I'll try to address the questions in the last few posts.

From Shattered Dreams:
You have not stated that you have undeniable evidence of the A. Do you? Or was it just his "confession" that brought it out? Or did you discover it? Those things may factor in, at some point in time.

I have proof. When I first met her it was only a few weeks after he met her I knew something was wrong...I just felt it. I then noticed phone records and shady activity on the computer. I confronted him and he got crazy mad at me. He never gets that like so that was the seal for me. I knew it and started looking. He tried to leave me before I knew or had proof. Said there was no one else. He even called his parents and told them he was leaving. His parents convinced him to stay with me and the kids.

He agreed to go to MC. We went and he denied the A. This was on a Wednesday. I still felt distant from him. That Friday he went to work (after sleeping with me) and I gain access to his email account. Right there in front of me was this heartfelt email from him to her. I could tell she was very uneasy about it. She didn't really respond to his confessions of how much he cared for her. I spoke to a Jag officer about her response of "please be careful" and was told that it was more than enough to prove that she knew what she was doing was wrong.

The email basically said he had been with me while thinking of her. That he can't stop thinking of her and not to worry we would still be moving to her neighborhood and he couldn't wait to see her. He even planned on going to meet her that Monday.

So there's my proof. After that he confessed and went from assasin to fetal position in a matter of seconds.


D_Rose - your post blows my mind. I was always under the impression that if I exposed this A the people involved were obligated to take legal action. I still do not know that I would consider this but it does make me feel like this option is not so hopeless afterall. I appreciate your advice. Are you and your W still together? Did it work out for you?


Just Learning - I think I'll take your advice and read the other thread and try to come up with my plan to get through this. Your suggestions are great. I hope I have the willpower to see them through.

I want recovery now. I want that more than anything in this world. I want my children to be happy to be home. I want my life back. I miss my H.

I'll try to address the questions in the last few posts.

From Shattered Dreams:
You have not stated that you have undeniable evidence of the A. Do you? Or was it just his "confession" that brought it out? Or did you discover it? Those things may factor in, at some point in time.

I have proof. When I first met her it was only a few weeks after he met her I knew something was wrong...I just felt it. I then noticed phone records and shady activity on the computer. I confronted him and he got crazy mad at me. He never gets that like so that was the seal for me. I knew it and started looking. He tried to leave me before I knew or had proof. Said there was no one else. He even called his parents and told them he was leaving. His parents convinced him to stay with me and the kids.

He agreed to go to MC. We went and he denied the A. This was on a Wednesday. I still felt distant from him. That Friday he went to work (after sleeping with me) and I gain access to his email account. Right there in front of me was this heartfelt email from him to her. I could tell she was very uneasy about it. She didn't really respond to his confessions of how much he cared for her. I spoke to a Jag officer about her response of "please be careful" and was told that it was more than enough to prove that she knew what she was doing was wrong.

The email basically said he had been with me while thinking of her. That he can't stop thinking of her and not to worry we would still be moving to her neighborhood and he couldn't wait to see her. He even planned on going to meet her that Monday.

So there's my proof. After that he confessed and went from assasin to fetal position in a matter of seconds.


D_Rose - your post blows my mind. I was always under the impression that if I exposed this A the people involved were obligated to take legal action. I still do not know that I would consider this but it does make me feel like this option is not so hopeless afterall. I appreciate your advice. Are you and your W still together? Did it work out for you?


Just Learning - I think I'll take your advice and read the other thread and try to come up with my plan to get through this. Your suggestions are great. I hope I have the willpower to see them through.

I want recovery now. I want that more than anything in this world. I want my children to be happy to be home. I want my life back. I miss my H.

Hero

I don't think that the Chaplain can legally do anything. I wasn't advised by him when we talked. We prayed that my W and OM's relationship would be difficult and end soon. The commander was a different situation. Our Squadron was small and we had a pretty good relationship with the commander. He could have pursued legal action, but like you I was hoping for reconcilliation and didn't want to ruin her career.

Your H's commander/boss might not react the same as ours did. I would contact the OW's husband to let him know and see what he knows.

My lovely wife and I are together and very hapy...thanks for asking

God Bless

D_Rose - your story gives me hope. I thank you for that. I'm glad to hear your M worked out. I hope mine does the same.

He really is trying now...at this minute...and if that keeps up I'm sure we will make it.

