Because, from my perspective, which comes from your own words ... you are doing NOTHING to try to make your situation better OR to remove yourself from it. I see you "standing still", or ... in LIMBO.

However, its your life, and you have the knowledge necessary to change your situation, should you so choose. I normally tell reluctant BH's ... "You Make the Call" ... and it appears you have ... and that "call" is to remain in LIMBO.

I don't have to agree with it ... YOU have to live with it. I just see a contradiction between what you advise, which normally involves taking some type of action ... compared to what you do.

Removing myself from the situation is not an option I'm considering at this point. As for doing nothing, I disagree. I AM doing what I can. My actions are just not as successful as I'd prefer them to be.

Finally you have some intel and you trivialize it. Think about what she is trying to tell you because I think, from her POV, she was trying to be honest. Before I comment on the first two, I'll focus on #3. She might be right. These forums are your outlet. In a sense they help you but they also hurt you because they do keep the pain and emotion fresh. Like constantly picking the scab off the wound - it never heals. Her statement makes you feel threatened because she would take away from you the only thing that makes you feel safe. You want help - you need a shoulder to lean on and, since FWW can't be that person, this forum is your surrogate.

Let me just speak from my own experience. This forum can be addictive. I was "in limbo" in my own sitch. I couldn't "trust" gemela to be my friend to rely on. Things weren't bad but not that good either. My M was better than D. I did feel that posting here sometimes brought up old feelings and made me depressed. I would stop posing for a couple of weeks and then started feeling very much better. I came back and posted and, within a day or two, I got in some pretty bad discussions with gemela and even told her a time or two I wanted a D. Then I stopped posting and things got better. Then I posted again and they got worse. I actually experimented with this and there was a significant correlation between posting and depression/LBing/lack of communication in the M. I also discovered that certain threads or maybe kinds of threads were particularly bothersome for me. The worst were the "JFO" sitchs because they could so easily stir those raw emotions I had felt so long ago just after Dday. Phantom pains.

One day I made the decision to try to get as far away from the A as possible but I couldn't get away from MB. I took the decision to have myself banned so I emailed Justuss and she accepted. Now you can still see MB if you aren't logged in and I did keep "viewing" for a couple of weeks but, since I couldn't post, I eventually lost interest. Since my "lifeline" had been cut, I was forced to help myself and, eventually, learn to let gemela help me. I do believe taking a vacation from MB was a significant contribution to me current state of affairs. It possibly has saved my M.

Now that Justuss has graciously allowed me to be here again, I still try to avoid certain types of threads. I can't invest the kind of personal emotion into threads as I used to because I find myself reliving my sitch through others.

So my suggestion to you is experiment. Take mini-breaks from MB and measure your mood. Then come back and do the same and see if there is a correlation to your happiness. I'm not saying you can't post on MB and not recover your M. Obviously I'm posting now - but on a limited basis. From your wife's POV, your posting on MB is a LB. You are showing her that you trust people here more than her. Even if she doesn't read your posts, the posting is a constant reminder to her that you are still dwelling on the A.

In a nutshell, I think your FWW was trying to open up to you. As far as #3 goes, with a little experimentation, you can find out. I went through withdrawal when I left MB. Can you have an A with a forum?

If you don't take a break from MB, at the very least, pick your threads carefully. Avoid the ones that bring up strong emotions.

I was thinking about it and remembered that you cannot see the forums even if you are not logged in if you are banned. The MB server remembers the IP addresses of every computer that each member has ever logged in from. If you are banned, you would have to use a previously unused computer to be able to see the forums so the MB wouldn't recognize the IP address.

Pio, perhaps you are right. I don't know about the "dwelling on the A" part (honestly, I think last night was the first time I've brought it up in weeks, if not months, with her), but I guess what really matters her is her *perception* of what I'm doing.

I think I might take a break from MB for awhile, just to see if it makes a difference.

