Sorry here for what will be a long post with a familiar theme. My wife and I have been married for 20 years in April. Three years ago I took a job with less career potential and money so I could return to school and complete my degree. With just a couple of semesters to go, my wife decided -- with my full support -- to pursue an MBA at a local college. So, we were both working, raising our 2 kids, and attending school.
I won't pretend things were perfect, but we were mostly happy and had a pretty good sex life and a generally affectionate relationship, although we were clearly strained by the exhaustion of our busy lives. We never fought about anything.
I should point out here that my wife is the more successful of us from a career perspective, and has also always been the person in our relationship who handles a lot of the money decisions and running the kids' lives (doctor/dentist appointments, etc.). Because my last job had me traveling a lot, more of this load shifted to her, and when I changed jobs and was gone 3 nights a week finishing my school, this burden got worse. Factor in that my young daughter has mild autism and that finding her care was largely done by her, you can see that she had to shoulder a big load. I let her do this, much to my shame.
Anyway, as part of her MBA program, her class had to travel to a foreign country for 10 days. During this time, she suddenly started calling me less and her conversations were somewhat distant. I could feel something was wrong, but convinced myself it was just my imagination. She came home, and despite having a slightly strained few days, I convinced myself it was all in my head, and started to relax.
Until the Friday of the week after her return. We have always had a friend finder app on out iPhones, and I liked to use this to make sure she was either in her office or at lunch when I called, so I did not interrupt a meeting or anything. Anyway, I looked and saw her at a familiar restaurant and got ready to call her, but my work phone rang and I had to wait. I called her about a half hour later when the app showed her at a nearby shop. When I asked her what she was doing ( completely unsuspicious) she told me she was somewhere different shopping for a baby gift. I was curious, but not suspicious. That night, I asked her again, and she told me the same story. Finally, I told her I knew she was lying, and she exploded at me. She became very emotional and told me she was at lunch with a friend and did not want to have this conversation. I pushed it, and she told me she was not in love with me any more, felt no passion, and her friend (a classmate) was just there to talk to her. She said this feeling went back years. She proceeded to take our daughter (we also have a teenage son) to her parents' house a couple of hours away for the night.
We rose early the next morning and were texting each other, and she agreed to come home later that day, she did, and things appeared calm until the next day, when she went out for a couple of hours for a massage, and I looked at our cell bill. She had been on the phone with him while texting me the whole time. I looked at her computer and saw some e-mails between them that, while not sexual in nature, were certainly romantic. This was June 27, and I confronted her about it when she got home without mentioning the emails. She confessed that they had formed an emotional connection while on the trip but denied ( and still denies) any sexual contact.
Six weeks later we are both in IC and just had out first session of MC. The problem is, she still is not showing any real remorse or urge to end her EA with the OM. He is married with three small kids and is a rather successful investment banker. She has told me twice before she was breaking it off with him, only for me to look at her text messages and see she is still in contact with him. They started using Google Voice to text to hide the texting, but I figured this out pretty quickly. Once we started MC, she promised again to end it with him, but I cannot verify anymore because she caught me looking at her phone and changed the password and is clearing her history.
Her IC is telling her that she needs to find her own happiness. The MC, whom she likes somewhat less, naturally, is telling her to break it off with the OM so we can work on out marriage. She has assured me that she is not in contact with him, but he is in her MBA program, which has another 9 months to go, so she will at least be in the same room with him for 9 hours a day, 2 days a month for the next 9 months until it's over, and since he is now in her individual 4-person team, they will be meeting as a team at least once or twice a month. Because her company has invested a mid 5-figure sum in this program for her, she cannot quit.
We fight constantly about this. I am hurt and angry and keep demanding that she break it off completely with him. She complains that it hurts her terribly to be away from him and misses him, but that she's trying. She is certainly full of guilt and self-hatred over this, but she confessed to me even today that she is not sure she wants to end it with him. I have made it clear that she has to, or else one of us is gone.
Tomorrow is her first weekend of class (Friday and Saturday) of class since the trip. I have asked her to call me on breaks and before and after class, not to sit near him, and to only communicate with him about school...and put the app back on her phone so I can track her just for the weekend. She has agreed, although after our daily fight this evening, she is wavering on the app. I have asked her for full transparency, but she is refusing, only telling me to save it for the MC next Wednesday.
I am torn about exposing it. I think that if I call his wife (I found their number online) she may force the issue from his end, but I suspect their marriage is not very strong itself, based upon a little of what my wife has said and the fact that he has an arrest for domestic battery in March of this year (easily located on Google, as it's public record in this state).
I recognize that our marriage may not survive even if the EA ends, but we're doomed without it. Because of our financial situation (lots of debt and an underwater mortgage) diverse will be really difficult. Neither of us wants to put our kids through that, although she seems to think they will be better off than with parents who fight.
Any guidance that an be offered is appreciated, as I type this message from my daughter's room (I moved in here last week, and my daughter sleeps with my wife).
Wow. Your wife has fallen in love with someone who has a domestic battery charge? Yuck, yuck, and yuck.
