Does the wife or one having the affair OWE the other anything...that depends. From my perspective, if someone has an affair, and wants to maintain the status quo, or save the marriage, she/he does. It's their call to make, but they need to understand their are consequence to their actions, and that is not a threat, simply a reality.
I agree with this 100%. I was only saying that in the case that the cheating spouse is NOT interested in reconciling, then they really "owe" their spouse nothing other than divorce.
Again, if the cheater wants to reconcile, then yes, there are some issues of honesty that need to be delt with and they "owe" their spouses some answers for their actions.
Quote: you can have a dual track of action in place, one aimed at saving the marriage, the other aimed at protecting yourself and your assets should the marriage not be salvagable.
I agree with this too to a certain extent. I am all for consulting a lawyer. I did it VERY early on in my sitch to make sure I knew what my legal rights were. I found out that in my state, infidelity is considered almost not at all in terms of custody and even alimony and so I had no reason to gather evidence or really worry much about things. Not much that happened was going to affect the eventual legal outcome of my sitch so I was pretty much free to go forward, feeling pretty ok with where I stood in the eyes of the law.
I just hesitate to advise people go further than that unless they really WANT a divorce because in my experience, and in reading the experience of other's here, when lawyers get TOO involved, then it is pretty hard to stay focused on saving the marriage. Again, that's just my opinion since I have not really been through the whole process.
Quote: When I read that the wife went on a nine day trip with the children, and spent four of those days with the OM, I'd personally counsel that a dual track approach is something to be given strong consideration...you may disagree, and I can respect that.
The context of my disagreement with that counsel is based on the number of threads I have read here in 6 months where similar trips have NOT resulted in much changing in the dynamic of the sitch. These sitches are usually pretty bad but the trip in-and-of-itself USUALLY does not become the deal breaker.
Once again, I agree that knowing your legal rights is always a good thing, it's just the degree to which you take things that I may disagree with you a bit on but all in all, I can tell you are speaking from your heart here.
Quote: As to leverage...I'm a business person, have seen to often in life that too often people can be blind to reality unless you smack them upside their heads with a strong taste of reality. It's quite possible that the wife in this case is so filled with NRE (new relationship energy) that she's going to be lind to reality until it's too late unless the husband takes certain steps that give him some leverage that make her wake up.
I could tell you were a business man from the start, which is not a bad thing at all. You have a very business-like approach to all of this, which works VERY well for some, and no so well for others. For me, I have a hard time thinking of my marriage as a business deal gone bad. As far as applying leverage, I do agree on principal with your idea but I would not call it leverage so much as just letting the WAS feel what the reality of the sitch is. To me, leverage is implying you are trying to coerce them into something and I don't agree with that. I don't want to coerce my W into anything, I just want to live my life and let her see what she is missing. If she chooses to be with me, then great, but I am not going to try to leverage any aspect of our lives, i.e. the kids, house, lifestyle, etc., to try to get her to see the "error of her ways". I just don't believe that is the right way to go about this although I will admit that while I am not ACTIVLY using leverage, some leverage is attained simply by taking the power back from your spouse and giving it to yourself in the form of the DBing principles of self-growth, GAL and detachment. It may be semantics but to me, it's important to understand your basic reasons for doing these things, and in terms of DB, your reasons should almost always be for self, THEN the WAS, and almost never simply to attain leverage in the situation.
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Sure, work on one's self, take back up hobbies you've let go, do things that give yourself a better self image, and in doing so maybe change how the other perceives you, but I'm not one to be so naive as to skip certain basic steps to protect myself should the marriage not be one that can be saved...did that first time around, and gave away the farm....not again.
And this is your basic disclaimer. This is personal to you, VERY personal because you didn't protect yourself well enough and lost a lot because of it. I get that. I too have a disclaimer, which most people here know, that is DB has worked very well for me and I believe in it so most of what I say is going to be pro-DB, sometimes to the exclusion of other "methods" of dealing with these situations. That said, I am not blind to the fact that you can mix and match and still have success I just think people need to be careful that the things they do are not counterproductive when combined.
