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Hepa Offline OP
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We have together 13 years, two kids, and we have gone through an affair on my side. The affair has ended, I terribly regret every part of it, we talked it over many times, we struggled for a year but managed to turn it around and got into more fullfiling relationship. It has been 3 years since the affair now and we had one draw-back last year when my spuse got angry and threatened to leave in anger and due to his resentment over the affair. He did not leave becuase of the kids and our finantial situation and we managed to reconcile after this incident and had another good year with many affectionate and fullfilling moments. Now, one year later, the resentment is back, triggered by a sudden memory and he is about to head out of the door again. In anger, he started to look for a place to move out, not sure if he will move out or not (due to kids and money) and he has asked me for space. We are now under one roof, but emotionally separated, sleeping in separate beds, and I do not know how to continue. Should I support the physical separation and encourage him? Could it bring any good? Should I try to convince him to stay emotionally separated but under one roof and see how it turns out once his head clears out? He said he is unsure, if he can ever get over his resentment. But it seems to me that he is only thinking this way when he is angry and in the loop of resentful thoughts. I love him dearly, want to help him and I fear physical separtion. Thank you for your opinions about what to do in my situation,

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Welcome to MB. You have found the best place to recover your marriage.

Have you answered all his questions about the affair? Who was the OM? Is there any contact at all with him? How did you carry on the affair? Was it through texts and meet ups?

Was your affair ever exposed?

Was the OM married?


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Please tell us what has been done on this list.

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.


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Hepa Offline OP
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I answered all the questions. He says he does not understand some of my explanations, but I cannot explain myself any better. The OM was a guy I met abroad. We had sex once and communicated for some time through e-mail and texts. When my spouse confronted me, I confesed the affair and ended all the contact soon after. Never saw or spoke to the OM since. OM was not married and our relatives and close friends know of the affair.

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We did everything from the checklist exept "change jobs and relocate". We cannot do that until my contract ends next year. Then we plan on moving out of the city.

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Originally Posted by Hepa
Now, one year later, the resentment is back, triggered by a sudden memory and he is about to head out of the door again. In anger, he started to look for a place to move out, not sure if he will move out or not (due to kids and money) and he has asked me for space. We are now under one roof, but emotionally separated, sleeping in separate beds, and I do not know how to continue. Should I support the physical separation and encourage him? Could it bring any good? Should I try to convince him to stay emotionally separated but under one roof and see how it turns out once his head clears out? He said he is unsure, if he can ever get over his resentment. But it seems to me that he is only thinking this way when he is angry and in the loop of resentful thoughts. I love him dearly, want to help him and I fear physical separtion. Thank you for your opinions about what to do in my situation,
The thing is, a relatively new BS goes through resentment almost all the time. If you read BS posts here, you will see that most are tortured with thoughts of the affair all day, and often dream of it at night. The worst of the horror passes after many months, but the thoughts are still there from morning to night, and there are several triggers every day.

So that makes me wonder what was special about the trigger that your husband experienced recently. He can't have forgotten about the affair until BAM - a trigger came along. I think something extraordinary must have happened to make him react by wanting to move out. Can you try and find out what that was? It just does not add up that, despite his grief, he was able to stay in the marriage until one trigger, out of the hundreds he must have had, caused a completely break in his thought processes.

No, separation will not do your recovery any good. The only way for both of you to recover from an affair is to complete the checklist that Brain Hurts posted, and go all out to meet each other's emotional needs, and have at least 15 hour's undivided attention each week. How are you doing on UA? Do you get out for enjoyable dates that combine recreation, affection and conversation?

The checklist says "change jobs and relocate IF NECESSARY". Is it necessary for you? Do you work with OM? Do you live within easy reach of him? Did you hook up in one or other home? Is there a chance that either of you could run into OM while out and about?

Because is any of the above is true, then your marriage does not stand a hope of recovery yet. If your husband is being triggered because you still work in the same company as OM, or because the opportunity still exists for you to hook up (e.g.if you travel away from home), or if he lives near enough for you to meet, it will be the thoughts that THOSE things are happening, and not "triggers" per se, that are upsetting your husband.

So please tell us about the affair, how it ended, and what has happened since.


BW
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Hepa Offline OP
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I know of two triggers that caused this, one was me going out for a walk and I did not mention that I went with a female friend. He confronted me, because he found out that the friend went as well but I did not mention to him, he got upset that I am hiding things from him and that I just do things behind his back and don't tell him. Then he said that he went by the bar where he was sitting the night the affair happend and that started all the thoughts. And the next morning, he just woke up and was thinking about it too. And he is tired of waking up and thinking about it. We also recently came back from 3 months abroad so we are readjusting to being in our home town again.

