Ok, Mel, I'll chalk that up to a bad decision and let her back in bed.

We sat and talked to a little while today. She enrolled in counseling and starts on Wednesday. I was here when she was on the phone with the counselor. I know you said marriage counselors will drive her away, but at this point she is already determined to go. Still trying to get something set up over the phone through this site.

During our conversation today she told me a lot of the same she has been telling me... I loved you for the wrong reasons, I don't love you anymore, disagreeing to a divorce will only hurt our children more, etc. I kept calmly telling her that I want to keep our family together and for us to try to work on our marriage. I said to her again that I won't give into her requests for a divorce. She said even if we get back to where we were before she still wouldn't want to be here which makes absolutely no sense to me. How could you not want to be in a place where your family is happy.

In one of her chats with a friend of her's today asking how she was doing she replied angry and frustrated.

I have spent the better part of the afternoon researching dirt on the OM, but have not been able to turn up anything as of yet on whether or not he still married or divorced. Records only say he and another woman filed for a marriage license. Under divorce it says no records. While it is easy to believe that must mean he's married. There's something suspicious about addresses of the two individuals now being in FL and AR, which leads me to believe they are divorced, just can't prove it. I hope like hell they are still married. What fun that would be!

If SHE won't fill out the EN questionnaire, YOU fill it out (alone) for her and try and guess what her top needs are based on some of the things she's been telling you. She may not respond, probably won't, but you keep going... UNLESS something you're doing is making her angry, then it turns into a LoveBuster (LB) (except for snooping and exposure), and then you stop whatever it is you're doing that is making her angry.

oh boy. This is not good. An IC does not understand how fogged out an affairee is and helps them make permanent decisions based on very foggy, temporary feelings.


This is straight out of the wayward textbook. It means nothing. She is high on the addiction of an affair and is rewriting history to justify her affair. Do not pay any attention to any of this!! Surely you see how insane her comments are: "disagreeing to a divorce will only hurt our children more.." As if divorce is good for your kids! Surely you can see how insane her narrative is?


Good! You are wrecking her fantasy very effectively!


Can you get a home phone # on him? If you can, you might call it and disguise your # using *67 and see if a woman answers or is on the machine.

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Just be clear, that you want to save the marriage, but if she doesn't want to she is free to go. However, since the children came from the marriage and she wants to abandon the marriage, the position you are taking is she is choosing to abandon EVERYTHING associated with the marriage. So if she is trying to take the children as primary custodian, she is not being consistent with her view on leaving the marriage.

You are not forcing her to stay, but her choice to leave has a very high cost.

She is free to go, you cannot fight her on that. But if she wants to take parts of the marriage with her, then she is not being consistent, and you will fight to keep the children in a pro-family, pro-marriage environment.

You are willing to address any concerns or complaints. However, if she simply wants to leave, the door is open. However, that opening is only large enough for her and her suitcase and perhaps a set of car keys if she owns the car outright.

But should she leave, you are taking this as she is abandoning the marriage and all marital property and the children produced from the marriage.

As much as she would like to spin it as you are holding her against her will, explain that she is the one who wants to leave the marriage, and that she is free to leave the marriage. But the marriage to you means she is not just leaving you, but the children and the assets.

Make it clear how you define the marriage, what she is doing, and the cost to do what she wants to do. It costs her everything to leave.

That's the only way to pause this. Make sure your attorney has the information you've already gathered. Should she attempt to get a restraining order, you may not be able to process that information if you are kicked out of your home. I'd protect myself with a recorder carried on person, so you can document any verbal exchanges, but try to do as much as possible via e-mail. Especially the parts about your view on what she is doing. By documenting that you are not holding her against her will, and that what she wants is to essentially abandon the marriage may protect you should she try legal action against you.

As one who let my XW take my child with her, I cannot stress what a mistake that was. Listen to me. You need to not only stay in the marital home (which I did) but not allow your WW to take the children out of that home for more than just weekend visits. I would not allow her to ever take them out of the marital home until there was a temporary custody agreement, and that it was only for every other weekend.

Again, stressing that if she feels trapped or that she made a mistake, the cell door is open, she can leave. She simply cannot just take the kids because she felt she made a mistake. The kids need a stable environment, and remaining in the marital home with you is a more stable environment than following her during her affair fantasy.

I agree...we went to MC and NOTHING he said could help, want to know why? Because I LIED TO OUR MC!

Your wife will lye to her IC and manipulate him so he would say "your right, you should leave this guy!"

