Sure you could have; there are people here who could have shown you how.

I'm feeling a bit dens today, can you explain what this means/when this happened?

Yup, and his wife should be warned if at all possible.

I really wish you would make some effort in warning her. I understand she is in another country, but contacting her may be simpler than you think. And since you are changing every form of contact you have, your excuse about OM contacting you because of exposing to is wife is negated.

What do you know about OM?
(Your H may want to know this one day too)

For example, I know the following about my wifes former OM
Name, first, last and middle
Social security number
Address
X-wifes name
Daughters name
Criminal record (Felon)
Employment history
Parents name and address
Automobile type and license number

Do you know any of these or other things about your OM?

I'm just a lurker -

but wanted to sprinkle some encouragement here.

To saddestwife - it's great that in spite of your initial reaction - you've stuck around and are still here! Be proud!

To many of the other posters - the fact that you continue to fight and fight and fight in order to try to help someone that you don't know is very admirable. Be proud!

Part of the issue is that touchy/feely language makes us BOTH really squirmy -- historically lots of eye rolling etc. when it has come up from time to time.

See how well that has worked for us?

We are both such logic based people -- I am having a hard time with the EN questionnaire -- pretty much all 0's -- needing anything from my H hasn't turned out so well in the past. I don't want to be dishonest, but I also don't want to hurt him or discourage him. So l am tabling that for now -- is that the right thing to do?

Another issue is that when we went to MC right after DD, I said I would talk about anything but I don't want the word "love" used because I don't know what that means -- my mother and my H both "love" me but if that is what love is, I don't want any part of it.

So I have to develop a metaphor and a language that we both can stomach and makes sense to me.

I ordered the Fall In Love audio cd -- we have a 13 hour car ride home in about a month so the timing could be just right. I ordered the His Needs/Her Needs book which should come tomorrow.

I can't express how twitchy the whole needs thing makes me -- needs are for weenies.

And you are right about the OM -- he is not a nice guy. One of the spurs to being able to end it was that I got really mad -- he is professional predator who saw something he wanted (me), knew all the right things to say, and wouldn't give up. Yes, I was low hanging fruit and none of that excuses me. But like all successful con men, he was very charming -- that's what I meant by nice.

You are in the right place. Marriage Builders is deliberately a lot less touchy/feely/psychobabble than other approaches.

You'll hear some amount of that kind of lingo here on the forum, but you won't see it in the books, website articles, or from the Marriage Builders staff if you talk to them.

NOW will you call his wife and let her know her H is a BAD man??

Saddest, Dr. Harley has said about his books that they are designed to be picked up by a woman and handed to a man. Women buy the vast majority of the relationship books that are bought. Every woman is different, but the typical woman eats up the touchy feely psychobabble language.

Likewise, every man is different, but the typical man despises that language, relationship discussions, etc.

Dr. Harley has stated that he designed his books to be different, such that the woman picking them up and handing them to her husband will be handing him something with an approach that will appeal to him.

You can call them emotional wants if it'll make you feel better. Or emotional roses.

Nothing is really a need. You don't really need air and food. You just need them if you want to stay alive.

All "needs" in life are things that you need in order to accomplish a specific goal. You don't really need them if it's not your goal.

Dr. Harley's emotional needs are the things that you need in order to experience the feeling of romantic love. That's why you need them.

You won't die without sex, affection, conversation, recreational companionship. But you won't be in love without them, either.

No!
And you should re-do it in a few months.

SW:

This line:



You had a need for Conversation and Admiration.

OM met this need in you.

Suddenly.... This "Logic-based" person was removing her panties, and hiding her cell phone, and finding reasons to leave the house, and ignore her children, husband and "Logical" life.

Believe me, I could have talked you out of your panties too.

Because these things that make you "squirm" were not being met, and someone was going to, and when they did, "logic" went out the window.

It is not "logical" for anyone here to post to you. What do we care? Its your life and your "logical" decisions.

We post to your becasue we have learned thatn what Dr Harley has learned in his Counseling Practice over many years, that the things that were being tried didn't work, and was able to bring those things to that did WORK, into HIS practice, and was able to offer those things in such a way that other could understand them.

You do not need to be in crisis, like you are NOW, to understand these concepts. You just have to be married for a while. And be willing to look at what is wrong with yourself and decide that ther may be another way to live in the future.

MB saved my marriage. I also believe that is saved my life. You may feel that is extreme, or not logical. That is OK. But what I learned at the MB weekend, and then thru the books, and even posting here, trying to "Give Back", was that it DID make sense.

And logical? I'm a CPA. Logic always worked for me. But once I left the area of accounting, I was whacked. I am MUCH more balanced now.

So, you can say this stuff makes you squirmy. I beleive that ANY touching of the truth will make you squirmy. And you will stop being squirmy when you start living in the truth.

Your Husband decided to help around the house, and you thought this was GREAT!

Emotional NEED. Right there. You can't escape it. You wanted help from your husband. But to talk about it made you squirm. But what if your had?

What if, like I was, you were introduced to MB and its terms and concepts THREE DAY before D-day? What if you had been introduced three YEARS ago? I wish I would have learned this stuff three years INTO my marriage.

