.....I started to find out my wife was having an affair
I've decided to take this day to look back and see what worked and why I was able to reconcile with my wife.
You take a look around the forum and you will see that there aren't many of us who have done this- so why am I in this small handful of people?
1) First and foremost- My wayward spouse was willing to work on the marriage and atone for the affair by being remorseful, being transparent and stopped the affair completely through no contact. She was willing to do the heavy lifting as it is said here.
Your first step if you want to R is to find out if your spouse is willing to do this- if they don't then you have lost them anyways and are merely putting yourself through a tortuous process of continued cheating or going underground. You need to make a stand and find out whether or R or D is in the cards. If you recall, I was ready to divorce and my threat was far from empty. This put her to the decision that needed to made then and there- "Him or me?" It could have been him and if it was then there was no point in me staying.
2) My wayward spouse had to prove herself through actions and not words.
You can go through my story and see where she did that. I will reiterate the big three-
No contact
Transparency
Remorse
3) After the affair was addressed, we opened the doors of communication to work on the problems of the marriage prior to the affair.
I like to say that dealing with an affair is like triage in a hospital If a guy comes in with a broken leg and a heart attack, well the doctors treat the heart attack first and then start to work setting the bone after the man is stable. The affair is the heart attack and the leg is the problems in the marriage.
We swung open the doors of communication wide and were able to overcome the majority of our preaffair problems (and new ones that came up afterwards) by having the 30 minutes session I talked about. I do wish to add a big old "don't try this at home" warning. I had almost 2 decades of therapy and knew how to structure these talks and get my wife to open up and feel safe in doing as such. I highly recommend that MC be used for most everyone who have gone through steps 1&2. (I think MC is next to worthless if an affair is continuing)
NOTE: While we explored the reasons that led up to affair I never let her justify the affair.
4) Although I was late and did a poor job of doing so, I exposed the affair to the OMW.
I really wish to stress this-
a) they deserve to know
b) affairs are like vampires, shining a light on them takes away their powers
c) you may get an ally or extra pair of eyes
d) the OM/OW may throw your spouse under the bus and then help snap them out of the fog (as was the case for me)
5) We rekindled our passion for each through intense bonding
and I'm not talking about just sex (though that helps), I also mean spending quality time together. We started to find commonality again and did things we enjoyed together. This really went a long way. We have fun together and truly enjoy each other's company.
so that's it in a nutshell, I supposed I missed some things along the way but I'm sure I covered all of the important stuff
I hope my story has helped and judging by my PM box I have reached a few people. I know I can't save everyone and I am certainly no expert but I hope by relaying what I went through can be of some help here.
Wish me a happy anniversary everyone- I no longer wish to view this as the anniversary of worst day of my life, I view it as the first day of my rebirth.
Wish me a happy anniversary everyone- I no longer wish to view this as the anniversary of worst day of my life, I view it as the first day of my rebirth.
HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, AR!!
And thanks for sharing your story. It is truly inspiring and you're a great writer. You know how to keep the audience on the edge of our seats.
Great wrap up AR! Happy Anniversary! Textbook response to the affair that your "former" WW (yes, it looks like she earned the f = fWW) did. It looks fairly straightforward, but we all know how difficult in real life it truly was. The lesson here is that there ARE tools that we, as BSs have to expose the affair, kill the affair, and either R or D, depending on the situation.
You and I are truly fortunate that our fWSs were not so very deep in the affair fog yet, and it saddening to see the BSs who come here whose WSs are so deep in the affair fog and unremorseful, that there is no hope of R for them. Those unfortunate BSs have no choice but to initiate D. That's what happened to me in my first marriage, and my heart goes out to those BSs who are also in that situation.
The short length of time until I stumbled across the affair was definitely a factor as it made the fog easier to lift. I always do wonder if the wife was more careful to hide her tracks (she really didn't know to delete outgoing messages) what would have happened and I think I'd be divorced right now.
Thanks for sharing your entire story! I too am grateful my WS has done all he has to be open and totally honest. He is still my best friend, and a wonderful person who temporarily had his head up his a$$. He has shown remorse and worked to rebuild trust. We are communicating so much better; our intimacy is amazing, and sex is great! I feel like we have a new better marriage which is a gift. It is great to read about success stories; everyone needs to see the light! Posted via Mobile Device
Waking up and feeling good is a choice I make every day now. Some days I fare better than others. Today is most definitely a good one for me as well! Here's to both of us continuing that good feeling! Posted via Mobile Device
You take a look around the forum and you will see that there aren't many of us who have done this- so why am I in this small handful of people?
1) First and foremost- My wayward spouse was willing to work on the marriage and atone for the affair by being remorseful, being transparent and stopped the affair completely through no contact. She was willing to do the heavy lifting as it is said here.
Your first step if you want to R is to find out if your spouse is willing to do this- if they don't then you have lost them anyways and are merely putting yourself through a tortuous process of continued cheating or going underground. You need to make a stand and find out whether or R or D is in the cards. If you recall, I was ready to divorce and my threat was far from empty. This put her to the decision that needed to made then and there- "Him or me?" It could have been him and if it was then there was no point in me staying.