I have real reservations about going to the OW's H because what if he exposed the A? Then I would have nothing to rebuild because my H would walk out the door.

I think I need to hold off on that and use it as a last resort. I feel like if he is still having the A...which is sincerly says he's not..and I find out about it I feel I will have nothing to lose by going forward. It will hurt me to walk away from him but at that point I think my Love Bank would be empty.

heroswife.... I just saw this today in Dear Abby... I don't know if it's something available to you, but just thought I'd drop it in here so you'd be aware of it.

"DEAR ABBY: You printed a letter from a 13-year-old girl whose father is deployed in the Middle East. She was worried about her mother's depression. You wisely suggested that the daughter seek assistance from a trusted adult who knows her mother and can encourage her to talk to a doctor. I would like to offer some additional suggestions:

The mother's primary-care manager through her health-care provider is a good starting point for assistance. She can also find out if there is a family advocacy program available at their military base. These programs offer support groups for spouses and children.

This child and her mother are probably eligible for TRICARE, the Defense Department's health-care program for military personnel, their families and retirees. TRICARE offers a health services and support contractor to manage the family's health benefits. It offers in-person or telephone counseling and online assistance. The mother can visit ]www.tricare.osd.mil www.tricare.osd.mil and request customer service using one of the toll-free numbers.

Americans must do their part to support those who are sacrificing so much in defense of our freedoms. -- JUDY BLACK, VICE PRESIDENT, TRIWEST HEALTH CARE ALLIANCE, PHOENIX DEAR JUDY: Amen to that! And thank you for offering this valuable information to the spouses of our military personnel."

Of course you are going through something entirely different, but there appears to be all kinds of counseling available.

I hope this might be helpful for you...

(sorry for the "bold, and all that, not too savvy to this site and it's nuances...)

Shattered Dreams -

Thank you for posting the Dear Abby column. I had ruled out my military insurance all together. I stopped using my military insurance after I realized how poor the facilities were on our post. We rarely saw a real doctor and my children's health suffered because of that.

I think I will check out the link you posted and go from there.

As for Just Learning's suggestion to read the KiwiJ thread in the Recovery section I'd like to say the following:

I am so glad KiwiJ decided to post here. That thread was very helpful for me and I would direct any BS in that direction. I should probably post this in her thread and will get around to that eventually I'm sure. I really think KiwiJ is still in the FOG of it all. Some of the statements there blew my mind and made me very angry. I didn't feel remorse from KiwiJ at all. That part was disturbing for me. I wish this MBer the best of luck and I honestly think that if KiwiJ hangs around here on this board many other MBers like myself will greatly benefit.

Thank you Just Learning for being so good at this and helping others. You have a very unique gift.

I just want to add my support, heroswife. It sounds like he is in the fog a bit and going thru withdrawl. He knows he did the wrong thing. I am glad that he says he loves you. Many a WS say they love. but are not in love, fog talk. Almost 3 years out of my H's A I can say that there is great hope for recovery. You are on the correct path and are doing all the right things. Keep a strong plan A. Hang in there, it really does get better. As you see here, affairs are VERY common.

Heroswife,

I am here to tell you that a marriage can be recovered even if the two still work together.
But it is difficult and wrought with peril.

My FWH and FOW worked together but not in close quarters as in your situation. They were in different departments (non-military). After the A was exposed and ended, he got on a different shift and their contact was minimal. Still, it was horrible for me every time he went to work. They still crossed paths often enough. Ugh.

I did not expose the affair to FOW's H right away for various reasons. And in the meantime, I found out months later, FOW wrote letters to my H and left them in his work mailbox and he responded a couple of times to her as well. The A could have been jumpstarted in those months, but my H was truly sorry and was truly trying to heal our marriage (despite the two letters he wrote her -- bonehead!).

Once the A was exposed to her husband, the nails were in the coffin. Her H's rage opened up FOW's eyes and put her focus back on her marriage, where it belonged. Over the last year there were short, minute conversations between H and FOW, mostly business in nature. That trailed off. There has been no contact between FWH and FOW for six months and recently H has left that company and moved on. Yeah!!!!!

So, yes, it is possible to recover and still work together. But your H has to take the lead from my H and be completely accountable to you, every minute of every day. He has to open up his inner life to you, give you passwords to email accounts, let you put spyware on the computer, change cell phones and give you the old one, allow you to check all cell phone bills. What's more, he needs to be honest with you if he is feeling any temptation to go back to OW so you can deal with it as a couple. He has to lay his soul bare to you -- and love it! LOL!