I learned about MB three days before D-day, and BS and I were able to TALK. To talk about the issues that existed in our marraige for many years, and in our shelves, because MB gave us a language and a process to address things that were WRONG.

So you can squirm. Or you can LEARN. Learning reduces squirming.

Or, if you prefer squirming, I will leave you with Dr. Phil's Line:

"How's that working for you?"

It worked you right into an affair.....

LG

I'm chewing on the OM and his W thing -- you may recall I was the tiniest bit resistant to some of the suggestions made early on but I came around. This is something I need to discuss with my H and the time is not ripe for that. I will be shocked if he would be willing to hire a PI to track her down.

I have a problem with my D21 who might have accidentally picked up some bad emotional habits from mom here. She is in committed relationship (or as committed as you get at 21) but met someone she likes. The first line of her text was "don't tell dad" so I immediately told dad. I texted her back that uncompromising and rigid honesty in all things is the only acceptable standard, etc. H asked me what I was telling her and I read him my text and starting crying for the first time since all this started, and I couldn't stop. I don't know if that helps him or not.

Anyway, I would love input on my texts and what I should say to her next, but I don't want to overburden this forum which has already given me WAY more than my share of attention.

Finally, if anyone is aware of a WS thread similarly situated to me, could you point me to it? There are lots of BS's and I'm reading like mad, but I'd like to look at WS threads too better educate myself.

Thanks guys.

Anything sooner, like a drive to the grocery store once a week? I wouldn't wait a month. I'd listen to it now every time you're in the car, and then again all the way through in a month.

Don't table this stuff, as it can't wait.

Remember, it's not "I need this in order to live." It's "When I receive this, it makes me fall in love with the person who gave it to me. I need it in order to fall in love."

Some keys to identifying your emotional needs if you find it difficult:
What did you and your husband do for each other when you were dating?
What things did you expect from marriage and look forward to when you were engaged?
What did you use to imagine marriage would be like when you were very little?
What things have made you fall in love with other people? (Former boyfriends, and, sadly, your affair partner.)
Dr. Harley defines an emotional need as a strong craving that, when satisfied, makes you feel happy and fulfilled, and when unsatisfied makes you feel frustrated.

You may not have perfect insight into what your emotional needs are, yet, and your husband may not, either. Each of you is still responsible for figuring them out and meeting them.

Good


You may not need to.

Whay do you know about OM?

I did not use a PI to find any of this out.

saddest, at age 21, your daughter is probably going to be very resistant to learning relationship lessons from you.

Does your daughter know at this point that you had an affair? She will learn more from watching your example of how you handle it, than anything you can say directly.

I agree with not keeping secrets for her from your husband. Whenever anyone asks me to keep something secret from my wife, I explain to them that I will not do that. We got married so that we could be one, and so we do not have secrets from one another. Anyone asking me to keep a secret from my wife is an enemy of my marriage.

I hate to be always recommending books, but you could give your daughter the book I Promise You. And/or the book Buyers, Renters, and Freeloaders. Both of these are aimed at single people (but good for anybody to read).

Your daughter is not married, and therefore no matter how "committed" her relationship is, she has the right to break it off and move on to someone else. She does not have the right to lie to people and hurt them. I hope she is not sexually involved with either of these people. But at 21, it's probably too late to tell her all of this. She is grown and is going to have to make her own decisions.

I would heed the warning that you get from airline stewardesses: in an emergency, put your own oxygen mask on first, then try to help your children with theirs. Healing your marriage will go a long way to helping your daughter down the road, no matter how old she is. But the time to do all of this was 21 years ago. You can't catch up immediately through talking to her, alone.

I'm really struggling today. It is all I can not to throw my stuff and my dog in the car, call the lawyer, and drive home. I haven't unpacked my suitcase yet -- every time I walk in the closet to do it, I end up not. I am a total neat freak so this is telling.

I don't know where the line is between self loathing and an appropriate level of guilt. I'm in self loathing but every time I try to crawl out of that hole it feels like justification.

I'm afraid I'm getting depressed again, but even saying that feels self indulgent. I should be depressed. I'm crying all the time and trying to hide it from H but he wanders out of his office and catches me.

I'm so lonely. H doesn't want to talk about any of this -- I asked him last night when I was crying if it helped him to see my remorse and he looked into the distance for a minute, then changed the subject.

I could really use a big block of time alone. That is where I heal and recharge my batteries -- my need for that and my H's refusal to acknowledge that boundary has been a huge issue in our M. There is no way I can ask for that now -- even the question would raise the subject of the A whether it is mentioned or not -- and even if he said yes, I don't know where I would go.

Husbands should NOT work at home.

On the bright side, I accidentally broke a wine glass last night and H didn't get mad at me. It's not much, but it's something.

Being with H 24/7 may be what's needed. I don't know. I'm out of gas. Help.

Saddest, what did you & H do when you fell in love and got married -- populate a spreadsheet and decide it was logical to get married? Of course you didn't. It was a touchy-feely thing that you guys did when you traded rings. You each said 'yes/I do' for a reason.

