9 months ago I found out my DH was having an affair. He promised to stop, it went back & forth until May 31, 2007. He had been gone for over a month without contact, called & wanted to come home & I said yes. He has not contacted the other party, but she has contacted him (voicemail, text messages). 2 weeks ago her d-i-l sent my DH a message that she was suicidal. Yesterday she (the lover) saw my husband at a gas station & started calling him, saying she couldn't live without him & she was going to commit suicide because he wouldn't talk to her. I should add that on March 2 of this year, her husband committed suicide at the front gate of my husband's job with her watching so she is now free. I sent her text messages today to tell her to stay away. She called my husband, who told her I had the right to feel that way & say what I said. He was mad at me for contacting her. I told him yesterday that I probably would after hearing about the guilt trip she was laying on him. Her husband called my husband several times threatening the same thing before he finally did it. I lost it. I have been very patient & tried to take the high road throughout this whole ordeal. We have not had sex & don't sleep in the same bed since he came home. She even came to a karaoke club that I was at & sat at the same table with me & I wouldn't even look at her or speak to her. I have tried to ignore her but she won't stay away. Today when I lost my temper with him he said he was telling both of us to go to ******. Later he texted me saying he broke it off, I got my way no matter what he wanted. He wanted to still be friends with her. I told him that if I didn't have him, I didn't get my way. Problem is after 25 yrs together, 24 married, I still love the jerk. I'm still shaking with anger over this whole thing today.

What should I do? I need help in the worst way. We went camping together this past weekend & had a good time & I thought we were maybe starting to rebuild our life. Guess not. I have tried to use the things I found here & get him to participate. He even tells me he wants to die. She was a co-worker & they both nearly lost their jobs when her husband caused trouble at the plant where they worked. She was moved to another plant & job. HELP!!!!

Lost,

Please read as much of the information here as you can and try to get your WH to read as well. Also buy the Surviving an Affair and His Needs, Her Needs book and Love Busters.

He must end all contact with this OW before your marriage stands a chance of even beginning to recover. This means he can't work with her anymore and may have to change jobs. You may even end up having to move.

My FWH had an affair with a woman who also threateded to committ suicide every time he tried to end the A. As he described it shortly after d-day, in his NC letter to her, his feelings had gone from friendship, to pity, to hate during their 8-month PA. As far as I know, she's still out there somewhere breathing and probably trying to steal some other womans husband.

Honestly, this woman sounds like a fruitcake and I think you should consider a restraining order if the NC letter doesn't keep her away. She could be dangerous.

Who

What a sad situation for all involved, especially since OW's H committed suicide in March and your WH and OW didn't break contact until May? Are there children involved? I agree-- you need to be careful. Where OW should be mourning, she continues to obsess about your WH (even in the face of her husband's suicide.)

Are you sure there has been no contact?

If this situation is true (no offense intended if it is) then you should be on high alert.

Lost, It is serious when your H says he wants to die. He needs professional help.

Beyond that, he also need to break contact with her. He can't be friends with her and work on your marriage.

Plus she sounds crazy. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Lor, believe me...you've come to the right place.
Your H has to understand that in order to prevent any further temptations to resume the affair, he has to stop seeing her completely and stop taking her calls and responding to her text messages. This means he can't be friends with her.

While he means well (perhaps this OW is unstable and he is unsure how to break it off), he should understand how maintaining a friendship with a FOW hurts your M.

My thinking is that if all conventional or traditional remedies stop working, you guys should start thinking of legal remedies --- like a restraining order. It sounds like the OW will never stop or give you peace.

Your only protection is to keep the bond between you and your H strong. Don't give up just yet.

I know she was contacting him but he wasn't contacting her back. I think he thought that if he just ignored her she would go away. She didn't. I don't know if he really broke it off like he said he did. We fought last night. He has an opportunity to get a job in a town 3 hours away. He said last night that with all the stuff going on, he couldn't take it. I tried to encourage him to take it & give us some space since I can't go with him until we sell our house. I hope he reconsidered. I haven't asked him today & I promised myself I wouldn't unless he brought it up. I lost my temper & text messaged her yesterday. He got mad but I think it was my fault. He tells me I always try to be the man of the house & I didn't understand what he meant. Now I do. My StepMIL started me thinking when she said that he probably wasn't mad about my contact with OW but that maybe he felt like I was saying "I'll handle this since you can't. I don't think you have sense enough to wipe your own hiny so I have to do it for you." When he told me last night that I was trying to be the man again, I realized that she was right. I just get impatient & would rather do it myself than wait on him to get it done. A huge fault of mine. After yesterday, our marriage may be over. I also realized that when he told me about her threat on Monday, when I felt he was siding with her against me, he was really trying to figure a way out of this mess without having another suicide on his head. He blames himself for her H suicide. I don't know what to do. I wrote him a letter for him to find tonight (he sleeps outside in our camper) trying to explain how I felt & what I now see. I hope it helps.