Sorry

Ok, so a mutual friend of ours today told me and WW that since we are getting nowhere by continuing to live together, that maybe she should move out without the kids for awhile to see exactly what it would be like if she continued down this road. She recommended WW get an evening job so I could have the kids when I get home and she is working and she could see them during the day while I was at work. Though she would have to come to our home to see them.

Thought here is to allow her to experience a little bit of life outside the home and being away from her children.

I am not saying I'm for this, I'm throwing it out there to check your thoughts and recommendations on this.

Too easy. She can move out and have the children Every Other Weekend if she no longer wants the marriage.

You have to make it as difficult as possible for her to get her way.

If your objective is to have a "nice divorce" then follow the plan your mutual friend suggested. If you want to wreck the affair and build a marriage, then you have to make the costs of continuing the affair very high for her.

Here are my thoughts....

You are in plan A correct? If so then I would not have your wife leave the home, she will find out exactly what she will miss once you get into plan B, so although your friends advice is very tempting do not go there until you are ready for plan B.

Your friend just offered a place for your wife, so when you are ready you can go to her and see if her offer still stands? Until then KEEP DOING PLAN A, and work your @$$ off doing it.

Good luck

Completely bad idea that will only increase the odds of divorce since you aren't together. It will also give your WW a chance to pursue her affair.

Ok thanks for the thoughts. I will not discuss this with her.

Steve, separation will be your last resort, not your first resort. It may come to pass in the future, but there is way too much opportunity to try first.

I predict this affair [along with her desire to separate] will quickly evaporate when reality sets in. There are way too many logistical problems here. First off, the OM is not going to want to support your wife and she cant support herself. Secondly, your wife knows you will not cooperate, so that adds an insurmountable problem.

If you can get her on the phone with Steve Harley, he will tell her that the BEST solution is to be in love with her husband. He will try and sell her on the logic of that plan while he emphasizes the impossibility of a future with the OM.

Really? How many marriages has your mutual friend saved from adultery? Steve Harvey has saved marriages. You are good to have the appointment with him. Ignore your mutual friends. They mean well, but if they want to help, they should be enlisted to talk to your WW about ending her affair with a man in another state whom she knows virtually nothing about. This will be covered in Exposure 101.

Enlightened has excellent words for you; you are getting good free advice here. Different sitch, but I got some of the same advice; for one reason or another wasn't able to follow it all. And guess what? - my D will be final in 31 days.

I agree with the others. Vehemently. Her IC will fill her with even more of a sense of entitlement. You might not be able to stop her from going, but don't pay the co-pay. Offer to get her counseling with someone "who has had a lot of success with this type of thing" - tell her she doesn't have to commit to anything, but it would be worth it just to "look into the possibility." [I'll get my friend Limbo to help out here - he's been working on getting his WW to partake in some MB counseling]

Side note: I went to MC with WW (stbx) for months before I found this site. The affair was thriving until I was advised to expose. I didn't do it perfectly, but I sure as he11 did a better job killing the affair than "M"C did. These people simply don't understand that you have to take the crack pipe away from the addict before any progress can be made in stopping the addiction. They just don't get it. They'd rather look at the root cause of becoming addicted/wayward/whatever and it doesn't work.

Steve, I know there's so much info coming in. Do your best to process it and act accordingly. This is not going to be fixed overnight. It took you years to get here to this wretched place, be patient and start laying down foundation for what will be a beautiful wonderful marriage in a year or two with a couple of fantastic little kids. That reminds me: your WW doesn't think it's possible for you to ever reconcile or to get back to a place of being in love. (right?). So point out that the day you got married, she never dreamed it was possible that you would be thinking of divorce either. See the logic? So any thing's possible. I got this directly from Steve H when I was in my plan A.


Okay, I've been here almost a year and I've never given a 2x4. (that's when we beat someone over the head for stepping out of line). So here goes:

Didn't I tell you not to listen to this non-sense?
Seriously, you're doing well not to give into it, and pushing back with "I'm fighting for our marriage, that's what helps kids, divorce doesn't help kids" type stuff is really great. I found it exceedingly difficult not to listen to my ww (stbx)'s rationalizations of everything. She's very intelligent. But all the smarts are put toward saving their addiction to the fantasy ~ and they wind up doing and saying the stupidist things in the world.

Keep listening to Mel and the others. I can promise you your efforts will pay off one way or another. And don't forget to eat once in a while.