You wanted to hear from WSs. Well, I'm one here to tell you that what I keep hearing from you here, in between hopeful & encouraging glimmers of lucidity, are excuses NOT to communicate better with your H and excuses NOT to fully utilize tools that have been recommended to you & that can help you communicate better.

Hanging out on this website talking to well-meaning strangers is only going to get you so far. I didn't even FIND this place until over 7 months after D-Day. My wife & I recovered our marriage, and I recovered my decency & boundaries (although still probably not yet the full requisite humility, LOL!), because we took our MC's advice to heart without question when she told us to work through "Surviving An Affair"; because we were radically honest, because we protected each other emotionally; because I kept to my EPs for the most part, because we POJA'd things; because we made time for one another in our daily lives for undivided attention, because we did the EN questionnaires and discussed our answers with one another and tried to implement changes to make sure needs were clearly expressed, understood and met.

We did all of these things because in the early weeks after D-Day, we both MADE OUSELVES VULNERABLE and admitted needs to one another. (Had I been man enough to admit needs to her before my affair, and even during my affair, while it was still at the emotional-only stage, how much heartache I might've saved!) We made ourselves vulnerable by admitting that we wanted "us" back, and with a goal NOT just of getting things back to the way they'd been pre-A, but rather a goal of making our marriage better than it had been pre-A. Now, over 18 months out, there is still work to do -- I know that I still have work to do -- there will always be work to do -- but it can be done, provided there is a commitment to doing it.

I'm being honest here: I don't hear full-fledged commitment from you. Rather, I hear you waxing & waning, between occasionally mentioning how much you are remorseful & wanting this marriage to work & how your husband's the love of your life, vs. basically tagging your H as an emotional abuser and thus basically making him responsible for where your marriage is now. I'm not saying I have it right, but I'm saying that's what I perceive from the sum vector of your posts.

So you like metaphor? Here's one: In one of our first counseling sessions together, our MC told me to imagine myself hacking through miles of jungle to get to my wife. Even though I couldn't see her, I had to keep hacking. It would take weeks, months, maybe longer for all I knew at the time; and for all I knew, maybe she'd change her mind and not find the ability to forgive me, and maybe she wouldn't be there when I'd hacked to where she was (which would've been her right); but no matter what, from the very start, I had to be committed to seeing it through. The "hacking" wasn't hanging around on the internet waiting for strangers to kick my butt into action. Rather, the "hacking" was the action -- the daily reading, the daily communication, the daily changes, the holding-on through the rough patches of her emotional roller-coaster -- which has mattered.

Saddest, you'd have thought that my wife & I had it all together before my affair. We each graduated 2nd in our respective high school classes. We're good looking. We make good money. We have straight-A, overachieving children who are good looking like their parents. She is an accomplished nurse and hospital unit manager, and I am a former diplomat with a Master's degree and speak a foreign language. All the logic & smarts & worldly wisdom you'd ever want. A textbook marriage to all outside appearances; and it very well could've been one on the inside, too; yet when I let myself get to feeling entitled, none of my smarts mattered; I was so stupid that I almost threw it all away by having my affair. Thank God my wife & I were both smart enough to realize that we weren't smart enough to save & improve our marriage without getting a little illogical & "touchy-feely," without making ourselves vulnerable to one another.

Three days ago, I suggested that you let your H know why you wanted to save this marriage. You replied that he "knows" why. I detect a whiff of evasion there. Have you actually told him? Or are you making an assumption? (My wife & I have found that assumptions are usually the least effective form of spousal communication possible.) If you've told him, you've gotta keep telling him, and follow up the words with actions. You're smart enough to see the logic in that, yes?

I'm curious, what proactive steps are you taking to change yourself, build boundaries, protect your marriage, and make it better? A list of things you are doing would be great, and include as many MB practices as possible.

SW,

I texted her back that uncompromising and rigid honesty in all things is the only acceptable standard, etc. H asked me what I was telling her and I read him my text and starting crying for the first time since all this started, and I couldn't stop. I don't know if that helps him or not.

Yes it will help him long term, I wish my wife could see the effect her affair had on me, but she never broke down or even gave an apology.

I think seeing your daughter repeat your errors is really killing off whatever microscopic life your affair still had, and will allow you to see OM for what is is a remorseless killer of families.

God Bless
Gamma

Great suggestion W/S.

Seems that it may get dimissed as "not logical"

And would make her "squirm"

Now she says she would rather spend time alone. She can obsess easier about the OM by herself. When she has to interact with her BH, it shows how little she has done.

SW: We can all use our own "Down Time". All by ourselves to fix "ourselves". Sounds "Touchy-feely" to me....

I was lucky on Dday. My BW had the next two weeks off work anyway. And I am self-employed, so I had control of my schedule. I doubt that her and I spent more than one hour NOT together during that time.

And here you are stating that he shouldn't be working from home.

Unpack your bags.

Start with that VERY SIMPLE STEP of showing committment to something besides your "feelings".

Don't you think your BH notices that you haven't emptied the suitcase?

I'm glad your here. Your learning. If you think the past two weeks were tough, just wait.

LG