I've tried not to love him but I can't. This OW is older than him & there are no children between them. There are more reasons why he doesn't like her than why he does. He knows that. He started texting me last night about an hour after bedtime. I went outside & talked with him. I got the feeling that he still loves me he just doesn't know how to get our life back on track. I think the job change would be good for both of us. I want to go somewhere that no one knows anything about what has happened. Our kids are grown (youngest only has 1 yr of high school left) so we should be enjoying our time together. This weekend was great.

I don't know, maybe I am doing all the wrong things. I know that my angry demands that he end the affair were the wrong thing to do. Even I didn't think she was this crazy til now. I do have a temper problem & when I get mad I sometimes lose it, say things I don't mean, etc. All I've wanted since I found out about this is to get my husband back & to make things better. That's why I feel so lost.

what city & state ?

Lost...

Do you like the drama and the victimhood? I'm asking because I'm sitting here wondering why you aren't taking healthy actions for your marriage...

Change the cell number. No more texts. Change your home phone number. When OW shows up ANYWHERE...you leave. WH leaves. Period. No words, no presence...nothing. She's not a part of your life.

When OW says she's gonna off herself...hang up immediately, dial 911, report the threat of harm to herself, give them all the particulars, including the history that her BH did so and your name and number.

When WH says he's gonna off, do the SAME THING.

How dare you choose to believe it's about being the man again...instead of a decent, responsible partner in your marriage? That's what it is...you aren't defending or protecting your WH...you are enforcing boundaries around your marriage.

Period.

As for WH choosing to believe he's responsible for OWH's suicide...he can't be...that was OW's BH's choice alone. He tortured, tormented and destroyed another human marriage...he didn't make a human being destroy themselves. He's not that powerful.

Nor are you.

Now own your half of the marriage...go for clarity and ownership of what is your half...what is within your control. You are responsible for boundary enforcements for your marriage...and for your own personal recovery.

I'm all for moving away...asap...since that's a possibility. Great way to enforce NC...won't do a thing if you guys keep the same cell numbers, email addresses, etc.

Think reasonably...act sensibly. You have control over your own temper...you choose when to lose it. I think a lot of your anger comes from you choosing to believe garbage like "being the man again"...get real.

You're THE WIFE. You're half of the marriage. Do what it takes and live respectfully.

You can do this.

LA

That's why I came here, to learn what I need to do to get things back on track. At this very moment, 10am Texas time, he is on his way for that job interview. He told me Wednedsay that if he took it, it would be for him & no one else. I agreed because he has been unhappy since he lost his dream job due to plant closure in 1999. This is the same job, different company, but more well known (Miller Brewing Company). I feel that if he were happy with his work he would be more happy everywhere else. In the past, this has shown to be true (most rednecks here are that way). I am praying that he will take it even though I know that it may mean that I don't go with him. My heart tells me that moving there, away from OW & me, he will decide he wants me with him. His friends tell me the same thing. They all say that the way he talks about me, he still loves me he just can't see it right now. I hope they're right.

He works in Tyler, Texas, 40 minutes from our home. We have already put our house on the market even though I am very sad about losing it. He made the comment this morning before he left, about yea, a job where he has to leave East Texas. I told him the move didn't matter, the job & how much he liked it did. I told him that he's been saying for about 8 years now that he hates East Texas & he wants to move, so now that you can, why do you want to stay? He didn't like that.

I don't know for sure if he is really NC with OW. Everything about his job now, everywhere he goes in that plant, reminds him of her. Even though she is no longer there. I'm trying to be patient but it is soooooo hard!! The letter I gave him Wednesday night, he has kept & not thrown away so maybe that's a sign he is really going to give this a chance. In the last 9 mths, if he didn't want to read my letters, he would throw them away or burn them in the fireplace without looking at them. He still has this one. In it I suggest using MB plan to get our M back on track. He also hasn't made any ugly comments about what I wrote like he has in the past. Wednesday, I didn't ask him about the interview, he voluntarily told me he was going to go anyway. Last night, he was being cranky & I told him that I would not fight with him & if he kept on, I would go out to the camper 'til he was ready for bed. Same thing this morning. I told him I was not fighting with him & not gonna get mad. He said you're trying to & I told him yea, but I'm not gonna do it.