You are right to be concerned about the MBA program. 9 months of them together in the same room? That is a fail. I have yet to see a successful reconciliation with such extensive proximate contact between APs on these boards.
I'd see if I could find a way to tell her individual counselor that this man has three young children and a domestic battery charge--not exactly the path to finding happiness. But really that counselor has to go--who's paying for it? Not her, if she's in an MBA program.
Speaking of money, who's funding that MBA program? You?
Get the book Not Just Friends by Shirley Glass, it will give you more insight and support with all this. Ask your counselor if they're familiar with Shirley Glass's work. although it's good that the counselor says she has to end it.
Do not expect her to listen to any counselor. She will take whatever supports her convenience. She needs to have NO CONTACT (NC) with OM. She's high on affair novelty here, and you need to push this NC, be very serious, do what you say, say what you do. Your wife will slowly drift away if she remains in this affair, and you will drive the relationship underground if you keep being so lenient to these incidents. I remember a story just like this one of a WS who was studying for the cpa alone with another man, can you guess what happened? They studied anatomy.
Well, expose to the OM's wife. Without delay. What she chooses to do with her husband is her choice, so don't feel bad if they decide to divorce. That's OM's fault, for being a cheating scumbag.
Expose your wife's infidelity to her family (mom, dad, siblings). Tell them you want to work things out with her, but that you'll need their support to stomp the affair out of existence.
I'd expose your wife to HR as well. Her company may not be too happy to learn that they've been financing her affair. I don't know how your financial situation is at the moment, but you need to weigh what is more important - your wife's job, or your marriage. Expose to HR (or not) depending on which you think is more important.
Lastly, I think you will need to file for divorce. You will obviously need to downsize, and it will undoubtedly affect your living conditions (and hers). She should have thought of that when she cheated.
I should add that they have seen each other since D-day, several times. I know they have been to lunch a number of times and she saw him after work one evening at her office when she was supposed to be giving a presentation at a meeting that cancelled and she did not tell me. Unless they have been really creative, I do not think they have been alone in a place where sex is possible since returning from the trip, but I do not kid myself about how creative 2 horny people can get.
I have not told her parents, they will be very upset to learn about it (their older daughter's first marriage ended much the same way around the time my wife and I got married). I have a very solid relationship with them and I think they would react by pushing her to break it off with him.
Again, full NC is probably not possible unless he withdraws from the program, which is unlikely. I would not go to HR at her company -- that's out of the question, but I might tell her boss about it.
I should also add that she has cut me off completely from all affection and contact. She claims she simply wants no sex or affection at all, but I imagine that I have somehow become the other man now and she does not want to cheat on him.
Agree with those saying tell OMW. Maybe she'll be mad enough to call the cops and say he's been beating her again, he'll be locked up and problem solved.
look, we see this *****footing all the time and it NEVER end well.
Start the exposure ball rolling or just go file. It takes no time to get a lil leg in a parking lot. AND save the my wife wouldn't. She just cut you off and you acting like a you are scared to make her mad.
Well, until you make her face the consequences of her actions, you are fighting a losing battle.
Also, I see her money mean more to you than your marriage. Otherwise you would have talk to her boss by now.
In that vain, you sound just like some of the cheaters on doc cool, justifing why they cheat instead of D'ing.
His wife, her family, your family, her boss, HR all should be told.
You need to get tough. You cannot nice her out of her A.
Tell her parents.
Tell her boss.
Tell her IC and MC. Explain that her keeping the A going is a deal breaker.
Your wife needs to feel consequences. So far she has felt none.
You might even tell her close friends what she is up to.
Tell the OM's wife ASAP. You will need to put pressure on him.
I would also get an attorney to make a formal complaint/letter to him. Tell him to stop harassing your wife. Especially he has a arrest record.
Hell, I would go to his employer and everyone on his FB wall and shout out the Affair to the world. Keep up the pressure.
It will piss off your wife but who cares, right now she is not your wife but the OM's girlfriend.
What you need to realize is that you have nothing to lose. You have already lost your wife.
But just maybe you can shake her world up and get her to see clearly.
While all this is going on work on you, man up on the areas in your life that needed the improvement. Love your kids like there is no tomorrow and support your family.
What do you want? You think your wife is gonna wake up one day and snap out of it. Hell no. She has the other man to sex her up and you to handle the kids and home, she can have her cake and eat it too.
Why she should stop the gravy train since you're too passive to stop the affair?
Unless you man up and give her consequences being have her move out alone and served with divorce papers, shes not gonna take you seriously.
You don't kill an affair with kindness, you kill it with the reality of it.
This is a bit different perspective, but why not just divorce her and move on, focusing on your kids and building a new life. Even if the shame she feels after disclosing the EA to the world causes her to end it, do you really want her back? And if you create the toxic atmosphere disclosing the EA will cause and she doesn't come back, it's going to create problems between you forever, and like it or not, you will never be free of her because you have children with her. She's showing no regret or remorse. Just file for divorce and if those consequences don't make her want to get her act together on your terms and with full transparancy, then finalize the divorce and be done with it. Posted via Mobile Device
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Wife having EA -- do I reveal? 
