You have more than showed your willingness to be there for him, to help him, and to recover your marriage with him. You have done your best to give him Just Compensation. And Just Compensation does NOT include abuse or punishment of the wayward spouse.

You cannot rebuild the marriage on your own. He MUST step forward and start doing some of the heavy lifting, and he is refusing to do that. He is unwilling to get help. He is unwilling to build a romantic marriage with you.

Nothing you do can make him be willing.

The absolute best thing you can do for your marriage at this point is to separate yourself from him so that you can preserve the love you do feel for him. Currently, your love for him is being drained away. You need to protect it, because he is not going to. You can only protect it by separating yourself from him.

When and IF he does decide to do what it takes to recover the marriage, your marriage will then have some hope. Currently, there is none.


It says that you care enough about your marriage to take the necessary and painful steps to save it. When a BH is abusive and refusing to recover, there is nothing you can do to turn him around. You have a choice: stick around and becoming his punching bag so that you eventually end up HATING him, or leave and give your marriage SOME hope of recovery later on down the road because some of your love for him has been preserved.

Staying with an abusive husband is NOT commitment.

Just Compensation IS NOT unconditional love, and that's just what you've described here.

Just Compensation IS:
1. Ending all contact with the affair partner for life
Examples: NC letter, phone number changed, email changed ...

2. Removing the conditions that led to the affair (Extraordinary Precautions).
Examples: Facebook shutdown, Radical Honesty (no secret second life), job change, no more nights apart ...

3. Creating a romantic relationship using Marriage Builders concepts.
Examples: Eliminate Lovebusters, POJA, PORH, meet EN, UA time each week ...

You are not helping your husband by being an enabler for his abusive/depressive behavior. You would help him more by setting the bar high!

um, you might want to actually listen to Dr. Harley's show before you post. Just a thought.

I did.

But thanks for the thought.

It sure doesn't show. How do you explain telling a poster she should write Dr. Harley before taking advice that he freely gives quite often?

ydnAccord,

You need to take some further steps to affair proof your marriage.

I am confused about whether or not a NC letter was ever sent. Your husband told us in August that it had been, but now claims it never was. Can you clarify this?
If you still have the same contact info that your affair partner used to communicate with you, you need to change these things.

Facebook needs to be shutdown and blocked. This is vital.

Do you still work at the same job as OM? If so, this needs to change ASAP.

Okay. I just read DH�s post and these are all fair points and I will answer to them.

It sounded like he was claiming that all contact has not ended with the AP. I can assure you it has. The NC letter was sent, although at the time I had not found MB and DH read it after it was sent. Like I said in my earlier post, I don't think a redo NC letter is advised... But perhaps I'm wrong. My husband is aware of the last contact I had with either affair partner. There has not been any since, nor do I desire any contact with either of them.

No, my phone number has not been changed. I did block OM�s number after DH brought it up. I didn�t do it reluctantly. I just did not think of it first. I can change my phone number. It�s not a problem. I guess the problem I have with it is that the issue has never been brought up to me. This is the first I�m hearing that it�s a problem.

It also sounds like he is saying he�s not happy with the EP�s we have. We have not yet had a discussion about changing our EP�s.

No, my email has not been changed. I would also gladly change my email. OM�s email has been blocked from my account. In addition, all of my emails show up on DH�s phone.

The Army program -
A few months ago I applied to the Army nurse corps. At the time I thought it was with the enthusiastic agreement of my DH. He accompanied me to my initial interview with the recruiter, and also helped me write my motivational statement. Had I been selected it would have required me to attend basic training in Texas for about 9 weeks. I found out today that I was placed on a back-up list for the program. So, unless a slot opens up, I won�t be going. But throughout all of our discussions over this program, we always talked about how I could decide not to accept the offer if I got stationed somewhere other than where we are living now. I thought we were having an open and honest dialogue about how we each felt about the decision for me to attend. For me, I was honest about the fact that I thought I wanted to do it. But it was always up for negotiation. I just told my DH the other day that I wasn�t sure how I would feel about it if I did get selected, because of the time away. I wanted it to be the best decision for the family. It was something I thought we were in enthusiastic agreement about.
Facebook again�..

When I initially spoke with Dr Harley back in October I told him I�d be willing to get rid of FB. At the time DH didn�t seem like he wanted me to, mainly because we have so many mutual friends and it does help to keep a sense of continuity when one spouse is in the military and we move every few years.
I did pick up on something DH said Sunday when he was upset. He said something to the effect that there were still things I had not done. I wasn�t sure what those were, but I wondered if it might have something to do with FB friends. So Sunday night I revisited them again. I had already deleted OS friends that were not mutual friends of ours. So Sunday night I went ahead and just deleted OS friends even if they were mutual friends. I�m not sure who the dudes are that he says he hates, but if I�d known he hated them, you can be sure they�d be gone.
Right now there are 10 OS friends on FB. They are:

My dad
DH�s dad
DH
2 cousins
my brother in law (DH�s sister�s husband)
2 openly gay friends
DH�s grandpa
my best friend�s husband

I told DH about my BF�s husband being on my friend list. They are considered friends of the family. And at the time he was okay with it. But, as with anything, it is always open for discussion. If his feelings on it have changed, I can delete him as a friend. Or I can delete FB.

As far as the mutual friends with POSOM 1 and 2, I have to tell you I honestly don�t know how many female friends of mine might still FB friends with POSOM 1. I think some of them probably are. It�s hard to know because POSOM 1 and 2 are both blocked from my account so I can�t go to my friend�s list and see if POSOM 1 or 2 is on their list or not.

