Hi all -

I've been poking around on this site quite a bit over the last six months. Earlier this year I discovered my husband's EA of around a year, and since then we've pursued every resource we could find to help us find our way. Things are progressing well between us. His EA was extremely motivating for us to fix what was wrong in our marriage, and I feel closer to him now than I have since very early in our marriage (we just passed 8 years).

The trouble I'm having is with the OW. I feel such anger toward her, and I don't like the fact that she has the power to make me so upset. I feel like I could finish healing from the EA if I could just shut her out of my life completely, but she's still there around the fringes. My husband has done all the right things and has no contact with her at all. But she is friends with my BIL on FB, and she still comments on his posts and I occasionally see those comments. We also have mutual friends that occasionally bring her up and whatnot. It's inevitable that we will see each other again. We have not told any of our friends or family about the EA.

The OW is a repeat cheater. She and her husband are separated now for that reason. I worry about her involvement with my BIL.

I don't know how to stop worrying and obsessing and being angry with this woman who has shown me no reason to forgive her. She constantly told my husband how much she didn't like me and she thinks I'm crap. She tried to push their EA into a PA (I read her texts and my husband's responses). When my husband ended the relationship she blamed me and belittled him. I really don't care what she thinks of me but it really gets to me that she used by husband and talked to him the way she did. She is not sorry and I don't know how to forgive someone like that. But I know that I really want to get over all this, and I feel like my anger toward her is one thing that is holding me back.

I'd really appreciate any insight or suggestions from those of you that have been through this and moved on.

Thanks in advance for your time!

- Nicole

The problem is that she is still in your life and you have not told the others about this affair. I would let others know so they can protect their marriages from her and so they can shut her out. Everyone in your family and friends group should know about the affair. You are demonstrating one of MANY reasons why its a very, very bad idea to keep an affair a secret.


No, it is not. You should make sure that you and your husband never see that skank again. Your resentment will fade once you cut her out of your life. That is exactly what you should do.


Forgiveness is not appropriate, but if you want to get over your anger at her, then take steps to shut her out. AND hold her accountable by telling everyone about the affair.

Is skanky married?

Dr Harley addresses the issue of "forgiveness" of someone who not want or care about your forgiveness:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=2864

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=2865

If you are interested in recovering your marriage from this affair, the FIRST STEP is for your husband to never see or speak to the the OW again. If you can see her on facebook, so can your husband. STEP ONE has to be taken before the next steps can be taken. Here is what it will take:

here

Nicole,

This is an example of the punishment of the victim which often occurs after an affair. You as the betrayed wife, BW, keeps quiet while the OW continues to behave as if nothing happened and repeatedly enters your life.

You need to gather info., facebook, linkedin, family, stealthily on OW and expose her to high heaven.

If you know of prior affairs expose them too, where does she work?

You are not obligated to keep this crime a secret.

God Bless
Gamma

OK. I thought it was enough that he never contacted her, and did not allow her to contact him. We even developed a plan for what to do if we should run into her in public (since we live in neighboring cities). He has given me access to all of his accounts so he is accountable to me. We could delete our facebook accounts, but we use them to share with our friends and family that live far from us. We get a lot of positive interaction from it, and I'm hesitant to give that up because of one person that's on there. I guess I shouldn't be.

OW is married, but separated because she can't be faithful. My husband is not the first or last person she's been involved with in the last year. It is widely known that her affairs are the reason for their separation.

Regarding exposure: how do you deal with the reactions of YOUR friends and family? His family will love him and forgive him, but my family would be resentful and may never forgive him. And we can't just stop seeing those people. How do you throw someone to the wolves like that? Honestly, it scares me. And, aside from my BIL that is also at risk here, I don't see how what happened between us is anyone else's business or would help the situation. I see it as fuel for gossip, and for resentment to build.

I recognize that I'm not obligated to keep it a secret. I don't care who knows what she's done. But I do care who knows what my husband has done.

Nicole, speaking to you as a married man who got myself into an emotional affair that became a physical affair & almost cost me my marriage to the best woman on the planet, the main thought I want to leave you with is that just about the biggest mistake you & your husband could make is to tolerate a situation where this woman continues to flit around the periphery of your lives.

Two bad dynamics are in play here:

(1) This situation is detrimental to your marital recovery, because it's undermining your ability to feel emotionally-safe with your husband. This is natural. It's the self-preservation instinct acting within you, and you shouldn't be trying to suppress it. She is a danger to your marriage. The issue isn't that you're not good enough at dealing with your anger, or that you're too obsessive, or that you're not good enough at forgiving the unrepentant! The issue is that your husband ought to recognize that the OW's continuing presence in your lives is a danger to your marriage, and he ought to act accordingly based on that recognition. The fact that he instead tolerates his brother's FB relationship & friendship with OW suggests to me that he does not fully recognize this yet, and is thus still at least a bit foggy.

Solution: Your husband ought to explain to his brother just how dimly he views your brother's continuing "friendship" with this woman. Said brother ought to be on the side of his brother's [your husband's] marriage, not on the side of the skank-ho who tried to break it up, for Pete's sake. If your husband's brother doesn't get this, then it'll be incumbent on your husband to velcro on a big enough pair to downgrade his relationship with his brother. If he doesn't like that choice, that's tough nuts for your husband; he should've been choosier back when he was cultivating his improper relationship with the OW. And your husband ought to be smart enough to realize that if his brother doesn't GET the importance of this, then his brother is second-rate material as a friend in any case. Your husband ought to man up & have this conversation with his brother asap, if for no other reason than that you need him to do it in order to do away with the triggers.

