No 2X4 from me!

Recovery is HARD for the very reasons you mention.

There is a push/pull dynamic of your emotions that is hard to describe until you get there yourself.

The love/hate is par for the course.

I'm just sayin' ........

I guess it is reassuring to not be the 1 person who has done this.

Now she is sick, and I have taken care of everything, the kid, her, tbe dog, put everyone to bed, tucked in, water at bedside, soothing musoic, administered meds.

Running to the store for chicken soup for her tommorow.

I am trying to force myself to meet needs.

But I feel like just not stopping at the store, just keep driving till out of gas, then go live alone in the woods with my knives.

Am I supposed to tell her if I am in tbe red?
Am I supposed to say "I love you" back if I don't feel it?
I don't WANT to hurt her, I just don't feel much of anything.
Is there a way to communicate thatg this is tearing my mind apart without it being a love buster?

I keep sayiong "i'd like it if you would protect me from love busters." Or "I'd love it if you would meet this need in this way." I just try to say that. She says "ok," doesn't say she doesn't want to or anything, just ok...

Then doesn't do it...
what else can I do? I am giving about as specific, positive, and persistant feedback as I can. She doesn't ask me any questions, doesn't ask for clarification.

So frustrating

I think right now she just doesn't feel well enough to give more than a one word answer, if you're asking all this while she's sick.

No karma, this is the last 2 weeks. She got sick today...

Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I misunderstood.

Is ok, is morning now.

She is set up with water, puke bucket, noodle soup on counter just needs to be reheated, medications all out and ready to be taken...

This is already exhausting. I am looking forward to work as a break from forcing myself to BE caring. Maybe I dont actually care inside, but I can BE caring. Its just a lot harder when you dont feel it I guess.

So, looking for thoughts on those questions...

1) Do I say "I love you" back when she says it even when I dont feel it?
2) Do I tell her if her Account in my Love Bank is in the red?
3) How do I do this without Love Busters? Mostly on this one, I am finding it difficult to frame a POSITIVE specific "I'd love it if" for it. I can keep saying the "I'd love it if you would meet X need in this way, and I'd love it if you'd protect me from Y Love Buster," I just dont see it doing anything...

MB seems to teach that your spouse loves you (otherwise you wouldnt have gotten married in the first place) and if you learn to communicate your needs without love busters, in positive specific requests, that your spouse will WANT to meet your needs and WANT to protect. For me to say that WW DOESNT want to meet my needs or protect me is a DJ. But to say that she DOESNT meet my needs or protect me is not a DJ, since that is an observation and my subjective opinion on how I feel about her. So, what is supposed to happen when you have communicated your needs without love busters with positive specific requests, and your needs still arent being met?

BT,

I know that just knowing all of us have been in your shoes and that truly only time (and DOING MB) will make it better is a hard thing to just swallow.

And i also know how hard it is to meet needs and everything else you have mentioned when it seems like "they got away scott free and here i am acting like this great spouse and they are just doing the same old things they have always done".

However i also know how i felt at 2 months into recovery and how i feel at 3 years into recovery and they are WAY DIFFERENT.

Part of it i think may be that even though they WS knows they hurt you, i do not think they can not truly fathom the depth of that hurt.

Also i believe we BS now look at everything in our relationship differently which could affect things too. Recovery is HARD, it is very HARD and no one would blame you if you decided you did not want to recover. That choice is up to you only.

Please, please, please consider getting on ADs........

PLAN B. BUT I am NOT suggesting that for you YET. Will you be calling the Harley's again? I think that these feelings you are having is the reason that DrH suggests Plan B during an active affair because of the recovery phase. It takes a lot out of you and your LB$ will take a huge hit. Thing is, that doesn't help you now. So what are you going to do? I would suggest that you read some of the recovered threads on here. Maybe talk to Mr.W about what it was like when he was recovering with Mrs.W.


Answers to your questions,
1. Is this a NEED for her? Does she need you to tell her that you love her? That should be the answer you were looking for.
2. You CAN be honest that you just aren't feeling very hopeful right now and you are frustrated. Just keep it about how you feel NOT about how it is because of mistakes SHE is making.
3. I would probably say this to her, "I feel like we need to POJA some ideas for ways for our ENs to be met more effectively? When would be a good time?"

