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I have to agree with Hellfire and BluerthanBlue.. this is predation. Your WW should have never sexualized a teenage boy that way. When my kids were still in high school, one of their friends lost his home. He had alcoholic parents who had finally reached a nonfunctional economic status, so he wasn't going to be able to finish high school without intervention. We took that kid in and treated him like our own for several years and I'll be honest, I can't even begin to imagine how an adult could sexualize that kind of relationship. In my mind back then, and even today when he's in his thirties, it's completely maternal.

Even if the AP was legal by your state's standards, there's still a maturity gap which makes it an abusive situation. When we put the shoe on the other foot and imagine that it's an older male and teenage female, it's pretty darned easy to see the damage and legal risk. What do you think the situation would be if it had been you preying on the female teen you took into your home? I think you'd be lucky to not end up in court on civil charges if not criminal ones.

I do think you'd be wise to seek legal counsel. Once this thing blows up, it's best to just be prepared for anything. Remember that in financial terms, you and your WW are currently a unit. Your finances are literally tied together until/unless legal steps are taken to divide them. So no.. I wouldn't go for "shock and awe" or for big exposure schemes. I'd see an attorney and find out how much of MY ass was hanging out first.

I'm sorry this happened to you.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:50 PM, Thursday, December 1st]

I always suggest D when it comes to LTAs like in your case and that's still the case here but you have mentioned that you would like to R, therefore your #1 weapon (and yes this is war !) is FULL EXPOSURE without warning, your WW is infatuated with AP, Exposure typically kills the "romantic, beautiful and exciting" aspects of an A and replaces them with pure shame and embarrassment, the more she hates what she's doing the more she will hate AP. Also it's not uncommon for the WS to deny sex to the BH in order to be "faithful" to the AP, that alone would make R impossible to many, but if you insist on giving R a try here's what I suggest, while nothing is guaranteed these are methods that have stood the test of time:

1) FULL EXPOSURE: You already have more than enough proof so I would gather the entire family in the living room TONIGHT (make sure you record everything with your phone) and confront them both followed by you kicking him out of the house right then and there, no questions asked, if your WW disagrees tell her you're going to expose them to the entire church community next (you should still do that eventually but not just yet if she ends the A and allows the AP to leave the house during the confrontation). Right now you should act from a position of strength. Because of your WW's huge betrayal, the AP's sister is no longer welcome back to the house and NC should be established with her too, again these are consequences of her huge betrayal, she did not only betrayed you, but her entire family and the church, she's a cheater, liar and hypocrite. During the confrontation tell her you're going to DNA your youngest child just to make sure for medical reasons.

2)NC FOREVER: She needs to end the A with him in front of the entire family and apologize, no sweet goodbyes to AP or private talks/meet ups with him for "closure" AKA "one last f**k". If he tries to contact her ever again she needs to tell you immediately.

3) Demand she gets tested for STDs/STIs (you should too), early detection is usually paramount for treatment, plus the walk of shame to the doctor's office could help with remorse, remember no remorse, no chance to R. Make sure you go with her so she doesn't tell the doctor you were the one who cheated to justify her taking the tests, make sure you read the results yourself, same with the DNA test of your youngest child.

4) You have already talked to an attorney which is good, I suggest you consult a couple more, typically this will prevent her from hiring the same ones and provide you with more knowledge about different possible scenarios, like division of assets, custody, etc.

5) Tell her to write a complete timeline of the A subject to a polygraph (very important, this may not be her first rodeo), did I mention cheaters lie and minimize? yes a lot, make sure you cover her reasons for being fired from the private school and that you will investigate deeper.

6) She needs to agree to FULL on demand access to her phone and all her electronic devices and passwords FOREVER, no questions asked.

7) She needs to go to IC to find out her "whys", forget MC for now, the M didn't cheat, she did.

8) She needs to read "Not Just Friends" by Shirley Glass and "How to Help your Spouse Heal After Your Affair" by Linda McDonald, both available for download on PDF.

9) She needs to get a job to pay for all the money she spent on AP during the A, this in addition to what she would normally contribute to house expenses when she was employed.

