what it comes to. <P>My W has grown up in a very different culture from my own, a culture far more liberal about many things. She says she is willing to give up her addiction, although at this point I don't think she sees anything wrong with it. She seems to think it is OK to talk dirty to men online even though she knows how badly it hurts me. When I point out that this is how her affair with the OM began, she claims that all the other men online that she has been talking to is just for fun, a joke, her way of having some kind of fantasy life. She says that I don't have the right to tell her to stop, that this is the way she is, that it is not right for me to try to change her. Our moral codes are very different, apparently, and this gives me serious doubts that we can make it. She has many "issues", most of which she wants to talk to the therapist about without me. She won't tell me what they are. She even says that going to the therapist is something she is doing because I want her to, not because she thinks it is necessary for herself. At least in Canada the government pays for it, so she can't resent me for having to pay for this.<P>I feel at the end of my rope. I came close to having a nervous breakdown on my D-Day (8 days ago). I thought things were getting better, but now I feel like I am once again standing on that knife edge, so close to falling into the pit of despair. My appetite is virtually nil, my nerves are screaming like guitar strings wound to the breaking point, and it seems a major undertaking to do even the simplest things around the house. I put on a false face for the kids. I am trying so hard to give them at least the appearance of stability, but I don't know how much longer I can keep that up if things continue the way they seem to be going.<P>Somebody PLEASE respond to me. I feel so alone.

I felt great pain reading your letter. I will suggest something that you may not wish to hear but I suggest that you leave this woman and this relationship and find someone who has the same moral code and attitude as yourself. First, I do not believe it is fair to compare looking at nude pictures with meeting other men and having sex with them.<BR>She tells you she is addicted to talking dirty to other men online and really does not want to stop and I am sure she will continue in this activity.<BR>A tell tale sign is the fact that she wants the monitoring<BR>equipment taken off. My God she just got caught having sex with another man and she wants you to trust her? She should be doing everything in her power to show great remorse and to regain you trust.<BR>The bottom line is to leave this chapter of your life and move on to someone better. She will continue to engage in these activities in the future and I think that you know it. Her behavior is already mentally destroying you.<BR>You are very lucky that you are not legally married. Don't you believe you deserve happiness in your life with someone you can respect and trust? You need to be strong and move on and away from this woman who does not believe in the same values as you. It is a recipie for disaster. I wish you luck.

Thanks, Bryan, for answering.<P>No, you are right, your reply was not one I want to hear. Nevertheless, I am afraid you may be right. I know from my own addiction that it is not so simple to just stop doing it. The odds of her relapsing into her chatcheating is high, especially if I were to remove the software. At any rate, she knows it is there, and I don't put it past her to attempt to circumvent it in some way that would conceal her activities. I could probably figure it out, and if I can, she probably can, too.<P>She also told me today that one of her coworkers told her to remove it herself. (And I thought that she wasn't talking to her friends at work about all of this.)<P>Yes, it disturbs me greatly that she is not doing everything she can to make me comfortable. One would think that a cheater who is trying to work things out would do all he or she could to reassure the BS that it is truly over, even at the expense of the cheater's own pride and desire for "privacy" and "independence".<P>I feel that short of some unexpected change of heart from her, I am going to have to make an ultimatum to her regarding where we live and my need for security. If she refuses to cooperate freely, I guess I will have the answers I need to exactly how committed she really is. That ultimatum could come as soon as tonight when she gets home from work. I guess I have to play it by ear. At any rate, if she is still talking to OM on the phone or at work, I have no way to prove or disprove it. She has even changed the access code on her cellphone, saying that if I want to see it, just ask (of course she will resent that, too). Yeah, like I don't know that you can erase the records of who you called and who called you on a cellphone.<P>Does anyone else agree with Bryan? Am I truly in a hopeless situation?