The OM does not wrok with me nor does he live in the same continent. There is no chance I would run into him. But we would still like to move.

I am really trying to do everything from meeting emotional needs to UA. But, my spouse is not always on board, does not want to do any questionnaires, and it is up to me to plan all the dates, all the time together and do most of the work on meeting his needs. Although I have to say he has done a lot of work as well over the past 2 years. Nevertheless, It takes me effort to convince him to do things with me, have converstaions or spend time together in the evenings. When we do, it is good, but I constantly need to push it forward. He is not on board with Marrige Builders concepts. I am trying my best at implementing them whenever I can. I do the best in scheduling the UA time, however, with him not on board, we do not get to 15 hrs a week. Now, whith him being absolutelly emotionally separated, I do not want to push him or suggest anything at all, since he asked me for space. So I feel a bit in the corner and I am not sure how to work it around or how to proceed now. When he wants and has good will towards me, everything goes smoothly and we have nice fullfiling dates and interactions. When he does not, we are stuck. And now we are stuck. I cannot figure out how to bring him on board full time and I think it is because of the resentment issue.

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You are probably right; the problem is indeed the resentment issue.

I would just like to press the point, though, that the heightened resentment is being caused by something.

The resentment is always there. It has never gone away, even if you think you have been doing well for a time. The question is why he has been set back so far that he wants to get away from you. As a stranger to both of you, I can't know the answer to this, but I feel it must lie in something to do with the way you're living now.

If you were able to have an affair with a man who lives on a different continent, then you must still be able to do so now.

My husband had an affair with a woman who lived in a different country. Most often, he was able to travel to her country because of his work, but sometimes they both travelled to a different country because of her work, and a few times, they met in my city, London, because of her work. When he changed jobs and stopped travelling, I knew that it was still possible for her to travel to London, and because I never felt safe, there were many times that our marriage went backwards after seemingly moving forwards for a while. OW could also contact him at any time directly at work, and I knew that he would lie to me when I asked if she was doing so.

I'll never know now whether they ever met in London after he stopped travelling. I can only say that for my recovery, that fear only went away when he took early retirement - which I encouraged him to take entirely because of the affair. Our son was only 15 at the time, and we needed my husband's income to put two kids through university, but I could not go on living with the insecurity of never knowing what he had done from the safety of his office every day. The effect of this permanent fear on my mental health was profound.

I will say that some of the accounts that I read by the WS seem to have little or no awareness of what it feels like for the BS, living with that fear over the long term; the fear that you could easily repeat the actions that you took without consideration of how badly it would hurt the spouse and children. If you could do it then, for months or years, you could easily do it again. That's how the BS feels - that they don't really know the person they are married to, and that that person is capable of anything. That awareness is lacking from your posts.

So, the things I can see are that, for all your husband knows, you could still be having the affair using the same means that you used before, and that you are living in the same place as before. For him that is triggering.

Dr Harley is not in favour of former unfaithful wives, who have given up the affair and who are working on the marriage, shouldering the burden of recovery for a long time. If your marriage is ever to recover, your husband's needs to overcome his resentment more than he has done. Dr Harley recommends anti-depressants whenever someone struggles with depression - which I think this is. Do you think you could encourage your husband to see his doctor?

But beyond that, you have to think hard about your lifestyle, and what is permanently triggering him. I think that your work might be one of those triggers. I don't think being under contract at work is a good enough reason not to leave; employees can normally break a work contract without being sued. Moving house also seems beneficial, and you should do all you can to achieve this. There might be other things also that you haven't mentioned. You need to dig deep and find out what your husband is afraid of, and make that thing impossible, so he knows it isn't happening again and again.


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Thank you for your insightful post. I think I struggle to understand the fear he is going through indeed, you might be right. I myself have come to the point where I know that I would never ever do it ever again to him, so it very is hard for me to imagine the fear he is going through, I think. We both work from home. I have not traveled anywhere without him for the past 3 years, I do not sleep away ever, and I do not do anythig without him except of walks with kids, occassional walks with one or two friends I have and twice a month I have to go to work for few hours to deal with participants. But I am in a public space, no private office or anything like that. Other than that, we are together with my spouse 24/7.
He does not want to consider any councelor, psychologist or psychiatrist. Does not want to read any materials, nothing. I will try to think what other changes in our lifestyle could help him feel more secure, but since we are together so much, the only last thing I can see might help is moving to a different city and changing our house. Since I need to finish this research project, because I have an ongoing grant until April, we cannot move anywhere before than and children also need to finish their school years. I hope this move will help us move on.

