OK, so things are a mess again. We were working on our marriage and things had improved dramatically, but over time my LB$ started running low due to lb's, communication issues, and problems with resolving the problems. Before I knew it I was frustrated again and slowly heading back towards withdrawal. I tried to discuss with my H, and he reacted so surprisingly badly, I just shut down again.

A few months ago I decided that I needed to plug back in and stat working on our relationship again. I felt we were starting to make some progress, but then last weekend my H did something that really upset me..instead of shutting down I tried to have a careful discussion about my feelings. This really upset him, and set us back again.

So now to the current issue. Yesterday I noticed he was very involved with some txt conversation on his phone, after he went to sleep I snooped. The conversation was with a female, initiated by him. He was complaining about me, our relationship, as well as our children. He was a bit flirty, (possibly testing her interest), but did not say anything directly out of line.

This is unacceptable to me regardless. He did something similar a few years ago too. The female said nothing flirty, I figure she just thought it just a friendly chat. Should I confront him TONIGHT, or wait and snoop longer? To be clear, at this point no affair, or talk of meeting, however, I feel he is most likely testing the water with this female. If I wait I have no doubt this will escalate (on his end minimum)and I am not sure I could even consider staying in this marriage once that line has been crossed.

Another question, I forgot my password for MB, got a temp new one but need to reset my password and have no idea how?

I would confront him tonight. After an affair and having caught him multiple times doing this, I don't see why you would wait. If he is unwilling to do MB coaching and follow the program, I'd divorce him for that alone. You will just be dealing with this again and again when he gets "upset."

Sorry he has done this to you again.

black raven,

Thanks so much for taking the time to respond, I have been sitting here really thinking over your advice. I agree, and will confront him tonight, things have got to change for good or I will begin quietly planning to separate, I will need to get my ducks in a row first if possible, because I am currently a SAHM.

I am not sure how he will react to the confrontation tonight, and it's possible he will decide to call it quits himself. I am OK with that too, but it will create financial stress and upset our kids of course. If he decides he has had enough and wants to leave that will be the final straw for me, and I would NOT be willing to make any further attempts to reconcile...ever.

I will see what he has to say, if he wants to save the M, I will insist that we start using the MB program together. I really appreciate your help, I have read many of your posts and believe my H and your exH have many similar personality traits. I guess that was probably a DJ, and I shouldn't say that. I think we are both at the point of frustration with each other.

Do you know the identity of the woman he was texting?

As for your password, you can reset it by clicking on My Stuff in the yellow tab above and select Edit Profile. Then re-enter a new password.

Thank you for the reset info! Yes, I know who she is, but do not know her personally.

And you're welcome.

I hope your WH will pull it together but if he doesn't you will be better off without him. The financial stress and upset to the children...always sucks but emotional and mental toll of living with a thoughtless WS far outweighs those things.

I think you should confront your husband and tell him : "It hurts me that you are having inappropriate conversations about our marriage" and request that he end all communication with her.
If he works with her, request that he get another job.
Otherwise this is an affair waiting to happen.

At the same time, try to be as pleasant as possible in "Plan A" and after 4 days of Plan A ask him to enroll in the Marriage Builders online program with you.

Tell him: "I am unhappy in our marriage and would like to create a loving romantic marriage. Will you join me in taking the Marriage Builders online program?"

This has been occurring in your marriage for years and you have been on this board for many years.
Unfortunately, you never followed the program in Surviving an Affair and your marriage remains in a crippled state (as Dr. Harley repeatedly warns callers on the Radio will happen if they skip his steps).
If both of you committed and followed through on following the recovery program this would not be happening.

You either continue in this state or jump on the MB recovery train.

thanks Jedi,

you are right of course, if we had both been on the MB program we wouldn't be here now...again.

I was tying not to force MB on him, and just lead by example. That did not work, obviously. We will not survive as we are now, so our days of limping along were coming to an end one way or another. At this point he is just as frustrated as I am.

We started to backslide because I started to get very upset and withdrawn about my complaints being ignored, he often would say that I just don't like anything...too much for him to work on, etc. I am going to speak to him tonight.

I do realize that my withdrawn behavior has hurt my relationship, I knew better then to allow things to get back here again.

He does not work with this women. She was a supply rep for a company my H worked for at one time. They no longer have any contact through work.

Thanks for the suggestions about how to handle the conversation tonight. I was thinking maybe I should not bring up MB tonight, but maybe over the weekend depending on how our talk goes. He will be shocked that I knew how to get into his FB and read his PM's. I have been doing so for a couple years without his knowledge. I think he is going to be upset and embarrassed because of some things he told her (some odd stories), and that I went behind his back to read it.

It is a standard MB principle, especially after an A, to have complete transparency in your marriage. It sounds like you have experienced infidelity in your marriage already, but have never implemented that very basic EP, which has allowed your H to continue having secrecy and the ability to have a SSL.

This has to be a deal breaker for you, if he is not willing to implement this very basic EP then you need to separate. It is one thing to work the program in terms of learning how to better meet EN's and avoid LB's, but there really is no 'learning curve' when it comes to complete transparency.