When DH first brought up my friends, he mentioned that he was okay with me being friends with certain people but that he didn�t want to see certain friend�s faces on my feed because seeing those friends was a trigger for the first affair. Even thought the people I was friends with during the first affair did not know about my affair, and I don�t think they would have condoned it if they did. BUT, they were people I was hanging around with while I had the first affair, therefore they were a trigger. Knowing this, I kept them as friends but changed the setting so their posts would not be showing up on my news feed.
But it sounds like this is still a problem. So I can delete them.

As far as changing jobs�. I am a little confused here. POSOM lives and works at a job 4000 miles away. I changed jobs when I moved here with DH. I asked him before I took my current job if it met with his enthusiastic approval. I was of the understanding he was in approval of my current job.

But again, if that has changed, we should be going back into negotiations.

Really, a social network site shouldn't and needn't be the cause of this much discussion. It's really not difficult; just ban or block the whole thing and have done with it.

Many people live without Facebook. I live with without Facebook. Why is this even being discussed at this stage?

Agreed.

Prisca already told you to get rid of it and I don't understand the resistance... It's not worth the trouble. It really isn't!

Change all your contact information today.

Then just delete it. It's not worth the risk or trouble at this point in your recovery.

Okay. FB is deleted. I'll have to change email at home since I've got some family pics saved that I'd like to keep on our computer. I think I might have to go to the Verizon store to change my no#, but I'll figure that out.

You can change you number at home from the verizon website. I have done this numerous times.

Okay. FB is deleted. I texted DH with my new number. But when I did he texted me back advising me to wait before making any other decisions. I texted back and said, that's fine. All I've done is deleted FB, LinkedIn, changed my number, and changed my email. I said I wasn't doing anything drastic.

He responded back that he thought this was drastic. He asked if I could get my old number back and said he hoped I had not deleted my old email account.

I responded that I did plan to delete the old account because I had already started a new one and I did not want to give him the idea that I was using it to start a SSL.

He said it bothered him that I did all this without talking to him first. He said there were important things to consider before changing personal info and he hoped I had thought through them first. The honest answer (and one that I shared with him) was that I did not hesitate or think it through. Once I read in his post that these were things I'd failed to do, I thought that if I hesitated or thought about it, or waited a few days to do it, that it would be seen as dragging my feet or resisting to do it.

I figured he would think "Good grief. I even spelled it out on the forum for her, but she STILL didn't take any initiative."

Now, he is on travel right now. So I do understand that he was bothered by the fact that I changed info while he was away, because of emergency contacts. He brought that up and it's a valid point.

I just don't get it. I thought in his earlier post he was upset by the fact that I had not changed my number and email address. Did I completely misread that?

He will be home later tonight and we can talk about it. But I've already changed my contact info. I have not yet deleted the original email account.

I guess when I was reading his post I thought it was some sort of a message to me as to what I needed to do in order to provide just compensation.

I think you did the right thing. Right now I don't think your husband sees how important these things are to recovery, so he views them as drastic. I think the main problem is most of the time he doesn't want to recover.


It sounds to me like in your husband's present frame of mind he would punish you either way.

This willingness he has to punish you is why we are telling you you need to be making your preparations for separation now. You may never have to use them, but you want such preparations to be ready in the event that they are needed. Over time, his love busters are going to erode the love you have for him and the willingness that you have to continue giving for this marriage. Ideally, separation needs to occur BEFORE that happens. Separations are easily ended/reversed when both husband and wife come on board.


I really think he needs to stop lecturing you. I think he has a valid complaint about not talking to him first, but to present himself as the expert with the enlightenment you are lacking on this subject is not the way to do it.

Okay. So, if I am understanding what you are saying, the better way to go about it would have been for me to wait until he gets home and discuss changing contact information.

When, in my mind, I try to imagine having this conversation with him, I can imagine a few responses I might get -

He says it doesn't matter.
He says he wants me to figure it out for myself.
He ignores me.
He changes the subject to something else.

My point is that, based on what he has said thus far, I thought I was supposed to be figuring things out on my own and taking initiative. He would think that me waiting to talk to him about it would = me asking him to tell me what to do.

I really don't mean that in a disrespectful way. When I try to envision it, those are the responses I would most likely predict.

I am also having trouble knowing when I have his enthusiastic agreement on something. I originally kept FB and the FB friends I had because that was what we had discussed.

I am starting to think you're right. I would have been punished either way. Because he isn't sure he wants to recover.

You have certainly done the right thing, and I applaud your fast action. So many FWW drag their feet on getting these things done (myself included). These things are basic EPs, and should've been done a long time ago. It is very obvious now, if it wasn't before, that you are serious about doing whatever it takes to recover your marriage.

It is also more evident that your husband is not by his reaction.

He set it up where you could not win no matter what you did. He is not interested in recovery. He is going to punish you no matter what you do.

You did the right thing, ydnAccord.

I need to retract a couple of statements....

1. I said I kept the FB friends I had because that's what we discussed. We discussed keeping FB. We never went through and evaluated each FB friend. Maybe that would have been a more reasonable option. But I don't think he'll have any objections to FB being gone.

2. I said he would be home later and we could talk about this tonight. Being completely honest, I am exhausted. I know without a doubt he is completely drained from a rough few days of travel. I think I will retract that plan and opt to get some sleep tonight instead. I think that would be best for both of us tonight. I just didn't want to put out a false impression that this was going to be discussed and then I go to sleep instead.