Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums For Newcomers WAW in affair. Help!

If you ever have a couple of hundred spare hours, and want to read my entire sitch, it's all here:

My Old Posts as "ChocolateEyes"

For reference, most of my early posts were regarding our SSM issues. My wife's affair was May - Aug 2007.

Puppy

Thanks, Puppy, for taking the time to post all of that. Goes to show, it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

I was just thinking about whom I would expose the A to. BIL and his wife are first on my list. As I mentioned earlier, BIL is something of a patriarch in the family. He’s a level headed and discreet man, and W respects him. She’ll be devastated that he knows, but she can also trust him not to expose to the rest of the family allowing her some relief.

W is very close to my mom and very friendly with my sisters. I want to restore my marriage so I want as little collateral damage as possible. If W insists on a D, she would know that I’ll then have no reason not to expose to my mom, sisters, or our friends. She’ll have to decide how large a price she wants to pay -- how badly she wants a divorce. It’ll make her think.


I fully expect this from W. When I asked if she was having an A (again, early on, a gut feeling, and being ignorant), her tone was indignant/you’re crazy. I’ve learned from this board and other sites that that is normal.


I will get, “We’re just friends!”



Did she refuse outright as in “No, I won’t stop” or did you know she was refusing because you continued to gather intel?

What was your evidence in total? I remember reading how you got to her cell and saw the text messages.

I’m having second thoughts about my plan. I don’t know OM’s wife from Adam. I don’t know how she’ll react…and she may just react. She has money. What if she’s the vengeful type and sees my W as the predator? “I’ll ruin that b*tch!” She could do it. I don’t want a sh*t storm if I can avoid it. I can always keep that card in my pocket.

On the upside, I’m getting a little unexpected windfall of cash tomorrow. When I started this thread, $500 might as well have been five million. But now I have little cash. On Saturday, I contacted a very close and trusted friend who stood by me during our first separation. We’ve been talking since the S but I leveled with him. I couldn’t stand it. I had to talk to somebody. At first he played the devil’s advocate, “Let’s not be too hasty”. But after telling him the whole story he believes me and will help me. Our bank accounts (business and personal) are transparent to both of us online. So my buddy will order the tasty little covert GPS tracker that I found online for me.

Tomorrow morning I’m getting up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. to drive by BIL’s house and confirm that W no longer lives there. I know that she rarely leaves the house any earlier than 8:00 a.m. and Wednesday is a light workday for her. If her car isn’t there, I’ll know I’m right. If I’m right…

I’ve only known about the A for a week and already W has made two major blunders; the cell phone bills and giving away that she has moved without telling me where she is living. I’ve known her for 23 years. She’s not the lying, sneaking, conniving type (one of the reasons I love and married her). In fact, she’s terrible at it.

In I blinding flash of common sense I’ve realized that going “dim”, while doing so on my part, isn’t the best solution here. I need to have friendly chat with W and OM every chance I get. They both think I’m clueless and neither are good liars. She’ll screw up again. They’ll give something away. And now that I’m paying attention and watching like a hawk, I’ll catch it.

Thanks, Soliel.

I don’t know how I do it. I guess I just keep thinking, “If you want to bust this A and save your marriage you must control yourself.” And, in a bizarre sort of way, I feel a sense of control. They think they know something I don’t. But I know, and that gives me a sense of power. At times, I view them like two little kids who are playing hooky from school and think they are pulling something over on the teacher. At the same time, I am able to feel forgiveness (but not tolerance for the A) for them both. They’re human, and they’re doing what humans sometimes do, even if it is the wrong thing to do. They’re confused, although they don’t realize it.

They think they’re fulfilling a need, but affairs are almost always a dead end. They aren’t stopping to think, “Why am I really doing this? And where can it go, really?” They’re living in the moment. I think it’s sort of like what we do when we distract, just for a different reason. “I know deep down I can’t stay here in this place, but for the moment it feels good and alleviates my pain.”

Still thinking through what I will do next.

Yup...she moved. I don't know where my wife lives.

