No, I've never done anything of the sort before. The whole thing was so wildly out of character that I can't believe it myself. I convinced myself at some point near the beginning that I had feelings for him, but quickly realized I was just trying to justify my own bad behavior. I recognize the bottom line boundaries/EN issues so don't take this wrong -- I did it because he was nice to me, it was fun to have someone to talk to, sex means nothing to me in that I there hasn't been any emotion associated with it in forever, and I'm mad at my husband for being so mean to me for so many years. The only emotional entanglement I have is with the process -- OM is a nice enough guy but he's an admitted serial philanderer and never pretended to be otherwise.

My H isn't evil. He likes to win. The very character traits that make him so successful in business have been deadly to our M. He criticized me for everything you can think of -- how I put up the dishes, where I planted the flowers, what time I made dinner, what I did or didn't do or say to the kids. Etc. You have to remember we have been together for 35 years and patterns of behavior developed when we were 16 and 17 still flourish in our relationship. It's really ridiculous. A good looking 17 year old boy has a lot of power over a 16 year old girl going on her first date in a culture where "How to Catch a Teenage Boy and What to Do With Him When You Get Him" was required reading. I wasn't about to do anything that might displease him -- he didn't like green, I wouldn't wear green. My self esteem was all wrapped up in who I was dating and I wasn't about to cross him. The balance of power was all out of whack, and we never replaced it with anything healthy. LOTS of resentment.

The comment about this thread being legal/debate has some truth to it. I am by nature and training a logic based person. I frame issues where there is a winner and a loser. I despise the female side of me that I associate with illogical emotional needs and have tried to kill her off for years but she is like a vampire.

But just because my posts have a legal/debate tone to them doesn't mean I'm not being authentic.

A few of the things you've said about your BH make my spine prickle because it is chillingly familiar. My own now XWH was emotionally cruel. Sometimes physical. He would call me horrible names at the drop of a hat. He too was a blackmailer...if I questioned him on anything he would turn on me like an attack dog....threatened to tell my friends and family things that would embarrass me...that kind of thing.

I stayed for 26 years because I kept thinking I could do better and be better and that maybe he would chill with age. And because I felt it was the right thing to do. I wanted my son's family intact. His affair/s gave me a get out of jail free card...In hindsite, I wish I had just divorced him.

I do not know how to advise you at this point though. It is difficult to tell if he is really a bad husband or if you are still foggy and rewriting history...and I am not questioning your honesty...just your perspective.

Stick around and give lots of examples of how he treats you and how he did treat you.

Stop being the Victim. That gives you almost unlimited control over your actions without expecting a payback "Wha! I'm a victim, so I get to do this!" You had control over your choices. You won't get a lot of back-patting by taking a martyr's stance.

Emotional abuse = address it or leave it. Having an A doesn't figure into the equation.

saddest,

As we gradually get more out of you, you will see the advice become more pointed and focused. You said something that really struck me. And you like the male side of you??? I ask this as a male. Here is what struck me. You view your relationship with your H as a win-lose situation. You view your response here as a win-lose situation where you argue if you don't agree rather than sensing that perhaps you missing something if we say something that you don't agree with.

Are you seeing where some of the issue might be coming from? If you agree with us it doesn't mean you lost, it means that we see things differently from you, and right now that is a good thing. You need to understand the only "win" I get out of posting to you or anyone else who has posted to you, is IF you end up either happily married OR you end up leaving this marriage secure in the knowledge that you did all you could think of and all we could think of. Nothing left in the bag as they say in golf.

Clamming up with your husband has never and will never be a good strategy. How you voice your opinions will determine how effective you will be in getting him to actually hear you. Part of what everyone is saying has to do with how you voice your opinions. Confrontational almost never works in a relationship. It hasn't worked for your H, his W had an affair. It hasn't worked for you, you are deep dissatisfied with your H.