Geez, my posts seem so long. I'm trying to plan A & I sometimes feel I'm the only one making any effort to work this out.

Lost,

Please study the timeline of an affair...there's no contact, withdrawal...and then recovery.

Takes time, commitment and holding to your own goal...side by side.

Have you learned listen and repeat? In the conversation you communicated above, what sounded like support and encouragement was really refutation. I can hear it because I sure did it...for decades. What I thought I was doing (my intent to encourage and support) actually cut off communication and my DH felt criticized, unheard and disrespected. Was reasonable...I wasn't striving to first understand, then be understood. I was trying to change his stuff...his perspective...his feelings.

That's how encouragement was exampled to me.

Listen and repeat..."I hear you saying if you take this job it will be for you and no one else. That it's important to you that I understand that. And that it means you'll be leaving East Texas if you take it. Are you saying you're now very fond of it here?"

Acknowledgment, validation...and offering what you hear back for clarification or confirmation.

This isn't me saying you're doing it wrong...I'm offering a new way to communicate, which I learned the hard way.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

About the letters you write him...wow, are you my twin? My DH was very much the same...not answering, reading, commenting or acknowledging my written communications...and I had no idea to look at myself and say, "Why am I writing letters to my DH?" Didn't occur to me...focused solely on his response (non-response) and my right to write.

Listen and repeat did wonders with ugly comments. I let his words go into a hopper on my head...and didn't allow them to come into my brain until I had a handle that these were his...not mine...his words, his truth. I repeated what he said back to him. Helped me to see where I took his truth as my truth very often...hurt inside from it...when it was his opinion, not my truth. And the more I handed back to him, saw the distinction (eliminated my LBs this way), the more he heard his own words and corrected, clarified or said more than once, "That's what I just said? I meant the opposite." Very surprising. That's wasn't my goal to listen and repeat...my goal was to act MYSELF from respect and let the response go.

And kudos on your boundary enforcements around you on not fighting...your choices last night and this morning were awesome, IMO. That's different choices, right? Felt before like you guys would fight and it would be like an event...something outside your control. When you stop, fights can't happen. Takes two.

Great job.

Plan A is only for the BS...to break up the affair and get through withdrawal...it is one-sided. Recovery has two sides...what I see you adding to your Plan A is healthy boundaries. Congratulate yourself when you don't LB, when you act from respect and act from your choice to love your WH. Helped me a lot in Plan A to know reality...and bring it. You're saving your marriage...dance a little inside, Lost!!!

(And no, you don't seem lost to me.)

LA

Also WH came home 5-31-07, one week after he got a letter from me telling him I realized he wasn't coming back, I wasn't trying to find him (he moved to somewhere & wouldn't tell me) & I hoped he had a good life. I told him I was ok & doing things that I wanted to do. I had met someone who wanted to take me out, but I wouldn't because still married. It was almost like WH knew even though he said he didn't when I talked to him about it. We discussed it after he told me I needed to find someone better than him, that I deserved better. I believe that you don't choose who you first fall in love with. He has been very jealous & our friends have mentioned it to me. When they mentioned that I was free to date or might find someone, he would get very jealous. When he found out I got a tattoo (something I have wanted for a long time & did to soothe my separation anxiety) he was upset because he thought a man had done it (its on my upper thigh). He admitted he felt jealous when I told him about the OM who wanted to see me.

Very confusing for me. Which is why I think he still loves me. I know from what I have read here that his head is fogged up & he doesn't see things clearly. He is acting very out of character. He quit his job on Memorial Day, texted me that he had ****** the rest of his life & lost his job & goodbye. Wednesday after Memorial Day, he called & we met for lunch & he told me he wanted to come home. I didn't know he already had his job back or that he had applied for this other job.

My WH has never been the type to quit a job without having another one lined up to start. He has worked since he was 15 & has always been extremely responsible about work. All our friends & family who know tell me that he is not acting like himself. He told me in August or September of last year that he thought he was having a mid-life crisis (he just turned 46 in June). I hate that term: Mid-Life Crisis. Other than that I'm not sure what started this whole mess. The mid-life crisis part started before the A started. It didn't start until end of Sept. & first of Oct.

Am I doing the right stuff? Am I being too impatient? Any advice is greatly appreciated!!!