She refused to stop -- "He's just a friend, so I shouldn't have to give that up. I should be allowed to have friends." I told her that she was then putting a FRIENDSHIP -- "if that's all it is, and we both know you're lying about that right now" -- ahead of her HUSBAND, and that was a boundary that I could not abide.

My intel consisted of:

- GPS cellphone hidden in the trunk of her car, which revealed she'd been hooking up with OM when she said she was either at work or running an errand;

- voice-activated recorder hidden under the front seat of her car, which revealed many cellphone conversations between her and OM (including sex talk, planning on their next hook-up, planning their lies, talking about me, etc.);

- keylogger on the home computer, which revealed the things I mention in my story above, plus apartment searches, "how to help kids deal with divorce," etc. Nothing on "how to work on a marriage."

Puppy

Good thing you've got that GPS ordered then.

In my experience, people who are able to master the above attitudes about their sitch, are the ones that are the most successful in being able to DB. By far.

Puppy

Had another thought. (Big surprise).

Earlier in this thread, Puppy suggested the possibility of bluffing in confronting my W. After giving it some thought, I think I can pull that off and save myself some money and time.

By now, W and OM are thinking, “Whew! Norm hasn’t seen the phone bills. He’s still clueless. But we need to be more careful (which will be evidenced in this billing cycle – 16th to 16th - the calls will drop off from Dec 2nd when I pried the password out of her).” I’m guessing she hasn’t gone over the statements line by line like I have, but it must have occurred to her that they look bad because she changed the password. W thinks I don’t know when or where she moved (and she’s right) so the two have been meeting there whenever in the same careless way that they were calling and texting until it occurred to her that I was suspicious and could view the statements, and she changed the cell phone account password. She realized that they had been careless. We know TM’s go through the roof when there is an affair going on, but she doesn’t know that. She thinks only the phone calls can make it look bad.

So, my confrontation will sound something like this:

“This will not be a discussion or an argument. I know you are having an affair with OM. And I have more than enough proof. You are disrespecting our marriage, our families, and me and it needs to stop. If does not stop I will expose this affair to your family, my family, OM’s wife, our friends, everyone. I do not want to see OM’s cell number on our cell bill ever again. The text messaging needs to stop. I do not want to see OM’s car or police cruiser in front of your apartment, and I don’t want to see OM in our gym ever again.” And turn to walk off. She will undoubted say something like, “We are not having an affair! We’re just friends! What proof do you have?!” I will reply, “What I know and how I know it is my business.” And just keep walking.

I know my W. Even though she’ll put up a front, when I walk away she will be shaking in her boots and thinking:

“Oh sh*t! He’s seen the phone bills! How bad do they look? If OM’s wife sees them it could cause big trouble for him (and me). And the text messaging! How in the world did he know about that? Has he seen something? Does he have some way of spying? And he knows where I live! How long has he known? What has he seen? What else does he know? If he goes to all these people saying that I’m having an affair, I don’t know how I’ll defend myself because I don’t know what he knows. But no matter what, it will cause a huge, ugly sh*t storm.”

I’m also guessing that dropping the hint that I’ve seen the phone bills will cause her to go home and do what I did; print them out an go over them line by line in order to investigate the strength of that piece of my evidence. She’ll sh*t. She’ll know OM”s wife will freak if she sees them. And, as far as she knows, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Puppy? Anyone? Any thoughts?

I'll leave the hard advice to Puppy et al.

Personally, I can see why you would take that course of action. Ideally of course, if you had some REAL evidence to back it up, that would be perfect. Frankly, if you already know about the A, exposure and setting the attendant boundaries is a given.

FYI, I also held off exposing my W to OMW for roughly the same reasons you posted, so I kinda understand. It would have caused immense trauma to her personally and in the workplace. My sitch improved, but this point was a "neutral" one, I wouldn't say the non-exposure to OMW helped or obstructed the recovery process. But a big point is that, as long as it took, the fog did lift for my W. I cannot honestly tell you I would not have gone full blown into full exposure otherwise. But the wrong reaction by OMW at the wrong time would have hurt us on a few levels.

Sure, your W has to be responsible for what she is doing and its consequences. There's a line separating that from doing what's best to try and save the M if you that's the stand you are taking.