You need to start to see things with a new perspective and it cannot be a legal perspective. Let me tell you young lady, you are "just starting to learn". I came here when I was older than you and I chose my login name for a reason. I am a scientist and have spent my life in science and frankly when I found this site I realized I was just learning about a world I did not know near enough about. Now 11 years later, I am still learning new things.

If you do nothing else, you need to decide to learn what you clearly don't understand. It will help you for the rest of your life whether or not your marriage survives.

I made the comment about being surprised that you shut down with your H after watching how arguementive you were with everyone here. Don't you think that is interesting that you would argue and defend yourself with us, but you would not defend yourself with your H? I do.

Time for a paradigm shift Saddest. Yes, you need to do your best to reassure your H, but what you don't seem to know and what he has never learned, is that he will be happier if you are happier. That is a win-win, not a win-lose.

The goal here is to help you win so that you can help your H win, and the two of you become friends/lovers rather than adversaries. He needs to understand this as well. It isn't done with threats it is done by expressing "honestly" how you feel and see things. You need to hear him as well.

I must go, but I hope you think about this very carefully.

God Bless,

JL

I have good news for you, then. Marriage Builders exactly the program for you. It is designed to appeal to people on a logical basis so that their "illogical/emotional" partners who have been pestering them for years to try a marriage-building program can finally hand them something different.

Do you really believe that?

Have you even been listening?

Forgive me, I'm just a dumb, semi illiterate hick who probably made less $$ last year then you or your husband made in a month, but...

Is there not a legal term for someone who watched a crime unfold, did not try to stop it, did not report it, and in fact hid it?

Again, in legal terms. Is ignorance of the law an excuse?

So you fully admit you are going to allow this man to continue to victimize his wife?

Again, is there not a legal term for this?

I am guessing your husband was not there?

Why are you, a married woman, going to a bar, especially without your husband?

Don't get offended, I am trying to help you.
Don't get defensive, I am trying to help you.
Don't think I hate you, I am trying to help you.

Gack, I'm not defensive with you -- at this point, it is clear to me that people are trying to help, and it is helping enormously for many reasons, but a big one is because I have gotten a huge wake up call on how precise I have to be in what I say.

For example, I said this: in MC that we will be starting from scratch. What I was trying to communicate was that we saw the MC twice over a month when everything was changing fast. Switching is no big deal, and, given H's travel schedule, inevitable. So, we are starting from scratch with whoever. The MC is a quick study and in a perfect world I think we would both like to work with him, but I don't think on a practical level that is possible.

See how unclear I was on a non-critical point? Scary.

I don't agree with you about automatically reporting adultery. In some instances it is certainly appropriate. In other instances, no. We know very little about what is going on in the lives of the people we know best -- everyone else is a mystery. There have been instances where a man was "outed" and the wife was blamed, in many cases wrongfully, and beaten or killed for telling anyone. I'm not suggesting that that is the case with the OM here -- the idea is ridiculous -- but he lives on another continent so I know nothing.

A very close friend had someone "out" her husband for an A ten years ago and she was furious then and she still thinks the spouse of the AP was wrong to invade her privacy and "use" her for his agenda. She would rather have not known. She believes to this day that if she hadn't known they would be much happier today. She may be wrong -- who knows? -- but she earned the right to an opinion for sure. And she told me all of that ages before my A.

With the very tiny exception of having an A, I am big on analyzing the potential downside impact of most of my decisions.

What I do know is that I am not willing to invest the time, money, energy and emotional resources into satisfying myself that that is the right thing to do with respect to OM's wife. All other issues aside, that process would inevitably result in me interacting with OM as I am reasonably certain he would contact me under those circumstances and reasonably certain he won't contact me under these circumstances, and so, no.

I am not being patronizing here at all -- I am at heart a teacher and you are going to have to take me on faith on that -- but your legal analysis simply doesn't work.

For the most part, there is no legal obligation to report a crime. I can watch you lock up your bicycle and watch someone cut your chain and drive it away and I have no obligation to do anything. With a few exceptions, the obligation to report only arises with a legally recognized duty. For example, all health care professionals have a legally imposed duty to report suspected incidences of child abuse. But in some states I can walk by a woman on the street who is beating her child with a hammer, and I have no legal obligation to do anything.