Only then will you be able to begin healing, especially as you watch him go off everyday to work with her.

Snow

Snow -

Why did you expose the A to the OW's H? How did you do it? I'm not sure this is something I want to do at this time but I'd like to better understand how you did it and if there's anything you would have done differently.

I think this is something I will do if I find that the A is still on. As of right now, I do not believe it is. Call me stupid but my H seems to be doing anything and everything he can to assure me of that. I have access to his phone and he allows me to hear all messages and view call logs.

As with all electronic communication I have no way of seeing his email work account or to know if he has set up another alternate email address under a dummy name. He knows that I searched call records and use spyware to catch the A in the first place. Maybe all I accomplished was teaching him how to be a better liar and how to hide things so I couldn't find them.

I do not trust him but I honestly think he the A is over. I also believe that if the A sparks up or if I am being blind now I will find out eventually.

Am I the typical BS? Am I stupid and blind? Is my life a Made for TV special?

Thank you for your post Snow. I appreciate the encouragement.

Heroswife,

You sound like a VERY typical BS. If a WS truly appears to come clean when busted, a BS will often give them the benefit of the doubt and believe the affair is behind them.

But many are the BSs who have found they've been lied to, again, and, like you pointed out, that the WS just got better at covering his or her tracks.

I think a lot depends on the A itself and the relationship the two had. In our case, my H was trying to get out of the relationship with OW and he had just ended it when I found out. The emails I found with spyware were proof to me that he did not want to be in the affair and that he missed what we once had. OW herself even said in an email, "I know how much you love (Snowbelle) and the kids....." Ugggh.

He was still so foggy about OW, though, thinking she was so "tender" and "caring." And my H admitted to me that had I not busted them, he probably would have been drawn back into the affair because she made him feel so good about himself.

So why did I inform OW's H after four months?
For three reasons:

1. To expose the affair so they would be forced to address their own marital problems;
2. To make OWs H aware so that he'd keep a closer eye on her and, hopefully, let me know if he thought things started up again; and,
3. So that I wouldn't feel like an accomplice in the affair by keeping the secret from OWs H. I felt just sick doing that. I know I would have wanted him to tell me if the roles were reversed.

Both H and I felt that our marriage was mending and, as far as we knew, theirs was still falling apart. The reason I didn't tell OWs H when I found out was because he had been depressed and OW convinced me he would kill himself (or my H) if he learned of the affair.

Anyway, over those first few months, I sensed there was still personal communication going on between my H and OW at work (later I was proved right), and even though I believe the affair was dead (and it was), I thought it would help to have an ally in her H.

So I wrote a letter to OWs H and OW intercepted it. I told her that I had decided to tell her H but I would give her a couple of days to do it herself and that it would be better to hear it from her than from me. With her back up against the wall, she she told him.

Since that time, the contact at work between my H and OW was all business. I think until her H was told she still harbored romantic feelings for my H and had it in the back of her mind that he'd come back to her -- someday. Exposing it forced her to work on her marriage with her husband.

We don't know how they are doing now. There has been no contact whatever in many months. And that is how it should be. But they aren't divorced as far as we know, and the last time I did talk to OW's H he said they were working things out, so....

I'm glad I forced her to tell and I think it played a positive part in helping rebuild two marriages (ours and theirs). Hope this helps.

Snow

Snow -

I think I've waited too long at this point and we are making too much progress with our marriage now to do this. I'm not sure how the OW's H would react. I'm sure he would flip out.

If he decided to expose the A it could end my H's career and that would just ruin us.

I think if I find one shread of evidence that they are still communicating I'll drive to his house personally. I will not give her the option of making me look like a crazy paranoid wife. I have hard evidence and I have a confession from my husband. I also have a lawyer that has informed me of the full extent of military justice and this A was the worst possible move either of them could have ever made.

The stupidity of it all amazes me. The way I busted them amazes me. I won't mention the industry I work in but they were in my territory and were insane to believe that this could take place without me finding out. I'm wondering if he did this so I would catch him...or is he that...nevermind. Who cares?

heroswife,

I completely understand your reluctance to blow the whistle while things seem to be going in the right direction, given the circumstances. I would have done the same thing, I am sure. I'm glad you're not opposed to exposing the affair under certain circumstances. The guidelines you've set should help you steer the course.

Hang in there.