thanks guys for your replies. (if this site didn't exist, I don't know WHERE I'd be).

I have not and will not say anything about ow to d5. She's too young to understand anyway and it's totally innapropriate. I made that decision from day 1 after learning about affair.

I just can't believe what LIARS our WAS (esp. cheating ones) are!! He just lies and lies and lies. I feel that I MUST protect my d5 and not have ow around her. I'm waiting to hear back from my lawyer.

I've never known, in my life someone who lies so much, it's almost pathological. I just read a great book called "After the Affair", it's really not a db book, but it explains the dymanics of the whole thing.

One thing that really struck me was how they cut themselves off from friends in their "former, married, normal" lives. That is EXACTLY what h is doing. I'm getting phone calls from people in the city who have been LIFE-LONG friends of h's, saying that he isn't returning emails or phone calls. I also ran into a friend of his in town here saying he saw him at the store and h avoided contact with him.

So the person (according to the book), even though to YOU the LBS, acts like they are so happy with their ow (or OM) and that all is fab, they are actually feeling incredibly embarrassed and see no other way than to hide away into their new world. Esp. when children are involved. It goes on to say that even though they may be acting like everything is so wonderful to YOU, the LBS, they are in fact (esp. if they have cut off contact with friends, etc), struggling very badly inside and feeling intense shame. They feel like they have boxed themselves into a corner. the love the "high" the ow gives them (and the book says affairs actually produce chemical reaction to the brain like a drug), and they want those feelings to continue (esp if they have been unhappy for a while prior to affair), but now they are conflicted because they know that the "right" thing to do is to go back to their families and work on the m, but they feel now that so much damage has been done (esp. if affair has been exposed to all family and friends) that they don't know how to get out of the mess.

It was really helpful to me to read this. That it isn't all roses for h as he is making it out to be. I tell you, for the past 2 weeks, every time I see him, he looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders.