One of the many questions that face the victim of a marital affair is whether or not to confront the other person. Understand that there is not much good information on this subject. We have approached the subject on this site both as a discussion and then as a summary blog post as a result of that discussion.
Now, one of the professionals that we respect the most, Bob Huizenga, will be having a 3-part webinar devoted to this controversial subject. It will not just be geared towards emotional affairs, but will touch on confrontation as it applies to all 7 types of affairs.
He surveyed over 500 people about confronting the other person and the webinars will be used in part to share his initial findings.
The first webinar will cover “Should I Confront the Other Person?” as it applies to the 7 types of affairs. Discover the risks and rewards for specific types of affairs. This will be held Thursday, September 30, 2010 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT.
The second webinar is an interview with Linda who tells her story of NOT confronting the other person (Tanya) as she faced my emotional affair. (Yes that would be our Linda!) This webinar will be held Wednesday, October 6 at 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM EDT.
The third webinar addresses the “41 Steps of Preparation and Assessment for Confronting the Other Person.” The time and date for this webinar is yet to be announced.
If his webinars are anything like his book, “Break Free From the Affair,” then we know they will have a ton of very helpful information.
Linda is both excited and nervous about her being the featured interviewee for the second webinar, so it would be great if a bunch of our loyal blog friends and readers can be there for support.
Each FREE webinar is limited to 100 participants. In the webinar you have the opportunity to listen, observe, receive free handouts and gifts as well as ask your pertinent questions.
We hope you will take advantage of this free program that Dr. Huizenga is offering!
Note: Obviously this event has already taken place some time ago. To listen to the webinar recording, click here.
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18 replies to "Confronting the Other Person: Rewards and Risks Examined"
I definitely need this information. Thanks guys!
This is the one thing that keeps haunting me. I want to confront her so bad. I know that it wouldn’t change anything but it seems to me to be the one thing to help me move forward. She is twice divorced and is single while she was having an affair with my H. I really think she thought that my H would leave me for her. She interduced him to her family and what my H told me is he told everyone he was separated and was getting a divorced which he never told me. I want her to see how happy we are now and I want her to hurt so bad. To me is seems she got off easy. I mean after all my h would have lost everything what did she lose and even didnt lose face with her family cuz who knows what she told them. I know I sound like a child but I just cant help it.
I am trying not to think about it, I know its all my H fault but then she knew he was married so some blame has to be on her. You know I am just sick because it seems like I am the only one suffering my H doesn’t seem like he is suffering to much to me and she is just going on her marry way while she waits until we fall apart again. It SUCKS!!! sorry for ranting but this really hit a sore spot with me.
i cannot believe that confronting the other is useful. it seems to give them a lot of power. it says that your spouse cannot stop on their own. it also gives them some power to see your emotions. yes they already know that someone has been hurt. in my own case, didnt confront but let him know he wasnt welcome. he was married but i reasoned that telling his wife would not benefit me, in fact it would relieve him of any restraint of keeping it secret from her. i think the threat of exposure to his wife kept him away. but reality is that my problem is with my wife, not him.
ppl again.. has hit it right on the nose.. I will not show the other women my pain or my emotions. Why would she care if she knew about me in the first place?I won’t blame her for my husband’s mistakes. She owes me nor my family any loyalty ..
Confronting the OM was one of the better decisions I made. First of all, he’s the boss in his office (an attractive quality to my wife) so I took great satisfaction in walking into his office, in front of his staff, and telling him we were having a meeting … NOW! The idiot had no clue who I was. But here’s the thing: the meeting didn’t end their contact, it didn’t stop him or her from pining for the other, it didn’t humiliate him or make my pain go away, but it did give me a certain amount of self-worth. I wasn’t given a chance during their affair to speak my mind, to defend myself, to have any control. Here was an opportunity to maturely, calmly (as calmly as possible anyway), and rightfully hold a mirror up to this man. I did this without vindictiveness or anger, but rather compassionately. I felt sorry for this slob who held so little respect for himself or those he cared about. How empty his heart must be. I was also able to use a phrase that is both healing (for me) and a little bit of a slap in the face (for him.) “I forgive you for not being the man so many needed you to be.” My whole purpose in confronting him was not to rip him a new one, but both to defend myself and my home, and to get him out of my mind. In forgiving him as I did I was able to walk out of his office with pride and dignity. Regardless of the fog my wife was in, I knew I was the bigger, better man. I just proved it if only to myself.
