Found out that OW was pregnant with OC back in November. Things have been going well with H and I through all of this. OW had been contact H on a farily regular basis regarding the pregnancy. H finally told her not to call unless she had something pertinent to say, that he needed to get on with his family. Supposedly, she has not called since, which is a little over a week.

He was in a down mood last Thu/Fri but came out of it Friday night. We spent the entire weekend together and it was very nice. Then yesterday he was down again. I asked questions to try and help and he got nasty with me. When we talk, it's like he has better things to do and the last two times on the phone he did not even say I love you. Prior to that I said it and his response was far from enthusiastic and really made me feel like he could give two s----.

Right now, I am sittig at work typing this with tears in my eyes. Our relationship has been strained for two years, which is when the A came out. He has been back and forth between me and OW since then. Since the pregnancy came out, he seemed to be really into the marriage. His mood swings bring back old memeories of when things always fall apart between us.

I am on the verge of calling him and telling him in a total LB'ing manner to just get out of my life. I know I should not but that is how I feel right now. I know that his mood could be based on so many other things but it's his attitude toward me and the way he is treating me that is p---ing me off.

I asked him a few days ago when we were going to talk to Harley again and he gave a very non-comital answer. I left a msg with Harley's office to schedule one, even if it's just for me.

Do any of you have any advice on what the WH goes through when OW is pregnant and how I can deal with that? At this point, I am feeling like it is just not worth it. <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" />

Ugh. I hate to go back in the "Way Back Machine" because the TOW's will say I haven't healed, but if it will help to know what to expect, I'll tell you what happened to me. And I was having such a great day, too...hahaha

My time lines are similar to yours in the sense that all my horror (D-days) occurred mostly in November (of 1998). Nasty time of year...and they say Trigger was a horse.

Bipolar behaved just like your husband. However his A only lasted about six weeks and I don't know if the length of time makes any difference, but he was totally immersed in the A while it was going on. When he found out OW was pregnant, he stuck around for another month because he felt obligated and was scared. Pregnancy was something he wasn't bargaining on and certainly didn't expect. It never occurred to him to use protection because for twenty years we never used anything. He assumed (and we all know about assumptions) since the OW was pushing 40 that she had a pretty good idea about how to prevent something like that from happening and he never gave it a thought.

Even though the shock of the pregnancy catapulted him back into the real world, he still had residule feelings for her after coming home. He was torn between his desire to keep the marriage, loving me and wanting his family to feeling obliged to her, feeling responsible for what had happened and his attraction to her. Even though they didn't know each other very long, he had developed some feelings for her. He saw her as much more than she really was and idealized her which was evident by his shock when he saw her for the first time a year later at court.

During that first year...especially the first six months, he would vacillate between her and me even though he wasn't in contact with her anymore. I suppose during quiet times he would think of her and he would wonder if he made the right choice to stay with me. He also worried that he had caused to much damage to the marriage for it to survive. He wondered if he should leave me and go to her and start over fresh with her and the child because it would be easier than fixing the near fatal destruction of the marriage. I'm just guessing here, but I think this might be standard stages in WS's personal recovery.

Bipolar was very confused...and verbally abusive. He tried pushing me away with his nastiness and his hostility towards me. He would become distant and detached suddenly when I thought we were again on the road to recovery. The push-pull made me crazy and I was always on edge waiting for his announcement that he had changed his mind and was going off to her. I knew he was experiencing huge inner-turmoil and what this was doing to me was making me feel insane.

When things were good between us....they weren't just good, they were incredible. It was always like this but intensified during those first few weeks after he came home. We were both hyper sexual in the beginning in an effort to reclaim what was lost, I suppose. During those times we were both very emotional and very romantic and close. The closeness during those times was so deep and meaningful and even more intense than when we first met and I think it was because of the seriousness of the recent events that were changing us and altering our lives. It made us both realize what we had, what we have and how much it all meant to both of us. I would become optimistic even in my pain to a point where I didn't feel it as much as I felt the increasing closeness and depth of our marraige. I tried to learn how to compartmentalize. We reminisiced a lot about our past life and all we had shared before the affair, and tried to examine what happened and why. Then the bottom would drop out again and he would become withdrawn again. Back and forth, push-pull for six months.

After the six month demarcation, it began to happen less and less and he was getting more and more into me and into our life together again. After a year, he was completely over her and I don't think he reminsced about her after that. He appreciated so much my dedication to him and to the marriage and was blown away that I was willing to stay with him after all he had done. In fact, he was stunned because I don't seem like someone who would be willing to stay with someone who could do something so horrible to me. But, I had invested so much into our marriage and into our lives, I minimalized OW/OC to a point where I could extract them from my life and stay focused on us and on our recovery. It helped that there was no contact and they were several states away...out of sight...

I loved my husband. I loved our life together. We had an intense and complicated history and shared so much and we had always been so close and so involved. I still can't figure out how this could have happened to us because I felt I had always been intune with his EN's. I knew him when...I knew him when we first began our lives and incorporated his children into it, I knew him when we built our first business and we lived together, worked together, shared so many joys and disappointemnts together and struggled to build yet another business. I couldn't allow a six week affair with some stranger to snatch it all away from me after all I had put into everything.

I didn't want gratitude because I wanted his love instead. Gratitude is almost too generic for me...like a consolation prize or something. I wanted what we had...I wanted the white hot stuff back, the intertwining lives, the closeness, the emotional and sexual exclusivity we had.