(2) Aside from the "trigger" aspect, having OW on the periphery of your lives poses an actual risk of resumption of contact, which as you must understand (if you've read enough around here) poses a risk, even if small, of resumption of the affair. Even if the odds of renewed contact seem fairly small, the fact that she's friends with your husband's brother is bad news all by itself -- it tells me that she's way too close to your lives. Tolerating this situation is like playing chicken with your marriage.

Solution: Same as above. As poster MelodyLane likes to remind people, the solution here isn't to become a better chicken-player; the solution is to get yer bum the hell out of the road already, so that you [or in this case, your marriage] don't become roadkill. This means that your husband needs to take further, active measures to get OW our of the periphery of your lives. If that means redrawing the circle tighter so that undiscriminating BIL is outside it, then so it must be.

If he's got questions about any of this, have him open up a username & post to me, and I'll be glad to 'splain it to him. I know about ending an affair & recovering a marriage.

My wife & I went together to several couples with whom we'd been good friends, and we exposed the situation together. (No, it wasn't immediate famiy, but then again, I had an awful lot more & worse to expose.) These people can be your & your husband's best allies in providing an extra measure of accountability for him on behalf of your marriage. They can be an extra set of watchful eyes on skank-ho.

Nicole, which do you think will be worse: Going to these relatives together & telling them about how committed the two of you are to saving your marriage after he messed up, showing them that the two of you are together on the same page & asking for their help & graciousness, as only the two of you can do together? Or going to them alone, sometime down the road, and having to tell them about your upcoming divorce, or about some huge fight you & your husband will have had due to the huge stress you're unreasonably placing on yourself by keeping this secret?

Re: resentment building... uh, what exactly do you think is happening every day that you keep the lid on this, and your marriage continues to be subjected to the wear & tear of the triggers? That's your resentment building, and that's what'll be more detrimental to your marriage.

Look: I know you'd prefer not to have to tell them about this. No one ever wants to deal with something like this.

Well, I'm sorry: You're not dealing with the ideal situation anymore. You need to deal with reality the way it is, not the way you wish it would've been. I know that's not fair, and it's not your fault, but it's your reality now. You can't unwind it; neither can your husband. That was a realization that I struggled with, but once you get there, it makes for better decisionmaking on your part going forward. You & your husband need to make the best decisions to give yourselves the best shot of having the best marriage from this point forward, based on the situation from which you're starting right now. If you try to sweep this under the rug, you will screw this relationship up & prevent yourselves from having the quality of marriage that you can have & should have.

Nicole,

How do you throw someone to the wolves like that? Honestly, it scares me. And, aside from my BIL that is also at risk here, I don't see how what happened between us is anyone else's business or would help the situation. I see it as fuel for gossip, and for resentment to build.

One of the more difficult concepts to grasp is that your WHs affair with OW was an addiction. Just like an alcoholic cannot ever go to a bar, your H should never see OW again. Exposure is one of the precautions you take to help make sure he never goes into that bar/OW again.

If I am reading between the lines correctly about OW, she lives a life where she manipulates, uses people and lies about everything constantly. She may also have an inordinate desire to have people think well of her and fabricates a false public persona. These kinds of people are very dangerous because they seem so perfect and being with them can be exciting.

Why did your H throw YOU to the wolves? You should also get a polygraph for your H as a 1 year affair was like physical as well. And this would put you at risk for STDs given the many partners of the OW>

God Bless
Gamma

NicoleB,
Your situation is not nearly unique. BSs wrestle with the urge to "get even" with the AP in virtually every case that is brought to this site (some more so than others).

Regardless of the depth or intensity of these feelings, you have been given the keys to unlock your problem by Mel, GO, and Gamma.

You came here asking how to rid yourself of the anger. You have the answer: Expose the affair far and wide - ideally, jointly with your husband. It removes the power OW has over you, and puts the hurt where it belongs - on her skanky butt.

Nicole, it may seem counterintuitive to you, but Gamma's point about the addictive nature of affairs (regardless of whether they were physical or "only" emotional) is spot-on. In fact, the addiction usually takes hold during the emotional-only stage.

Having this woman still be around your lives is like having an alcoholic walking past a tavern every day. He doesn't touch the liquor, and maybe he doesn't even see any bottles through the window. But a slice of his mind will know it's in there.

Better to just take another route that doesn't go past the liquor store.

Y'know what'd risk throwing your husband to the wolves? Keeping this affair covered up, so that no one can be looking out for him; and having him risk being triggered through his brother's ongoing contacts with the other woman. That's what risks throwing him to the wolves (more particularly, to a certain she-wolf). Maybe you think it's a small risk; but why should your marriage be put at eevn that risk, when it could be safer & better?

Do you see how her presence on your family's fb pages triggers you? It triggers your husband all the more. You have many, many other ways to stay in touch with your family. Email, phone, skype.

That "one person" almost destroyed your marriage. She inflicted something as damaging as rape or physical assault. You are the rape victim who stays in touch with her rapist.