There is only one reason to want to continue a life of secrecy and that is because you plan to continue to be unfaithful and have secrets. He should not have a FB account that is secret to you, if he has one at all.

These were FB messages? I thought they were phone texts. Take screen shots of these and either email to yourself or print them before he has chance to delete them.

I hope you aren't taking blame for his decision to seek out another woman AGAIN. If you were feeling upset and withdrawn because he dismissed your complaints, that is perfectly normal and understandable. Him bad mouthing you to another woman and flirting on top of it...is 1000% on him. Do not go there, tis.

unwritten,

Thank you for you reply. Yes, he did have a full blown A several years back. At the time I did not know about MB, so no MB concepts were implemented. I came here long after the A had ended, at that time the discussion forum was quite different from today. I introduced my H to MB (not the forums) then, hoping we could begin to follow the program. He was interested, and began pouring over Dr. Harleys articles, but was not looking at it as a plan we could work together, but as a plan for me to correct myself. This made HUGE LB$ withdrawals for me, I then looked for another program to fix our M that only required me. This was a disaster.

I returned to MB several years later myself, and stated trying to clean up my side of the street, and discussed our M with him, and we both agreed to make serious changes, and start to work on our M, things went very well for a while actually. We had not been able to implement some concepts though.

TBH, in general my H isn't too hard to please in our M. He is happy as long as I am happy, connected, and enthusiastic about SF.

I have been snooping fairly regularly on his phone. He knows I read his actual txt messages, and check his history. His phone is fairly complicated, and I don't think he was aware that I have also been using his phone to monitor his fb activities. Not because he would have fought me on it, but because I had never mentioned it, and clearly I don't believe he would have been PMing her the way he did if he had been aware.

Yes, sorry I was unclear about that. I noticed yesterday that he was very busy on his phone with some type of txt conversation, but it was a FB PM situation. I will try to do a screen shot, but know little about that type of thing on his phone, but my DD may know how to. I showed the entire conversation to our DD last night to get her honest opinion, so if he comes home with this erased my DD has also witnessed it.

I do realize his choice to seek out an OW to bad mouth me and our family, and flirt was 100% HIM and unacceptable! I did know he was unhappy with my behavior (withdrawn and distant, low SF) and I was not taking any action to correct until recently.

I also wanted to add some additional info. We lost our oldest DS in a fatal accident about 4 years ago, I realize this is a DJ but feel it is important to add, his behavior has changed since.

He has had a great deal of anxiety, depression, and strange thinking and behavior. He did get on medication, and says he feels 100% better, but I am still seeing very odd behaviors. Example being lying to others about very strange things. He was actually telling this female very strange lies about his childhood and teen years. This is why I suspect he is going to react very badly to me having read these messages. He will be ashamed and angry that I am aware of these bizarre tales.

Sorry about the loss of your boy. I read your original thread. As for what you call bizarre behavior and the weird stories he is telling OW...I don't find that odd. WSs lie and make up all sorts of things...perhaps looking for sympathy from the OP or just because. I would not take that as a sign that he will be ashamed. All WSs lie and do crazy things.

True black raven, I assume these lies were an attempt to impress and gain sympathy, but they were quite extreme and bizarre! I have been aware of this lying issue for some time now, he seems to be telling tales to many people, including his own family, not about me, but about himself.

He will be home very soon, after dinner I will confront.

Let us know how it goes.

Hi there Brainy! Of course I have come back to let everyone know
how it went. I so appreciate all the help and support of all of you!


OK so when H got home I noticed more phone activities, and I had a chance to take a quick look again, he had really crossed the line with bad mouthing me, and lying on me to boot, the flirty tone continued of course, but kicked up. I was seeing RED and just wanted him OUT, so brought him into our room, door shut, and calmly informed him that I had been following his chat, that I was done for good, and informed him he was to leave ASAP and not return for any reason. He initially agreed, and said that he was also tired. I agreed.

After some brief thought from him, he asked me to come back to talk. He gave me his phone, and has agreed to delete his FB acct. I told him we would need to put very strict permanent EP's in place and work a program of my choice (MB of course) He has agreed to this as well. We didn't get to far into that yet. We agreed that we would discuss that more today. I am thinking the MB coaching program. We recently had a major financial set back due to job loss, luckily he has found another job, and we are starting to dig out. Within a short time I expect that we can afford to join....he may disagree but I will do everything I can to show him we can budget this in, because it has to be a priority.

I think I will still quietly start an emergency plan for myself, just in case. I also may eventually offer his phone back...but will first quietly install some type of spy wear, this was his idea to give me his phone, but I am just not sure how realistic this is long term, as a solution.

I want us to start working MB together right away, so I plan to bring him back here again very soon to start reading, discussing, and planning.

I will probably have to ask the mod to delete this thread in the next few days but I will start a new one. I doubt he will want to post here, but I would love it if he would. Should we start with basic concepts?

I am open to any thoughts or suggestions. I realize I did not handle myself standard MB last night, but I was just ready to quit and be done. I wasn't expecting him to decide he wanted to fix this.