wife won't admit PA with OM

[Accuray]

Jake,

GreenBlue's perspective on addiction and enabling is well-covered in Dobson's "Love Must Be Tough". If his line of thinking speaks to you, read that book. I read it, and DB, and several others, and was able to come up with a "cocktail" that worked for me by combining the relevant parts of each.

Through my reading and experience, I have come to believe there are many different types of affairs, and people pursue them for vastly different reasons. I did some Google work on that topic and there have been some good things written.

In my W's case (if it helps), I have come to believe she was having an "exit affair". She was unhappy in the marriage, but didn't have the motivation to do anything about it because she was scared -- scared of disappointing me, scared to be alone, scared of what divorce meant. By pursuing an affair, she established that there could be life beyond the marriage, she established an outlet for her bottled-up feelings, and she was able to gain some perspective. This gave her the catalyst to bring things to a head.

That's a different motivation than someone who has been "sex starved" and is looking to get their physical needs met. That's different than someone who loves to have their ego stoked by being pursued, etc. etc.

SOME people who have affairs follow the profile of "an addict", and some do not. It's obviously easier to identify a serial cheater as an addict, but even then the addiction may not be the root cause of the issue.

What my DB coach convinced me of is that the affair is not the cause of your issues, it's a symptom of your issues. If you treat the affair like an addiction for the purpose of ending the affair, there is still a hole in your spouse's life that they are going to look to fill.

It's easy to focus on the affair, because that's what's causing you immediate pain, but focusing on "fixing" that is a red herring. MY understanding of DB is that if you fix the root cause of the relationship issues, then affairs will no longer be a problem.

You and your wife both have needs. Pretend for the sake of argument you each had 10 "needs" that had to be met for you to feel good. You probably got to the point where one or both of you were only getting 1 or 2 of the ten met. THAT is the root of the issue, not the affair.

If you were both getting all 10 met, there would be no reason to look outside the marriage -- in fact, you wouldn't have the time or emotional energy to do so because you'd be consumed by your marriage. If you spend 30 - 60 minutes talking to your W every night, she'll be less interested in finding someone else to talk to because she's had her outlet.

When you come to crisis, you need to look at your "inventory of needs". Some of them you may need to start satisfying on your own, or finding another way to have them met. This goes to GreenBlue's point of being less co-dependent. In some ways you have to learn to validate yourself and make yourself happy.

That said, you will still have an inventory that you will expect to be satisfied through your relationship. Then, you have to understand your W's list, and recognize that they may be very different from yours, and that doesn't make them wrong.

Once you know what her list is, you decide if it's something you are willing and able to satisfy. If not, you're probably not going to make that marriage work. Otherwise, you need to get busy figuring out how to satisfy those needs -- even if they are incompatible with your own.

I guess that's the root of my advice for you -- pursuing explanations from your wife, setting boundaries, checking up on her, none of it will ultimately get you back on track. It will help with the symptoms in the short term.

Others can rightfully argue that you can't even start to make progress with OM involved. They are right that you can't make progress together, but you can get a head start on you. I believe that if you make enough progress on yourself, then dealing with the symptom takes care of itself and you don't have to go through those gymnastics.

If it doesn't take care of itself and you've become a better, more self-confident person, then you won't care as much when it doesn't work out, because you'll feel good about you.

Either way you come away happier than if you get consumed in the surveillance / blame game.

Your thread has gone WAY crazy, how are you doing?

Accuray