My husband and I have lost his childhood home, filing for bankruptcy and he says he's no longer in love with me. A lot of this is my fault, I was a stay at home mom, who should have looked harder for a job, I didn't give him enough emotional, physical, financial or sexual support. I know this, and I wish I could turn back time.

He says he does love me, but he's not in love anymore and doesn't want to be. He wants us to stay together and be a happy family with our 2 girls, but not as Mr. & Mrs. anymore. He says he wants to support me and our children and that he doesn't want me to leave. He doesn't think that kind of love can come back because of all the hurt I caused. He has found a new friend, of course female. He assures me that he only became attracted to her after I asked him, and that he only wants to be friends. He has confided all of our details to her.

I want my marriage back and I'm willing to do anything I can to recover it. Is it possible to achieve this without his support? I haven't asked him to go to counseling, we tried before and it didn't work, and I don't think he would anyway.

Could his love be hidden so far deep inside that he doesn't realize it's there? Can I help him find it again without his consent?

So lost, can't stop shaking, want to be his love again.
Please help

I've notified the moderators to move your thread to survivng an affair. Hang on. Help is here.

Welcome to Marriage Builders, scared.

Here's the problem:
Who is this woman? Do they work together? What do you know about her?

Did you laugh when he said that? If you asked him if he was "attracted to Santa Claus" would he have an affair with Santa? Do you see how silly he is by blaming his attraction on you? He became attracted because he has poor boundaries around women.

How long have you been married? Are you married?

Scared... You are going through so much of the same thing so many of us have gone through.

Be assured of this: your husband's attraction to this Skank is NOT excusable for any reason you mentioned above.

My husband said A LOT of the same things you mentioned above. We are now recovering our marriage thanks to the Marriage Builders program. The thing is, you can't do a thing (in terms of rebuilding attraction) without him getting rid of the OW first!

Have you read any of the principles on this site?

I would encourage you to start looking at Plan A and Plan B. Read Surviving an Affair - but don't ask your husband to.

I am short on time but I want to offer you some encouragement: it IS possible to recover, but you're going to have to learn some tough love concepts and gather up nerves of steel to fight off this affair!

Rest assured: if you've gotten the "I love you but am not in love with you" speech, your husband is DEEPLY involved with this woman, I'm sorry to say.

My husband and I have been married for 14 years, together for 21. He works with her. She has 2 children from a previous marriage, and a son from, ?, I'm so scared of losing him. We met when I was 18, now I'm 40, over half my life has been with him. I don't want to find love with someone else. I want it back with him.

Others will be along soon to help you to your best to bring a heavy dose of reality to your WH's fantasy land and break up the affair.

Please read the following articles to get you started:

How Affairs End

For Newly Betrayed Spouses

You will need to expose this affair to everyone you can and ask for their help in ending the affair. Expose to the OW's friends and family as well. This is the first weapon in the Plan A arsenal.

Don't tell your H you are going to expose. Just do it.

While you are exposing, be a wonderful wife, doing your best to meet his emotional needs (ENs) and avoid love busters (LBs.) Most women can handle this part for about three weeks; staying with a H during an affair is extremely painful, so Dr. Harley recommends keeping it very short before separating into Plan B, which is a total separation from the WS.)

His affair is NOT your fault. He has poor boundaries with women and he let someone else meet his needs; that's how this started. You could have been the most wonderful wife possible, but if your H has poor boundaries, affairs will always be a risk. The conditions you list might have helped contribute to the environment of an unfulfilling marriage, but lots of people under these conditions do NOT have affairs.

Basically, the path to recovery:

1.) Your H must agree to never again see or speak in any way to his OW...for life. Often this means changing jobs and/or moving away.

2.) He must agree to creating a list of Extraordinary Precautions (EPs) to prevent another affair from occurring.

3.) He must agree to Just Compensation. This means that you and he will work together to create a marriage in which you are romantically in love with each other. The marriage after the affair must be better than it was before. This is the Just Compensation part of recovery. A betrayed spouse does not simply "forgive" the adulterer. This part will come eventually, but the important part is that he owes it to you to do his part in creating a wonderful marriage with you.

Keep posting here. This is one of the most painful experiences you will ever go through and this forum is one of the best places to get help. It's straightforward, no nonsense, and follows a very clear plan.

Check the Operation Investigate forum for help with the snooping. You should be watching his emails, his phone and know where he is (GPS)to help you gather the hard evidence you will need.

Please don't bother with counseling. Most marriage counselors, including most pastors, don't know diddlysquat about saving marriages; nor do they understand infidelity. Order the book "Surviving an Affair." Read up on all the Marriage Builder basic concepts right here on this website.

When the posters give you your next steps, please do what they say. There really IS hope, but you must follow a very narrow road.

