Ugh. kaleidoscopes...it's like they go right to the heart. You know, like in horror movies where they say: it knows what you fear most? It's like the WSs on some level are acting out the things that will cause the most pain. Why can't they come up with something new?!? Sheesh!

My WW made friendship bracelets for her and OM1 out of some thread I still had laying around the house from one of my Ex-GFs. She wore it all the time and never took it off. It's was in our family pictures. She said it was for her and her sister, but I always had my doubts. I finally got confirmation during the most recent D-Day.

Just had a thought:

The OW's BS and I became friends (of a sort) when I informed him of the affair (he had already - but only just - found out) and the two of us compared notes to great effect (via phone). Anyway, they are (as far as I know) seeking counseling and trying to get back together. My money is on the bet that if she has these shells hanging around he has no idea where they came from and she is the kind of person who would get off on sitting there with her own H, looking at this gift and thinking of my H.

Should I tell him - confidentially - that he may want to get rid of these shells if they are around? I am inclined to think I should not. Just let it go but had the thought so am running it by all you brilliant advisors out there.

I have not contacted her H since the week after my H came back (in May), so it's been a while. I think his W probably made not contacting me part of what she wanted from him (on their end she would be only half-heartedly going back to him, she was super clear with him that my H was the love of her life and that she was near-suicidal without him, etc. She would be in the stages of serious withdrawal, possibly only biding her time until she could try again to get my H back, etc.) Do I let her H try to get his head to a place where he can live with such a woman, or is this wrong? (she'd still dump her H for my H in a second and all four of us know it).

By the way, her H used to tap her phones and was quite a good detective. Not talking to him from time to time might be playing right into the OW's hands.

Anyway, might be a bad idea, but the thought passed my mind so there it is.

Sure! I would let him know. Mementos like that can prevent recovery from taking place. It would help if he knew so he could get rid of it. It will also send a message to skanky that it must not have meant much to your husband for him to tell you about it.

I would add some little stink bomb [in the hopes he passes it on] about how "my H feels really disgusted by this now, but he told me he gave her a necklace made from my sea shells. He told me all about it."

I would also get a commitment from him to contact you immediately if he sees any contact.

An addicted man. Mothers addicted to drugs will abandon their children in public restrooms. Regardless of the source of the addiction (drugs, internet, affairs, etc.) and the topography of the behavior (abandon your child, sell your memories, etc.), the formula is the same: do anything to get what you want.

I am a reader, a photographer and my husband and I love theater. My husband gave his OW one of my books, tickets to one of our favorite plays and tried to give her a camera.

Different players, same roles.

I agree about keeping the correspondence, BTW - don't make a hasty decision based on pain. You can ALWAYS discard them later, but once they are gone, you may not be able to ever get them back. Leave yourself the choice.

Good luck -

BV

I could have writen that about my FWW. She wasn't lazy but I had to point out nearly everything for the first month. She thought it was me "bringing up the A" and "Dr. Harley wouldn't recommend talking about it anymore". But if I hadn't, I never would have found out everything we really needed for her EPs. On D-day, she deleted ONE friend from FB (POSOM#2). She didn't block him, just defriended. I kept WAITING and WAITING for her to delete the 2 "friends" that encouraged her to sleep with him. About ten days later I told her to dump them which she did willingly and sent them a letter (which she did on her own). It took another ten days for me to get her to defriend all her other male FB friends, about 6 of which I found inappropriate messaging with. Again...willingly, but not without prompting. There's more, but that's my story.

Yea, the blast radius of an A is far and wide. I use the analogy of a nuclear bomb. Anything at ground zero is gone (OP, gifts, enablers, personal memories). Anything that didn't die in the blast still may die later from the radiation (triggers). The task of cleanup is up to BW/WS. They've got to suit up and clean up, and it's a scary, post apocalyptic scene. It takes two, fully committed spouses to do it because no one can see the rip on the back of their anti-contamination suit. FWW covers me, and I cover her. We've had to tape eachother up many times. If not...well, that's when the radiation gets in and the cancer of resentment grows and kills the R.