Does her husband know that your husband shagged her? Is it widely known that she had an affair with your husband? This is a married woman, after all and this is information he has a right to know.


Your husband will have to earn their respect. You harm your husband by hiding his crime. And you deprive yourself of much needed support of your family by hiding it.


You don't throw him to the wolves. You tell everyone about his affair. That is good for your husband and good for your maarriage. It is BAD for your husband to hide his crime. The more people who know, the more people to hold him accountable and the more people to support your crippled, sick marriage.


Adultery affects everyone in the family. Your husband behaved in a reckless and dangerous way. Others need to know this. You hurt your husband by keeping it a secret.

You also put yourself in situations where you are forced to be around the OW. If everyone knew the OW was a skankho who slept with your husband they would stay away from her. But if you don't say anything, you set yourself up to be at social settings with her.


You are an enabler. That harms your husband.

here

Thank you all for the time you have put into your responses. Several things have clicked for me while reading this.

A couple things I'd like to clear up:
- The affair was emotional only. It did not get as far as a PA.
- OW's H is aware of the EA between her and my H.
- My BIL did not know about the EA until tonight. So his friendship with the OW was not in intententional disregard for its impact on our marriage.
- My H has had no communication with OW since he ended their relationship. I have verified through cell phone records, e-mail, text, chat, FB, and instant message accounts that no communication has occurred.
- The relationship ended when my H sent her an e-mail stating that their relationship was inappropriate and that he would have no further contact with her. I read and approved the message and watched him send it. We read her reply (which was relevant only because it confirmed she got our message) but he did not respond further.

My H and I had a good discussion about all this tonight, and he called up his brother and talked with him about the situation. He explained to him what happened between him and the OW, cautioned his brother about the OW's possible intentions in their friendship (between OW and BIL), and asked him if he would unfriend OW on FB. BIL understood and agreed with no hesitation. My husband has also unfriended one other friend that was a mutual friend with OW.

There is still much work to be done, but this was a big step toward resolving some of the tension I've been feeling. Thank you all for helping me to see it. I didn't realize that we weren't completely following the guidance established in HNHN.

We will continue to work at it...

Thanks again,

Nicole

Has your H changed all his contact information, so OW can't contact him again?

Radio clip on forgiving the OW.
Radio clip on Forgiving the OW
Segment #2

Nicole. This is a great step forward but do not stop here. Your WH needs to inform all the mutual friends with an explanation of what has happened. The fact that these people unknowingly mention OW to you and him AND he allows it to continue while he hides behind the veil of secrecy is hurtful and will damage your recovery.

I think you can feel this deep inside. In the great words of SugarCane..."ask me how I know this." His putting an end to the secrecy and the continued hurt is the greatest act of CARE AND PROTECTION OF YOUR SPOUSE that I can think of.

Both parents also need to know.

No, he has not changed all of his contact information. Yes, I can see that I�m an enabler. Really, I need some help. I'm sorry this is going to be long.

Here�s the full background, minus a lot of details for brevity�s sake:

OW, OWH, H and I have known each other for about six years. H and OWH were friends/co-workers before OWH met OW and married her. H's friendship with OWH is the reason the four of us started hanging out to begin with. I had very little respect for her from the day I met her for several reasons, not the least of which is the way she dresses. It was obvious that she didn't like me much either. Fine. But OW, OWH, and H all got along great. So we continued to hang out.

I was very uncomfortable with H's friendship with OW for about a year before D-Day. I didn't like the way she acted around him, and I didn't think it was appropriate that she had his phone number and texted him, and chatted him up on FB so much. I hated that she dressed so provocatively around him (although she dresses like that ALL the time).

I expressed to H many times that I felt something weird between him and OW, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Despite his assurances that they were friends only, I couldn�t get over it. I was very insecure about their relationship. Several conversations with him, arguments about it, and a few choices he made reinforced my feelings. I talked to his sister, with whom I�m close, about the situation, and she told me I was being insecure and controlling. My mom said the same thing when I talked with her about it. NO ONE had my back. Everyone believed that I was wrong, and that he would never do anything inappropriate. I was told to suck it up.

It came to a head in early March 2012 when I told him that if he cared about me, he would cut off his relationship with her. He reluctantly agreed. The next day I felt terrible about it, and recanted my request for him to end their relationship. I told him it meant a great deal to me, though, that he would end it if I asked him to. That�s when he told me that if he had to make the choice again, he would NOT end the relationship.

I won�t go into all the details of what happened that night, but I got in the car to drive off. He begged me not to leave, and I begged him not to choose her. He wouldn�t change his mind, so I left. I didn�t get far. I realized that I didn�t want to live a life without him, so I turned around. That night we had some major breakthroughs. It was the point when I realized how miserable he was, and how much I was screwing up our relationship. (I was committing LBs left and right, but won�t discuss here unless someone wants to know.) We both knew we didn�t want to divorce.

That night, I didn�t know the extent of his relationship with OW. I believe that if I had known then all of the things that I know now, I would not have stayed with him. Our relationship was not strong enough to bear it.

We spent the next week reconnecting and trying to figure out what was wrong between us, and what we needed to do to fix it. I felt and saw that he wanted to fix us, and it helped to bond us again. I can�t believe how much our love banks grew during that week. Without that week and the progress we made during it, we wouldn�t have been able to withstand what came next.

