My husband and I are recovery after an affair. I'm the wayward spouse.

We are reading through the site here and we started planning our time for undivided attention. Based on the fact that we have a less than healthy marriage we decided to spend more than 15 hours a week. We agreed on 30 hours a week.

My husband smokes weed recreationally. He only smokes at night after the baby is asleep (no other time) and is not allowed around the baby when he is high.

I requested that he not be high during our undivided attention time as he is not all there. He took this as me being retaliatory against him and refused.

I'd like some advice. Is being high during the period of undivided attention appropriate? Am I unreasonable in my request? Is there a compromise?

Is he a dope addict? How often does he smoke dope?

I guess I misunderstood the policy of undivided attention.

Probably and every night.

He uses it more to cope with the affair since he started smoking after finding out.

Brightside,

Have you offered to take a polygraph

Gamma

Please tell us what you've done on the list below.

Also, who is your OM? Was he married? Was your affair exposed and to whom was it exposed to?


From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

I cant thank you enough for addressing this Brightside. When I first started here, I am more quiet by nature, and when I had questions, rather than finding my voice (as I am now, a bit), I would wait, and read what others post, and when I would find someone who I agreed with, I would either do whatever they had posted, or ask to contact them directly, as it seemed, idk, less...painful to rehash i guess. Anyway, there was a post by someone a while back, and that member mentioned doing exactly that! That members motives were totally different than what I think your husbands seem to be, but the action was the same anyways. I actually talked to that person and asked if that followed the spirit of the program. The answer was that as part of the NC rule, the WS had to hand over the phone, the computer, etc., to the BS for their inspection. This was when the BS started communicating with the OP. While that was NOT for discovery purposes, it was for the purpose of knowing what the OP was doing, and to intentionally inflame the situation and attitude between the WS and the OP. I was shocked. They told me that if left to the WS that they werent confident that the NC would be done. I agreed, at first. Point is, I think there have to be some limits. Not written down ones, as intentions may be different. Your situation is just a bit more unique by the fact that you watch him doing it. You can understand Im sure why he thought it was a good idea at first, of course. However, if it is a few weeks later, and you have been honest (and as open as he has requested), then in the interest in total honesty, he should stop. All that will be accomplished is more undue paranoia (assuming you HAVE been honest), and probably an almost obsessive mania in him. You can not make progress this way. If you have to, to avoid breaking a NC agreement, cancel your email/skype account completely, as that is NOT a violation, and that should do it. Either that, or the idea of the joint message, is the only way you can truly heal. The member I mentioned before was the one who made me see that, as I was in that exact compulsive/manic state myself, and yerned to chat with the OP as my spouse. 3 weeks after I had spoken in private to the other MB member, I was contacted by him again, and he told me that while he did feel it was helpful, at first, his intent was only to hurt and cause pain to the OM, and had been successful, but didnt know when to stop. There was a backlash, and after some soul searching my MB mentor said, he looked in the mirror and knew he had taken it too far. To keep it from coming back on his family any further, he just let the accounts fade away. That wasnt what i wanted to hear, but I believe it to be the right thing.

Sorry all. Now you see why I am more the quiet type. Why I do get going, and care of what I speak, I tend to be like longfellow. Thank you again for bring up some of the odd and unpleasant realities, that occur when healing. Too bad it cant be as easy as a pen stroke, huh?