travler. I really don't know if your wife is in an affair or not. I wondered why after 20 years she is suddenly standing up to you and saying that she can't stand the sight of you. Why this after 20 years? This is often the sign of an affair.

If there is an affair, then we first need to kill it before anything else.

If no affair, then great. MB can show you how to make her feel safe again and how to restore romantic love back into your marriage. The groundwork of MB.

Here is a link to article #1 on forgiving and forgetting:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5042_qa.html

Wow... the out pouring of support and insight from you guys is awesome. Thank you.
Again and Again the question comes up of if she is having an affair and have I investigated. How does that go along with trust? Should I trust that she is not, or is that just being naive? And how would I investigate without making her feel that I do not trust her?
Thank you for the suggestions on how to win her back too. Unfortunatly, at this moment she has left home and I do not have the opportunity to take her out, talk to her, ect. I did send flowers today though.. (thanks for that suggestion).. Trying to reach out and let her know that I do still love her and I want to work on our marriage. We have only talked three times since she left a week ago. First time was a bit heated, second was a little better, (I appoligized for the A), third time we both seemed that we realized we needed alot of work, but in kind of a stand offish way.
Today will be my first day of professiional counsel. (wish me luck) I've never had formal counsel like this and I'm not totally sure what to expect, but hey... I'm trying.
Thanks again for all the support. Hopefully at some point I can get her to MB and we can both start on the road to recovery.

trvler. In my honest opinion, women do not suddenly just pick up and leave unless they have something to leave for. I wonder if she will now suddenly have a new boyfriend "that she just met" now that you are are separated.

trvler, You can see that there is a wealth of people with experience here, giving advice.

Trust is earned, and just like you probably never earned it back from her, as you swept it all under the rug years ago,(and she buried the pain), the chickens have come home to roost.

So am I blaming you for poor recovery? No, but now that you have this oportunity and am informed of the right way to recover, I am holding you accountable for it.

So the last 20 years you have been blind, will you now choose to see? Will your eyes be opened? Its never to late,(As Jesse said, which is a great post BTW Jess, full of insight and good advise). I would read that post a few times trvler.

So on the issue of trust, you should never trust that emotional needs don't get filled somehow, and that making "sacrifices" in your relationship time together, isn't a form of death.

As long as she is alive, her Ens will be also, and she will find a way to have them filled. Just because she doesn't know them, does not mean they don't exist. Just like you can say you don't believe in God, does not mean He doesn't exist, and he believes in you, and wants the best for you.

People grow apart, and they continue to grow towards something, becuase they are apart. Its plain science, common horse sense, life is for learning, and sharing it with someone as we navigate our thoughts and feelings through this journey, is what marriage is all about. Marriage is Gods institution, and everything on this site lines up with what he designed us to be to each other in marrige.

So looking for an affair, silently snooping, is just something you should do in secret, because those feelings went somewhere, and possiblt outside the marriage, which she might have felt was disapointing, and you have to make sure she is not finding other places to get them filled.

To ask her WOULD be insulting, as she might have stayed faithful all these years, and if an affair is going on, might cement the idea that you never really cared, and were all about ownership all along.

You have got to admit, that played a big part of the work ethic.

So now you need to learn how to love, and I hope you embrace it, it is time, and God knows your marriage has sacrificed enough for it.

traveler,

I think that your wife wants you to fight for her, and for your marriage.

She wants to see you doing some heavy lifting in the relationship, and my guess is that she feels as though she has been doing all the work in the marriage. She probably sees things from her side like she has tried to get you to understand that she has tried to get you to "listen" to her, to "romance" her, to "pay attention" to her, to do things with her that she is interested in, and to just "be with her" sometimes. You probably did for a little bit, then went back to the same-old, same-old, once she got over her deal (and in your mind, you never figured out exactly what her deal really was about!). This kind of came and went over the years, and you didn't necessarily attribute the problems to the affair, but kind of to things being basically "her" nagging ways, or "her personality", or her ideas of what "women" want in a marriage. You probably saw things come and go, and she would give up on them.

You didn't really think about it much. You fought about the same things time after time, and you kind of expected the same cycles after awhile.


Only now, she wants solutions.


She is finished. What has happened? Something has tipped the scale. She has either met someone who made her think that the grass actually COULD be greener - which forced her to tell you that you had better fix it or else she will leave - or she has seen/read something that has made her believe that the time is NOW for her to make the change in her marriage.