My recommendation is to NOT do MB slooooowly. Go all in. The hard lesson I learned about MB is: it's simple, but difficult, and not too forgiving on mistakes. Many mistakes you make will set you back to d-day. That is not a pleasant place to be.

Is your H working the MB concepts as well?

Me too. I don't think your marriage can survive this separation at a really vulnerable time. Or your husband's lackadaisacal attitude.

I'd get an accountability coach to do the nagging or ask your husband to post here where he can be motivated by the words of successful FWSs.

I think you may have to take a drastic approach with your jobs and revisit your lifestyle entirely to find a way to make it work.

Even happy marriages with no former problems will be destroyed by travelling. Any separations will make you lose the bond and form new ones with others. You really do love the one you are with.


At the moment you are living completely separate lives and this has made you incompatable to the extent you prefer it when he is gone! He should be at home paying JC and rebuilding love.

The marriage can't possibly survive these conditions. I don't think you will get to the end of your job contract with your marriage intact.

Why are you rebuilding if you prefer him gone?

I don't prefer him gone, but at times like these I remember the space between the affair and trying to rebuild. I wasn't checking up on him, reading emails, snooping around, asking all these questions where every possible answer hurts like hell....life in that time was peaceful. It's just a fact.

Anyway, my kid's tuition comes from my job. This is their final year of high school. I am not making them change schools six months before graduation, especially after everything they've been through this year.

But I took the point to heart Indiegirl... I thought of the seven zillion woe-is-me emails I have been sending my H trying to sort out my feelings about these shells and how I get replies hours later that just irritate me more....today I decided to send a loving, short email about something fun we are doing next weekend. Two seconds later I had a text from my H on Skype and we had a great conversation. The most light and fun one in weeks, actually.

If the affair could start via email I could certainly use email with a little more purpose! And I have not been (until now!) Thanks for the inspiration to get a little smarter about this!

Unfortunately, they are headed for more wreckage when your marriage does not recover from this affair. You can't recover from an affair when you are not spending nights together. Traveling jobs are extremely hard on good, solid marriages; they are a disaster to crippled marriages. You can't possibly create an intimate, integrated, romantic marriage with that lifestyle. You just can't.

I really hate to tell you this, but you are not in recovery. It is a very narrow path to recovery and you are not on that path. We can help you get there, but let me assure you that you won't get there by cutting corners. If you want your marriage to change, you are going to have to change your lifestyle.

continued here

Traveling Jobs

That's true. It's sad to hear you can't do recovery.

I'm not saying you should choose recovery over your kids tuition.
It's every BS's right to choose not to recover.

But you can't have both.

This is an important realization. Recovering a marriage after this kind of train-wreck requires plenty of purpose & intentionality, from both spouses.

Now, you can have purposes sort of randomly, as they occur to you; or you can have purposes that are carrying out a more comprehensive, overarching plan. The plan laid out in the book Surviving An Affair may be what saved my marriage, Pinkstraws, and I don't get a penny for telling you so. Have you & your husband read it? If not, you should -- both of you.

There are a couple of benefits to this: First, if he's remorseful, your husband should be very interested in doing more than a little introspection (especially, introspection guided by some independent, professional expertise, in contrast to some of the rationalization/gobbledygook that his "therapist" POSOW no doubt sprayed in his direction) regarding why he let himself get into the mess he got himself into & the hell he put you & his whole family through. Second, and most importantly, SAA is intended not mainly for this intellectual exercise of developing a better awareness (although it helps with that), but foremost rather as an action tool for proactive protection of a marriage against infidelity & betterment of the marriage itself, with the aim of ensuring that both spouses' most important emotional needs are met, so that romance can thrive within the marriage. If your husband is serious, then he has no reason not to be extremely interested in all of the above.