Great story D. I imagine the guy took a good long look at himself after your meeting. Did the affair end any time soon after that?
This confrontation took place in late Feb. At the time I was naive to just how much “in love” with him my wife was. I was under the delusion that our love was so special that she could never truly fall in love with someone else. It must be a glitch. But the confrontation made her realize how really over the affair was and she plummeted into withdrawal and depression, cutting off all physical intimacy with me, which in turn opened my eyes to what we were really up against. If it weren’t for the kids we would surely have parted ways. Their physical affair was over but the emotions were kept alive by checking in to see how the other was doing. It was only through the efforts (and vigilance) of me and the OM’s wife that NC was finally established in mid April – which has been honored to this date (five months.) It helped that the OM left town for three of those months to go “find himself.” My wife now says that she can’t look at what she experienced as “love” but rather as issues within herself that she was doing everything she could to avoid dealing with. This doesn’t help my pain, by the way. It just partially explains that “why” part. The wife is now dealing with the guilt and shame, still dealing with those same issues that got her into this mess. We are far from being safe – the specter of divorce or separation is always prevalent. I am no longer naive about love. But I believe the confrontation was a turning point for us both. It wasn’t definitive by any means, but looking back I became real for him, the pain the affair caused had a face, a name, a history that had to be addressed by both parties – and it wasn’t going away. There are about a thousand things I might have done differently in the past eight months, but confronting him wasn’t one of them.
I like what you said about the fact that you “became real for him.” I’m sure up to that point, you were basically non-existent in many ways. Thanks for sharing your story.
I have to tell you that I did confront her and it was a good thing…I know many people say “are you crazy, I would have killed her” but it wasnt like that. She came to my place of work which was a good thing because as soon as it was over I had friends to lean on. She wasnt the young vibrant person that I thaught she would be. Yes she was 25 but didnt look it, she was not anything like I thaught she would be, I kept thinking my husband must have lost is damn mind! She did and said things that shocked me and I know if he really took a close look at her he would have been shocked also! I think he now realizes this. I cant say it was easy talking to her but I was able to tell her my side of things and get the whole truth out beings he lied to her also! So I think it all depends on the person, it worked for me!
You’re right in that every situation is different–different personalities and circumstances. What may work for some, may be a disaster for others. I think everyone who is considering confrontation needs to first step back and analyze all of the pros and cons before doing so.
Well just tonight I got so overwhelmed with anger at my H and the OW that I gave him an ultimatum and called her and left a very angry voicemail on her phone. Well my husband chose divorce. Which I’m not surprised about it though, because with this type of affair you are not supposed to according to “Breaking Free from the Affair” To be honest I feel free now. If my marriage is over then so be it. I would rather be happy alone then in a marriage where I’m fighting tooth and nail to get my husband to love me and not the OW.
Tina, I’m sorry to hear of your husband’s decision, but am happy that you feel that a weight has been lifted.
I think you really have to know a bit about he OP before you make contact. In my situation, the OP was more than I bargained for. I had texted her to tell her she was ruining my husbands family and please stop contact. I also made the mistake of telling her if she did not stop contact I would contact her husband. By the time I ended up contacting her husband (with a very basic e-mail, just commenting that I believed he was aware of the situation with his wife and my husband and as the relationship had started to be noticed at their workplace, he also works within the same business, I requested he ask his wife to stop contact with my husband please. What happened was that she had made up an elaborate story about me to her husband so that when I contacted him he replied by saying he knew all about me, he suggested my husband keep details on “my abuse??” to him, I would be looking for child support soon, I had mental problems and he was contacting the police to protect his wife!! IMAGINE!
