That's a tough one. Good that you are being forgiving but you must prohibit her from ANY contact with this person whatsoever!! Best of luck with counseling. Keep in mind that most people cheat because they feel something is missing in their relationship...not always physical either. They seek out what is missing and often cannot find it elsewhere either despite what may seem promising at first. Keep being patient but also realize that some relationships just do not work out. I hope this helps and I will be rooting for you. Andy M.

A, yeah, any contact with this other guy is completely unacceptable. She has broken your trust and she has to earn it back over a long time. If she can't get through the first step (cutting off all contact with the other guy) it is going to be extremely difficult to get through the rest of the steps. Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but you have all the cards and she needs to do whatever it takes for you to be able to trust her again.

Good luck!

Al

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My best friend recently went through a very similar thing and his experience made me want to address Al's notion that 'you have all the cards'. The one thing I learnt from my friend's painful journey is that, sadly, the truth is quite the opposite. I know it sounds horribly brutal, but my friend quickly realised it all boiled down to this: 'Can you stand to live without your kids?' Either he had to swallow it and make it work - and thereby get to see his kids grow up - or decide he couldn’t forgive her and walk away. Yes, you have to put your foot down about the ‘no contact’, but it’s dangerous to think you have the moral high-ground and that she will be racked with remorse. Hopefully that IS the case and the fact that you’re in counselling is a very good sign, but make no mistake, SHE holds all the cards and until the family courts change their bias towards the mother, that’s a truth we all have to live with.

By the way, after all that gloom, I should mention that my friend and his wife worked it through and are still together six months on. As Andy suggests, in their case it wasn't so much the sex as a 'cry for help', a dissatisfaction with their lives (pressures of kids and work, struggles with changing roles on both sides, all that stuff we all battle with). They've talked it through and made some changes and hopefully they're back on track. It can be done, mate. We're all there for you.

BritDad is right about the courts being biased toward women. My brother in law went through a nasty divorce where the judge totally favored his crazy x-wife. My bro in law is a terrific dad and it was so sad to see him get punished because his wife is nuts and our liberal courts think that all men are created EVIL. It certainly does make it difficult in cases like this one where it was obviously the woman's error in judgement. How doe she ever change or show remorse knowing she holds the cards to his happiness as a father? She can use the kids as pawns! She never has to be held accountable for her disgraceful behavior and that stinks and must change!  Andy M.

That the courts are gonna screw you if it goes that far.  And that she went outside the marriage to fill a void.  Counseling is a good start but take it the next step, ask her what about this guy was worth the risk.  It's going to be the most painful conversation of your marriage most likely, but the answer to that question may  contain the answer to your problems.  If she even knows for sure.  Whatever attracted her to that guy was what she felt she wasn't getting from you and/or your relationship. But make her examine the question honestly.  It may not even be you or your relationship, it may just be her.  Not sure if that would be the good news or the bad news, but making her look at it might open her eyes to what it is she really wants and why she acted as she did.  It might be the beginning of the end as well, but most likely it will be the beginning of a learning process for both of you and a healing one for you at least.

But she HAS to ditch this dude completely.  No forwards, no emails, no anything else.  And she ought to be willing to be transparent about it.  Ask for access to her phone, email account, etc.  Keep in mind that only the guilty feel the need for secrecy.  Just be sure that is wise if she asks for reciprocity in case you might have been too friendly with someone in a play group or whatever.  She broke the trust, but the courts don't care, so be sure YOU are willing to cross that line if you have to draw one in the sand somewhere down the line.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

I agree that a "no contact" agreement is a must, but I understand how difficult, if not impossible, this might be considering they work together. 

Wow...I usually have an opinion, but I don't for this.  The only thing I can tell you is that you have to follow your heart.  To rebuild trust, you must be honest with your wife about how you feel.  Take it from there...

I wish you the best.

Wow I am sorry to hear about what happened to you. I just went through something very similar. I have been a SAHD for 2 yrs now and my wife and I have been together for almost 6yrs and married for 4 it has been easier for me to try and get over our situation because she was open and honest about almost everything. We have been having trouble in our marriage for a few months and she started getting close to a guy at work which she told me he was the one she would talk to about me and he was having problems with his wife too so they started to get kinda close. My wife and I were going to try a trial seperation were we could sleep with someone else. I asked her not to sleep with said guy because I knew she was starting to have stronger feelings for him and that I wanted to be informed of when and who she slept with that way there were no secrets..But she slept with him and didn't tell and I found out like a week and a half afterwards because his wife had found e-mails they had written back and forth. So i was upset that she hid things from me and lied about it. We are working things out and are doing good so-far. My advice is gonna sound absurd but I don't think you should try to enforce rules on who she talks to or converses with that will drive her away from you. The more controlling you are and try to be the more she will probably want to do it again. It is gonna take effort on both of your parts you can't just expect her to come all the way to your side you have to meet her in the middle. by saying you are going to work it out that means you have to be on board to compromise neither of you should hold all the cards. Marriage is a team effort and the only way you will get through it is if you work as a team. You should let her know what you want and I agree she probably shouldn't be alone with the person but they do work together and forbiding any contact will cause more problems than it will fix. absnece makes the heart grow stronger or however that goes. Counseling is a great idea but the best remedy is openess and communication and she has to be willing to tell you what ever you want to know.I know ho wyou must feel and my heart goes out to you. If you truly love each other and still desire to be together than you can do this but before you try make sure that is what you BOTH really want...I am here to talk if you need to. 