About a week later, a partial D-Day came. I discovered a text that showed me that their relationship was closer than I thought. She was sharing very personal problems with him about her own marriage. I was not comfortable with it. Knowing what I know about EAs, I knew that they were crossing the line into dangerous territory. I asked him if they had danced together. No. I asked if he had ever kissed her or if she�d kissed him. No. I asked if they talked about sex. No. He said he didn�t tell me how close of friends they were because he knew I wouldn�t approve. I didn�t believe him. I told him I thought he lied because he knew it was wrong. He also said that since that night a week earlier he�d wanted to confess to me about their friendship, but didn�t know how and was afraid that it would destroy the good progress we�d been making. We had a long conversation, and he agreed that he needed to establish some boundaries with OW.

When he attempted to set up some boundaries, she resisted and accused me of being insecure and controlling. I didn�t know this, because he didn�t tell me about her responses. He covered it up so it sounded like she was confused, but not upset at me. At this point I believed he had done nothing wrong, and it was all OW trying to seduce my H. All the evidence I saw was her trying to get closer to him. I didn�t know that he had shared with her how unhappy he was in our marriage sometimes, and had allowed her to talk disrespectfully about me. I didn�t know about all of the intimate conversations he�d had with OW.

From my perspective, he was doing everything right and she was the evil witch trying to break us up. I told him I was OK with their friendship, so long as he had his boundaries up so she couldn�t get beyond friendship. I didn�t understand why he�d want to be friends with someone that wanted to be more than friends even though they were both married, but he claimed he didn�t see her as wanting to be more than friends. I didn�t feel like I could ask him again to break off their friendship.

This went on for almost two months. I tried very hard to trust him and let him handle her. I believed that he was doing what he should be doing, although part of me wondered if he was telling me the whole truth about them. I didn�t ask him for passwords and such because we agreed that crossed the privacy line and showed I didn�t really trust him. Yeah, I was a FOOL.

Full D-Day came when I finally broke down and read through his text messages with her. I saw several conversations he�d told me about, and others he hadn�t. He said that they needed to stop their inappropriate behavior. He said he knew he was as much to blame as she was because he was a big flirt, too. He said that he and I were in a good place and he didn�t want to screw it up. She was angry, and said things like �you�re the one who wanted to keep us secret from Nicole.� She said �When I kissed you I told my husband because I felt guilty.�

There was more, but that was about all I needed to see. I realized that I�d allowed myself to be misled. I really wanted to believe that he was the innocent, but knew that he wasn�t.

I confronted him and got what I believe to be the whole story. It had happened when I was away from home on business, and he�d gone to her house. It happened with her husband, friends, and children in the house with them, but out of the room. She initiated it, and I believe that her text message confirms that. He said he didn�t tell me about it when it happened because he would never let it happen again. They talked for hours on the phone the next day and she said she was drunk and it was a mistake, and they agreed they didn�t want to ruin their marriages. That happened about 6 weeks before D-Day. I demanded that he let me see every text message, e-mail, etc. between them and he did. We were out of town for the next few days, but during that time more details came out. Intimate conversations about how they both wished that polygamy was legal, nude photos, discussions about details of their marriages. Conversations between them were pretty innocent until a few months before D-Day. It turned my stomach. I couldn�t believe the number of lies he�d told me, the cover-ups, and the things that I�d let myself believe.

He told me that since that evening when we started to reconnect he�d wanted to end things with her so he wouldn�t screw up our relationship any more, but he wasn�t sure how to get out of it. The crazy thing to me is that he led me on about it instead of confessing and getting my help. I understand he was afraid that it would have destroyed us.

NC letter to her happened via e-mail as soon as we got back to town. He explained that their relationship was inappropriate, and that he didn�t want any further contact with her. He was clear and civil. I read & approved the message, and we sent it together. She fired back with an angry response, telling him that I was controlling him, he was stupid, blah blah. We did not respond. That was May 1.

After that day, more details trickled in. He didn�t come to me to volunteer information, but he answered all of my questions. Based on guidance on this site and in HNHN, I didn�t ask for all of the details, knowing I could ask later when I was not as emotionally charged. We have learned a great deal, and we are still learning.

OW and OWH are now separated because of her inappropriate relationships with my H and at least one other man since then. We have learned of her other inappropriate relationships since NC. My H was not aware of them during his relationship with her. As expected, he now feels used by her.

Here�s my problem:

I LOVE MY HUSBAND MORE THAN ANYTHING. I do not want to hurt him. I know that he has made mistakes, but causing him to suffer will not fix them, make me feel better, or improve our relationship. I cannot hurt him simply because he hurt me.

I know that he loves me, too. I have seen the emotions, and watched him struggle with things that are hard for him in order to make this right. Seeing those things made it easy for me to forgive him.

I still have a hard time trusting him. I know that trust is earned and learned, not automatic. I know that it would help me if he was more open about his e-mails and social websites, but I feel like I cannot ask. Snooping through e-mails and such makes me feel sick. I feel like I am violating him, and that if I truly care about him I should be able to just trust him. Wrong, I know.

We have not established any defined guidelines to prevent something like this from happening in the future. I know that would do wonders for helping me to feel emotionally safe, but again � I feel like I cannot ask. I know that it frustrates him to talk about it, and it makes him feel not trusted. Those are the consequences of his own actions, but it hurts me to ask him to do something that hurts him.