Wow, not what I was expecting and not in any way close to reality. The only good part about this was that when my husband saw this, it made him realize the people he was bringing into our lives were definitely not who he thought they were and were a danger to his family. It also gave him a more realistic perspective on the harm he was causing me, and the real person the OP was. He could not believe that she would make things up like that to protect herself and make herself look like the victim, at my expense after all they had already done to me. It has been a year and it still makes me upset to think about how she was portraying me, to make herself look innocent. There was no contact in any way after that by Husband or myself with the OP or her husband. I still wish I or my Husband had contacted them to defend me, but at the time we decided that to just stop all contact would be the best. And it was the only thing that got my Husband to “snap out” of his emotional affair, and see things clearly.
I confronted the other person a number of times. It is something I have regretted ever since. She admitted knowing she was doing something wrong but refused to stop anyway. She showed no remorse and at times played the victim and blamed my husband for the affair. It was pointless and in the end gave her more power over me and the situation.
Most info I’ve seen, says that confrontation is not a good thing when dealing with an emotional affair, though it can work with other types of affairs. Dr. Huizenga’s book gets more in depth about it.
I have too confronted the o/w , talked to her once on the phone, and texted her several times, she acted like they were just friends, that she was telling him to save his marriage,through talking to my husband I found out that she was telling him lies when I text her, she texted back, I asked her what feelings she had for my husband, she responded, she wasnt sure, it was too soon for her to know. She adviced me to talk to my husband and try to save the marriage. I told her to keep away from him, she answered”I dont know what he feels or wants, if he still loves you,he will come back to you,talk to him”I told her ,without me talking to him, you will stay away. No aswer from her, that pretty much told me I was dealing with a homewrecker with no respect for her or anybody else she hurts,that includes my 3yr old girl. I texted several times telling what kind of human waste she was, she never texted back.When I texted her I was so angry and hurt that I just wanted to take it out on my husband and her, I now regret doing this,because trough my husband I found out things that she says to him that are lies,while she and I texted. The sad thing is my husband believes her and defends her 100%. That really hurts. I will never text her again, I made a mistake because I showed her my emotions, and she was more certainly laughing at me,aware of my desperation, hurt. So I would not recommend confronting the other person, they are not worth it,I think I only gave more power to the affair. So I am trying so hard to back off and avoid doing stupid things such as texting her. There is already 2 stupid people doing crazy and stupid things, I dont want to be the 3rd one.I feel like an idiot for doing that, its hard not to think about confronting the AP when you have so much anger and hurt.
I have also considered confronting the OW, which is somewhat hard because of where she lives. I think I want to do it so that she realises that very real people are hurt by what she does with married men (I do not believe my H was the first she’s had, or even the only one during the affair she was having with H, she seems ‘that type’). She was also under the illusion from H that we didn’t have sex anymore. We were still trying to have children.
But as others have said, it would give her some considerable power to see what she could do to spouses and maybe even make her worse in the long run. I’m not sure, really, what benefit I would get from it – so this is the main reason that I haven’t contacted her.
Hi,
I am on the other side of the table, since I am one of those women that has had an emotional affair. Both me and the guy I had the affair with had some problems in our marriages and we found a mutual understanding in each other. His partner found out about us and left him. I felt therrible because this was the last thing I wished for. Although we grew feelings for each other, we agreed from the very beginning not to meet in real life, since we still love our partners. We only needed someone to talk to… He wanted to get her back, so I asked him if I chould get in contact with her. She was more than willing to talk to me. At first she was very angry on me, which I totally understand, and had lots of questions. I tried to answer as honest as I chould to most of her questions, but in the end I ended up taking the whole blame of the affair on myself, since I chould hear that she wanted to believe that her partner was not the one to blame for the affair. So I ended being the phsyco one that go after other men to get my ego boosted; which I am totally fine with. She was going through too many emotions, and was not prepared to accept that it takes two hands to clap. Although I still have feelings for him, I am glad that they will try to make it work. Also, I am glad I spoke to her, since I believe it helped their reconciliation.