Thanks for your P.O.V., and your suggestion.

She is a shrew who cares so little for you. Did she have any remorse at all for what she did? If she had no remorse than who cares what she thinks. It is lucky for her you are even still with her. But she is not grateful.

I have always thought that the greatest gift a couple will give each other is a commitment together to a recovery process.

On the other hand, I believe the greatest gift you bring to any relationship is your personal recovery.

About time for a quick update...

We're spending some of our Xmas vacation time with MIL and FIL. We've done it a few times since D-Day, and it's always been a bit "triggerish" for me because one of my better memories of our stays here (her new ring) also reminds me of when her PA started (just a few days after the blessing of the ring).

It's actually been going well so far. The break has improved her mood quite a bit, and she's more affectionate and caring, treating me even better than usual. There have been a few trigger moments though (she gave me a massage one night, which reminded me of the massage she gave the OM while he was staying overnight at our home, at her invitation...), but generally we've been having a great time.

For my Xmas "gift", she purchased a sexy Santa Elf costume, some white fishnet stockings and surprised me in bed with it . She obviously put a lot of thought into it. I knew something was up, as I kept catching her giving a little smile every now and then, but I was still caught by surprise - the last time she did something like this was over 20 years ago...

And to think, just three weeks ago I was thinking of asking her to go on vacation alone, to give us some time apart, to give me some time to myself.

I'm still struggling with the feeling that, given our pre-M history as I've written it out here, our M should never have happened, and I know it's affecting my approach to our M. I feel that I should have walked away at the first sign of infidelity from her, but I didn't, and as a consequence this led to me being hurt very badly by her 2-year A that she carried on in our home under my nose. I'm really concerned that I'm making a HUGE mistake by sticking around, no matter how I feel about her. Maybe there are other As she hasn't told me about. Maybe she'll be more inclined to get involved in another A, now that she's done it and has "experience" in not only how "exciting" it could be, but how to get away with it. Maybe she's just decided to "settle" for me because of our kids and social standing. These are a sample of the thoughts that go through my mind on an almost daily basis, and it makes it difficult to "really" enjoy anything she actually does for me; I find myself always wondering if there's an ulterior motive.

We're due to spend three days in a posh hotel shortly.. just the two of us. It's supposed to be a "second honeymoon" of sorts. I expect that there will be a lot of talking, perhaps a good dose of O&H, and hopefully I can discuss some of my feelings with her, without it turning into the "dancing with a bramble-bush" experience that characterizes many of our relationship talks.

Wow. good day today, bad days ahead when she decides to mess around on you again. I am sorry you cannot leave her. She is terrible. A shrew in white fishnets. Sad.

MiM, glad to hear things are going well. Obviously, doing things she hasn't done in twenty years clearly demonstrates some serious effort on her part.


I hope you both really enjoy the second honeymoon. Let us know. Sounds like a great opportunity to continue the rebuilding process....

TB

I'm no expert. But, it does not sound like your wife adheres to MB principles at all. Nor does it sound like she has a great deal of remorse or much of an understanding of the pain she inflicted.
This would seem consistent with someone that has cheated multiple times, as you wife has done.
It's pretty clear to me that she is not terribly invested in fixing the marriage or helping you deal with this trauma. She wants it to go away on its own.

Another update...

Things are fairly stable at the moment. Though we do have our ups and downs, they're not the "rollercoaster-type" ups and downs we experienced just after D-Day. It's been weeks, if not months, that any sort of A-related conversation has happened between us (though thoughts of her A are still on my mind every now and then - that's likely not going to go away in a hurry).

To "get away from it all", I've taken to hiking every few weeks with a couple of friends and acquaintances (stomping around in the bush and streams for a couple of hours is a great way to get the mind off of "worldly matters"). The beer at the end helps too . My FWW tried it once or twice, but now doesn't come along, saying that it's "too strenuous" (yet she's able to spend three times as long checking every store in the shopping mall - go figure).