I have a few questions, now that I've gone back & read your initial thread & your posts on other threads:

-- About "Undivided Attention" time: Are you familiar with this concept, what it entails and what it requires?

-- About travel apart: You've been hearing a lot from other posters voicing well-founded concern about this. I'm not sure you've told us specifically, so between the two of you, how often are you apart, on average? How much do you travel away from him, and vice-versa? I travel some (mostly internationally), and while my wife was without a doubt glad & even reassured to have me on a separate continent from the other woman in the early days following my affair, I made a deliberate effort to pare back my business-travel thereafter. Spending time apart makes it hard to rebuild an affair-proof marriage; and spending lots of time apart makes it very hard, in part because it prevents the two of you from getting in the requisite time for Undivided Attention to one another.

-- About Facebook: Does your husband still have a FB account of his own? Given how his affair with her was kindled, for him still to be on FB would be in the "YGBFKM" category, and if he doesn't get that, then that would be indicative of him still having some considerable fog to burn through.

Chime back in when you can, Pink.

It doesn't even sound like you have full disclosure yet...you don't want to know what affair items may still be in your house and trust him to just toss anything? He can't even find the time to delete emails.

The traveling job and proximity to OW are big issues but if you also don't have full disclosure that is going to set you back no matter where you live. You don't want to get slapped in the face with something else later. Pink, did WH disclose on his own and answer ALL your questions or did he just basically nod in agreement to what you confronted him with? You have stated a few times that you didn't want to know x, y, or z.

To answer your questions -

Yes to undivided attention. We see we have put our marriage on a low priority for a super long time and it's difficult to break patterns build over two decades so some of these things are much easier said and agreed to than done over time. We sort of veer into old habits and then redirect. I think this is okay because like with going to the gym (ha ha ) for example, if you beat yourself up when you don't go every day, it defeats your motivation.

Travel apart - very complex issue.***edited***

Facebook. Funny you should mention this as I was just pondering if he should block OW. I have not wanted him do this before now as I definitely wanted her to see all of the photos of our summer together in the US as (from previous posts) I have issues with her existing with the thought that my H loves her and not me. I know it's silly but also, I wanted to send a strong "we are back together" message to all friends and family as since we are not home often, people were a little confused for a while. I actually logged into his account last night with the intent of blocking her, but then changed my mind and decided that he had to do it if that's what we were going to do.

Historically, in late May, around when we started talking about getting back together, he changed his status to married to me and OW unfriended him and blocked me (she is such a...well, you know what I think she is...that she tried to friend my daughter).

I log into his account from time to time as he is hopeless with settings and sometimes posts things only to himself or whatever and so I can see messages and so forth. That is how she last contacted him (in July).

H is interested and motivated and remorseful but also, just started a new job and I cannot over-stress how difficult these living transitions are proving to be, even with six months to sort it all out. So the first part of saving our marriage (changing our lifestyle) has sort of sucked the energy out of him. I do get that. I mean, today I cannot even get dressed I am so pooped. I know that we are up against a lot.

I have read the book Surviving and Affair. H has read parts. We've done a lot of the things in it and found it really helpful but have not looked at it in a while. Obviously we need to go back as I have learned something very useful/valuable these last few days. My H and I have had such a fun, loving last few conversations. I found this little skype graphic 'miss you' online somewhere and posted it to him for when he wakes up yesterday (he is overseas) and he posted the screen shot to fb so if anything, I am feeling a little silly for acting like teenagers...I get the travel concerns, but at the moment I am not feeling it as we feel more connected than we have in decades and that is saying a lot.

I feel like I just posted a novel! But anyway, this thread (and everyone's feedback here) has been massively helpful to me (maybe the most helpful thing I've come across yet - as instead of raging at H and going all out of control, I have gotten my head into a much more rational and "strategic" place, which has worked wonders in only a matter of days) and I just wanted to get all of the details out there.