So -- what you are talking about is moral duty to report. My friends and family were uniform in their opinion that what I was doing was so very wrong and uniform in their opinion that I needed to tell my H. However, they were all also very nervous about the condition of my relationship with my H. I think they made the only choice they could.

My H wouldn't ever take me anywhere -- I am a really good cook -- and so, I started going out to dinner every so often -- MAYBE once a month for the prior 4 months - with female friends. It was a nice break every so often - I get tired of cooking 7 nights a week. My standards are ridiculously high -- I won't order out, I have never served a canned anything in my house and we eat what I call "close to the ground" as in, no processed stuff, ever. My perfectionism frequently gets in the way of my life, but on this point I think I am right.

H is way more willing to go out now, and that has been huge.

The night I met OM, my friend and I had finished eating, people were waiting for tables, I didn't want to go home yet so we went to sit in the bar and have another glass of wine. It was so innocuous at at the time. I didn't know I was vulnerable even a little bit.

I emailed the Harleys today to set up a phone session. My hands were shaking so hard I could barely fill in the form. Then I threw up.

Baby steps, but progress.

Here is my thank you:

I saw OM last on Thursday night, I sent the NC email on Friday morning, I came back to this website that I have been haunting for months on Friday afternoon, I sent my SOS first post right before I go on the plane to come see H, saw the responses and felt under attack.

There is no better thing that could have happened to me. When I sense I am under attack, I go into hyper-intellectual overdrive. Net/Net what has happened is that all of the time that I would normally have spent obsessing about OM and drafting and redrafting my next email to him has been occupied by thinking about what I am going to say to whoever on this forum.

So, for every post you see from me here, consider it text messages and emails NOT sent to OM. And every response I get tells me I am not as alone as I think I am and I don't have to contact him.

I've replaced one addiction with another, but this is way healthier. I need this right now, but I hope it is a stepping stone to saying all this to my H.

Don't think for one moment though that I am not hysterically grateful to all who respond. I am humbled by the effort.

Sad, I haven't read your entire thread, but I will have to say that I disagree with you NOT telling your OMW. You have ONE example of someone who didn't want to "know". The thing is, DrH wrote the books and it is the "Marriage Builders" name above the door here. It would be WRONG of us NOT to suggest Exposure as that is the FIRST and most important step to marital recovery. MB is very much an all or nothing type of program. It is not a menu where you can choose things as YOU seem fit.

It is better for a BS to know about their WSs affair so they can protect themselves. It could be that they would protect themselves by getting a divorce and it could be they protect themselves by affair proofing their marriage. The choice is the BSs and THEY are in control. MB is the BEST way to recover from an affair. It should be used in it's entirety.

AGREE! Sorry, but ever since I saw your first post, I mentioned that the OMW needs to know before they tie the knot, do you honestly believe that you are saving her from heart ache? Sorry, but my response is NO! She will even be MORE hurt when she find out after 3 kids, that her husband left her for a woman 20 years younger.

My bit telling OMW
and here where I askend -why bother telling OMW.

Wrong.

Your friend needs to learn to place this blame firmly at her husbands feet, not that of his victim.Strange, if I was her I would rather my husband not had an affair.
Or they would much more likely be divorced.


Yup

Your still not getting it.

All avenues of possible contact with OM must be eliminated.
This includes, but is not limited to.
Phone numbers
E-mail addresses
Acquaintances with OM
And in some cases, moving.

Once all avenues of contact have been eliminated, there will be no contact.


That might be because I'm not a lawyer.

What I am is a betrayed husband who is recovering from his wifes affair.

Hmmm....


I put a beer can up the chickens but, and put it on the grill last night. Sides where baked tators, fried okra, corn on the cob, and a salad. Now that's some good eating!

