Well, I knew from reading this string that my opinions would not be popular !
TT, I am not trying to scare anyone into doing anything. Fear is what keeps most folks on this board from taking positive action. Fear that if they rock the boat, or point out the affair to the OP's wife or significant other that their spouse will drop them like a hot potato. Fear is paralyzing. It is when we are finally able to act without fear that we can detach and get a life. It is this that the WAS sees and responds to.
I read your story TT, and it seems that you are a product of not setting boundaries of any kind in your own relationship, and that is why your husband has had multiple affairs and feels its ok to continue to hide things from you. It is your fear of ending up alone that keeps you paralyzed from standing up for yourself. I think what your H has done to you is appalling. I don't care how respected he is in his field, that does not give him the right to treat you the way that he has. Unfortunately, he has become accustomed to treating you this way because you have a history of allowing him to.
What you have done in your own marriage to keep your husband loving and faithful hasn't worked, yet now you advocate that DD follow the same path? That sounds silly to me.
In an earlier post on this string you liken the affair fog to a drug addiction, and with statement that I couldn't agree more. Have you ever seen a case where a drug addict was cured because they saw a drug free life as the better choice? Not me. Drug addics have to be snapped out of their addiction FIRST, being totally removed them from the drug, before they can see that a drug free life may be better for them. I am advocating exactly this to DD. Remove the source of your wife's addiction (the OM) so that she can see the possibility of a good marriage with you.
I have lived this myself. I made all of the necessary changes to myself during my wife's EA. she would often tell me and the counsellor that I had finally become the husband she had always wanted- only now it was too late. No matter how great I was, I still wasn't an alternative to her "love drug"....
It continued until i wasn't afraid anymore....It wasn't until I got the OM out of her life that we were able to repair our marriage and fall back in love with one another. Feel free to keep making the same mistakes, not doing something else to change the dynamic. But don't let too much time pass before you re-read this post. One day it may change your life.
!