Either way, YOU HAVE TO DO THE WORK.

1. Snoop to see if you have a potential affair to deal with. That adds something to your job, and you have more steps to do.

2. Call the Harleys. Get an appointment, tell your wife you have an appointment, and tell her you have found a center that offers a PLAN to get the marriage on track. Tell her that you are going to fight for the marriage, learn the methods, and when you are ready, you will get her into the mix and onto the team with you. That gives you a chance for independent work with the Harleys first, so you can get some professional advice first, so you know exactly what you need to do to get this thing going. After 20 years, you need some details ironed out.

3. Put your apology to your wife in writing. Let us read what you are thinking of sending her, so we can help you fix it - there are lots of good editors here, and they will weigh in on it and help you get it straight and make it good!

4. Learn about meeting your wife's Emotional Needs. Fill out the EN Questionnaire on this website, and pretend that you are your wife. Figure out what her EN's are, and do your best to meet them as best you can. Using those, figure out what went wrong in your marriage, where you fell down as a husband. It will tell you exactly what your wife means when she says, "I need to see some changes."

That should get you started.

Get to work.

almost forgot:

5. If you haven't already told your wife all of the details about your affair - write them down and tell her everything. Do not hold back a single detail. You cannot go forward without this.

SB

traveler, I would strongly suggest you hire a PI to see what she is doing. You can't save this marriage if you don't know what is going on. I have a feeling that she is probably in an affair and your staying home now has interfered, which would explain her sudden move. It is not a good idea to blindly trust; that is bad for marriages.


What kind of counseling?

Schoolbus... you hit the nail right on the head. Reading the first part of your reply made me think my wife was writing to me.
Yes, its time for me to act. I have apoligized to her for the affair... only it was over the phone and not in writing. As for details of the affair. She said she has already forgot the womans name. (not sure if that is true or not).. so I'm not really inclined to tell her all the details. After 20 years I don't think I could remember them all either. I guess I feel that would bring back toooo many bad memories for her and for me.
Like you said, she wants me to change. She wants basically everything you mentioned. I feel like such a scum bag for not trying to fix this earlier.
I did start my first counseling session yesterday(individual counseling). Took basically the entire hour to explain the situation, so not a whole lot of progress was made there. As for calling Mr Harley.. at $225 an hour, there is no way I can afford that. The session I went to was paid for by my employer. I have also contacted a pastor that she wanted to use as a marriage counselor. I am going to meet with him too.
This is very difficult to get thru. The Wife is not at home now, she left for a couple of weeks. And our phone conversations don't seem to make a lot of progress before we both get upset and then it just falls apart and we hang up before we start fighting again. Try as I may, I end up saying the wrong thing and the conversation takes a nose dive.
As far as snooping goes, not sure on that one. I have asked if she was seeing someone or in a cyber relationship, but she denies it. She claims that there is no one else and she wants us to work things out. That part might remain a mystery for a while.

Can you communicate through emails or notes to ask your questions and ask what it would take to rebuild so the fights don't happen.......

travler,

You are not inclined to tell her the details of the affair.

So you are saying you are inclined to go forward without having an open and honest relationship.

Willing to sweep the problem under the rug

AGAIN.


That is the issue, traveler.

You cannot "move on" unless you fix what broke in the first place.

Start THERE.

Write a letter that starts right there - with an apology in writing, and honestly tell her that you don't remember the details because it was long ago. Then, tell her what you do remember. Tell her what you remember about how STUPID you were, how you felt about hurting her, how you have carried that with you and how you now realize that your marriage has suffered because you two never repaired it correctly way back then.

Take 100% of the responsibility for the affair.
Do NOT blame your wife for any of it. Not one thing related to the affair was your wife's fault.

All along, when it comes to the affair, the conversations have likely linked your unhappiness at home, or your wife's behavior, or something else for your affair - and this is all just not true. What your affair was about was one thing:

YOU.

So let's start there and get you figured out about the affair. Let's start with the apology to your wife, taking 100% of the blame for the affair, and with YOU understanding that this mess your marriage is in is because the affair and your marital problems are intertwined.

Your marriage never healed from the affair.

Letter number one: Apology. Keep it very simple. Tell her what happened. Details you remember, the truth - all of it - and you take the entire blame for your mess.

then tell her you are figuring out the plan to recover the LOVE you know is still there between you two



If you two talk on the phone....

YOU need to LISTEN to her. Give her credit for knowing her own mind, and her own feelings.