H disclosed on his own but the details were shaved down. This whole shells nightmare - to hear him tell it - was just some "beads" he admitted to making for her.

Dr. Harley says that there are graphic details that are not healthy to know and can actually have a damaging effect on the relationship and both spouses' ability to move forward. He mentions sexual details but I believe that this is a personal question - in other words, what things will be psychologically damaging for one person might not be for another (actually Dr. H may have said that as well). This thing with the shells is one of those things for me. I wish I didn't know and I only do know because I went digging around in the affair graveyard like an idiot, something I do not want to do anymore.

That being said, I do not want to get slapped in the face later with something new down the line. I watched him throw away everything from the A over the summer but the obvious stuff is not that meaningful to me. More important are the things he has gotten rid of on his own.

There are some clothes that the OW mentioned in emails that he got rid of without knowing I knew about them. He bought a pair of shoes when he was with her that he doesn't know I know about. I could tell he really liked the shoes and they were just shoes so I ignored it. One day we were out and he said he needed to get some shoes and so he got some like those and (on his own) got rid of the ones he got with her. He didn't know I knew and I didn't say anything.

He was staying at his mom's in the US during the bulk of the affair (and at the OW's house). We cleaned out his mom's house this summer, we cleaned out the storage unit together too. When we cleaned out the storage he found a new hoodie the OW gave him and he showed it to me. It was really a really nice hoodie so instead of throwing it out, we drove around and found a homeless man and gave it to him.

I don't know if something could be lurking around, but I can't think of a place I haven't looked. Maybe the attic at his mom's...I do think the only place affair relics exist is in the home of the OW. One reason I am so tempted to tell her where her shells came from!

Just clarifying before someone notices...

We agreed living overseas and traveling all the time was one of the reasons we drifted apart so my H found a job in the US in a *****different city**** from where the OW lives and we are selling our house and moving there. I know at first glance it might sound like he got a job closer to her. Technically I guess that's true as the entire United States is closer to her than I am.

Regarding Facebook, my marriage was one of millions lost to it.
My ex wife affair started on facebook.
It has NO place in a marriage.
My aunt and uncle have a joint account.

There are other avenues than facebook.
There are several instant message apps that cheaters can also use.
And my wife would "block" OM and still be in contact.
Get rid of the facebook.
Oh when I asked my wife to delete it she said she couldn't because of the family pics on it

Forget about tthe pics

I don't think you do get it. Dr Harley spoke to a couple on the radio who were successfully PAST recovery. They had done it, their marriage was strong and they were in love. They were adorable, actually.

He had to start a new job somewhere else but his wife could not leave her job for another month. They didn't want to throw all their hard work away so they asked Dr H if it was OK.

He said no, no way. In spite of praising their newly rebuilt connection he said they could not do it. He said if they did it, the marriage would suffer greatly. That's one month. AFTER recovery was achieved.

Why not email the show yourself and find out what Dr H would advise?

That is only because you have not had an intimate, romantic marriage and think the little you have NOW qualifies. It doesn't. Traveling jobs are hard on close, recovered, romantic marriages. You just can't create an intimate, affair proof marriage while traveling. This makes recovery impossible. I fear you will have to find this out the hard way. And that's ok, it is your marriage to ruin. But if you are serious about recovery, you will find a way to never be apart overnight again.

He will tell her not to travel and not to spend the nights apart again. He will tell her that her marriage can't recover this way.

Pinkstraws, I understand you don't want to make any lifestyle changes due to your children, but are you willing to put off recovery until then? That is the question you have to ask yourself. Your marriage is not in recovery and won't be until you start spending the nights together and meeting each others needs on a DAILY basis. Nor can you affair proof your marriage while you are apart. Traveling jobs are an INVITATION TO AN AFFAIR.

So it comes down what is more important to you. Are you sacrificing your marriage in order to travel? And that is ok if you choose the job over your marriage, but I just want to make you are fully informed about the choice you are making.