And for heaven's sake, DON'T let him know about this website. Always log out and clear the history.

In addition to what 51 has just said, I think it is very important for you to Scared, to come to terms with a few things. You are vulnerable right now to doing a lot of things wrong (in terms of marriage saving) that will feel "right" to you. They will feel right because you are - as in your name description - SCARED. If you are going to save your marriage, there is a lot that you are going to have to accept. The first tenet of that is to be willing to feel the fear and do it anyway. (It being following the advice that is given to you by those of us who have been there and done that.)

Are you ready to do that? Are you ready to get tough despite your sadness, anger, and fear???

Here are some basics that you need to grasp right away:

If you have been tearful - begging, pleading, trying to appease your husband in order to get him to change his mind - you need to stop RIGHT AWAY. Understand that every time you try to do this you push him further away from you. This feels unnatural. When you first hear this bomb from your wayward spouse, you want to cling tightly and say, "Please don't leave me - I'll do anything." Because of your feelings, you believe all the cr@p nonsense that your WH has fed you in terms of this being your fault.

Now, this doesn't mean you haven't had any faults in the marriage. However...it also doesn't mean that you have done anything to excuse your WH's involvement with another woman! Your faults probably contributed to your marriage being in a less than stellar state - that you must own up to - but you need to know that it was also HIS responsibility to make this marriage a good one as well. So, you accept your contributions to the marriage being sick but you do NOT accept being at fault for the demise of it. That is TOTALLY on him for choosing to go outside of the marriage to fix his issues.

What does this mean? Well, it means you start changing what you can right now in terms of you being a better person - for your marriage, but mostly, for YOU. Take care of yourself mentally, physically, and emotionally. Eat right, get sleep, and exercise. Go to a doctor and if you need anti-depressants to get through this, so be it. It sure helped me. (I would never offer that as a long term solution. When you are in crisis, however, you MUST be sane enough to function.)

Stop talking to your H about your marriage. This can also feel unnatural. In fact, right now you want to say as little as possible about your state of mind as you can. Be upbeat - stop moping around the house. Laugh - make plans with girl friends - focus on the kids. Your H should see a totally different Scared and wonder what the heck is up. Find something to do that you can excel at: take a class, join a club...anything! (This helps in SO many ways.)

Keep the house clean; organize yourself; cook healthy meals. Do your hair and nails differently - get some new perfume. Make yourself interesting.

A lot of the more experienced vets can come along and give better advice about exposure and plan A/B. However, if you are not mentally prepared to follow through - it does no good. So, hopefully that's where I can help you here - to get prepared, psychologically to do this.

See, right now your husband does not respect you. Your natural instincts are probably going to lead to behaviors that make him respect you even less, because those behaviors show absolutely ZERO self-respect - and when we don't respect ourselves, no one else will respect us either.

Right now you are sad and anxious. You need to get to mad! Not the screaming, raging mad - but the righteous indignation kind of mad. You've GOT to get to that place so you can expose the affair and be ready for the fallout of it.

Your chance at saving this marriage is to get rid of this other woman - to expose this affair for what it is - and QUICKLY.

So, yes - start investigating and get proof of what is going on. Check on the Operation Investigation thread as suggested. Start being the best Scared that Scared can be!

Start gathering info on people you can expose the affair to: OW's family, mutual friends, etc... Is your H on Facebook? Is Skank on facebook? If you don't personally know her, this is where you will be able to find her family members. Is she married?

Above all, you've got to play this all with the best poker face you can muster! Show your cards to NO ONE that will support H in this affair and especially don't show them to him!

You've got to go from "ScaredToLoseHim" to having HIM scared of losing you!

Keep strong honey, follow MB and take his puppet strings off your shoulders and lets get HIM justifiably terrified of losing YOU.

You ARE amazing, and it isnt your fault one bit.

Keep the plans and keep your sanity.

I haven't begged, screamed, yelled or anything. This type of thing happened a few years ago, and that's just what I did. Not this time. I stay very calm, try to look happy and pleasant. I started wearing makeup again. He did notice, told me I looked nice and that he liked it. I started dressing more feminine to attract his eye again. He tells me that he will always be attracted to me no matter what. I am the sexiest person in the world to him. We have had a lot more sex lately than usual. Part of this is because I'm trying to keep him from finding that satisfaction with her, and in part, because I want to. He did ask me about this, and I was honest.

As far as moving out, right now, that's just not so easy to do. All of my family lives waaaaaay too far away, and I have no money to fly my girls and I. The girls also have school, I don't want to disrupt their lives more than has already been done.

