And be prepared for your own answers to change. As the fog lifts and dissipates, your own view of events is going to change.

I experienced this with FWW.

I suggest you look at some of the fogbabble, or threads about what waywards say. There is honesty, and there is temporal honesty. What you may see as truth now, may not be truth in a month, in two months, in three months.

Examine some fogbabble statements, see if you "feel" that way, and ask yourself why. Apply MB principals, and see if that still makes sense.

Well, a bit has happened.

OM had called my office again and I let the voice mail pick it up. I called BH and told him. I deleted the voice mail without listening and BH called OM to ask him to please stop calling me. OM then texted my phone (which BH had) to tell him the only reason he was calling was to ask if I was quitting. If I didn't quit, he would. BH replied that I had no plans to quit.

OMW emailed BH that OM had informed her that he tried to contact me in the morning. I guess having BH call him back did the trick and got him to be honest with OMW. I felt like crap ignoring his calls, but I know I can't be there for him anymore.

BH and OMW have been talking a bit and BH is unsure whether he should be making me aware of their conversations or letting me read them. I don't know either. I am curious, but I also think it may violate NC. Suggestions?

OM was in the office last night and left some things on my desk - some pictures of my kids I had given him and a little note saying "Good Luck". I told BH about this.

I feel like I am getting away with less upheaval in my life than OM and OMW and I feel really bad for them. I know I need to focus on my own marriage, but even BH admits that it is hard to stop caring about what happens to them.

Having BH call OM felt really good to me and I have to admit it sparked a bit of attraction (which I thought was DEAD!). I have told BH how it made me feel (hoping he can repeat this kind of protective/sexy behaviour).

BH has complete access to my email and my phone. I will look for other areas to be transparent too. The less temptation and opportunity, the better. I have been trying to tell him how I am feeling - and I'm doing ok at that. Need to get better though.

Yesterday was a busy and anxious day. Today feels quieter and sadder. I know withdrawal will hit me in weird ways. Just need to keep BH informed and work through it.

*sigh*

Their conversations should not include you. That would be a form of contact. They also should not spend a lot of time establishing a relationship with each other. They are vulnerable to having their own affair with each other. What starts out as comparing notes leads to commiserating and possibly bonding. Their conversations need to be brief and related strictly to communicating evidence of either of you breaking NC.

I hope the OM quits. His BW is probably pushing for NC on her end.

You are doing GREAT!! And please give your H a BIG TEXAS HUG from me for manning up and defending his marriage!! He did a superb job of contacting the OM and should continue to contact him EVERY TIME he tries to contact you. All hell should break loose for the OM every time that happens. His wife should be notified and he should be called and warned off.

Please show this to your H and have him send this to the loserOM:

I hope all you other betrayed husbands are reading this!!!

I feel the same way, Athena. I love, love, love when my husband protects me. It's such a comforting feeling and draws me closer to him.

He thought it was funny and said he liked that movie, Tombstone.

Thanks!

athena,

I apologize I have not read your entire thread but parts of it. One statement you made really struck me as I am sure it did others. YOu said when you first started posting: Now I am not sure how long you have been married, but a 10 year long EA has basically doomed your feelings for your H from the start. Your marriage has been a lie since before your children were born. You have lied to your H, and that means he has had no clue how to meet your needs and further probably got negative feedback.

You mentioned that it felt good for your H to stick for you and the marriage, has it occured to you that he would have earlier if he had known what you wanted/needed and what you were doing?

Has it occured to you yet, it may not until withdrawal is finished, that he is sticking up for you, his children, and this marriage in the face of a 10 year affair? Athena, in my book that takes guts. Lots of guts.

You seem to have found a man of surprising strenght and commitment. I know right now your focus is on OM and his troubles, but as you go through withdrawal, you are going to see your H has it much worse in dealing with what you have done.

My guess? You two can make this marriage something special. your H seems to have the guts to stick it out and try and he seems to have the love for you to endure recovery. The question remains if you have the strength to carry your part of the load as recovery starts. By the way it won't start until all contact with OM is severed and you have gone through withdrawal.

Hang in there.

JL

That is your husband!!

Well, I am very proud to announce that BH has joined up - he is Helo. He has started his own thread in this forum, which I think I need to stay out of, right?

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2445830

Anyway, I think it is good timing as today was a rough day and I find myself in a very sad mood. There is guilt about OM and some longing for him - I know this is bad, but I can't shake it right now. I am trying to be positive about the work we've already done, but I found myself getting weepy on the way home from work today. I thought I saw OM's car a bunch of times and my heart leapt, then I felt sick.

I will talk to BH about it tonight as he needs to know what I am feeling. I don't think I'm sliding all the way back, but I definately feel some angst and fogginess again. It feels different now though - before I didn't talk to him about it much and now I know I can/should, so it doesn't seem as lonely.

However, the fogginess says that he won't "get it" and I will be left wanting support that he doesn't know how to give. It's not just meeting the need, it's meeting the need "how" I want it met. I'm not a very patient person and I'm sure the recovery process will require lots of it. I think it is time to start reading the books together and see if that helps.

