My W wants to leave me to live with her colleague. The damage she is doing to 2 extended families is immense. I now believe she is the prime mover in their relationship and he is weak and confused. He is going through alot of trauma at the moment and I wonder whether he might find the strength to dump her. I cannot convince her of anything at the moment and nor can her family. I believe she must see the damage and future regret for herself before the sutuation will improve. She won't look at this site ( she doesn't want the marriage and seems to care little for our 2 boys or anything else except OM ). Any ideas how to help her back? She's not interested in church. How can I reach her?

Sorry to hear about your troubles. I'm not exactly a veteran of this yet but it seems to me after really looking into this stuff that you will have to let her go in order to have any kind of chance.<p>Be a rock for your boys and let her go. Be civil to her, make her see that you're a safe place. Try and find out what it is that caused her to seek someone elses arms. Were there problems that you were aware of? Has she told you anything about that? If so listen carefully and try to make changes within yourself while the two of you are apart.

Unfortunately ther eis nothing you can do to make her see the light.<p>Please read the info. on this site. Get a good understanding of what is happening to you, your WW and your marriage. <p>Read His Needs/Her Needs and SAA (Surviving and Affair) both by Willard Harley.<p>On the Divorcing/Divorced board I bumped up some threads for new members to read. They give info. about the acronyms we use as well as some other helpful info. You may want to read those too.<p>Know that your wife is going through an addiction of an affair. If you treat it as an addiction then you'll know that telling an alcoholic to stop drinking or a smoker to stop smoking doesn't work. They have to come to those conclusions on their own.<p>All you can do is detatch with love - read some info. from al-anon - it may help.<p>At this point, you need to set up a support system for yourself - a counselor, friends, family, and most importantly God, so that you can weather the ups and downs that you will be facing in the next days, weeks, and months. You will also need to be strong for your kids.<p>By reading all this info., and becoming educated on what is happening, you can make well informed decisions about your marriage.<p>Read about Plan A and try to implement it. Affairs usually last 6mos. to 2 years after being exposed to the light of day. By doing PLan A you are making changes to yourself and making the marriage a safe and desirable place to return to.
You may want to download the EN and LB questionaires from this site and fill them out as if you were your wife and then try to meet her EN's and stop all LBs.<p>Then give yourself a time limit for Plan A - 3-6mos. and see if you can continue and if you can't then go to Plan B. This is a similar technique to James Dobson's Love Must Be Tough, however, it gives you time to make sure that your wife sees changes in the marriage so that she will want to return whrn the affair dies.<p>Make no mistake - the A must die a natural death. You can't force the issue. Begging, pleading, rationalizing, moralizing - none of this works. <p>We all know wht a shock this is for you and how much pain you are going through and how much more you will have to suffer, but you can make it through this, and please continue to post here with any quesitons, or vents of emotion. We're here. K

Hi, <p>When our children totter, wobble and fall, we as parents want to be there for them each time to prevent damage. We later learn we can't be there for them everytime so we teach them how to handle it themselves and watch them learn and grow. All part of life and growing up. <p>Now when it comes to our spouses who should have already been through those stages, we see a regression. Still the nature is to nuture for the same reason: 'to prevent damage'. We later learn that we can't be there for them everytime and here is where the paths change. These are NOT our chidlren. We CAN'T teach them to learn and grow. It IS NOW part of the lives of not just the parents (WS/BS' parents) but chidlren, siblings, spouse, in-laws (some cases out-laws), friends, relatives, workmates, neighbors, teachers, law enforcement, etc. Still we CAN'T teach them. We have to learn to step back. Say our piece (let them know where the real love is), show it by bettering ourselves, taking care of us and our families. Then if they are still struggling to fall, you have to let it happen. Fighting it will only initially hurt you and your family. The hurt will eventually come to the WS but later. Remember this is their doing. You need to make sure you are doing the right thing so that their out come is undeniably their doing. <p>WhY? Because many a WS will attempt to shift the blame on everyone else (even the dog) instead of themselves. <p>Hey my inserts may sound comical and they are meant to be but they also have a ring of truth here. Taken from actual experiences from MBers. <p>Read up, keep busy, love your children, better yourself, don't stop living and don't stop loving your family. <p>WS' need to see they are being left behind due to their bad choices. It is called tough love. Somes we do it even with our children. The reason is good. It is harder to do it to our mates, but how else do you handle an immature, selfish and greedy adult who is throwin away the most precious piece of their life - their family?<p>L.