I do want him to be scared to lose me. I need to get this constant lump in my throat out!! (I'm not sick, it's just this feeling, I'm sure you guys understand)

I am typically thin, and have lost more weight since this, but I'm okay with that. I'm feeling pretty satisfied with my appearance right now, and have noticed other men checking me out. Something he said he always saw, but honestly, I never did. It feels good, I think he notices my since of awareness now. I do feel more confident.

Trying to work this out. Thanks to everyone for all of your input, I'm so sorry you all had to go through this, but I don't feel so alone now. THANK YOU

She is on FB, but her page is locked unless your a friend, and I just can't friend her. As far as I know, he doesn't have an account, but what do I know right?

Everybody, thank you again, it helps knowing I can come here for support.

Well you would have to kick him out....

Separation is a must, unless he does everything in his power to make you feel safe.

If you stick together while he misbehaves you will 'prop up' his A. He will hve no reason to change.

Plus you will get more than thin, you will get ill and severely depressed. How is that going to work for anyone?. Your girls need their mum and Mr badlad needs to see a fabulous you - right before he gets the door shut in his face.

There are lots of people on here who have separated to do Plan B who have recovered a happy marriage. It usually does need that drastic a step.

Sometime the WS is so unrepentent they dont come back but you dont need that heartbreak.

It would be fantastic if it was easier, but I am afraid you must work the plans to the letter.

A good Plan A may be enough but usually it only does half the work and B is needed.

Oh and in B you dont worry about where he stays. Thats his problem. Which he should have thought of before having an A.

Thanks for you insight. I will definately look harder at the plans. It's just been hard, everything seems so....I don't know, it's like I can't process everything I read on here. My mind is usually going off in another direction.

He has said that if we seperated he would live with one of his family members. I don't know if I'm ready for that step yet. As stated in my first post, we are filing bankruptcy and lost his family home, so we just moved where we are last December, and my children had a horrible Christmas, no tree, few presents, etc. I really want this Christmas to be a better one. Now that we're not trying to stretch money to so many bills, we can get a tree and hopefully some gifts for them.

Okay this just popped into my head this evening, and tried to find some helpful information, but couldn't find anything too useful. They are co-workers, he is not her supervisor, but he does supervise the workers who ready her homes to be rented. If and when he does, if they haven't already, take their relationship to a sexual level, what are the chances she could later sue him for sexual harrasement. He's only known her one year and didn't have a high opinion of her when they met. I wouldn't put it past her to potentially sue if their relationship was on this level and he didn't do something she wanted. I know this is futile, but it's been on my mind. I could still be legally married to this man, he will still be the father of my children, and the potential may exist that he can no longer support them.

Just thought I might need to prepare myself.
Thanks for any input

Scared,

I'm going to let others advise you tonight as I am short on time, but you need to have a PLAN. Have you read Basic Concepts here? Look right over to the right to read...and read everything there.

You are concerned with details that do not matter right now...you need a PLAN. Do not mean to be harsh, but you need a path to follow, and it's right here.

What are you doing/learning/hearing about exposure?

This needs to be exposed ASAP.

I have read an article here about exposure, but this is within his workplace. I agree with the article when it said that he may find it hard to find future employement. Feeling kind of stuck right now.

I know I shouldn't care about what happens to him, but I do care about what happens to and with my children, they are still elementary age. I still need to protect them.

Thanks for your help, I will reread the Basic Concepts. I have a hard time focusing right now.

scared, to whom have you exposed the affair? What is your exposure plan?

I don't have a plan yet. I have no concrete proof, yet. Another thing I wanted to mention is that we all live on the property they work for, so one or both families could lose their place of residence. He has a family to fall back on, I don't. My children go to school with her middle child and have some of the same friends. I really do not want to humiliate them at school. I just had the sex talk with my oldest just recently, and I'm not sure how it would go down at school, again, because my daughters know her kids. I do not want them to be harrased at school because their dad is f****** ____'s mom.

I'm sorry, I hope that wasn't rude, but I am really afraid of that.

My husband is a smart man, he will try his best to argue everything I say to make me look stupid, and he usually wins. I have to be prepared before I can make this kind of accusation

scared, then I would get the evidence you need and make plans to expose the affair and to MOVE. If he is having an affair with a coworker and she lives right there, then the only way to save your marriage is to move. Also, your kids will need to be told of the affair if you find out there is an affair.

Thank you MelodyLane. I have a lot of planning in front of me, but I know I need to be diligent and careful. I thank you for listening to me, I really appreciate it. For the first time in about 2 weeks, I haven't felt the need to cry. I think I'm finally getting mad. But I know this is going to be a LONG HARD ROAD, and I need to stay calm and focused.

MelodyLane
Surfer88
indiegirl
Truly, thank you, I have honestly talked to no one about this. Not even my own family. I guess, I'm really just too embarrased.