When confronting the other man, when is enough enough?

1. What was your purpose for confronting the OP and what did you say/do?

My purpose for confronting the other married man my wife was having an affair with was to approach him as a man to man fighting for the marriage. I told him that he was causing our marriage to fall apart and asked that he back off and allow my wife and I the chance to reconcile for the sake of the kids and our families… plus I still loved her as sad as that may sound.

2. What happened? What was the outcome?

At first he threatened me over the phone that if I let anything out about his relationship with my wife to his wife that his family would have ways to deal with me and that I didn’t know what I was messing with. He basically threatened my life. Oh, he also denied that he had done anything wrong by being involved with my wife even thought it was kept a secret from his wife and my wife tried to keep it secret from me and even took extreme measures to hide it i.e. adding him to her mobile to mobile group so she wouldn’t rack up huge cell bills and having the billing address changed to a secret P.O. Box. Anyway, the outcome was that he promised to back out of our lives and would respect my request that we be allowed to try and save our marriage. I in turned agreed not to tell his wife of his secret. (I basically just wanted the bastard to go away) In the end, things continued but even more secret, they tried to be more careful not to leave evidence but I had installed a PC spy program, voice recorder on out home phone etc… I knew the truth even though it was denied over and over again. In the end, my wife divorced me, she now dates this slime and has involved our 2 daughters ages 13 & 15 into the affair, he buys them visa gift cards and takes them out to dinner etc… all still behind his wifes back. I ended up with over $40,000 in attorney fees from allowing it to drag on for over 2 1/2 years trying to reason some sense into my ex-wifes head… it didn’t work unfortunately.

3. If you were to do it again, would you do it differently? What did you learn?

If I were to do it again, I would have filed for divorce immediately, got all the evidence of the affair in order to present to his wife once I had moved out with my children. Instead, I let my emotions rule my better judgment and I allowed myself to be further victimized by the affair.

Coach’s Comments:

A common but difficult question: When does the writing on the wall say… no more. This is and never will work?

In this case study the man in hindsight should have pulled the plug on the relationship earlier, before spending $40,000 and countless sleepless nights.
And yet, if you’ve been there, that is easier said than done, is it not?

How was he to know? What were the markers along the way that said the relationship was beyond repair?

Well, the other man’s threats were red flag number one. Threats are primitive. Threats indicate an unhealthy person with little flexibility, insight and sensitivity to others.

The continued secrets and lies, after the alleged agreement, were another red flag that he was headed for trouble. No honor.

It is also problematic to set up an agreement with a triangle (you the OP and your spouse) with the hope that it will remain intact and honored. After all, isn’t an affair a blatant disregard for marriage vows? How can one expect someone who easily and consistently break those vows to honor other agreements?

A telling statement of this man is his “feelings or emotions ruled.” His time and energy would have been more effectively spent disengaging himself from those feelings (remaining calm in the face of infidelity and the pain, hurt, loss, anger) so that other strategies for different types of affairs could be used to alter his relationship with his wife.