10) Be very careful with possible "R at all cost" advice from church leaders, they often are for rugsweeping the entire thing, that never works.

If she refuses to comply to any of the above just file for D and have her served at church without warning, you can always stop it if she comes around (that's a big IF) and does the heavy lifting to restore the M she destroyed, if D papers don't shock her back to reality then nothing will, and if so just let the D process run its course and get out of infidelity.

Keep posting frequently, the collective wisdom of SI could help you go through this difficult situation, every case is different but cheaters typically follow a similar script, we've literally "seen" it happen THOUSANDS of times here on SI and other forums.

I think Buster123 gave you great advice. Read it over a couple of times. This is one of the most horrendous threads I have read here. I am so sorry you have to deal with this cesspool of a situation. Stay strong and keep posting, you will get great advice for each along the way. Look after yourself. Do not cry in front of her or beg her to come back. From this point on your best move is to always present a firm confident front to her.

Everyone on here has given you great advise.

I don’t think you should confront until you have a plan in action and are ready to move.

Make no mistake you need to take real action.

Shock and awe.

I worry for you. I think you are in very serious danger.

Crazy wife troubled kid. Not good.

You cannot save this marriage. It is over. There are only 2 things you can do. End the marriage and move on or build a new one.

The old marriage and life are over.

The arm over her is very troubling. She is in love with this kids not you. That’s cold even in a sea of terrible stories. It is her and him vs you. She is not your wife nor your friends and I know that’s hard to hear.

She is in a deep love fantasy world. You cannot fight it with logic. You cannot talk her out of it. No words will fix this.

She is in a love story and if you try to stop it you will be the thing standing in her way. It will actually intensify the love story. If you try to stop it you will become the enemy.

If you are standing in the way it might cause the boy to do something drastic as well.

You can’t stand in the way. In fact you need to get out of the way.

But you also can’t enable them any more.

She has to be the one to end the relationship with him not you.

If you confront before you are ready to take action this could get worse. If you think it can’t get worse you are mistaking.

First I want you to kick her out but you may not be able to legally. If you confront early or try to win her back they could just start openly having sex in front of you.

You want to be sitting on the couch and they just get up and go to the bed room. Or start walking in on them making out. That sounds a lot worse to me. It could happen.

Or they could plot and take legal action against you.

Don’t let that happen.

You need a lawyer immediately. Right now. Not some quick phone call where you still want to save the marriage. You are going in to fight for yourself.

Also make sure it’s a real lawyer. Not some guy from your church. An outside lawyer.

Set up an in person appointment. You are going in with the intent to divorce and protect yourself. Not save the marriage.

Ironically, not at first, but in the long term the best way to try and save your marriage is to send her packing to her new life.

When she is faced with consequences and when she is out in the open alone with him reality may set in.

You also need legal advice on kicking him out as with out knowing the law she may try and stop you. Remember she is totally crazy right now.

As for this baby you need the dna test right now. There are many legal implications.

If he is the father he will have rights.

It won’t get easier to find out next year or two years from now.

It is also not fair to the child to let them think you are the father just to find out when their 4 or 5 that your not.

No matter what bond you have they may be able to take her and the child won’t have that bond with you.

That will hurt you even more.

You need to rip the band aid off now and deal with all the pain.

It won’t get easier later.

You need to file for divorce and have her served.

You either need to get custody of this child or get yourself removed from all financial obligations.

You don’t want to be supporting and paying for a child that doesn’t care about you.

That will unbelievably hurt you more and keep you on the hook for supporting them.

My heart breaks for you. I would not wish what’s happening to you on anybody.

But you have to for your long term benefit and healing.

Start separating finances. Open a new bank account and transfer all your money there.

Quit paying for things like phones.

Tell all friends and family.

Tell everyone at the church.

Also you need to move. They have been having sex at your house. It is even the professionals advise to move when sex has occurred in the house.

His stench is all over your house.

Plus if you do reconcile you need a fresh new clean start and a home he has never been to.

And if you divorce you need a fresh start. Not staying in the monument of your broken family.

Just be honest with your kids. You won’t be able to trick the older ones.