Lordsetta, I can only imagine the pain and frustration you must be going through, but I have to say I think you are WAY OFF on this.  A trial separation in which you are both allowed to sleep with other people is a horrible idea and not just because you were the only one who didn't take advantage of it.  Look, I don't pretend to know what's best for you, but not to be indelicate about it, how is your own advice working out for you?  Re-read the initial comment. This guy was straight up lied to by his wife.  So how exactly does "Absence makes the heart grow fonder" apply here?  They work together. She admitted to the whole affair, pardon the pun, and is trying to work things out, but clearly having no rules about this guy didn't work the first time, so why would it work now?  I will admit that being TOO controlling is a bad thing to try and do, but someone has to set some boundaries and she isn't likely to do it.  This is where the counselor comes in.  Where do they stand in all this?  What are their suggestions?  You're paying for their advice Anonymous, what do they have to say about it?

The suspicious part of me says kill all communication, but also realizes that if she does keep up the non-work related communication, it will just change forms to something other than email that is less easy for you to track so it's hard to know what to root for entirely, but she broke the rules, not you, so some consequences are to be expected.  It's not like you asked her to transfer for God's sake.

Ultimately, only Anonymous can decide if what he's getting is worth what he has to go through to get it, but the facts remain: SHE went outside the marriage and only admitted it after SHE was caught.  Letting her continue to make all the rules seems like no deterrant at all and I'd bet won't decrease the chances of her doing it again.  If she's pissed about not being allowed to forward the guy emails, tell her to think how you must feel.  Ask her for a free pass with a woman of your choosing for an unspecified amount of time, during which you will lie about it to her and afterwards promise it's over but keep in contact.  Put the shoe on the other foot and let her try and justify her actions from the other side of the equation.  Make her defend NOT putting any restrictions on you in that circumstance and see what she has to say. Chances are, she would have nothing for you from that perspective. 

The key here is to make her examine what it must have been like for you.  She will always defend her own position, otherwise she wouldn't have done it, but make her take your side and defend it. She will be forced to confront feelings she's been ignoring in defense of her own mistakes and taking a look at them from the other side should be quite an eye-opener for her.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

I never said she should do what ever she wants I said I agree that she probably shouldn't be alone with the guy our going out for lunches with him. As someone else said generally people just don't cheat for no reason people usually cheat because they are unhappy about something in the marriage. That is stuff that only they can figure out but open communication and honesty is what will help. and not just on one persons part. They both need to express how they feel and what they expect from each other and they must come to an agreement on things they both have to give and take here. She can try to get his trust back and mend the wounds she caused but it wont work if he is not willing to pull out the knife. anger is to be expected but you have to realize that harboring the anger and not trying to let go and open up to her will stop the healing from happening and she has to realize just how much damage she has done. A lot of people usually see this with the man cheating and just pass it off as men are pigs. Things like this are never as easy as that no matter who cheated on who. it is very complicated and it won't get better over night. My wife still goes through bouts of questioning on my part and she has to deal with the insecurity too and she knows she can't get mad at me for having question or feeling like less of a person and she knows that and she accepts the fact that we have a long way to go to get over this but we also loose site on the fact that this isn't just a walk in the park for them either. They also have to live with this. Just because they did it doesn't mean they don't regret it or hate themselves for doing it like it said it is complicated you can't just put it in a she cheated on me doggy bag and call it a day thats why i agreed on the counseling being such a good thing or just someone that knows how your feeling to talk about it and get someone else point of veiw on things. well enough of my rant I appreiate and respect your opinions and look forward to talking to anyone who wants to talk about this. Getting it off your chest is a good remedy as well... = )

You’ve been married for a long time and I can understand how things can get to this point, especially after four children. But your wife also needs to understand the commitment she made when she decided to get married and have children. I don’t think it’s as simple as some of the responses I’ve seen such as prohibiting her from any contact, etc… Learning good communications skills is a good start and it may not be easy to hear or understand what she needs from you to make things work, especially after the hurt she’s caused. Staying together and raising children takes a great deal of commitment and good communication from both partners. Unfortunately, many of us never learned how to let someone know what we need or how to listen when our partner is telling us what they need. Instead, we withdraw, get defensive, or use a variety of other defense mechanisms. And let's face it, many of us are so busy that we periodically neglect our relationships. It's important to get breaks and have time every day for just the two of you. I’m no expert, but my wife and I have both had to work on our communication skills since our parents weren’t very good role models in that respect. We also have to consciously set aside time for just the two of us.