I�m struggling, guys. I know what I need to make things right, but I STILL would rather lay on the grenade for him than ask him to bear the consequences of his choices.

How do you find the strength?

P.S. My last post probably sounds argumentative or like I'm disregarding the advice from previous posts. It's not intentional. I'm really just looking for the right words to make the advice sink in, click, whatever. I guess I need convincing, because it still sounds more hurtful than helpful right now.

I really do appreciate everyone's input. I'm sorry I'm being a big baby about this and need to have my hand held.

Guess I need to grow a pair, too...

What EPs has he put in place?

When is he changing all his contact information?

Put a Plan together and follow it.

MB has a program of recovery from an affair, a step-by-step PLAN that has been used by thousands of couples to recover after an affair.

You have been given these steps by some very knowledgeable posters who have worked through this program. If you and your H follow the steps they are giving you, then you will have the best opportunity to recover from your H's affair.

First step: No Contact Letter to be written by him and approved and delivered by you.

Second step: block all avenues of communication and never see or talk with the OW ever again.

Third step: Transparent and integrated lifestyle - shared passwords and accounts. You will each know what the other spouse is doing at all times. Yes, this means you will check his email. This is not a violation of his privacy. MB does not promote privacy of this sort in marriage. Your lives are to be an open book to each other. Checking his email and his phone are a way to establish trust. Blind trust is always ill-advised.

Fourth Step: Extraordinary precautions to prevent another affair. These are non-negotiable and are designed to make you feel safe. Waywards sometimes protest at first about this, but they are necessary! No nights apart, no friends of the opposite sex, no flirting, no recreational activities with women, no intimate conversations with women, as a start.

Fifth step: Create a romantic and passionate SAFE marriage. He would join you in a program to create such a marriage. MB Online is a great choice for this if you can swing the cost. If not, then get the book Surviving an Affair and read through it. HNHN and LB is for building a great marriage. The workbook Five Steps to Romantic Love has all the questionnaires.

This is what it will take or your marriage will end up a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage.

Nicole, I agree you should not "hurt" him. But you have been doing that very thing by keeping his dirty secret. Keeping his little secret and allowing the OW to stay on the fringes, hurts you and your husband. As such, you need to tell others about the affair. Don't forewarn your husband, just call up or email your friends and family and tell them about the affair. Ask for their support and tell them you will not be involved with any interactions with skanky.

And if you have not personally spoken to the OWH, I would call him up today and discuss this affair. Make sure he has all the information about it.


Has he given you just compensation? Told you ALL the facts about the affair? Agreed to extraordinary precautions to prevent another affair? The reason this affair happened is because he has pisspoor boundaries around women. Has he agreed to end all opposite sex friendships?


It was too much trust that led to the affair.


That is silly, of course. You have a right to know every thing he does in his life. The fact that you have not been snooping is part of the problem. If you had been snooping you could have put a stop to his affair a long time ago. This is your husband and you need to lose your irrational feelings about snooping. It is not a "violation." It is a violation to have an affair on your wife.

You should know absolutely every thing your husband does and says all day long when you are not with him.


It doesn't hurt him at all. It hurts YOU and your marriage to not set conditions for recovery. You are destroying your marriage by not doing a damn thing to recover. And this will get worse, I promise you. You think you feel resentful now? Just wait a couple of years. It will grow.

\
If you want to save your marriage you are going to stop being silly and start taking a proactive approach. Your marriage will not survive if you don't. Your resentment will grow and he will have another affair.

Agree. Your marriage is not going to make it unless you do grow a pair.

Read these:

Can't We Just Forgive and Forget?


How to Survive Infidelity

Nicole, yours is not a unique situation by any means. What you describe is a textbook affair. (Remember, I know, 'cuz I got myself into one.) I'm gonna react to several things you've said in your post, insofar as the perspective might be useful to you.

First, if I were you, I'd put keyloggers on your husband's PC & cellphone if you haven't done so already. With the trickle-truth that's gone on in your case, and with how long the improper relationship went on, and with your knowledge that it was beyond talking (kissing ain't talking), and the fact that he didn't change his contact info, I'm guessing that two of the things that are bothering you, even though you're reluctant to confront them or even admit them here on an anonymous website, are the possibility that this relationship ain't 100% over, and that it might've gone farther than you've been told -- and all you've got to go on has been told to you by the affairees.

Well, he needs to change his contact info, plain & simple. Cell, e-mail, and if at all possible, work phone & work e-mail. That's textbook, week #1 advice for ending an affair. You need to insist upon this. Ask nicely, but insist. (BTW, your textbook here ought to be "Surviving An Affair". My wife & I would both tell you -- and we don't get a single penny for saying so -- that SAA may well have saved our marriage. Our counselor put us onto it after my affair. Please check it out asap.)

Look, Nicole: I was the official "Last Man in the World Whom You'd Ever Have Thought Would Have an Affair." I was the clean-cut, family-man, good dad, model employee, church volunteer, and basically happily married for 16+ years to a woman with whom I got along well. People -- including quite possibly your family members -- often don't believe what they don't want to believe, especially if it doesn't square with what they've seen in the past. Add to that, that once a person has allowed someone of the opposite sex (other than his/her spouse) to start meeting top emotional needs -- in your husband's case, I'll bet my last dollar that admiration & attention are very high on his list -- then it doesn't take much for the addiction to set in; and once a person is addicted, they will do what any addict will do: they'll flat-out look you in the eye & lie to your face if they think they need to do so in order to keep open a clear path to getting their 'fix.'