I know that myself, I am having a hard time trying to figure out HOW I would want my ENs met. It is not something that I had ever thought about before. You KNOW when someone IS meeting them, and you KNOW when they are NOT. That is because of the feelings you have for them. Trying to figure out HOW they met them in the first place, that's what I have a problem figuring out.

Just keep working the plans and reach out for help. Read threads of recovered stories and see what advice could help in your sitch.

You said you have the book "I Promise You," right? Look and that book and see if you can find Dr. Harley's description of the two kinds of love. See if there is one of those kinds of love which is true for you, and if so, then you can truly say it.

If I remember right, the wayward spouse's feelings of withdrawal can last for several months. Something like 6, if I remember right. During that time it's not uncommon for the wayward to be nearly unable to meet the betrayed spouse's needs, unfortunately.

Somebody correct me if I am wrong.

Recovery is WAY harder than Plan A most of the time. In Plan A you set short goals, lower expectation of getting anything in return and just execute a plan one step after the other.

Enter RECOVERY...

Now we have to work through ever detail. We can't relax our doing all the while struggling to get our own needs met which during Plan A were not getting met at all...

And here's the part that makes recovery so blasted hard...

We can't even decide to step away and stop the pain of dealing with it by going into Plan B because we still hurt. There is no Plan B for recovery.

Now if there is some other issue such as physical abuse, drug addiction or something else that is standing in the way of progress, then Plan B comes back into play, but forcing the (F)WS to start engaging in recovery is not one of the things Plan B was designed for.

Recovery pretty much sucks most of the time and early recovery sucks almost all of the time.

But that brings me back to the time factor here...

As time goes on, new patterns of communication get established. New responses to interactions get created. New ways to responding to each other get discovered and each tiny step builds upon the previous ones to make the whole process go more smoothly.

Also keep in mind that once the adrenaline wears off, you are left with no emotional motivation factors that drive you onward as if by some outside force. You have to find motivation within to keep trying when things are not going the way you hoped for.

It's as if the house caught fire in the middle of the night. You fought every obstacle that was presented to overcome the smoke and heat and darkness and you rescued your family. Everyone stands on the front lawn, grateful for the chance to move forward in life. The fire department has put out the fire and the insurance adjuster has made his investigation. You even have the check you need to begin rebuilding in hand.

But you still stand in front of a burned out mess, the smell of ashes, smoke and destruction filling your nostrils with burning pain and grief.

To make matters worse, you both have injuries that have to be healed as the rebuilding begins.

There are three parts to the healing process here. First is that you each have to heal. You have to both work through the emotional wreckage, find what is still usable and what needs to be thrown out and discover new motivations to even get up in the morning. Until withdrawal is complete, your wife will not be even really working on this phase. Sorry to break that to you like that, but it means she will still be trying to minimize what has happened for a while. She's just realizing she is the one who set the fire and she did it on purpose.

The second part is to heal together as a couple. This phase can last longer than the first, but it is now that you begin to come back together and sooth each other's wounds, show care for each other and begin to seek each other out for comfort.

The third phase is working to build a new and better marriage. It is NOW that you start tweaking and sharing goals, ENs and fine tuning the relationship to mold it into one that can make both of you happy. Unfortunately, you can't bypass any steps or move on to the next before the previous is complete.

In context of the burned out house analogy, recovery begins with each getting checked out at the hospital and resting and recovering from the ordeal and giving time to your body to recover from the injuries you got when escaping the fire.

The second phase will be as you pick through the rubble, examining each piece of the relationship to see what still works and what needs to be eliminated. You will only be able to really start this process once you are both able to work on it and though you are both willing, only after you have each healed enough to tackle the hard stuff will you reach the second phase.

The third phase in the analogy comes when you start building the new house. You might need an architect along the way (Jennifer) and you need to decide on what will go into the new house (ENs, LBs, habits, likes, dislikes...)and you need to be sure the foundation is sufficient to hold up the load of what you are building (Understanding the LB$ model, making it part of you, learning to meet ENs and avoid Love Busters etc.)