I don’t think you’re a chump for trying to work things out. Keeping the family together and providing role models for a relationship is one of the most important things you can give to your children. But it won’t be worth it if staying together causes too much pain, turmoil, and unhappiness.  It must be difficult to lose the trust you had but I hope you and your wife find a way to work things out.

Before I met my wife I used to think I had good communication in my relationships.  But after the first couple weeks of dating her, I realized how uncommunicative a person I really was.  It surprised me and challenged me at the same time and I have always loved that we do communicate so effectively.  Probably why our marriage is going on 15 years and my longest previous relationship was less than 2 years.  Prior to that, it was 6 months.  Not exactly banner examples of my excellent communication skills.  The reality of any relationship is that it is only as good as your abilities to get through the tough times.  The old adage about a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link applies here as well, and if your relationship is good except for your communication, then expect that to be where the trouble starts.

On a sports team, a lack of communication leads to everyone having their own ideas and then attempting to execute those ideas without informing teammates. When it doesn't work because not everyone is on the same page, you wind up with each person believing they have to do everything themselves and then when that doesn't work, inevitably, resentment sets in.  I'm not saying that's what happened here, but if she went outside the marriage, it didn't just happen one afternooon. It took time to build up frustration with your situation and an interest elsewhere and my guess is that some of that time was spent communicating her feelings/frustrations and pointing out to the guy exactly where the relationship was vulnerable.  Not all men are pigs but anyone who would knowingly interject his own agenda into that situation would certainly qualify in my book.  But he had a distinct advantage, she was TALKING to him at least.  So he got the chance you probably didn't, the chance to hear how she REALLY felt about your relationship.

There isn't one cure-all solution for this situation because there are too many things that were negatively affected by it, but if you can't be told where things are going wrong then you have virtually no chance of stopping them from getting worse until something breaks.  In this case, a trust was broken and that is quite possibly the worst thing that could've been.  Counseling is the first step, but if you two aren't being taught how to communicate in good times and in bad, then you are not addressing one of the key problems that is likely to occur again.  You need to find a way to make sure each of you can express your feelings, frustrations and thoughts to each other, whether they are good or bad, so that neither of you struggles alone and resentment never has a chance to work it's way into your relationship again.  If you both can learn to communicate with each other, then the need to express your feelings to someone outside of the relationship decreases and the chance that that person will exploit that need to their own advantage is all but eliminated.

Good luck to you and your wife and remember that you made a promise to her too, that you would love her in good times and in bad.  It hurts, but just like the labor pains she went through four times, it's only temporary.  The children, the family that was created through those painful times, that is what is most important. You're not a chump, you're a man with a family, going through a tough situation.  Loving someone after they let you down doesn't make you anything but a good man.  Feeling like you can't trust her only means that you're human too.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read.

Annonymous,

I had a friend once who went through a life crisis.  His long time fiance, whom he loved incredibly, died in a car accident one month before their wedding.  Different kind of pain, I know, but what he said to me after some time of grieving was this.  "Nothing anyone can say, or do, will change the way you feel." The pain is yours alone, no one else can feel it or alleviate it in any way, and no advice works in all situations.  The only thing I could do for my friend that seemed to help, was to sit and cry with him, listen to him and keep my mouth shut most of the time.

This was also the case with a pastor friend of mine.  His daughter had stopped taking some medication, went into a tail-spin emotionally, left a suicide note, took her fathers gun, and dissappeared.  No one knew where she went, or if she had indeed gone somewhere and ended her life.  There was nothing anyone could do but wait.  I sat for hours with him, on the living room floor of his home.  He cried, talked, prayed, cried some more and I sat and listened.  A lot of people came by to visit while I was there.  Most had some word of advice, or "encouragement" which, honestly sounded quite "pithy" and meaningless in the face of the darkness. Three days later, his daughter showed up at a friends house several states away, emotionally drained, but alive and physically well.  His prayers were answered and all was eventually well, but what stood out in his mind through all of it was that all the advice, words of encouragement, quoted bible verses, etc.... did nothing for him at the time.  What he remembered most was a friend who simply sat with him and grieved with him.

Having said all of that, I encourage you to find that good friend, one who will allow you to vent, grieve, get angry, cry or just sit silently, and will listen.  You will come to a point of action at some time.  When you do, you will want that friend to be beside you to help you take the necessary steps and he will have shared the deepest thoughts, fears, hopes and prayers of your heart, and can help you figure out what you reallly should do.  When the time comes.

I too went through something similar to what you are experiencing and there was nothing that could be done to save the relationship.   My wife continued to see the man even as she said she wanted to try and work things out.  Everything I did seemed to backfire and things slowly dragged toward the inevitable.  I spent two years trying to  save the marriage only to have it end.  Through all of that, I can say the closest friends I had were those two men with whom I had grieved in their time of trouble.  They stuck closer than my own flesh and blood brothers.

Ultimately I can look back and wish I had done things differently.  However, the greatest help I had getting my head back and my life under control again, where my two friends who listened to me in my deepest pain.

My prayers are with you brother. 

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