That is a great letter! It is factual and to the point. Good job!

fyi, Dr Harley discusses freeloaders on the radio show today. You just missed it, but that radio show will replay every hour until the next show tomorrow. click on rebroadcast after 1:00 and you can hear the entire show

I agree. Mel, is there a thread you can save this letter on? As a future template?

Good for you, SBT

One little point you made I would like to give you a tip.

You said your wife could 'point to' your past mistakes as a way of excusing hers.

Not so. Complaints in marriage are supposed to SOLVE the complaint, not make more trouble. One thing has nothing to do with the other.

When your wife makes complaints, past or present say:

"Tell me more"

"What would you like me to do instead?"

"Tell me specifically what you would like me to do?"

"How do you see our ideal future?"

"That must have been really hard"

ENCOURAGE her complaints. Listen to them all day long and make solutions together.

But the MINUTE she uses it as an excuse to make her own mistakes, say: "This is what it will take to keep me in the marriage"

You want to come across as loving and listening and patient - but strong. Women dont love men they cant respect

You have a line in the sand.

Agree! I will add to my Exposure 101 thread.

I don't have a lot of self-confidence, and I usually take too much blame on myself for all sorts of things. The help I'm getting here is stiffening my backbone on this.

Just to reiterate the importance of separating jointly owning the condition of the marriage pre-A from the WS's decision to engage in an A:

You claim to have read my story. I seriously doubt if you were as inattentive in your union as was I. BUT NONE OF THAT SWAYED ME! Many years of cooperating in becoming less maritally engaged was careless and ignorant. Falling in "love" with another man was a horrendous choice. The clarity with which I saw the difference, and was able to transmit that vision, is a huge piece of the puzzle of our rapid recovery.

You have to internalize the underlined sentences, my friend, and act without doubts. If you're not fully on-board, she'll not buy a ticket.

Preach NG, preach! Don't blame yourself for WW's poor choices. Use that energy you have to fix yourself!

She wants you to 'co-operate' with her bad behaviour BECAUSE THAT'S WHAT SHE DID.

Instead of having an affair, what if she had simply refused to co-operate with your bad behaviour?

When you refused to meet her needs, this is what an MB wife would have done:

Mrs SBT: "Honey, I am dreadfully unhappy. Can we sit a moment while I tell you some of my complaints calmly and reasonably so I can be happier?"

SBT: "Well...no, I dont think so. You see it really isn't all that clear to me that you are VERY unhappy so I am just going to continue as I am."

Mrs SBT: "Well here is what I am going to do to make it clearer. I am going to be the best wife possible for a short period of time. All the while telling you I need you to step up and do the same for me. Then I am going to separate from you."

SBT "You're leaving me?"

Mrs SBT: "Oh not for some time and even then, not permanently I hope. Just until you take me seriously and start making me happy. If you never agree to make me happy then what can I do? I will not stay in an unromantic marriage".

Wouldn't a WARNING such as the above have been better then her passively going along with it - and having an affair?

Now she wants you to copy her own bad methods by encouraging her in her mistakes.

Spouses who care NEVER enable mistakes.

BTW: Love the letter to the organization President.

Your CC: list should include one or
two highly responsible Board members,
and OM and OMW, separately.

No mercy, dude!

Yes. She actually said something like this, at least twice, in the last two years. It went over my head....I was 'better' for a couple of weeks, then I reverted to my old, withdrawn ways. So, you see, unlike the wives who 'suffer in silence,' she DID threaten to leave, and I didn't listen. Her error then was not following through and leaving me. What she did was continue to suffer, and then, when her patience ran out, have an affair. The children, financial considerations, advice of friends, etc I'm sure played a big part in that decision.

I told her it would have been better all around if she HAD left me..I, frankly, deserved to have been left..rather than stay and commit adultery. But, we must deal with the situation as it is.

Sadbuttrue, you realize that is all fogbabble, don't you? All waywards rewrite history to demonize the betrayed spouse in an attempt to divert blame.

Obviously she was not looking for solutions when she had an affair. Your bad marriage had NOTHING to do with her affair. She is using YOU as her excuse.

She is still there. So you ARE and have been meeting important needs all along. Maybe not all of them, but you must meet at least a few. Or she wouldn't even consider staying.

