We were in marriage counseling for the three months last year while the affair was going strong.

After exposure (1 week after counseling ended) and our endless hours getting close to eachother again, whenever I asked about it, he said he had NOT told OW that we were in marriage counseling.

Yesterday he revealed to me that he'd told OW he wanted a divorce (during time we were in marriage counseling). This was because I asked him how OW CUOLD (in good conscience, because I think she's inherently evil) go after a man who was NOT available? He said he'd told her he was going to be available, and that he'd wanted a divorce.

But he'd never told me (during the marriage counseling & concurrent affair (12/10-3/11) that he was even interested in someone else, or a divorce, for that matter, and OW KNEW THAT!

Tonight I asked him about it again, and he said that he HAD told OW we were in marriage counseling, and he doesn't remember saying any different(!)while he's falling asleep just now, and he doesn't want to stay awake any later to talk about THIS.

So I said, "I understand now why she thought I was such a joke. Thank you."

It just hurts and hurts and hurts.

Earlier today I was shocked by him telling me on the phone at work that he doesn't hate OW. How could he not hate her after what she did to us, what she did to me? All the threats she made against me after exposure 3/11 & 10/11!?!

It makes me suspicious all over again, bcause the farther away from it he was getting, the more clearly he could see that he'd been played and manipulated. Now he's defensive. Tells me I'm the only one, that NO CONTACT remains in effect.

Yet earlier today he said to me, "I'm not going to tell you anything more, becaues you get too upset. I was just telling you my feelings. I am NOT going to contact her."

I want him to tell me his feelings. I want the whole story. For 4 months last year, he was closer to OW in his head than he was to me, and I want those 4 months back. It is essential I hear the whole story and all of the horrible nuances, right?
The affair was largely emotional, but their closeness was, in many ways, far worse than any passionate sex could have ever been.

It's just killing me, it being Christmas again, and this all being tied up wth his rejection of my oldest son (grown and moved out; not doing well).

Here's an excerpt from HNHN--the chapter on Openness & Honesty:

"Do you do anything to discourage your husband in this area? More specifically, do your values encourage or discourage your H to be open and honest with you? Do your reactions encourage or discourage your H from revealing the truth, even when it's unpleasant? To see how you rate, answer these questions:

1. If the truth is terribly upsetting to you, do you want your spouse to be honest and open only at a time when you are emotionally prepared?

2. Do you keep some aspects of your life secret and do you encourage your spouse to respect your privacy in those areas?

3. Do you like to create a certain mystery between yu and your spouse?

4. Are there subjects or situations about which you want to avoid radical honesty?

5. Do you ever make selfish demands when your spouse is open and honest with you?

6. Do you ever make disrespectful judgments when your spouse is open and honest with you?

7. Do you ever have angry outbursts when your spouse is open and honest with you?

8. Do you dwell on mistakes when your spouse is open and honest with you?

If you answer yes to any of the first four questions, you tend to compromise on the value of honesty and openness. Apparently you fell your marriage is better off with less information in certain situations......

If you answer yes to the remaining questions, you are punishing honesty and openness. The way to help your spouse learn to be transparent is to minimize the negative consequences of his truthful revelations. If your spouse is faced with a fight whenever truth is revealed, he'll keep his thoughts to himself."

The truth is going to hurt to hear, but if you want your H to be open and honest, the only way to encourage him to do so is to take a deep breath when you hear something painful and thank him for telling you.

We all know it's painful.

Then you should have it. I am puzzled as to why this much time has gone by, and you still haven't been able to address this.

I think you need to go about it a bit differently. First of all, don't ambush him with questions when he's going to sleep.

Explain to your H, if you haven't already, that it is critical for the healing of your M that you have an honest accounting of the affair. Tell him you understand that it is a difficult thing to talk about (for both of you!) but is necessary if you are to successfully recover from the A. Work with him to arrive at a time when you can sit down together and talk about it. I would suggest you compile a list of questions to ask him. And when you're done with the session, you're done asking the questions. So make sure your list is thorough.

It is a hindrance to healing to keep bringing up the A, so get it done in one session.

And when you're done, THANK HIM for being honest with you. Don't punish him by getting angry or upset because he gave you what you asked. He needs to know that he can be honest with you and not be punished for it.

Thank you for this insight. Things about the affair come up in conversation a lot with us, and since I read your thoughts on this, I have been bringing it up less. A lot of times he brings it up. I know it's important to get to the heart of how he felt and what went wrong now that he is more than willing to share what his feeling were like, and we can get past this.
AO had been a big LB with us throughout our 21-year marriage. That has affected some of our older kids really badly, and we have been working hard to treat eachother with respect at all times. I am often more sad than angry about revelations.
Because it was so entrenched, and there were 3 D-days (we were in recovery w/ NC this past summer before the A came back for Sept-Oct)it is sometimes hard for me to believe that recovery is real, and I become very anxious and doubtful and need reassurance a lot.

