My wife and I are the envy of every one, we met when we were 14, married at 22, two kids and always seem so happy <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" />

We are true master host and hostess and never offend, and to make the other mad or sad is considerd fate worse that death.

But the last year has been miserable, and I have just found out that she has been harboring a secret love for a doctor at her work. She will not admit any sexual contact but I just don't know. She is willing to do anything to not hurt me face to face.

I feel incredibly stupid/ vulnerable because last July I caught her lying about talking to Dr. Otherguy, and she brushed me off and I believed her. For a year our relationship has rotted from within, I think she has felt guilt, but it might also be love/ infatuation with him. I have caught her 3 addition times in lies but always believed her lies.

Finally after doggedly trying to hold on to my belief that our marriage was in shambles because of me, a family member took me aside and asked me how could I keep holding on when my wife had stated that she had no energy to give to our marriage. It was that made my wall of denial crumble and finally revealed that someone else was involved.

By no means am I blameless in creating this situation but I am so scared and sad. My wife is my first and only true love and now I feel that my world is shattered. I know I love her but I'm not sure if she loves me. She says she does.

But I don't know how to make her leave her job where is in constant contact with Dr. Otherguy.

I don't if I can risk offending her and having her leave. Help. . . ?
<img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

Read Surviving an Affair and get full insight as to what brought your marriage to this point. It's not your fault she had the affair, but you had some doings in your marriage being vulnerable to an affair. Here are some tips for you to consider.

* "Invite" your WW to do as many "fun" things as you can get her to do. Almost like courting. No or few relationship talks.

* Do a SERIOUS self-evaluation. What were the negative contributions you brought to the marriage? As Dr. Phil says "Get Real". Now, starting today, begin changing those things about yourself that made withdrawals from the LOVE your wife had for you. These must be permanent changes, not cosmetic.

* Read about LoveBusters, and eliminate them from your life. This is of great importance. Your wife may take every negative thing you do or say to "enable" her justification of the affair. LoveBusters make the OM appear to be a better choice than YOU, because you are mean and confrontational. She may even go through periods of PROVOKING you into LB's, and that's why you always turn Lemons into Lemonade. Don't get sucked in.

* See a Marriage Counselor. If she won't go, go alone. Make sure they are Pro Marriage. Many just want to make you feel better about yourself while you go through a divorce. The Harley's and Penny Tupy are considered to be among the best.

* Read all about Plan A on this website, or in SAA. Part of Plan A is exposure of the Affair. If this has not been done, you need to do it soon, but only after learning HOW TO DO IT. To do it wrong may cost you weeks or months in your journey.

* Live your life as if her affair is not going to stop you from living your life. Stay busy, eat healthy, sleep well, and involve yourself in a big slice of life. Do not let her see you mopy, weepy, pity party, etc. She wants a strong man, not a broken one. Let her see just how "alive" you are.

* No revenge affairs or relationships. Period.

* Find strength in your God and in your best friends. Find strength on these boards. Vent here, not at your wife. We have been through this, and can help you.

You will find strength you never knew you had, and the Marriage Builders program is as good as it gets for getting through all this. You have to BELIEVE it will work, or it will not. You have to BELIEVE it will work or you won't be able to do the necessary things to make it work. So BUY INTO THE PROGRAM and make things happen.

* Your ACTIONS will speak volumes for the next few weeks and months. Your words will mean very little. So SHOW your WW why you are the best choice, by doing the things I've listed for you.

Best wishes

SD

ReallySad - Welcome to marriagebuilders. You have come to a great place. Start in Plan A. You can read all about it on the link in my signature line.

You might want to switch to the general questions forum, since there is more traffic there.

Stick with us, we will help you get through this.

Thankyou SD and Believer,

What is hard is that for this last year I have been in counseling I have done the relationship matters by Dr. Phil, and everything was just dropped by my wife because she was emotionally tied to this OG.

I feel like all of this is covered ground, I understand myself and I understand why she could have gone to the affair, but now I don't understand what to do next. Plan A is great but how long do I wait. This guy is involved in a lot of the same stuff as us and we see him both socially and my wife, of course, 40 plus hours a week. She asked me last night if she is just supposed to flip a switch, and I said "Basically yeah," but thats not realistic, is it?

How do I cope with the feelings that everything that I say is being twisted and manipulated by them at work so that I am commiting the offense again that drove them together?

Thanks again
Really Sad

Is the doctor married?

Maybe it's about time you had a chat with his wife.

There may be some policy regarding sexual harrassment in the workplace at their office too.

Read the following:

WAT's Quick Start Guidelines for Betrayed Spouses

It's tough to make the first call, but it must be exposed.

Sad

Sorry you had to come here but now that you have I think you will find it a great help. Now I am from the other side of the fence so to speak, a FWW, to let ou know where I am coming from.
It has and is helping me, dont know if it can help save my M but one keeps hoping.

Anyway, I guess from your posts you are unable to go on as you are, its not a way for anyone to live in such a relationship.
So first I suppose you need to know if there was or still is an affair.

Sorry but from your posts describing your wifes reactions & thinking back on mine, I suspect that there was or is one.
Now it may be emotional Affair (EA) only or may be full blown physical affair (PA).
Both are very tough to to come to terms with for all concerned.

Could it be only on your wifes side....... possibly but I doubt it. Unless the fantasy was returned I don't see your wife continuing in the same fantasy by herself for so long, but it may be. Dont discount it but be prepared to hear the worst.

You need to know this BEFORE you can decide where and what you are willing to do.
Of course this WILL hurt to find out, could it hurt much more than what you are feeling now, I don't know I was the one hurting my H so you may have to ans that one. My guess is probably not.