Even when all of these pieces have fallen into place, you aren't ready to move into the new house because you still have to do the work to build it. And even once you live there, the work doesn't stop since you have to keep up the house or it will fall into disrepair and be another fire waiting to happen.

Three phases...

* Personal and individual healing
* Healing together as a couple
* Negotiating a new and better relationship

And then the hard work of making it reality begins.

Mark

Wow Mark, that was an EXCELLENT analogy and so very true!

Thank you mark.

As always, a genuine pleasure to read your posts...

For the question of will we be talking to Harleys again:

we have had an appointment almost every week since the first one on June 1st. We are giving the wait 2 weeks a try now, see how it works.

Its expensive, but the marriage I want, and the possibility of having it with my first true love and the mother of my children, is worth it.

So I suppose if I am willing to shell out the cash I better be able to follow through on directions...

time to pick myself up again.

Pray for me I guess.

I have blasphemed and cursed god (and still purposefully neglect to add the respect of capitalizing it) but who knows. I am almost willing to take whatever I can get at this point...

I dont know why today was any better...

but I feel like I WANTED to try harder today, and while we both have messed up a couple times, I feel like we BOTH wanted to try hard, and we BOTH believe that the other is trying and are willing to go that extra inch to stop LBing and such.

She really has it made.

She can deposit love so fast with me with such easy things.

Once the sieve is plugged and LBs are gone, should be easy street.

Gotta keep at it I guess... doing the daily review sheets and following the plan...

hey, BT! I am new here. Took me a few days, but have made it through your thread thus far. Way to go!! You give me hope. I am praying for you and WW, that you can make it through.

Maybe she is coming out of withdrawal, maybe you just needed to hear from those of us that have been there, maybe asking us to pray for you, maybe it was just a good day.

No matter the reason you need those "Little Victories" (as Mark calls them) along the way, that does give you incentive and encouragement to keep going.

I am glad you had a good day and there will be more to come i am sure!!!!

BT,

It has been likened to a roller coaster because of the ups and downs, sometimes daily and sometimes even on a shorter cycle. Trust me; it gets better.

Eventually you go a whole day without a meltdown and then a day and a half and then two. Before long you string together the better part of a week and pretty soon you realize you have been making steady progress for almost a month without any gigantic falls backward.

Then one day, completely out of nowhere you find yourself sad, depressed, fearful...

And it too passes and you are back up the hill and moving forward again.

Just wait till you guys begin talking about your concerns for the marriages of your friends...

You see, this stuff doesn't just change your marriage, it changes how you think about marriage and relationships. It changes YOU...

Mark

Yeah Mark, we already talk about that. The friends.

Jennifer said it well, "Most marriages out there arent healthy."

Sad but true.

There really are vey few examples of what a good, strong, healthy marriage is like...

Went out shopping today. Had a nasty trigger that left me throwing up watermelon in the grocery store bathroom, love busted eachother the whole way home, she chose to take the way home that drives right by the first place they met for sex, cried rest of the way home.

Then I did one nice thing for her and apologized for love busting.

I feel a lot better.

Wish she would apologize and mostly wish she would stop defending OM. Its like when she defends him and says he's not so bad that she is also saying she doesn't think what they did was so bad.

Still trying to be happy...

BT,

Not sure if you want to hear from me at this point, but anyway, I was laughing at the watermelon bit. I absolutely tho can understand and I feel what may have happened.

In all seriousness, did she understand about the trigger or why you became sick and was she concerned?

I think you have to tell her tonight about how you felt, what happened and what instigated your throwing up. There was a reason, and she should at the very least recognize that she caused you discomfort.

The LB'ing on the way home tells me that neither you nor her are as close as you may think in saving your marriage. I suspect that most W's in the real world would want to know why their H's do not feel well and would try to comfort and encourage them.

You need to sit down tonight with this woman and tell her honestly your feelings as to your reaction and the LB's. There is no other way to do this, despite MB, execpt to invoke your marital accord.

I could tell you more but that is enought for now and just to let you at ease, I have that thing of acid reflex so I have a few time responded like you did too. Yea embarassing but my wife was kind enough to at least show her concern and get me to a dr.


Bt, good luck and you Will have my prayers tonight.

Tom