Okay, honestly though I have to ask then. What is it the other experts on the site are meaning then when they say confronting your S about their A doesn't help? I mean I obviously must have been reading that wrong or is it just a difference of how others approach it?
Not trying to be snarky or anything, but right off the top, I'd ask those advocating such advice if they were successful in saving their marriages. I think that's a fair and important question.
Secondly, I think even I would say that "confrontation" (and I wouldn't even really characterize what I did as "confrontation") in and of itself doesn't do a damned thing, other than:
a) clearly communicate your core boundaries to your wayward spouse ("I will not live in an open marriage");
b) re-builds some attraction, esp. when articulated by a man but I've seen it work for both sexes, just due to the decisiveness of it;
c) Outs the deceit and secrecy of the affair, and kills some of its mystique and attraction.
But it didn't do ANYTHING to help my wife and I rebuild our marriage -- that hard work came later.
Somehow, "don't expose the affair!" has gotten morphed into some sort of silly game, whereby the betrayed spouse knows about the affair, the wayward spouse KNOWS that they probably know, but neither one of them say anything and she continues her infidelity and he wallows in despair, his wife slowly losing whatever attraction she still had for him. Or -- worse -- openly LYING to people who ask point-blank, to cover up and enable their wayward spouse's affair.
Read my story (as "Puppy Dog Tails") -- it's far from a story of "confrontation," and neither is HS's.