After a year, remorse set in big time. He pushed it away before then because it was too much for him to bear. His remorse would come out in angry outbursts and verbal abuse during that first year...the guilt was eating him alive and I think he thought if he was a jerk, I would leave him and let him off the hook and he could run away and not face all he had done. He had a tough time facing himself and felt guilty about his decision to stay in the marriage. If he made me partly responsible for what he had done, he could live with himself. Once he accepted responsibility that all this was his decision, regardless of his illness, his remorse became almost debilitating. Not just for me, but for his OC and the OW, too. And he still struggles with this. But the good news is is that he was able to let go of a lot of it once he realized I had forgiven him and that I understood him, his illness, what had happened and that we could move forward. He has not said one unkind word in almost two years and does everything he can to treat me the way I should be treated...and I treat him the same way. We are very good to each other, very kind and it is very healing.

When he first came home after the affair, I was so distraught and so hurt, deeply hurt and confused, that I told him that that there were a few thihngs, a few conditions that had to happen for me to consider reconciliation. There could be absolutely no contact whatsoever with OW under any circumstances for eternity...no visits, no phone calls, no letters...nothing. I said all communication had to go through an attorney. He agreed. For us it was easier than for most because we are several states away from OW so actual physical contact was something I didn't have to worry about unless he bought a plane ticket, then all bets were off and we would be done and both knew there would be only one reprieve, one chance to make right.

I also said he could not have contact with OC. He told me that since he had never seen OW pregnant that it wasn't real to him. At first he asked me if I would consider raising this child and I said, "I can't believe you would ask something like this of me after all you've put me and our family through." I was stunned he would ask me such a thing. The last thing I wanted to see or be a part of was the OC. This was during the early weeks and months of the first year after the D-days. I couldn't even watch EPT commercials on TV or walk down the baby food aisle of the grocery store or look at a pregnant woman or a baby on the street. The pain was too horrific, too surrealistic. How could I even consider something so bizarre..how would I explain this to our kids and our families? How could I face this huge betrayal and stare at the product of this betrayal. I was too sick myself, too messed up and far, far too hurt and damaged to even consider contact. It wasn't good for me, it wouldn't be good for me and most of all, it would ahve been horrible for the OC at the time.

I reminded Bipolar that he wasn't much of a dad to the three kids we already had and that two of those kids were his from his previous marriage that I had raised for him and that while he was really nice to them and fun, he was pretty much detached from them as well, leaving most of the raising up to me and that it was a thankless job and I wasn't about to do it again. I told him that his OC had a huge extended family and would be living with the Mom and Grandparents and an aunt and a bunch of cousins down the block and would have all these people around her all the time loving her and that we needed to fix what we had here, and if he accepted my conditions, we were good to go and could revisit this decision after we had healed ourselves. We even went to a priest in charge of the Retrouvaille weekend we attended to find out exactly what our obligation was to this child, and he assured us that our marriage came first and foremost, that our kids came first and that the only obligation we had to this child was financial until we could ever come to a point in our lives where contact might be possible...but my heart had to soften.

Well, now it is five years later and the OC is four years old and I have healed through the grace of God and I am very open to contact. Bipolar has been consistently well for 18 months now where he would be able to offer something to OC where before now any contact from him might have been detrimental to her. The pain is pretty much completely gone, our marriage is beyond excellent and far more than I ever expected and far more than I would have ever guessed.

What is good for the OC is our primary consideration. We had to fix what was wrong with us first to be in a position to be able to offer the OC something more than two fragile adults with seemlingly insurmountable problems. I know it is probably too late and for this and I am sorry, but anything sooner than now just couldn't have happened for a variety of reasons. I am well aware that our healing does not coincide with the OW's timetable or demands and that her child does not know her dad and hasn't had any contact possible until now. But that's the price everyone pays because of the initial behaviors and the OC is the one who is left feeling rejected and not wanted and that is the horrible tragedy of it and I haven't a clue how to fix this. I'm just grateful she has such a huge loving family otherwise I would agonize over her well being and I am glad I don't have to. I know if we lived in the same state we would have initiaited contact by now.

My posts are usually long and tiresome but there is so much involved here that just to give you soundbites is unfair. You need to know there is hope and that recovery is possible if you can hang in there and try not to take the mercurial behavior personally because it really isn't you...it's them. They need to get through what they have done, and they need to realize that the damage can be repaired and that you can and will forgive them. My "bipolarcoaster" has finally come to a halt and we live a normal life and we are tuned into each other and into our marriage. We live the POJA and take care of each other's most important emotional needs.

I apologize for the length, but take what you need and leave the rest. This is just how it was for us.

Catnip =^^=

<small>[ December 17, 2003, 11:26 AM: Message edited by: catnip ]</small>

{{{LMF}}}

I apologize for not keeping in better contact with you lately and I hope you don't mind me reading your threads here to keep updated.

You have been through so much trying to save your marriage and your family. You know I will always support you in your decisions and I will never say I told you so.

Please take time for YOU! You have really lost yourself and wasted so much energy trying to keep yourself sane. Like pepperband said, let him own his feelings and detach yourself from them. It's hard to do, but it's not impossible.

During my marriage with exwh, I attended Al-Anon meetings and found them very informational for going through his EMRs. Al-Anon talks about detaching with love and theres an old thread here on MB that talks about this and is really great. I had it printed off for the longest time and if I can find it I will link it for you. Also, read the Al-Anon web site. An addiction is an addiction is an addiction and Al-Anon is really great for guiding you with dealing with a loved one with an addiction.

"Just for today" is an Al-Anon slogan. Just for today I will try to live through this day only and not tackle all my problems at once. Just for today I will be happy. Just for today I will have a quiet half hour all by myself and relax.

Just for today, LMF, just for today!!

All my best to you... you are doing fine! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

Hi, again,

I found the thread by Bramblerose and also a thread I started about her thread. I think you might get a lot out of them.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=31;t=003539

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=34;t=002911#000000

How are you doing since you posted this, LMF?

{{{LMF}}}