As for talking to her there is a poster on here named "BIGGER". If he chimes in listen to his advice.

You can be kind to her through words but not actions.

"I love you but I cannot trust you"

"I want our marriage but I cannot trust you"

You cannot let your guard down.

Go for everything use the fact that the child was underage to get the best deal for yourself.

Only compromise if it affects your other children in harmful ways.

I know you’re hurting. This is so terrible.

There is no way you can be thinking straight right now.

She is in a fog and so are you.

Take decisive action and get them both out of the house.

It will help clear your mind.

It will also clear her mind and give her a dose of reality.

Don’t go easy. If you try to be too kind you will actually enable her to set up a dynamic to get what she wants.

If she comes back begging then post again and that will be a whole round of new advise.

Everybody is pulling for you and I wish you lots of luck.

Okay, well, the panic attacks are back! Some of you have made some excellent points about this amounting to abuse and manipulation of the AP. For clarification, it seems unlikely that he would have been underage when they started having sex, he is turning 21 this month, but I am going to have to dig into that, no matter how much it hurts. So here's my rough to-do list for the short-term.

- Get an actual consultation with an attorney, maybe more than one.
- Open a new bank account and change my direct deposit over to that.
- Get a Paternity test for my youngest and discuss the results with my attorney (if she's not mine, that would
move their earliest active sex to at least February of 2019. Still post-graduation, but not by much.)
- Change a crap-ton of passwords and make sure her email is not listed as the recovery email.
- Confront them both with her parents in the room all at once.
- Kick at least him, and possibly both out that night (if her parents will support me where she's concerned. They will
be on board with kicking him out.)
- Depending on her reaction during the confrontation, file for divorce immediately, alternatively if she is remorseful and
immediately agrees to the requirements, we begin the reconciliation process (unlikely).
- Sign up for counseling because I am going to be (already am) a complete wreck!

I'm antithetical to a scorched earth kind of guy, so what I must do here is going to be extremely hard for me. My state is a no-fault divorce state, so unless there is a compelling reason not to, they will want to do 50/50 across the board. I'm okay with that in principle, but that will depend a lot on whether she goes after me and what my attorney says once I've discussed the full details of the affair. There may be factors I'm not aware of that would affect the state's judgement.

Am I missing anything from my immediate to-do list?

Thanks again for all the amazing advice here! I appreciate everyone weighing in and I am reading everyone's comments obsessively so please keep them coming.

I am also the opposite of scorched earth so I really understand. You are in the worst of it, and I just wanted to reach out and let you know that you will, eventually, be ok.
It’s always darkest before dawn, as they say.

Once you start the process of letting her know you know, and moving forward, there will be a plan, and you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

You might want to get STD test done as well, not fun, I know.

Other tha. That, take care of yourself and your kids. You are not alone.

Someone mentioned the possibility of this being dangerous for you because of the troubled young man who thinks he’s in love with your wife. That’s something to think about because believe it or not it’s happened many times where the husband is killed. You need a VAR with you and you need to tell a couple of friends exactly what’s going on and you need to have written out with an attorney what should happen to your your estate if something happened to you. I don’t want to scare you but you have a time bomb in your house because that young man is wound up like an eight day clock about the free sex he’s getting.

You need a VAR with you and you need to tell a couple of friends exactly what’s going on and you need to have written out with an attorney what should happen to your your estate if something happened to you.

Forgive my ignorance, but I'm not sure what a VAR is? It's not coming up in the abbreviations.

- Depending on her reaction during the confrontation, file for divorce immediately, alternatively if she is remorseful and
immediately agrees to the requirements, we begin the reconciliation process (unlikely).

You take the time to decide if YOU really want to try to reconcile. Maybe don't file right away if you don't want to. There is no pressure for you to make a lasting decision about any of this right now. There's no shame in changing your mind either.

No WS is immediately remorseful when confronted. She may be regretful. She will certainly be angry,defensive, and covering her ass.

Do not offer reconciliation. It's a process that takes years. And you can't begin that process until you have the entire truth. And you must have a WS who is completely honest, and willing to work on becoming a safe partner.