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Originally Posted by Hepa
He does not want to consider any councelor, psychologist or psychiatrist.
But YOU could consider this, to get the best advice for both of you.

This site is owned by Dr Harley, who coaches people for free. All I've been trying to do is to pass on what I have learned from studying his methods - but I feel out of my depth when I come across a difficult case like yours. That's why I recommend that you write to him. He and his wife produce a daily radio show during which they answer listeners' questions and discuss Marriage Builders in depth. If you write to him, he will answer you by email, and if you give permission, he will read out your letter on the show. He might even ask you to be on the show. He will then correspond with you privately if you need more advice.

You just need to give him the outline of the problem as you have done here, and ask what you could do to help your husband and your marriage to recover.


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Email your questions to Joyce Harley at mbradio@marriagebuilders.com. When your email question is chosen to be answered on the radio show, you will be notified by email directing you to listen to the broadcast. If you would like to consider being a caller, include your telephone number. You will receive a call to explain the procedure.


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Hepa Offline OP
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I have written to the radio already and my e-mail was discussed last year in October, when we had the first drew-back (similar situation, main issue was resentment). Dr. Harley seemed a bit puzzled with the behavior of my spouse, saying that his taker has completely taken over and he was suggesting maybe he has an affair (in my view impossible) and he would need to talk to him to find more information. He siad his case is very unusual, because usually, when the woman is willing to do anything to fix the issue and extraordinary precausions are in place, men go along with it, because what are the other options, really. The problem is that my spouse does not want to disucss anything with Dr. Harley, and I cannot be a caller because we live on a different continent. So, this option just seems exhausted. But I think that I could indeed consider some kind of counselor or psychologist and try to talk to them on my own. I will try to explore this option, thank you.

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In that case, snoop!

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We are together all the time, both work from home, there is nothing in his phone or e-mail. I just don't see how that would be even possible.

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Have you followed back up with Dr. Harley since he answered your email?


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Originally Posted by Hepa
I have written to the radio already and my e-mail was discussed last year in October, when we had the first drew-back (similar situation, main issue was resentment). Dr. Harley seemed a bit puzzled with the behavior of my spouse, saying that his taker has completely taken over and he was suggesting maybe he has an affair (in my view impossible) and he would need to talk to him to find more information. He siad his case is very unusual, because usually, when the woman is willing to do anything to fix the issue and extraordinary precausions are in place, men go along with it, because what are the other options, really. The problem is that my spouse does not want to disucss anything with Dr. Harley, and I cannot be a caller because we live on a different continent. So, this option just seems exhausted. But I think that I could indeed consider some kind of counselor or psychologist and try to talk to them on my own. I will try to explore this option, thank you.
What date were you on the show? We would like to listen, through the archive.


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Originally Posted by Hepa
The problem is that my spouse does not want to disucss anything with Dr. Harley, and I cannot be a caller because we live on a different continent. So, this option just seems exhausted. But I think that I could indeed consider some kind of counselor or psychologist and try to talk to them on my own. I will try to explore this option, thank you.
I am absolutely NOT suggesting that you speak to any counsellor other than Dr Harley. If my advice results in your doing that, I will have failed, monumentally.

Are you sure that you can't speak on the radio show because of your location? Why would that stop you? A difference in time zones can surely be overcome, and might you have a phone plan that would give you a call price that you could afford? What exactly is the problem?

I'm not saying that speaking on the show is essential, however. You can still follow up with Dr Harley by emailing and reminding him when your letter was featured, and then asking further questions. He will answer you questions indefinitely, for free. I think you need his help, badly, so I do hope you do this.


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My issue was discussed on the radioshow on 9/29/20 and it was the first segment. I was trying to follow up with Joyce on the issue after my case was featured but I did not get another reply any more. Since the radioshow in 2020, our situation has improved over the course of the year, we became affectionate and we had a lots of nice moments. I think we were doing much better for most of the year as compared to what I was describing in my e-mail featured in the radioshow. But now it feels to me that it is repeating again and I feel like on the roller coaster. I would rather avoid being a caller but I can try to send another e-mail and ask Joyce to forward my further questions to Dr. Harley.

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I couldn’t find a 9/29/20 show only a 9/28/20 show and a 9/30/20 show and I found this in the 2nd segment. Is that yours?

Pam has had an affair and is trying to win her husband back. What can hinder recovery after an affair?

Hepa’s Radio Show


FWW/BW (me)
WH
2nd M for both
Blended Family with 7 kids between us
Too much hurt and pain on both sides that my brain hurts just thinking about it all.



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Yes, that was me, Pam the second segment, sorry for being imprecise.

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