Originally posted by 1alex123:
I am being non-confrontational (until it hurts!), and doing my best to meet her emotional needs.

I wonder if you are being non-confrontational for her benifit .... or

... might you be a conflict avoider by nature.... ? What do you think?

She is in the "double dipping" place, getting love and support from us both.

This will kill your love for her if you allow it to go on very long.



Can plan A work if we stay here and she finally realizes that the OM is just a passing thing (or she realizes that it is not)???

This is really an astonishing comment you make here.

The king of conflict avoiders says : "Perhaps if I hide away long enough, the problem will fix itself and I (we) can pretend nothing happened."

This is a crisis.
Your marriage house is on fire.
You want to wait and see if it might rain and put out the fire?

Plan A is just fine, don't get me wrong .... but NOT if both of you are pretending there is no affair.

You don't need her to agree about the affair, you know there is an affair.

Be stronger than this affair.
Imagine your wife was holding a gun to her own head .... would you take it away from her, or would you pretend you did not see the gun and hope she'd realize she better put it down.

I vote you hire a PI.

Good luck kid, you're in a tough spot.
How many years married? Any kiddlets?

Pep

<small>[ March 03, 2004, 04:54 PM: Message edited by: Pepperband ]</small>

I am a very non-conflict oriented person when it comes to family issues. It stems from a very stressful childhood.

If, as you say, she will deny any evidence that I produce, then how will anything from a PI be useful? If we had the A on the table, and she agreed to the NC letter, then a PI could monitor compliance, but, in our head in the sand world that both of us live in now, they are just good friends. They do things together. I don't believe that A PI could get anymore than pictures of them shopping at a mall etc.

I recorded phone calls with very condeming eveidence in them. Now that she knows that I did it, she is smart enough to not make that mistake again. I have no idea how the A is conducted now. As they still have friendly contact, I don't believe that an A can be down-shifted back to "just friends" so easily. It must still be going on, maybe toned down, but still there.

Time to talk to the OM's wife. Let her know about phone calls etc. See how her relationship with her H is. Throw a little light on the A. Yes, your wife will be angry, but it might just end the A.

Exposing the A to OM W will be difficult. She doesn't speak english, doesn't know who I am and probably doesn't know who my W is! I wouldn't even know how to present this.

Find someone who can speak her language. Exposing the A is critical.

I am very depressed today. I have great uncertianty about what lies ahead. The A is not on exposed. We seem to be healing from the pretend wound to our marriage (see my first post), but I can't be sure if she is just buying time. In the phone calls that I heard, she was just putting up with me until she was able to resolve some financial issues (I guess), and it's more convienient to have me as a husband than a "lover" who is more than 14 yrs her junior. She still sees him, and I have no insight into what their relationship is at this point. We have not kids to drag through this(thank God), and we have been marriad for almost 12 years.

Can I "tip off" the OM's W to the A? I think that the backlash from me doing it directly would put us into plan D!

You definitely can tip off the other man's wife. That is necessary to shed light on the affair and she deserves to know what her H is up to, so she can protect herself and make informed decisions about her marriage.