What to do

[sandi2]

“I know that it says that you should not snoop to try to look what your W has been doing. I haven't looked at the cell log and am wondering if this is something that I should do. And if I do what do I do with that information. I am thinking that there will be a lot of contact with the guy at work. Do I mention something to her or do I just plain not look? She will jsut say that they are just friends yada yada and I don't have any real proof of what they are talking about. When she was having problems with her life 4 years ago she did the say thing and was in constant contact with the guy. I talked to her about it then and was a total wuss about the whole thing. “

Okay, here’s the thing; most people on the board see two ways of approaching this kind of stitch. One way is not to snoop and not to approach your W and you work hard to improve yourself until you are the best you can possibly be! You act as if you have had an “awakening” in your life and really, really “live life” to the fullest and enjoy every aspect of it. You are a man with a healthy self-esteem and who is attractive in his grooming, sexually, personality, manners, and basically every way possible. A woman would be a fool to want any other man but you!
Confronting the W is the other way a lot of people here on the board thinks a LBS should handle the stitch. They believe one should confront the W and bust the affair. If you decide to do that, then you will need to find out what is going on with your W. Check the cell phone, check the emails, put a keyloger on the computer, and/or put a device in her car to track her comings & goings. Whatever it takes to give you solid evidence, then do it. You don’t talk about this to anyone and you don’t give any clues to your W until you have the hard, cold facts. Once you have enough proof, then you confront her. You don’t say anything about the proof you have. You tell her that you have reason to believe that she is emotionally (or physically) involved with another man. Then you wait to see if she says anything. She will probably ask what you know, think, or who told you, etc. Don’t tell her what you know. Make her wonder about how much you really know what’s going on with her. You don’t want to give away your source of information or how much you know. You keep your ways of tracing her completely secret. But, you tell her that you do not believe in an “open marriage”. (Puppy Dog Tails is the person to actually tell you word for word what to say b/c he has had to do this in his own stitch.) Anyway, you have to say things a certain way or it can all fall apart or backfire on you. Puppy or gucci loafer or Coach are all great at giving advice along these lines.
You would have to have some firm boundaries in the stitch and not waiver when she decided to act all nice and her old self again (b/c it won’t last). The point is to make it about “you” and what you can deal with and what you can’t. They can explain that much better than I can.
You never contact the OM or anyone in his family b/c it will only draw him and your W closer together. More than likely her EA will fizzle out, but who knows how far the A may go before it ends? It could easily turn into a PA and then you have more issues to deal with. But, I think you have to decide which road to take in how you want to handle this. Let me add this before you make any hasty decisions. There was (maybe still is) a man who came on the board and his W was having an EA. He had read some of the advice about busting an affair and so he not only confronted his W but told her she would have to leave the home. Then he told her family, his family, and all their friends. Bad move on his part! It did not go like he thought it would. I suppose he thought she would fall to her knees and beg for his forgiveness (and this is hardly ever heard of). Things quickly went from bad to disaster and he ended up losing his W and children b/c he did not take time to think through with his plan of action. He could have dealt with the issue completely different, but he treated it as if things were already as bad as they could get and as if she was in a full-blown PA and as I recall, she was in very early stages of an EA (which I don’t mean to imply it’s not serious, but he just didn’t handle it wisely). Don’t discuss this with your friends, your family, her family or friends, co-workers, boss…..nobody. Come here to do your talking.
I can mainly talk to you from the POV of a WAW, but these other men I mentioned are very good at advising you on the other end.
There are a lot of different opinions here on the board, but don’t forget the DR book and what it teaches.