Please read that again & let it sink in.

Affairs are addictions. The brain-chemistry impact is the same as that of crack cocaine -- you can look it up. The first time my wife voiced apprehensions about the other woman's intentions, I looked her in the eye -- my wife, my best friend -- and assured her she had nothing to worry about. I may even have believed it myself for that moment. But I failed to institute 'no contact', and because, dammit, I was hooked on the cheap admiration, a few weeks later, I found myself paying cash for hotel room so that it wouldn't show up on my credit card statement.

Partly that, perhaps, but also what I said above regarding addictions: To him, ending the relationship meant the end of his cheap 'fix.'

Careful with your interpretation re: what MarriageBuilders advises re: details. You may not need to know every gory detail. But you sure do need to know the extent of the affair. Are you sure that you know? Let me be very blunt (because I'd be doing you a disservice if I sugarcoated any of this): Your husband's affair went on for a long time to have remained emotional-only. Now, I'll grant you that from a marital-recovery standpoint, it may or actually may not matter so much to you whether they slept together, if he is truly committed to be a good husband going forward, and if you are likewise both committed to learning & meeting one another's top emotional needs & avoiding lovebusters. But from a recovery-standpoint, truth & transparency on his part -- retrospectively as well as going forward -- are essential, and are a bellwhether of his commitment. (I take it that at this point, openness & honesty is a top need of yours, right?) It's up to you, but consider whether you need him to take a polygraph.

Well, you gotta love the irony, I guess: Imagine, he feels 'used' because his married affair-partner wasn't faithful to him! Actually, it's not uncommon for unhappily-married OWs to troll for more than one affair partner. I wasn't my OW's first affair-partner; she admitted to me that she'd kept in touch with an ex-BF from out-of-state, and actually met up with him more than once (for all I know, maybe lots) on his business layovers -- a long-distance affair. Setting aside the self-centeredness of the sentiment, the feeling of having been used (or at least the feeling that he might not have been his affair-partner's "one-&-only") might nevertheless actually be beneficial in helping him see his affair for what it actually was, rather than for the idealized fantasy that some guys will construct in their minds.

Whoa, there, cowgirl, hold on a sec: You need to take a minute & recenter your perspective on "hurt." There's little hurt, and then there's BIG HURT. Think about it. If your child (or, heck, your husband) was walking backwards and was about to fall over a cliff behind him, wouldn't you knock him to the ground if you had to in order to keep him from going over the cliff? Knocking him down might hurt, but falling over a cliff would hurt a lot worse. Asking a man who's had an affair to start living transparently isn't "hurting" him -- it's keeping him from hurting himself much more grievously. It's giving him the gift of accountability. He has been an addict, Nicole. Accountability is the best thing you can do for him. Conversely, denying him accountability is one of the very worst things you could do for the wayward spouse in a marriage that's recovering from an affair. Denying accountability risks allowing him to hurt himself badly & hurt you in the process. (Think BIG HURT.)

More to the point, it's a mistake to blindly trust before the trust is earned. Never mind that it's wrong. Worry that it's dumb. Worry that it's bad for the future of your marriage.

Glove oil hit on something real important and that is knowing all the facts about the affair. Has he answered all of your questions to your COMPLETE satisfaction?

Yes, I do worry sometimes that I haven't gotten the whole truth and that the relationship could still be going on.

After having been lied to for so long, even after we committed to working out our problems, I don't know how I could NOT worry that he's lying to me still. I have some evidence that supports his claims that it didn't get beyond the kiss and that he's not still in touch with her, but not anything that proves it beyond a doubt. I'm sure that keyloggers and other snooping methods would provide more proof, but how can I ever know definitively? If he really wants to hide it, he can.

That said, I believe I know all there is to know about the affair. I didn't ask for a ton of detail, but I asked for enough to know how serious it was. I also read their e-mails and texts, so I saw what their conversations were like. Nothing in any of them gave me cause to believe that there was more than he's told me.

Regarding exposure as accountability: one of my concerns is that family members will not agree that an EA is truly an affair, and they won't support me. I fear that they will still take his side and tell me that I am unreasonable and insecure. I have a couple of family members that feel that there is no such thing as an EA. Others believe that if sex did not occur, there's nothing to worry about. Anyone else encounter this?

Yeah, he feels used. But I don't think it's because she was "unfaithful" to him in the way I think you mean. It's more that he thought the feelings were mutual, but it turns out she is just a user looking for as many people as possible to fill her ENs. She's a phony. He thought she was genuine. On this side of things, he does see it for what it was. He has told me that he doesn't know what he saw in her. He's also been adament that he wants nothing more to do with her.

Regarding ENs: Yup, admiration is a huge one of his. And I have been terrible about fulfilling it for far too long. OW, though, is fantastic at manipulation. She was right there to fill in where I was lacking. Attention is lower on his list. We've not had trouble there. I also suspect that SF for him had a lot to do with it, even if they never actually had sex. OW is well-endowed and super slender, and about five years younger than me. I'm not ugly or overweight (I'm actually in damn good shape and have been since before this whole thing started) but I don't compete with OW. I don't know how else to describe it other than she dresses and behaves VERY sexily. Men are drawn to her. I've watched it happen over and over. I don't know why they can't see how loose and fake she is. She'll say anything to get a guy to compliment her and be her "friend". My point about the SF is that he probably got a lot of satisfaction from having someone like her give him so much attention and admiration, and express an interest in him sexually.