Given that she is dead-set on not giving up her friends there are two scenarios that could be the truth here:

1) She enjoys having needs met by more than one person.
2) She can't believe you will meet all of them on your own.

Given that she is noticeably a 'flirt'. I lean more towards option number one. It is highly important to her that lots of men think her interesting and attractive. She has low self esteem that has to be buoyed up by outsiders. But someone who does this WILL have affairs.

Your plan is unchanged regardless. Plan A, show her you are capable of meeting all her needs, while standing up to enemies of the marriage. Plan B: refusing to play 'your part' in her harem of men meeting her needs.

All or nothing. It's up to her.

I bet she told the OM she was "abused" by you. This is a classic card played by wayward wives.

Nothing like taking a little bit of bad and adding a whole heap of worse!

Maybe she should write a book called: "Crazy solutions for common life problems"

The starting point 'I am having problems with my marriage' does not = 'have an affair'.

However:

'Lots of OM like me and flirt with me and talk to me lots' DOES = affair

Mine said he only married me for legal reasons. What legal reasons, I cant imagine. Plus I am pretty sure I don't remember that in the proposal.

I was also described as 'abusive'.

I can attest to that statement indie. WWs do it a lot so the OM feels like a knight in shining armor, I guess.

Well, I'll tell you, here's how far apart we are perception-wise right now.

Yesterday I made a special effort to call her several times during the day....at the end of the last call I could tell she was upset and she said she was having 'aa bad day today.'

When I got home I made sure we went for a walk, and talked, and I praised the dinner she made...she said she was 'angry' but would not talk about it...afterwards we watched a movie together..then I asked if we could slow-dance to some romantic music before bed. She said yes, but she was very stiff and and unemotional about it. I was concerned but figured she was preoccupied about the overall situation so I let it go.

We went to bed and we kissed and so on, and kissed more passionately than usual....I couldnt sleep (again) so I spent a restless night.

This morning, she said, 'you know, you havent kissed me like that since you 'found out.' Stupid me...I thought it was a compliment....no, she went on to say that she actually had been angry the previous day because I was still not meeting her needs (intimacy) and that it was a probelm since 'no one else is meeting them, either'.

That hurt. Im still dealing with intimacy issues b/c of thinking about 'him' (I have intimacy issues anyway, this has made it much worse), and there I thought I had made a bit of progress, but instead, actually I had failed again

Apparently there won't be 'progress' until I get over 'him' and can be intimate again.

Dude, do you have ANY idea of the jewel you were just handed by WW?

'you know, you havent kissed me like that since you 'found out.'...she went on to say that she actually had been angry the previous day because I was still not meeting her needs (intimacy) and that it was a problem since 'no one else is meeting them, either'.

There are BHs here who would donate a kidney to be so clearly presented with what their WWs are missing, and what they can do about it!

After the exposure is done, you and she will fill out the Emotional Needs Questionnaires on this site, and analyze the results. If "Affection" is not Number 1 on your WW's list of needs, I'll....eat my laptop.

She appreciated your gesture? WOW! Get some extra-strength chap-stick, my friend and raise your game! Find places you have not recently kissed/caressed/stroked and go to work (Excuse me, I'm getting......warm!) Give her a back-rub! Massage her feet! Brush her hair! Do her nails! Write her a love-note and let her find it unexpectedly (in her cereal box, on the steering wheel of her car)!

This is NOT the time for you to be resentful, or analytic, balancing the books as to who should be satisfying whose ENs. You are in a fight to bring her back to your marriage, with her already having dipped her toe in other waters. TURN UP THE HEAT, my friend. Bury her in affectionate gestures......TELL HER YOU ENJOY IT ......AND MEAN IT!

Damn it, I need a shower!!!

This is all in the Basic Concepts, which I hope you are reading. Do you have a PLAN to save your marriage SAdButTrue? Because if you don't have a plan, you have a plan to fail.

Here is how to solve that. Sit down with her tonight and schedule out 20 hours of undivided attention time together for the week. The bulk of it needs to be out of the house on DATES, meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. No TV, no movies, no friends, no kids, just you two meeting those needs for each other.

Do you have the book Surviving an Affair and are you following the program in it? If not, then you are headed to another affair, I assure you! If your marriage is not 10x greater than it was before the affair, you are not recovered.

So, get to work!

This program does not work without this step -----> The Policy of Undivided Attention