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My husband and I are 4 years post the emotional affair he had. She was fired, he wrote the don't contact me e-mail, she left the state with her husband has a daughter, my husband has a new job, we have a new house, dealing with the memories....its been 4 years....now new job is bringing up old stressors and I'm trying to use new techniques to build our communication and husband doesnt see the reason for it.. doesnt want to see the past as a road map for our future....feeeling a little frustrated... how do i move forward while dragging him?

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What Extraordinary precautions do you have in place to make you feel safe in the marriage?


Me BW: 30
WH: 33
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I have all his passwords, check his phone...he has been for years open...its just the last couple of weeks his job has opend up old wounds....the same conditons work wise have come to haunt us. personally...nothing is the same we...communicate, we have fun... we have worked on "us". the last coupld of nights though i have realized that we are in the same situation he found himself in 6 years ago. he has come home every night the last couple of weeks telling me the stresses, and i have tried to help him through it. tonight, though, we had a horrible fight.... he just said some things that triggered me...and of course i closed up. after dinner, i tried to discuss this with him and it just made it worse.

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Just need some advise.... i dont want to fall in to old patterns.. and when i expressed this to my husband he didnt understand. he's trying to connect with me. but we have done alot of work on exposing our weakness in communicating and he wants to fall back on old problems where as i am moving forward to touch him and reach him in his love language..and he still is talking to me in his love language not mine and i have made it very clear what mine is....and when he is confronted he tells me what mine is...but he doesnt even try to reach me in it. dont misunderstand....when it is comfortable for him emotionally...he reaches for me...but if it is out of his comfort zone.,..he wont do it...like tonight...and it hurt me... how do i not read into this and how do i deal with it as it is....

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If I understand you correctly, he is not in an affair right now, but the issues that hurt the marriage before his last EA have resurfaced. Is that correct?

Are you give each other 15 hours of undivided attention? Have you read His Needs, Her Needs, and Love Busters?

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Just the work circumstances...he finds himself in the same situation at work as far as self esteem and work appreciation. we talked about that tonight and we both agreed that i have handled that differently....but he hasnt. he admitted that it came to his mind that i might get scared about the obvious and it might bring up old wounds...but he did not come to me about this until i mentioned it...and then he got mad and defensive about the way i felt. he felt that i overlooked him and the way he tried to handle it...he didnt handle it....his question to me was" do i have any makers mark left? or have you drank it all.? that was his attempt at showing me he realized i was stressed out.....

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I have worked hard to change the way I respond to him and our situations. I don't feel he works that hard for me. we have been married 29 years and together 31. We have 3 kids and the youngest is 21. especially after the last 4 years, we have done so much work on our emtional openess....or i have....dthat it hurts me when i see him blatenly look past me.....or....thats the way i feel.

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Did you use marriage builders principles to recover from your affair? Is there something about his field that is stressful, or is it related to work performance?


Me, BS: 35
WxH: 36 "HAM" Hearts a mess
6yo DS (with WxH), 9 and 12yo DDs from first marriage
Discovered DH's affair in June, 2011
"I'm not having an affair, you're crazy." major gaslighting
Served with divorce papers on 2/3/12
Divorce final 7/29/2013
Living day by day, counting my blessings, loving my children
Personal Recovery well underway!
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Just the work circumstances...he finds himself in the same situation at work as far as self esteem and work appreciation.

Okay, what changed at his job recently? New position/responsibilities? Rumors of layoffs? Failure in key areas? Competition from coworkers?

If you can't point to any factors like those, it may be that you are interpreting "cause" and "effect" backwards. It might be that FWH is less satisfied at home, and without that support, the normal work stresses seem more unsustainable.

Are you attending to his key Emotional Needs? (Can you even list them?) Are you getting enough time alone with him, the so-called UA time?

Download the Emotional Needs Questionnaires on this site, and complete them with your spouse. His answers might be surprising, and helpful.

Workplace stresses do not, as a rule cause affairs. (It might be posited that relief of stressful work situations, when accomplished with coworkers of the opposite sex, may lead to personal closeness facilitating affairs, but that's for another day.)

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Originally Posted by fatuggybaby
I have worked hard to change the way I respond to him and our situations. I don't feel he works that hard for me. we have been married 29 years and together 31. We have 3 kids and the youngest is 21. especially after the last 4 years, we have done so much work on our emtional openess....or i have....dthat it hurts me when i see him blatenly look past me.....or....thats the way i feel.
How much UA time are you getting?



FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Originally Posted by fatuggybaby
I have worked hard to change the way I respond to him and our situations. I don't feel he works that hard for me. we have been married 29 years and together 31. We have 3 kids and the youngest is 21. especially after the last 4 years, we have done so much work on our emtional openess....or i have....dthat it hurts me when i see him blatenly look past me.....or....thats the way i feel.

Hi fatuggybaby, welcome to Marriage Builders. A couple of things stand out to me. The first is that something your husband is doing is triggering you terribly.. But you are not clear on what it is. What is triggering you?

The second red flag I see is that your marriage never recovered from the last affair. It is clear you didn't take the very narrow necessary path to recover a marriage after an affair. When that path is not taken, resentment grows with every passing year and marriage struggles. These marriages often face second and third affairs because the cause of the affair is never corrected. The Marriage Builders program, on the other hand, corrects the issues that led to the affair and restores romantic love to the marriage.