Thank you. The reason it has been so difficult to address is that we'd already been through an honest accounting in recovery (June-August w/ NC) and then it started up again in Sept, kind of at arms length, and still with daily UA time, that my sense of reality and adequacy had all been distorted again. In the end he'd needed my help to get rid of OW's attempts at contact completely, and I am still sometimes unsettled by that.

The further behind us this is, the better I am at feeling safe and needing to ask less questions. I am thanking him for appreciating his O&H and resaaurance now. It gets easier as it's more voluntary.

Learning to negotiate with your spouse without demands, disrespect, and anger is a huge win in a family with children. Once you learn it with your spouse, you'll naturally begin applying the same lessons toward your children as well.

Of course, your goal is not to build a romantic relationship with your children! So the Policy of Joint Agreement is a good guideline for parent-child relationships if you can make it work, and it tends to work better the older they get, but it's not an absolute rule like it needs to be in marriage. It helps preserve a respectful relationship, even when your child inevitably makes choices with which you disagree, but there are times when it's not appropriate, particularly the younger they are. It's really great with teenagers, though.

Doormat No More, when I posted that I was thinking about how the years of watching mom & dad always at odds with one antoher shaped my 3 adult childrens' intimate partner relationships.

To see H & I together, talking things out and getting along, coming to mutual agreements, sets a new and different example for DS and his GF (they live together and have a child), and for DD and her H.

I think my H might still be wayward because I see that he has unblocked OW's daughter (age 21, homewrecker junior, financier of the affair phone (phone surrenderred Oct 15))from his facebook account within the past week.

About 4 weeks ago I discovered that H had unblocked OW herself, and I called him on it. He got agitated and said, "I don't know what you're talking about", and "You must have done that," and "I have NOT contacted her," and THIS was a RED FLAG to me: "I shouldn't have given you my password," and "You can't live like this."

That night he would not admit he was lying, even though I said, "You and I both know that you're lying". Today he admitted it when I asked him about it. Said he hadn't wanted her to think that she was dead to him. I said "Then you can be dead to me."

I said that I wanted him to send OW a no contact letter. He said that at this point it would just be rubbing salt in the wound. That may be so; she has contacted him with a vengeance in the past every time he broke it off with her.

No contact has been in effect since Nov 9, and a letter out of the blue might compel OW to contact H again. (The A lasted on and off for a year 11/10-10/11). OW's daughter used facebook messaging to WH last summer, and that ended with H telling OW's daughter to wait, that now was "not the time". (A resumed when school started thru Oct 16).

H is adamant that he wants nothing to do w/ OW and is committed to me and our future, and he is grateful for the chance to work on our M and for my not giving up on him.

But this bothers me. Why would he unblock OW's daughter from facebook? Why should he care about OW's "wounds"? She's a serial OW, and she should have known EXACTLY how it would turn out for her, getting involved with a married man.

I feel H is patronizing me to tell me that I "can't live like this". I am the one who lives with having been deceived, perpetually in an uncertain, questioning agony. Not him.

I blocked OW's D again (just now). I hate confronting H about things like this. After all we've been though, why this now? We are supposed to go on a trip tomorrow (H, me, and our two little ones).

OW's daughter wanted my H for her stepfather. H had been enamored by OW & her kids'family closeness. He spent time with OW's family periodically when he was missing from our family last winter.

H already has two stepchildren - my two oldest. We married when they were babies. He promised to be a father to them, and he helped me raise them. He is not close to them now, but he is close to our 21-year-old we had together.

If it hadn't been for the marriage counselor (12/10-3/11)telling me I should believe him, instead of me listening to my own instincts, I would have stopped the affair before it became severely entrenched. I found MB this past August. A lot of things I would have done differently had I known better.

I had never been in this situation before. H had never cheated. I cheated 12 years ago, an internet EA, nothing like this long drawn-out mess, and H was devastated then. I gave up all contact with OM and repented quickly. Why has H been so reticent?

Why has H been so reticent?

A bad marraige counselor.

Yes you have been in this situation before. Except you had the role of the WW in that movie. Now you have the BW role this time around.

Not finding MB after the first affair (your's) so you and your BH/WH did not heal properly and learn how to have a safe and healthy marriage that MB teaches.

Only you have found and are using MB.

WH is still angry from your affair.