This time, who should I see near the end of the hike but the OM! Evidently he's either joined the hiking group (it's large, so it's quite possible that I didn't see him), or he just happened to be in the same area at the time that our group finished our hike. I ignored him, but I also found myself feeling very angry, not at him, but at my FWW, for putting me in the situation where I had to even care about situations like this. A lot of the old feelings I had about her and her choice to have an A with that character got stirred up again.

I left as soon as I could, but I was still a bit moody and upset when I got home. Interestingly enough my FWW didn't pick up on this (or perhaps she did, and chose to ignore it). I'm tempted to just let this particular sleeping dog lie and hope that the OM doesn't turn up at the next hike, but that doesn't seem to be very "open and honest". I think somehow I have to find a way to mention this situation and my feelings to her, without triggering the defences and accusations ("Oh I'm never going to forgive her, never going to let her hear the end of it", etc., etc.). Not sure what to do yet.

I don't think you should say a word. It's not your WW's fault OM showed up there!

Hiya MiM:

Please leave it alone. Drop it. Don't mention the OM or your reaction. That is my suggestion. I agree with BigK.

Looking for empathy or sympathy from your wife is a lost cause from my take on everything you have ever said over the years. I think you actually want her to do something so you can trust her again. And there is nothing she can do since the lack of trust is in you.

How about raising your kids, enjoying your daily routine, going to work and paying the bills: Take her temperature every so often to make sure she hasn't strayed from the ranch, and thus get on with your life. do keep posting here, I know it helps you, just as it has helped me.

All the best MiM.

Larry

MiM, I'm sorry that you had to have a trigger like that.
I've never met my H's FOW, I can't even imagine how hard it would be being in her presence.

Ditto Vittoria, Larry and bk

I don't see the problem with telling a WW that the BH ran into the OM post affair.

I would find a new organization to run with to avoid OM.

More important and a reason to tell WW of contact is to ask did the OM run before/during the affair.

If OM never did then is this a sign that OM is using running to break NC with the WW?

If he did run prior to now was it with this organization?

Then why didn't WW protect the BH by giving this knowledge to protect the BH from triggering?

There's no other local hiking organization. This is the only one.



OM was not the type. I was actually very surprised when I saw him, as I thought hiking would be the last thing he'd take up. It's possible that the reason I only saw him at the end was that perhaps he was there just to pick up someone else.

Any, I have an update to write...

Well, I thought about it, thought about it, and thought about it some more. I finally decided that it was important to be open and honest about what I experienced.

So, I told her last night that I had "something to tell her". I also told her that what was on my mind was troubling me so much that I'd gone to the MB forums for advice, and I indicated the advice that I'd gotten, and I'd decided to go against it in this instance. I then told her about my experience, what I felt and why I felt the way I did.

It actually went down fairly well, after we got through her "those forums are inhabited by bitter BSs" comments, which I chose not to engage her on (I knew where THAT road led, so I was not interested in traveling on it). She didn't draw close or anything like that, but she did say she was sorry, and she asked if there was anything she could do. She also asked me what I usually do with the anger, if I just keep it inside. I replied that I normally vent it out, either into my journal or on the forums.

After we talked for awhile, she mentioned that when I said that I had "something to tell her", she actually thought that I was going to tell her that I strayed. I guess in the face of that, what I actually had to say might have come as a bit of a relief, LOL. I insisted that there wasn't even the remotest possibility of me doing anything like that, but she insisted that wasn't the case. I let the matter lie after awhile.

Progress? I don't know. Perhaps. We didn't end our conversation last night on a low note, but this morning there wasn't any indication from her that we'd spoken at all.

It was otherwise a really great weekend, so that's what I'm going to remember about it. If the OM shows up again, well, I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

MiM:


Nice window into her mind and mental processes. Sounds like she is very uncomfortable in the current situation where you own the moral high ground. Just a thought.

Larry