A VAR is a voice activated recorder.

Voice activated recorder.

Hell fire is right that she will not be remorseful.

At least not immediately.

You already knew that.

You need to file. Ask your attorney.

There is no coming back from this without some protection in writing.

You can’t take a chance that she stalls to set you up later.

She has a bond with him right now that is going to take time to break.

It also needs some help to break that’s why you send them packing.

Right now she has been thinking and worrying about him. Thai has increased her attraction to him.

You need to change that dynamic.

She needs to be worrying about you and what you are doing. That will help snap her out of it.

You can stop the divorce if she is remorseful later.

I understand it’s tough.

Like I said you don’t have to be tough with words but you need to be tough with actions.

I like the idea of having parents there when you confront.

He’s out on his ass but if you don’t throw her out some time at her parents is a good idea.

No WS is immediately remorseful when confronted. She may be regretful. She will certainly be angry,defensive, and covering her ass.

@HellFire Thanks for the clarification. It's good to know what to expect. Also, to everyone concerned for my safety, it's amazing how close one can feel to a new community without knowing any of you personally! I appreciate the warning and will take precautions to make sure we are safe. That's partly why I decided to have the conversation with her parents present, but the VAR is also an excellent idea, as well as making sure a friend knows when and why I'll be having the conversation.

I agree with others that she will not have any remorse this soon. She may have regret at being caught, guilt and/or anger, complete denial, complete shock. You have a good plan in place which is very important. You may not be legally able to force her out of the house, but you can certainly voice your desire for her to leave. In any case, be sure you do not share a bed again until such time as reconciliation is on the table (if ever). When the enormity of what she has done hits home, she may spiral so far down that she may require hospitalization for a while. If she threatens self harm, report it right away so she can get the help she needs. This is all worst case stuff, but it is best to be prepared for the worst. stay the course, one step at a time, one day at a time.

It sounds like you have a solid plan in place, OP. Good for you. I think it is VERY smart to get a new bank account and to let your friends know what is happening. When do you plan on confronting?

Meanwhile, please keep in mind that you have no idea how she will react, and frankly, you are not even positive how YOU will be feeling. Just stay the course. You better believe though that it is likely she will do everything she can to deflect the blame onto you, so be prepared for that.

Her reactions may range from defiant to intense shame, maybe even varying from one to the other. She may deny the affair, but then when it becomes clear how much you know, she may crack. She may also not be repentant--what was the name of that teacher who ran off with her 12-year-old student again. Stay the course--your one job is to get yourself out of infidelity.

I agree with everyone that your WW will NOT be remorseful and you should NOT even be considering R. Hell, if she were remorseful, she would not be doing what she is doing, right? Even if she promises "to do anything to fix this", those tears are about HER world being blown up. If R is even possible, she has to dig down deep into her why's. She not only betrayed you AND your family, but she did it with an emotionally vulnerable teenager.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 8:48 PM, Thursday, December 1st]

You have every legal & moral right to kick AP out of your house immediately. You have every right to ASK your wife to leave the house (for the fearful readers here of course he cannot force her out). I agree with the previous poster who said it’s time for you to find your anger. I don’t mean out of control, hurt people anger. I mean righteous anger for the evil that has occurred in your marriage and home. Recall that Jesus, multiple times, was extremely angry (and visibly showed that) at the temple leadership in Jerusalem for the evil they were committing. Your wife has gone far beyond "mere" adultery.

Two things:

First, spend some time understanding the distinction between regret and remorse. Regret is feeling sorry for having done something bad, mainly driven by the fact that the regretful person is realizing the consequences of his/her actions. Wishing he/she had not done it. Wanting to "take it back". Seeking forgiveness for a "terrible, terrible mistake". Begging for a second chance. People who do that are sorry they got caught.

Remorse is grounded in empathy. It is a deep and profound understanding of the pain you are experiencing. Your feelings of emasculation and sexual humiliation. A driving desire to help you heal, above all else, even if helping you heal means ending the marriage and watching you enter into a relationship with somebody new.