2) My wayward spouse had to prove herself through actions and not words.
You can go through my story and see where she did that. I will reiterate the big three-
No contact
Transparency
Remorse
3) After the affair was addressed, we opened the doors of communication to work on the problems of the marriage prior to the affair.
I like to say that dealing with an affair is like triage in a hospital If a guy comes in with a broken leg and a heart attack, well the doctors treat the heart attack first and then start to work setting the bone after the man is stable. The affair is the heart attack and the leg is the problems in the marriage.
We swung open the doors of communication wide and were able to overcome the majority of our preaffair problems (and new ones that came up afterwards) by having the 30 minutes session I talked about. I do wish to add a big old "don't try this at home" warning. I had almost 2 decades of therapy and knew how to structure these talks and get my wife to open up and feel safe in doing as such. I highly recommend that MC be used for most everyone who have gone through steps 1&2. (I think MC is next to worthless if an affair is continuing)
NOTE: While we explored the reasons that led up to affair I never let her justify the affair.
4) Although I was late and did a poor job of doing so, I exposed the affair to the OMW.
I really wish to stress this-
a) they deserve to know
b) affairs are like vampires, shining a light on them takes away their powers
c) you may get an ally or extra pair of eyes
d) the OM/OW may throw your spouse under the bus and then help snap them out of the fog (as was the case for me)
5) We rekindled our passion for each through intense bonding
and I'm not talking about just sex (though that helps), I also mean spending quality time together. We started to find commonality again and did things we enjoyed together. This really went a long way. We have fun together and truly enjoy each other's company.
Almost - you need to amend your post to newbies here in CWI and add this as the primer for waywards. Great story - glad y'all are doing so well!!
A-
Wow, the simularities are over whelming...just freakishly over whelming.
From start to finish. My father, my wife, and the R, the big difference was my behavior and how I treaded my wife your part 2 or 3 but everything else was so simular.
The short length of time until I stumbled across the affair was definitely a factor as it made the fog easier to lift. I always do wonder if the wife was more careful to hide her tracks (she really didn't know to delete outgoing messages) what would have happened and I think I'd be divorced right now.
I think this is so true. Early intervention makes R so much easier for both parties. In order to protect M, one has to be always vigilant to any threat to the M.
Okay, I'm having my worst major trigger/anxiety since almost a year ago.
As it states in my story I didn't use monitoring software right away. I think I finally installed the keylogger by the 2-3 month post d-day period. At that time I also found a program called fchat that was able to restore some deleted chat files but not most since those files were overwritten by that time. (it was in temp memory) I figured there was no way to retrieve those files and gave up on it a long time ago.
....and then I just read this interesting nugget of info an hour ago-
Quote:
Originally Posted by Hijo
Log into the account. In the upper right corner, click the little down arrow and go to "Account Settings".
On the account page, at the bottom is a link to download an archive. You may be asked to re-enter the password for the account. Depending upon the amount of data on the account, Facebook may take a while to collect the data and zip it up.
Between the time you request the archive and the time you actually download it, you need to watch the email account associated to the facebook account like a hawk.
FACEBOOK WILL EMAIL A NOTIFICATION TO THAT EMAIL THAT "YOUR ARCHIVE IS READY FOR DOWNLOAD" WHEN IT COMPLETES THE ZIP FILE. Be ready to kill that email and remove it from trash immediately.
So, before you snag an archive from facebook, make sure you have full, uninterrupted access to the associated email and your WS is not monitoring the email. (Asleep, at work, etc).
Our ISP runs our email system through google. Google (gmail) has this neat thing called filters. I did the following:
set up a filter for all facebook mail to be forwarded to my account and then deleted from my wifes account (this happens as it arrives)
hide the "Trash" folder from her IMAP connections. She doesn't go to the website to read her email, she uses IMAP on the iphone and via outlook. The above deleted messages have a copy in "Trash", but she doesn't see them.
I've turned on maximum email notifications in her facebook setup so every little notification she gets (new comment, post, message, etc) is emailed to her email account (and then forwarded and deleted).
If your spouse is one to go in and mess with her facebook notification settings, this last may be a bit harder for you to do. If she is one that is expecting to get email notifications from facebook, you can do without deletion, just forward em. (no, it will not appear in "sent items" when it is done via a filter rule).
If your spouse is IT saavy, all bets are off. Good luck with that!
(btw- we really need more stickies here)
So now I know I can get those chat logs and I'm feeling just as anxious as over a year ago as a result.
I know myself, I will be compelled to do this no matter what. I will likely do this tomorrow morning while the wife is at work as I have access to both her FB account and email. (so here I stew for the night, ugh)
what's triggering me about it
1) While I hope I won't find anything that I don't already know about, it is definitely a real fear/concern that I will.
2) While I know the "details", I will actually get to see the "details". Not exactly a fun thing to do.
3) I now have the onus of informing OMW all over again, 2 years later, as I will have more proof to show her. I was hoping to keep them out of my life. (unless you guys have a good reason for me not to do this)
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Re: 2 years ago today... 