In order to recover from an affair, the environment that led to the affair must be eliminated. I don't know if that happened. The second most key thing is to restore the romantic love in the marriage.

In order to create romantic love in a marriage, the couple must spend 20-25 hours of undivided attention time each week alone together. It takes 15 hours of UA time to maintain the love and 20-25 hours to create. If you have been using the Love Languages book, you don't know this because it has no program to save a marriage. It is a book on "communication," which is good, but couples who are in love have no problem communicating. And even the best communicators end up divorced. Couples who in love don't get divorced, though.

Do you think he is having another affair?


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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FUB,

Do you think you have the complete truth, or do you suspect that it was physical as well as emotional? Your Hs guilt and your doubt can keep the affair alive for years.

Was the OWH told?

Who knows about the affair? Do your children know, or are you all alone with this horrible secret?

God Bless
Gamma

Last edited by Gamma; 02/03/13 12:00 PM.
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Yes marriage builders principals were used. his job is not a stressful job day to day. He is dealing with an issue that has come up. He didn't cause the issue but it is his responsibility to clean it up and fix the problem. So it has been a very stressful couple of weeks.

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Dear Neverguessed:

Yes a problem has happened at work. An issue that involves 3 companies that he deals with. he is the program director of the program, so although he did not cause the problem it is his job to fix it. So for the last couple of weeks he has been dealing with product recall from all over the nation, then getting new product out...so...very stressful.

Yes we did the emotional needs questionaire and we do it once a year just to stay up on each others emotional needs. I do know what his emotional needs are and he knows mine.

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Dear BrainHurts:

We spend every night together. We eat dinner together at the table and discuss our day. Usually it is that time that work stresses come out. Then we do watch t.v. together and play with our puppy. During this time we usually tease and have fun with each other in our verbal banter. We make plans for our weekend. We always have friday movie night that is just us. We plan one activity during the weekend that is just us then we either plan time with couple friends or our kids.

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Dear Melody Lane:

I did follow MB principles 4 years ago. The affair ended, He found a different job, we moved to a new city. We do have UA time. We have made new couple friends and as the the years have gone on, the triggers have greatly diminished. This trigger was the job situation, he is under insurmountable stress and put in a situation where his expertise is being scrutinized and unappreciated, yet it will be him that has to solve the problem and be responsible for the outcome. It will be the owner who receives the accolades. He was in this position at his last job when he saught comfort from a much younger co-worker. So...although i know we are in a much better place, he brings his work home to me,we discuss work, home, and everything inbetween it did cause me a bit of a panic to see that we were in the same situation and we have to make different choices. this has happened everytime we find ourselves in mirroed situations. We do share romantic love....we are in love We worked very hard at finding that love again No i do not believe he is in another affair. He has and remains open in every way

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Dear Gamma:
I do believe I have all the truth, it has been 4 years and I do believe it was an EA only. The OWH was never told, I tried every way to get to him but couldn't. Tried finding him online, phone numbers address. Could never find anything. Our children were never told. Two were living outside the home and the last was a senior. That was always my decision, WH said he would do what I wanted. I chose to keep it private.

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You are telling us how your husband is stressed from his job through no fault from either you or him.

It has nothing to do with his past affair.

Be the comfort for him at home. Be the safe place. Be his escape.

He is bringing his stress, his problems, his anxiety to YOU, not to another woman. He is relying on YOU to meet his emotional needs right now. This is good. This is healthy, this is what a marriage should be.

Be there for him, let go of the past.

Last edited by schtoop; 02/04/13 08:52 PM.
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Originally Posted by fatuggybaby
. This trigger was the job situation, he is under insurmountable stress and put in a situation where his expertise is being scrutinized and unappreciated, yet it will be him that has to solve the problem and be responsible for the outcome. It will be the owner who receives the accolades. He was in this position at his last job when he saught comfort from a much younger co-worker.

fatuggy, in order for you to be feeling this badly this far out, something is wrong. If recovery were complete, you wouldn't be thinking about the affair and you wouldn't be so anxious.

Having a stressful job does not cause affairs. But I wonder if your husband is pulling away from you emotionally and it is causing you alarm? Is he working long hours? There must be something going on here and that is causing this.. A stressful job should be a cause for you to pull together, not a cause for anxiety that makes you think of the affair.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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Originally Posted by fatuggybaby
Dear BrainHurts:

We spend every night together. We eat dinner together at the table and discuss our day. Usually it is that time that work stresses come out. Then we do watch t.v. together and play with our puppy. During this time we usually tease and have fun with each other in our verbal banter. We make plans for our weekend. We always have friday movie night that is just us. We plan one activity during the weekend that is just us then we either plan time with couple friends or our kids.

Do you spend at least 15 hours ALONE with each other out on dates? And I would deduct any TV time and the movie night from that time since it doesn't count as UA time. You are not giving each other your undivided attention if you are watching TV or a movie.

Do you eat dinner ALONE every night or there children around?

I suspect you are not spending enough time together to sustain the romantic love in your marriage. If you are not spending at least 15 hours meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs you won't be in love. And if your marriage is not a happy place, the mind tends to wander back to unhappy times. That might explain why your mind is wandering back to the affair. I would check out these radio clips in this thread: http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/u...in=165778&Number=2594724#Post2594724


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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