It is almost unheard-of for a cheating spouse who is first called out and caught to get anywhere remotely close to remorse. She will quickly realize that her life has become a shit storm. She will very likely be flooded with regret. But it will be for selfish reasons, because she is now in a bad place and she is desperate to stop being in a bad place when, just earlier the same day, she was living in her fantasy world with her comfortable living provided via the marriage, but her fantasy lover to pleasure her. Sorry she got caught. Not remorseful for the pain she has caused you.

Tell her she is free to run to the arms of her fantasy lover, wherever he happens to land after he is booted out of the house. "Go, join him, continue living your dream life with him."

Second, the divorce process is slow and tedious. It will present many opportunities for the two of you to talk, ruminate, share emotional times. It is quite common for divorces to proceed under a start-stop-start-stop scenario. You can pause or stop it at any time. Filing a divorce is not a final act.

It is, however, an act. It's better than being frozen in the headlights. It starts you in motion away from infidelity. As stated, you will have plenty of time to re-thing, re-group, change direction, attempt reconciliation or re-defining your relationship with your WW, etc.

[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 9:02 PM, Thursday, December 1st]

Brother just a message of support here.
You have been provided a lot of good information to help guide you through this shit show.
To get her head out of unicorn fart land she has to see the full results of her grooming habits to seduce this young man. Yes I say that as her actions when he was 18 prior to going on the 2 years of religious quest was or could be considered grooming. Regardless her former school by various laws requires to be informed. Seek legal advice there as well as the family D advice. When you confront try to keep a level head, remain calm but don’t accept any blame. As her gaslighting will commence big time.
She will cry, blame everything on everyone else bar AP and herself. People in an affair thrive when it and their actions are kept in the dark. Like cockroaches. Shine a light on them and watch them scurry for the dark. Eventually the children will find out specifically if they both move in together. Try to keep it generic and don’t bad mouth her to them. Also she isn’t a good mother as her betrayal is a list of people, you, the children, parents, APs family, the church community just to name a few.
Eat healthy drink water and try to exercise to help with the stress. Good luck.
One day at a time.

A lot of new BS mistake regret for remorse. They are actually two totally different things. Regret is about them. It's often regret that they got caught. Tears,during this time,are about how being caught affects THEM. Remorse is about you. How sorry they are that they hurt their BS..how sorry they are that they betrayed their spouse and family. Remorse is actions. Remorse is what they are doing to help heal the damage they've caused their spouse, their kids, and themselves. Remorse isn't verbal. It's actions.

Yes,get a var. A lot of cheating wives will attempt to file false DV claims against their BH. It's their way of gaining control,and also their attempt to excuse their bad behavior, knowing others may learn of the affair.

Keep it on you at all times. Not just when you are speaking to her. We've had a few BH who weren't even in the same room when cops arrived,and their wives appear,disheveled, claiming he pushed her around.

listen to everybody.

Just want to highlight that the divorce process can be slow.

It will give you time to figure things out.

Also don’t know your finances but you need to move houses if you can.

That can also be a slow process.

You need to get the ball rolling on both these things as your wife does have rights and can make your life a living hell.

You won’t be able to trust anything she says at first not matter how sorry she is.

If she’s even sorry.

She could just live with you and openly date him in front of you.

That would torture you.

That’s why it’s important to get the ball rolling on those 2 things.

You’re getting out of this s@$t fest. If she demonstrates through her actions that she wants to save the marriage then you can let her come along.

It is going to be a long process. Guarantee if she does say she wants the marriage you are going to catch her breaking contact. Reading emails, sneaking out, and grieving him which is going to hurt you and piss you off.

That’s why you have to stay the course.

She is going to need a lot of time to snap back to reality and get over this.

And she is going to need looming consequences to keep her check.

A new house will help her too as she will have triggers and memories of him.

Everything he ever touched, any trace of him needs to be removed. Every vacation he was ever on.

Sucks that he came on that vacation to mt Rushmore but now all mt Rushmore pictures are gone. Even if he’s not in them. That’s how deep his deletion must be.

You’re going to need to move too. If you try to stay there it’s going to hurt your healing.

Also she may leave you.

Either way you need a new life.