Regarding my ENs, openness and honesty are at the top, followed closely by affection. His honesty has been a problem in other areas of our marriage prior to all this. Due to all of my LBs, affection was also a problem. Hard to be affectionate and want to spend time with someone who you don't feel admired by.

ETA: ENs were one of the things we started working on early into all this, before D-Day. I believe that is the reason he and I have been able to start working forward, and why he's been able to cut it off. He's told me that he feels that all of his needs are being met, and feels no desire to look elsewhere.

As to contacting OWH: I do not have, and never have had, his contact information. I have never thought it appropriate to have phone numbers and such for other men that aren't family, even as "friends". It's a personal boundary of mine. Even before reading up on EAs, I felt intuitively that it was wrong. Along with a whole host of other things that my husband has never thought were wrong. He thought I was overly concerned about things that didn't warrant it. Live and learn, I guess.

Is SAA more than what's included at the end of HNHN and on this website?

Again, thank you all. The insight about it being an addiction helps tremendously -- not only in terms of how to handle it, but also in terms of coping with it. It helps me to understand how he could do something so damaging to us. ENs are incredibly powerful.

What do you mean "his side"? Does your husband acknowledge that he was in an affair, or does he not? There should be no "his side" & "your side." There should be only one side; "your side" (plural; meaning, the both of you together as a couple). He's already told his brother, right? So expose the affair together. (Your husband can easily silence any doubters by politely asking them "I had another woman in my arms & I was kissing her; if that's not an affair, WTF do you think it is?" )

Good news, this is fixable! Get better at it. You took his ring on your finger for a reason. There must be something there to admire.

In emergency circumstances, you can cross boundaries. You'd put your lips on another man's if he'd had a heart attack and you were the only one there trained to give CPR. And it is entirely appropriate for a betrayed spouse to contact his/her spouse's affair-partner to make sure the facts check out. In the internet age, you can easily get his contact info -- no lame-o excuses allowed on that.

Have him take a poly?
Polygraph Testing

Yes, he acknowledges it was an affair. "His side" was a bad choice of words. What I meant was that they would defend his actions, regardless of whether or not HE AND I feel it is a problem.

Also to clarify, she was not in his arms and he wasn't kissing her. She planted one on him while everyone was out of the room, and he pulled away. That's the story he's given me, her messages to him confirm it, and I have no evidence to the contrary.

My husband has MANY admirable qualities, and I have always seen them. I've just been learning to express my admiration for him. On this side of things it seems so obvious that it should ALWAYS have been this way. Before we started working things out I constantly passed disrespectful judgments and had angry outbursts. I've been very selfish and immature, and I carry a lot of guilt about that. In the same way that I can't believe he did those things to me, I'm ashamed that I've treated my best friend the way I have. I'm disgusted with myself for leaving him with an emptiness that he had to find another woman to fill because his wife didn't do it. That shame and guilt is my burden to bear. He's forgiven me for it, but I don't forgive myself. I've promised him that I will work every day for the rest of my life to make sure he is never sorry that he chose me for his wife, and that he always knows and feels how much I love, admire, respect, and need him.

How did you all approach the polygraph test and other EPs with your WS? I know he wants to move past this, but I'm afraid he might see some of it (the poly in particular) as re-opening the wound. I don't want to keep dragging him through this muck.

Did you read the polygraph thread?

You tell him you need it as a step for recovery.

Just did. Thank you for the link.

You're welcome.

Nicole. What is his response to taking a poly? His response will be telling.

My story is very similiar to yours. I found out the truth in pieces over time. It was painful and almost destroyed our recovery.

Now is the time to get the whole truth.

Nicole, it may seem like we're throwing a lot of stuff at you really fast. Please know that your recovery has to happen at its own pace, as you are able to feel emotionally safe. We are just sharing from our collective experiences, and there are lot of us. You're new to this. Please feel that it's OK to take some time to re-read & digest it all.

I am in your husband's corner as much as yours; I have already walked some in his shoes. I can feel for a wayward husband who's honestly sorry about how he messed up & who wants to make things better. However, I don't trust him. That's because I also know firsthand some of their hangups & some of the trickle-truthing that goes on, and some of the reluctance to take full precautions -- because even when a wayward spouse starts with the best of intentions to make right their wrongs, lots of them haven't thought through the implications of their actions, or the motives behind their actions. And so they fail to do all they could be doing to help their betrayed spouses feel safe & to build better marriages. (And that needs to be your goal. Going back to the way things were pre- D-Day won't work, because the marriage you had back then wasn't affair-proof. It's great that you realize this, as I sense you do, but your H needs to realize it also.) So it's OK for you not to trust him fully -- that's not a shortcoming on your part. Trust is won back in installments, in increments, over much time, and should never be blind or unverified.