Seriously, learn to order a pizza or bucket of chicken occasionally.

This is a good step. You both need to start spending time doing things together, not individually with friends.

Have you read about Extraordinary Precautions yet?

We are all vulnerable to an affair, on good boundaries and precautions keep them from happening.

Why?

Seriously, I don't understand this.







I just have to tease you about this.
So, where do you get your hot dogs from?
Or SPAM?
Or tuna?
Or baked beans?
Or Beer?
Or Velveeta?
Or cranberry sauce?
Or Spaghetti'Os?
Etc, Etc, Etc......

All the good foods are either processed or grown in a can.

Okay Gack:

SPAM is not actual food. I think it may have originated from an alien life form. Never trust a meat whose animal of origin is uncertain.

Tuna is a fish. You can find it in the meat case along with all the other fresh fish.

Beans come dried in bags, not just in cans that include the word "pork" in their name.

Beer can also come from a bottle.

Velveeta is not an actual cheese.

Cranberry sauce is made with real fresh cranberries and is very yummy.

Spaghetti Os are far inferior to actual spaghetti, which is made with dried or fresh pasta (fresh is better).

*** And I do hope you know I'm just messing with you here.

Though, with the exception of the beer (which I don't drink at all) I do actually prefer all of the above mentioned foods to their processed counterparts.

Gack, if you are eating those things, you must stop instantly -- and I mean no contact of any sort. Go through your pantry and refrigerator, put it all in a trash bag and take it to the dump. Avoid situations where you might be tempted -- if you have to change your driving routes so you don't pass McDonalds, do it. Have someone else go to the grocery store for you. When I say No Contact, I mean none whatsoever.

I know you will probably go through withdrawal and will do things to justify your bad behavior like deciding that an unpronouncable chemical name on the ingredients list is an actual nutrient. Recognize that you are experiencing foggy thinking and come here instead. There are people here to help you -- you may not like what they have to say at times but we won't hold back because we want you to live.

Even though it is awful that you had an A, the real issue here is that you are in an abusive M. My first H was abusive and I can tell you that staying with an abuser is much worse. Like another poster on this thread I got the courage to end that M after he had his third (that I know of) A. My life became so much better after I divorced him. It was one of the best decisions I have ever made. You need to get help for the abuse first or get out.

Actually I don't personally like spam, but it's history and contents are very interesting.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spam_%28food%29
I do keep several cans of it and other long term storable foods on hand, in case of a Zombie uprising.

I personally prefer tolopia, preferably a light lemon/butter sauce. However, when it comes to something to put on a Rits cracker, I'll take a can of StarKist tuna.

Bush's country style trumps all other baked beans I have ever had. Homemade or not.

Bottles are harder to recycle, are more likely to end up in a landfill, take up more space in a land fill for a longer time, and require more fuel to deliver.

Plus it costs more$$ to purchase.

But it sure does taste good on my Broccoli

Nonsense. I have personally interviewed several people between the ages of 5 and 12, all of whom prefer "Sgetti-O's" over actual spaghetti.


I'm hungry

Ok, I think we have Thread Jacked this enough.

Is she?
Or is she rewriting history?

I am not saying she is not, but I am hearing the same basic complaint's of control and criticism that I have heard from almost every WW that has ever posted here with recent contact with OM.

Gack.....I can't believe you don't like spam. Oh well, neither does that lady in the Monty Python skit.

SW, I know the world is spinning. I can't write much - I'm in between sessions at a workpshop. But keep posting. And don't eat any spam. Since you are a lawyer, if anyone tries to make you eat spam...just say, "I object!" That's all the humor I've got today.

Another T/J

But I wonder if we could start a thread for WW and FWW so that they could list whether they claimed it after recent NC and whether it still exists into recovery. Just to get some numbers on this issue

- obvioulsy one close to my heart.

My opinion at the mo is that she really needs to make amends for the A and start working the prog. She feels she is physically safe and she will need to weather the emotional bit for a while 'til she has her house in order.