Once you know YOU have to decide how you will react, despite all the pain and hurt, only you can dcide how and what you will do. Leave & think about it, stay & fight for her, serve divorce papers & so on. I hope you will stay and fight for youe M. YOu seem so dedicated to it and it would appear she cares enough NOT to hurt you face to face........though you may be thinking 'big deal' by now...but it indicates some feeling for you.

You have kids like me so there is also something else to fight for to keep the family together.

Ok find out....how??? ask her direct, calmly assuring her you will not overreact, make sure she understands that she MUST tell you the truth no matter how much it may hurt YOU, you have to know exactly what went on and for how long. Leave details for now is my advice, but you have to feel ok with this.

Maybe before you ask her can you find out if she uses the internet, and phones, if she is in contact with this Dr otherperson. If you do you need to say when you ask for details that you are aware she is/was in contact so many times etc.

Sad please be aware that if you are agressive she will not be likely to tell you much at all. As hard as it may be, and as much as it hurts, try to be as gentle as possible to encourage her honesty.
Look, even with all of that, she will probably not tell the truth right way. I didn't. When confronted by the evidence I kept on telling wilder and wilder stories until I broke down and admitted it all. I think most of us WW do that.

Anyway once you have decided what you want to do once you are confident you have the truth, as much as you can obtain, then you should come back here let the board know what you have found out and depending on what you have decided to do you can be directed to the best place to help and get some advice.

I do hope you can work with your W on this Sad.

Dear Crazed Love and the others,

Thank you so much for helping me out, I guess you all kinda know what I am going through, and that means the world to me now. The fact that I am not going through this on an island truly is a blessing that I am not sure I can ever repay. Thanks.

As for the situation, well I feel like I am on the most intense roller coaster ever made.
I confronted my wife the 8/25/04 after a year of denial mostly on my part but some (enough) on her part to keep it covered. For two days the cover eroded and on 8/28/04 she admitted that &#8220;a part of her was in love with him, but it wasn&#8217;t physical&#8221;. I was so scared that I had lost her I just cried and told her that I love her.

On 8/29/04 I called a friend/former co worker and she listened to my sad story and all the sad details and then told me that I had to make a stand. So that night I packed my bag and wrote a note to each of my kids letting them know that they were loved, and then wrote a long letter to my wife, including lots of articles from Dr. Harley about what had to be done if we wanted to save this marriage. My wife came home and we had dinner as a family, (felt like the last supper at the time).

After dinner she went to our bedroom and saw all the stuff and I explained that if she was ever going to come back to me, then I needed to make a stand. I tried to be strong but it was brutal, my wife and I are best friends and are #1 problem is that neither one of us will risk offending the other by asking for something we need. So to stand there and basically crush her was one of the saddest things I have ever done. We talked and cried and she started to say that it really wasn&#8217;t and affair and I started to even believe her (it scares me how bad I want to be wrong about this affair) until she finally said that its not like she can just turn off a switch and end her relationship with Dr. Otherguy. That sent me to the door. I told the kids they were loved and left. I went to my parents house, they are out of town, but the silly thing is that they only live across the street. (Hmmm do ya think that&#8217;s a love buster?) I began to get ready for bed and thought I would check this cite to see if anyone had replied. In fact I got two replies and they recommend I go with plan A. I freaked out and ran across the street and told my wife that I wanted to be patient and see how this all would work out. See was pretty confused, the kids were too, and needless to say I was a mess.

I knew that I was a mess, and so I decided to take Friday off (no relationship stuff) although I did find a great article that fit us perfectly regarding control and independence. I told her she could read it is she wanted but as a family we went to a 50&#8217;s style dinner, ate French fries and then followed my 7 year olds advice and we all went bowling. It was fun sad at the same time. We all like to have fun and be silly, as a family we really enjoy each other.

Saturday we both had other commitments, and things seemed to be on the back burner and yes I was starting to slip into the comfortable sleep of denial. But then we went out for ice cream. We were all giggling and then my wife brought out a work story about how she made Dr. Otherguy look stupid. Just in that split second my world crashed, actually it took about a minute, and all of a sudden I realized that even though we were having a fun as a family a part of her was still with him. See, her pattern has always been to always talk bad about this guy, that way she could mislead herself and others so that there would be no way this could be considered an affair. But that&#8217;s the thing with EA&#8217;s no contact, but what is sooo cruel is the fact that that person just isn&#8217;t there. I think long term sexual affairs must be the worst however Emotional Affairs are terrible because there is such a powerful deception because there is no sex and all the parties can just deny that an affair exists. However it's cruel because it all takes place in the head, the person can be right there in front of you but totally removed to that other affair fantasy world. I have never had to deal with a one night stand but to me the hurt is much worse when you are with your family and actually looking at your wife, but you realize that they really aren&#8217;t there, in their mind they are with the otherguy.

I had to finish the rest of Saturday on auto-pilot, I almost lost my dinner on the way home. Sunday came and I went and worked out. My wife was very tense, and cleaned for much of the morning. Finally I asked if she was ok and she said no. We talked and I explained how I got to where I was and she seemed to need assurance that I was not just going to throw her butt out. We talked a lot and went to evening mass, and then dropped the kids off at a slumber party. We had dinner and then and there she totally melted my heart. She picked up the weekly newspaper and began to look for a new job. It was really sad because she does love her job, (she is a vet tech, Dr. Otherguy is a vet) but she really likes the place and likes the clients, it makes me sad to think she has to leave it.

Thanks for your time
Really (not so) Sad