And you're right, there's this general cultural supposition, or conventional "wisdom" which holds that an emotional affair really isn't cheating. It's completely wrong, because the emotional connection -- the division of loyalties that occurs with the emotional connection -- is what allows all the rest to happen, in an affair. (People don't go boffing random strangers whom they meet in a grocery-store checkout line. They first share compliments, recreational companionship, confidences -- intimate conversation, in MarriageBuilders' parlance -- and thus they form a bond that constitutes & sustains an affair.) You're certainly competing against the commonly-held misunderstanding that the emotions don't matter & that affairs are all & only about sex. People who have this misunderstanding will want to minimize what you're going through, and will want to downplay its seriousness & will expect you to downplay it as well. You'll do well to simply ignore those people. They may mean well, or not, but on the matter of affairs, they are simply too ignorant to be listened to.

Can't speak to the polygraph. Re: EPs, I think that reading SAA together, section-by-section, and discussing each section afterwards, would be a good idea for the two of you. It'll help you both. And it should help him empathize with you & help him appreciate why EPs are so crucial. (And also why "radical honesty" -- about the present, future and past -- is so crucial, and so beneficial, to the kind of marriage that you say you want to have.)

And re: "re-opening the wound": It's your wound that he needs to be worried about. If EPs -- and perhaps even a polygraph -- are a positive step toward helping heal your wound, why wouldn't he jump at the chance? That's not you "dragging him through the muck" -- that's you offering him a shortcut to pulling himself out of the muck that he himself willingly waded into when he chose, over the course of a year, to engage in an inappropriate relationship, and chose to lie to you about aspects of it after he got busted.

Girl! You've gotta quit blaming yourself for crummy choices that he made, and you've gotta quit acting & talking in ways that give him excuses not to fully own those choices of his. Listen: People don't cheat on their spouses because of unmet needs. People cheat because they have poor boundaries. Unmet emotional needs can certainly weaken a marriage relationship & make it more vulnerable to an affair, but the decision to engage in an affair is entirely the choice of the person who engages in the affair.

I am sure he does want to sweep it all under the rug, but that is not how marriages recover. The way to close *YOUR* wound is to get the full truth. I would not drag him through the mud at all. Just hold him accountable for doing the necessary things to give you just compensation. You act like he is the victim when you hold him accountable, but he is anything BUT. You are the victim and it is up to you to hold him accountable.

And once again, this affair should be exposed to your family and friends. If some want to believe you are "insecure" your husband can explain that you are not insecure, but that he had an affair. Even so, the point is not to get the approval of crapwits, but to tell your circle of family and friends so they can hold your husband accountable and keep the skank out.

I asked WH if he would take a poly to prove his innocence (i.e. just "friends" not physical.)


I know that would be something I would jump at the chance to do...prove my innocence to my spouse...if my story was honest.

I asked WH if he would take a poly to prove his innocence

The problem with this is that "asking" leaves open the door for "declining". Great if he says "Yes", but a source of irritation if he says "No" and you have to come back saying (in essence), "Wrong answer, Bozo! You will do it!"

Better to make the statement that until you have incontrovertible proof of the extent of his betrayals, you do not feel confident in moving forward. (And, btw, you have heard that a poly provides just such assurance.)

Gloveoil - this was a wonderful post and has a lot of good points. It was even good to read for ME, a BS who is 13 months past Dday- thank you.

Nicole - I would strongly urge you to push for the poly as I suspect your WH is lying to you about the extent of the affair. I had my WH take a poly 9 months into our recovery because there were things that didn't....sit well with me. I found out that he had been lying to me about when his affair had started and that caused major issues in my healing for me. I wish I had pushed for it from the get-go but Kiss refused and I let it go. If your WH refuses, do not let it go! It means that he is hiding the truth from you and you are entitled to the truth.

~RQ

And that is exactly what WH did. He refused using the lame excuse of "ethical reasons." I then knew without a doubt that he was lying.

Nicole there is nothing wrong with making a poly a condition to keep you interested in the marriage...but you do not have to be an jerk about it. That's probably not a good Plan A.

You really don't know this for sure. Someone who sends naked pictures and then meets privately isn't just hugging and kissing. Make your DH take a poly. We went through Marriage Builders counseling and one of the things they stressed was radical honest. You may not feel you can live through the total truth but believe me, you will drive yourself insane later if you don't have 100% truth about the A. I know you love your DH and even though they sucker punched us by having an A, we still want them to be OK but now is the time that you make him accountable for what he did by making sure you are safe in the M. That includes being totally transparent and radical honesty. I highly recommend counseling with MB.

Nicole,
You're getting excellent advice from experts here, I hope you'll take it seriously. They certainly helped me. Don't dwell on your anger toward OW, she'll fade from your thoughts in time when she's completely out of your life. Consider getting Dr. Harley's advice directly via MB Radio if you're having trouble accepting the concept of exposure: it's so important and needed in your situation!
Here's a way to deal with FaceBook: close one of your accounts and change the other one into a joint account, by simply changing the account name (ex. MaryandJoe Smith). This eliminates the OW's ability to try and contact your H via FB messaging/chat (as well as his tempation to reply), while sending the message to your FB Friends that you and your husband are not leading independent lives. Block the OW from your FB by using the privacy controls so you can't see her and vice versa.

"Is SAA more than what's included at the end of HNHN and on this website?"

YES, SAA is much more, and you and your H should definitely read it. You can get a complimentary copy if your email question to the Harley's is discussed on MB Radio (or if you agree to call in to the show).