"My husband, Ron, used the Internet to cheat on me," Amber says.
"Amber and I were high school sweethearts," Ron says.
"After we had our three kids, I put Ron to the back burner. Ron did tell me he wanted more affection, so I would try," Amber recalls.
"I felt very rejected. It's starts to eat you up and hurt inside," he says. Ron found his ex on MySpace.com. "The flirting escalated into more sexual type flirting. That's when I decided, why don't we meet?"
"Ron told me that he was going to go to a casino with some guys," Amber says.
"I went to her apartment, and we drank a couple beers, and that's when we just started wrestling on the bed. We started having sex," Ron says. "My ex, she was beautiful."
"When he finally called me at 3:00 a.m., I was very suspicious. On Ron's birthday, I was curious, so I hopped on the computer," Amber says. She found his ex's MySpace profile. "I found the famous line that her bed still smells like him."
"I found that on our wedding anniversary, he and his ex talked for 108 minutes," Amber says.
"We texted between 100 and 150 times a day," Ron admits.
"At this point, I start thinking that maybe we're not going to work because I knew his feelings for his ex were getting really intense," Amber says. "What I'd like for her to know is she is just as guilty as Ron is, and I want her to feel the pain and the hurt that I feel every day. There are times when we are intimate, and all I have is a picture of his ex in my head and what they did. I am furious. I'm a great mom. I'm a great wife. This is the biggest betrayal of my life."
"I have made about the biggest mistake you can make in a marriage, [and] she didn't leave me," Ron says. "I feel like our relationship now is closer than it's ever been."
Dr. Phil addresses Ron. "You've got to explain to me how you think this is actually a good thing."
"Well, I'm trying to look at some kind of bright side to something really bad," he says. "Our biggest issue is we didn't have any communication. I mean, there are so many bad feelings that came around from not being able to communicate and understand things."
"Look at her," Dr. Phil instructs. He asks Amber to look at her husband as well. "Look her in the eyes. You want to communicate? A big part of communicating is looking at each other, so just look at her. She thinks every minute of every hour of every day about you groveling on top of this woman, about her sending you a text that said, ‘My bed still smells like you.' That haunts her thinking, it haunts her emotions, it haunts her feelings. What do you see in her eyes?"
"A lot of hurt, disappointment," Ron says.
"Amber, what do you feel when you think about that?" Dr. Phil asks.
"At this point, I'm really more pissed right now than anything," she says. "I feel extremely betrayed."
"You were," Dr. Phil agrees.
"I don't deserve this," she says.
"You don't."
"I'm really pissed," Amber says.
"You should be," Dr. Phil says.
"And I want the ex to know that too. You know, I've been with him almost 10 years, and what she says to me is, ‘Oh, the past is the past. Just move on,'" Amber says.
Dr. Phil encourages Amber to look into the camera. "If there is something you want to tell her, she's in camera three," Dr. Phil says. "Talk to her."
Amber looks into the camera and speaks to the other woman. "You knew that I was married to Ron. You knew that we were in love. No matter what he told you, you knew that we were still married. Even if we were having relationship problems, you should have ended it right then."
"Tell her what you think of her. That's a pretty damned non-impassioned statement to me," Dr. Phil prompts.
"I think she's a piece of ****, and I would love to kick her ***!" Amber says. She looks into the camera again. "I want to tell you in person. You don't realize the hurt that you've put " " Amber covers her eyes and breaks down.
Dr. Phil turns to Ron and says, "Still think it was worth it? Still think it was a good idea? Still think it was a great way to get in some communication?"
"No," he says.
"At least I know I'm a better person than she," Amber says.
Dr. Phil tells Ron, "Here's the thing: You can't change what has happened, but you seem to have this kind of cavalier, just lackadaisical attitude about it, like, ‘Well, you know, it was wrong. It shouldn't have happened, but it did, and at least we're communicating again.' If that's all you're capable of comprehending, then you two need to get a divorce now because it isn't going to get any better. Seriously. I mean, there's no sense punishing each other forever and ever, because it's not going to get any better if that's your attitude, because she will never, ever get over this until she truly feels and believes that you understand the hurt, the pain, the betrayal, the loneliness, the emptiness, the sense of failure, the self-loathing, the self-blaming that you created when you did that. Until she knows that you get that, and therefore knows that if you ever do it again, you will do it with a conscious awareness that that's what you're going to put on to this woman, the mother of your children, the woman you married."
Dr. Phil explains that Ron may have had a legitimate complaint about the state of his marriage before the affair. "You weren't paying much attention to him, were you?" he asks Amber.
"No," she admits.
"You were totally absorbed into the children, weren't you? You had stopped being a friend and a lover and started being a mother, and that was wrong. That does not justify what he did. That does not explain what he did. That does not cause what he did," Dr. Phil tells her.
He tells Ron, "If that was the case, and she admits that it was, there are remedies for that. It's called communication therapy, redefining your life, putting balance in, getting things back to a way where everybody has their needs met in a relationship. That's called marriage. That's called negotiation. That's called give and take. That's not called *** your ex-girlfriend, OK?"
Dr. Phil turns back to Amber. "Listen, it's not about her. You ain't married to her," he says, referring to the other woman.
"I know," she says.
"She owes you nothing, and you're not going to get any satisfaction from her. If you want to dog on her, then do it, I guess, but it's not going to help the situation. Your problem is sitting next to you, because if he hadn't done it with her, he would've done it with someone else," Dr. Phil says.
He turns to Ron. "You need to figure this out," he says. "Since you're so glad you're communicating again, you need to communicate to her that you really get that it might've been a one-night roll in the hay for you, but it was a life-changing tragic event for her. You two need some help walking your way through this, and I actually don't think it'll take very long to do."
"I disappointed myself probably more than I disappointed her, as hard as that is to believe," Ron says. "I mean, that is something I felt so strongly against."
"Yeah, well, here's the thing: You may feel you're where you need to be with that, but she's not. You know how long you need to work on cleaning this up?"
"As long as it takes, I'm there," he says.
"There you go. You need to do it until," Dr. Phil says.