ABSOLUTELY read SAA First and start to follow the steps outlined for recovery. You know, the part you didn't want to read before.

Also, have you thought about getting on any ADs? It may help you with the withdrawal symptoms.

Athena, the most important thing you can do right now to cause you to fall in love the FASTEST is to sit down tonight and schedule out 30 hours per week of undivided attention time together - without kids and without TV or friends. Go line up baby sitters and start planning dates. Sit down together and make up a schedule that looks like this:

DATE TIME ACTIVITY TOTAL

11-24-10 6-8 dinner at applebees 2
11-25-10 thanksgiving 0
11-26-10 11-5 lunch, museum 6
11-27-10 1-4 drive through country - hotel 3

You get the idea, schedule this until you have 30 hours planned for the week. STICK TO THIS SCHEDULE. This time should be spent meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. The more sex you have, the more bonded you will feel.

This will be AMAZINGLY effective in helping you fall in love again.

This should be implemented ASAP. Go sit down with Helo and plan this out and start lining up babysitters.

Athena, the sooner you start this new habit of spending time with your H and falling in love with him, the faster you will forget the loserOM.

Athena,

PLEASE read, read again and read again! This is the absolute truth. This made so much of a difference between my FWW and I it was unbelievable! ML really knows what she is talking about.

Good Luck and HAVE SOME FUN too!

Zeke351

You got me! I don't think I was ready to move on in the book until I had accepted NC. Now, I finally read the chapter on "Rule of Protection" and the beginning of "Rule of Care".

I think we are good on the protection stuff. Unless I am in a b*tchy mood, we rarely exhibit love busters. My worst is AO and his are DJ.

HOWEVER, I noticed right away that we exhibit a lot of the love busters with the kids. That is not cool. I think we need to factor in some time to start working out how to fix our relationships with them too. I found a book called "The 5 Love Languages for Children" and will give that a read. Dealing with the kids some days exhausts us because we have (no surprise) taught them to be disrespectful to us. And I know it makes BH less attractive to me when I see him lose his patience with one of the kids.

Then, I went through the needs and made my list. It made a lot of sense:
1 - conversation
2 - family committment
3 - physical attractiveness
4 - sexual fulfillment
5 - affection

I found it tough at first because I wanted to think of OM as I determined what needs I had. I had some trouble putting BH as the one meeting these needs. But the explanations in Appendix A of the book were so clear and after the first read I had already picked my top 5, just needed to put them in order.

I guess the next step is the Emotional Needs Questionnaire to see how BH currently stands in meeting my needs. I gave him the same homework and we'll review it together tomorrow night.

Babysitters are hard for us to come by. And with the kids having busy sport schedules that drag us in different directions some nights, we barely get 1-2 hours a night after we finally wrestle the kids into bed. And those 1-2 hours come at expense of much-needed sleep.



Good call, but I am already on antidepressants. In a positive interaction with a counsellor early this year, she was able to diagnose me and suggest I get a prexcription from my family doctor. Leading a double-life was taking a toll on me mentally and emotionally to the point where I was having very dark thoughts. AD seriously saved me and I will be taking them until our recovery is well underway. They didn't leave me loopy or make me feel numb, but they did an amazing job of getting rid of the anxiety that the A would bring on. I had lost my ability to cope with the little things and when you are hiding everything, there are a lot of little lies to manage in addition to the every day details of a regular life.

Best part is that I'm not so foggy after doing my homework for the night. This is actually helping Yay!

So, I have to admit that after actually reading the Emotional Needs questionnaire, I see that DrH actually does address the quality and not just the quantity of meeting the need. It helps to actually READ the book and not assume it doesn't do me any good. Yeesh.

Who watched your kids while you were spending time with the OM? Your BH?

Find a sitter. Make that a new priority. Create a new life around that......your kids being cared for while you and your H care for each other.

Athena,

I don't usually offer this thread to someone so new and just out of the affair and into no contact. Sometimes I do to the BS. But, somehow when reading your thread I seemed to feel that perhaps you would benefit from knowing what a timeline from an another Ws was.

I sure others will tell you and continue to tell you that your withdrawal and recovery will not happen overnight. But, in a few months you are going to feel better but there will be ups and downs (the rollercoaster). Given that your affair was almost as long as your marriage, things will probably take longer than normal.

But, in any case here is a time line from SKM. One of my favorites from years gone by. SKM's Chronicles

God Bless,

JL

This worries me, Athena. You're just starting NC, still in the withdrawal phase where a WS can be wistful for for OM's attention, and yet it seems that this forum could be a platform for communication for you & OM, even if you don't intend that at this moment. I might suggest that in your case, you may wish to consider getting a new posting name chosen by your husband, and eliminating some personal details from your sig line, so that your BH (whose feelings need to be paramount now) can have confidence that there is no surreptitious communication between you & OM on these boards.