They worked for me. Can you try them on another device?

They are working today...listening to them now. Thank you.

One of the Just Compensation clips provided, I think, the key to where I failed. Dr Harley strongly makes the point that the WS has to make the firm commitment to not only eliminate the vestiges of the affair, but to commit her all to creating a better marriage than the one damaged. Only then need the BH reciprocate.

I failed to do that, at least with the rigor that I now understand is required. As I posted in my opening note: "I make no claim of credit for the progress we made. My husband drove the process."

I now understand why he believes his tank is dry.

This is going to take some care in presenting the "second-try paradigm" to BH. His innate thrust to "take charge" should more properly have been muted to defer to my "driving the bus" all those years ago. It cannot come across, as (if?) I get his new cooperation, that the first recovery shortfall was his, but now I should stand a better chance of success.

Ideas, anyone?

PS: Thank you for the clips, BrainHurts.

What has he said he needs from you?

In a matter like this (a problem requiring solution) he will never admit he needs anything from anybody - and in all fairness, he never has. It amazed me as he learned or intuited the concepts of exposure, increased undivided attention time, more targeted emotional needs satisfaction, and other things by reading Not Just Friends, and Five Love Languages, before finding His Needs, Her Needs and the other books by Dr Harley.

What I think he needs from me is initiative - in the matter of restarting an L_I_A-driven recovery. But like I mentioned, it probably cannot be a blatant "Okay, let me try to do this," action.

I just never understood how much of his emotional energy went into driving our recovery effort for almost seven years. His tactic to ensure that I'd never become dissatisfied was to become the primary "giver", and I, thinking he was happy in that role, settled in as the primary "taker". He never complained about the (now evident) imbalance, and I couldn't see it.

Is he communicating with you at all now?

He sounds like a he has been sacrificing. Did he ever read Surviving an Affair? Dr. Harley is very clear that HNHN is the wrong book for affair recovery. Is he communicating with you? Did he have some complaints that you could start addressing now?

We've found it to be pretty rare for an affair not to have involved sexual activity, and when we prompt a betrayed husband to snoop further, he often finds out that there was sex. Is that what your BH found out in those emails?

How can your BH be sure that you told him the truth about the this being an EA only? What were the circumstances of the affair? How long did it last, and how did you manage to keep it at the EA level only?

He is not communicating with me at all. He has maintained normal relations with our three adult children, but they have told me he will refuse to discuss our situation with them.

I have been wracking my brain for any complaint from him that I should have detected, and I really can't recall any.

There was no physical affair. Nothing in the package indicated there was, because there was none.

I think the one thing that the copies revealed, as my BH read them, was the higher level of infatuation evident in AP's words than my BH would have understood when we discussed the situation after confrontation. I didn't have the copies to show him at that time.

Also, AP had saved emails from between us from well before I would have considered anything improper to have developed. We had work discussions for several years that were necessary to our responsibilities. Why AP would have saved them is actually alarming, like I was being stalked without knowing it.

In what ways was he the 'giver' and in what ways were you the 'taker'?

In what ways was he the 'giver' and in what ways were you the 'taker'?

In any way imaginable.

Most importantly, he gave me the gift of (and the faith in) a recovery in spite of my treatment of him. He cut way back on his time away from home, which was my chief (unvoiced) complaint pre-affair. He arranged for a second marriage ceremony soon after d-day. He took up golf because I enjoy playing, even though he never really did. He bought a place near our out-of-state daughter, so I could spend summers with our grandchildren. He took over the cooking and shopping duties because he had more time than I did.

Those are a few of the big things; the hundreds of smaller things I can't list here.

Meeting your emotional needs does not make him the "giver" and you the "taker." This is not how the giver and taker work in Marriage Builders. Everybody has a giver and taker at all times -- you are not one or the other. You have both.

As a formerly betrayed spouse, I have to tell you that the picture you are painting here makes absolutely no sense. It has been five years since I discovered my wife's affair. Our recovery was guided by MB principles, as is our marriage now. But if some documentation like torrid emails were dropped on me now, although it would not be a fun experience, it would make little difference. I bear no delusions about the affair. I don't know how anybody who follows Dr. Harley's radio show or website could expect that affairs would ever really depart all that much from the common pattern.

It makes no sense that your husband would engineer this fantastic recovery and then go into full retreat at the disclosure of emails that he certainly should have known could have existed in the first place. The story is too inconsistent to be believed. Either he ain't the great guy you make him out to be or the fantastic recovery your are describing is just that - fantasy.

Although you state that there was no sex, that may have been difficult for your BH to believe. How much time did you spend with OM physically and did you offer to take a polygraph?

If there was sexting or self-pleasuring then indeed there was sex, perhaps that is what your BH gathered from reading the emails.

Perhaps after reading the emails your BH felt that you had minimized.

VW

Prisca, if my use of the words "giver" and "taker" are inconsistent with the paradigm here at MB, please understand I meant no offense. My point was to relate how my husband's elevated efforts to change our marital environment for the better far exceeded anything I did.

mrEureka, I don't know exactly how to respond to your statement that your reaction to the recent blow my husband received would have been different than his, except to say your fWW would be more fortunate than I have been. Or maybe she did more to alleviate your emotional outlay in the five intervening years since discovery than I did in our seven. Either way, I see no way to apply those sentiments to my current problem.

vwvw, it appears you registered tonight, and nine minutes later you submit your first MB note accusing me of lying. Seems like a lot of trouble....

Lia, Prisca wasn't offended. This is an educational board where we discuss and learn the MB program and concepts, so Prisca was letting you know you'd misunderstood this concept. Go back and reread to make sure you get it.

I very much agree.

They are right. I never would have guessed it to be possible, but a true recovery puts the affair so far behind the BH that mere letters will not trigger him to throw everything away.

What was in those letters?