~opt

Thanks for the good advice, please keep it coming. Last night my WW grabbed a couple of pillows preparing to sleep on the couch again. I told her kindly that she didn't have to sleep on the couch, and that I really would like her to come back to sleep in our bed. And she did, but like everything else we don't talk and if I try to initiate conversation she is short with me, but not disrespectful. I can tell by her response and her tone that she is frustrated with me right now and would prefer just not to communicate with me. How very frustrating when you are trying to save a marriage. But I take a deep breath or two, or ten, whatever it takes and I keep on moving forward keeping as much of a positive mind and outlook as I can.

We took our DD to her first day of kindergarten today. Our little girl is growing up. Glad I could be home to experience it with my wife.

When we go home, I checked the mail and His Needs, Her Needs was sitting there waiting for me. I opened up and am already into chapter 2. Without much to do today, I suspect I'll get a good portion of it read today... Love Busters and Surviving An Affair should be here tomorrow. I am sure my wife won't read them, but I'll leave them out in plain view... maybe she'll get curious.

I guess one other concern I have is that I have been spending a lot of time on this computer lately, and rightfully so I suppose. Gathering as much information from this website and reading all of the information contained here and the great advice I have been receiving from you all. My concern is that I feel that I am not paying enough attention to my WW while spending all this time on the computer. Not sure how it makes her feel, but I imagine she is curious as to what I am doing on here.

Well, back to the book for now.

And it starts again... remember in her last e-mail to OM she ended with goodbye again. And that was yesterday.

Here is this morning's e-mail to him:

"I thought the first day of kindergarten would be easier since she already went to pre-k. Not so much."

I went with her to take our DD to her first day of school, and I asked her how it made her feel, and got nothing in reply. So she runs to OM to express her feelings. This is really frustrating.

I'm not surprised. Just keep up the good work and keep watching.

Anything new on the OM's marital status? Did you see my post about calling his home #, disguising your # with *67 to see who is on the voice mail?

I know this is tough. You are doing good, though - keep it up. Asking her to sleep in your bed was a good move. Keep asking the questions, keep trying to engage her. She may not respond and she may seem cold, but it's hard to stay cold at someone who is warm, welcoming and loving. You will start to wear her down.

You may also expect some anger from her. She wont like you being nice to her - it makes it difficult for her to daemonize you in her mind and justify what she is doing. It will create conflict within her. Recognize it for what it is - her fighting with herself. Her anger will reflect that you're making an impact.

Keep researching, and keep plan Aing - Meet as many of her needs as you can.

She keeps saying goodbye - but you must realize, she is an addict. Every time she talks to OM chemicals are released in her brain, giving the satisfaction of another 'high'. She is no different than a crack addict. She is physically UNABLE to break contact. You gotta make the stakes of continuing contact so high that she has no other choice.

Keep it up - get smart about this. It's great that you got the books, they will open up your eyes.

Also - turn off the computer when your wife is around. Try to focus on her. Also, being on the computer might make her curious as to what you're doing - you DON'T want her to find this place. So when you can, and when she is around - be PRESENT with her.

Yeah, plan A is frusterating. To help preleive yourself from this frusteration you have to get rid of any expectations a normal loving DW would do. Expecting her to tell you how she feels about DD first day of kindergarten? Forget about it. Even if she does answer with how she feels they will be lies targeted at you.

However, this does not mean you should stop trying to get her to talk about her feelings. That is why plan A is frusterating. you gotta try to be the best husband and have no expectations that a normal DW would do.

Another thing I would do to get over the frusteration was forcing myself to think and act positively. I would get up each day and tell myself an affirmation like: "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and dog gonnit people like me." This really helped me out. Even though it was way hard at the time I tried to change my mindset.

One more thing that helps is to vent the problems here, and with some guy friends of yours that do not know your wife very well.

I told you don't believe them saying "goodbyes" just keep going in plan A. Just remember that YOU have a plan and she doesn't she is only going with the flow of her emotions and we all know that will end up a train wreck

Mel, looks like his most recent address listing shows up with no phone number, and the one prior to that is his Sister's house only 3 blocks away. This is a very small town that OM lives in.

Not sure how to pin him down if I can't locate a home number for him. I understand what you want me to though with that information. I just can't seem to find it.

Ok, need help here... latest e-mail to OM...

I'm doing ok. I'm actually looking for a lawyer at the moment, and I really don't know how to go about this. I guess you file for divorce in the county that you live in? I don't really know, so right now I'm just making a long list from another much longer list and then I'll call some people.