So keep on working MB. I don't know if it's time to bring WH here, but get the SAA book leave it around. Say I was reading this in a book that to have a good marriage.....

A few notes.

1. The affair has been renewed (at least in the past) through Facebook. This means that one of your husband's Extraordinary Precautions needs to be NO FACEBOOK FOR LIFE. And possibly no computer use, if he continues to make you feel unsafe with his computer use.

Sounds harsh? It is. This is why you feel unsafe. He has facebook. He can unblock OW, send her a message, then block her again and you'd be none the wiser.

So what would the POJA say? If you just tell him, "I am unhappy when you use Facebook", he should simply not use Facebook again. It's Extraordinary Precautions, it's the Policy of Joint Agreement, and it's an absolute prerequisite to a happy life together.

2. If he continues to act in a way that makes you feel unsafe, you need to get ready to separate from him. Get all your legal ducks in a row. Your husband is still very much in withdrawal from the OW, and some setbacks are somewhat normal, but renewed contact is a deal-breaker. Talk to a lawyer to find out what you'll need to do to protect yourself. Talk to family, friends, or a landlord to arrange where you will live if or when you need to go to Plan B.

I'm not going to go as far as some would to say you're definitely fighting an active affair right now, but his behavior has red flags all over it. Unblocking the other woman on Facebook? Even USING Facebook at all, in any way, after having used it to further his affair?

He's not following the Extraordinary Precautions that are required to prevent an affair. He's trying to find ways to keep OW in his life -- even if only through her daughter -- and that keeps him deeply in Withdrawal.

Extraordinary Precautions are called that for a reason. Your WH needs to go the extra mile so that you feel safe.

He needs to cancel his Facebook account and stay off any other social networks he might be using. Twitter, etc.

He may sincerely want to recover your marriage, but he is not putting EPs into place to enable that recovery to begin. I would start with Facebook. He needs to lose that. He's already demonstrated that it is a catalyst for sliding back into the affair.

But remember you can only control YOURSELF, not him. An Extraordinary Precaution requirement is a demand, but a calculated one.

"Sweetheart, I feel unsafe with you having a Facebook account. Because of the problems it has created in the past and is continuing to create today, I cannot remain with you while you have Facebook access. I would gladly give up Facebook myself if you were to do likewise."

I almost feels to me as though I am the one doing something sneaky; here I am online, talking about him behind his back -for healthy and constructive reasons I am doing this. But I have hurt him before by spending time on a computer, talking about him.

We had a discussion this morning. He says he's glad I caught him unblocking OW 4 weeks back, and he does not want to get any messages from her or her daughter. We ended up having a romantic morning alone together.

Thank you for the insights. I will work on this. I could use some better phrasing when I am making an EP request/demand.

We are going on a trip with our two youngest children as soon as school gets out.

IARTQ,

I had never been in this situation before. H had never cheated. I cheated 12 years ago, an internet EA, nothing like this long drawn-out mess, and H was devastated then. I gave up all contact with OM and repented quickly. Why has H been so reticent?

Sometimes men keep things in and don't recover, although on the surface they appear to, that was me before I found MB, he might never have believed that this was only an internet EA. So for 12 years his resentment towards you grew and grew in a compartmentalized part of his being.

He may also have felt that this was his last chance to get his revenge for your EA. I had those feelings for a good many years, actually more than 20. It was particularly acute since when my WW had her affair with OM2 she was in her 20's and if I were to have an affair I would have to settle for a less desirable woman.

Was OMW ever told of the EA? Did your H ever confront OM?

God Bless
Gamma

It's important to remember the advice from the radio show when this kind of reasoning for infidelity shows up, though.


So it's important to address what makes HIM feel unsafe, too. There's a good chance there are some extraordinary precautions you could do that would make him feel safer, too.

His anger and defensiveness over the facebook discovery is a tell tale sign to me that he is planning on re-initiating contact, if he hasn't already. Waywards always get defensive and angry when they are called on their cheating actions. Its textbook stuff. Sounds like he's in and out of the fog. When he's reasonable let him know this. Agree with the posts about POJA and EP's. Only way to recovery it would seem to me.

Gamma,

H's OW was not attractive or desirable (at least not to anyone else). She is older, plain-looking, fat (weighs nearly twice as much as I do), and a financial wreck.

My internet OM 12 years ago was single, so there was no OMW. H confronted OM and scared him away, told him off.

That entire A lasted 3 weeks, with internet and phone contact only. (H knew it was an internet/phone only A) H had saved and printed the emails telling OM off, and OM's acceptance of NC. I pulled the letters out of a drawer this past November for H to read, because it seemed H had forgotten he'd loved me that much, fought for me, and won.