Understand that YOU have failed in meeting her needs. LISTEN to what she says,

do NOT disagree with her.

Instead, when she says something you WANT to disagree with, SHUT UP instead. Hold your tongue for 15 seconds.

Let her fill in that silence.

Hear her out.

Then, tell her that you need to think about what she is saying, because you have


"FAILED TO LISTEN IN THE PAST"

and you need to hear her, and that takes time.


Write down what she has said when you hang up.


Then, come and post it here. We can help you understand what she needs, and how you can help meet her needs.


SB

Well... I wrote her a letter of apology. Claimed all responsibility for what is wrong in our marriage. Apparently there is much much more going on than my affair 20 years ago. I close friend of mine kept telling me that my wife was a manipulater. Darn if that friend wasn't right. I have looked online, and every test I take and every post I read tells me that I am married to a maniupulater. Everthing is my fault, she tells me something and someone else something different. She tells me things about how my kids feel that isnt true. She claims she told me one thing when in reality she told me something else. Now she claims to be close to a mental breakdown, but yet she refused to get ANY kind of counseling. I have started to take back over the household finances, which I should have done along time ago, and now she is paniced about it. She brings no income to the marriage and hasn't in the past 25 years. But she still wants to be in control of the money. A few things have already surfaced that she did not tell me about as far a finace goes.. now I am finding myself not beliving what she is telling me... Im just dazed and confused at this point.

You need to get your wife's computer. Install a key logger on it, or if you can just get it and take over custody of it for some reason, it can reveal a lot of information for you.

Do not shift over the blame to your wife. TWO people are in your marriage, and if you failed to recognize what was happening right there in your home, you have responsibility for failure to participate in your own relationship.

OWN IT.


Also, just because your wife has not worked "outside" the home, does not mean that she has not made a meaningful contribution to the marriage. She has. Working outside the home brings in dollar income, which YOU may apply value to.

There is also value to what a homemaker does. Consider your life as it might have been without your wife at home taking care of your home and your children. The MONETARY value of her services and the impact on YOUR WALLET would have been....what????? YOU would have paid for childcare while you traveled!!! YOU would have had to pay for someone to transport your children to and from school, to cook and clean for them, to do overnight care for them, to take them to and from lessons and sports and after-school activities. Someone would have to have been paid to take them for medical care.


And money could NOT have bought them the love they would have missed.


So consider that your wife may not have worked outside the home, but there was a valuable contribution to the home being made every single day, and that her contributions DID put money directly into YOUR WALLET.


Don't make me go there.


This, from a woman who HAS WORKED OUTSIDE THE HOME FOR THE ENTIRE 37 YEARS OF HER MARRIAGE. I appreciate stay-at-home mothers.



SB

2 X 4 over.

Update:

First off, my wife has found this site and is reading my posts. She says thumbs up btw Schoolbus. (she likes your advice)..
So if you happend to see a MrsTravler on here. Please welcome her and give her the wonderful support and advice you guys have given me. It really helps...


And for all the folks that wanted me to snoop.. I have been told I can snoop all I want but will find nothing. We had a very very very long and indepth conversation the other night and among other things, I now know there is no need to snoop. So thanks for the suggestions about that. But that is now a mute point... So on to building a loving marriage....

I was also told that I need to get back on here and give an update. (don't think she wanted me to leave you guys with the wrong impression of whats going on) I am in a total different place than I was when I started this thread. My wife and I are now going to follow the MB program and work on our marriage ***TOGETHER***... as she can tell you, only one person working on it dosen't work at all.

I finished reading the book 'his needs her needs' and have sent a copy to my wife so she will have her own copy to read. I also have a copy of Love Busters (started reading last night) and the workbook 5 steps to Romantic Love. Of which we will start working on when she returns. Needless to say, she is still sceptical of me and my desire to REALLY work on our marriage this time. I don't blame her for that. My tract record is not what you would call impressive as far as that goes.

She was espcially pleased to see from MB that it's not a program to repair and save a marriage, its designed to restore LOVE to your marriage. And thats the key. I didn't recognize that at first myself, but now I do.

For now we are still living apart, working on the trust issue and I guess until she is certain that I will be putting 100% of myself into our marriage. Which I am Honey... But I understand and realize these things take time.

So hopefully, sometime in the near future, I will be able to post that we are back together and building a loving marriage.

P.S.
If you send flowers, make sure they are delivered before you post on here your doing it... it kinda spoils the surprise if she is reading your posts..