She reaches out every time she engages you in a text conversation, Blindsided. I have really felt terrible for both you and her in some of ways you have shared about responding to her texts.

Yes, from her conversations reaching out to you, I can see you are very much on her mind, but you NEED to stop lovebusting when she reaches out.

Please, please let us help you respond to her texts....but only if you can not feel so hateful towards her. She would not be safe in a relationship with you as long as you are so despising.

You either have feelings for HER, not her role as a mother, or you don't. You need to figure that one out before deciding on a Plan B for the sake of your health, or a Plan A because you LOVE her....yes, love HER.

Yes, to Jedi's comment.

100%, yes.

But Blindsided, if you think it, she can feel those vibes from you.

Do you care about her, do you love her, or do you not?

Give her a choice between a drunk, opportunistic POSOM and her little girls' daddy who knocks her socks off with meeting her needs and puts a cork in his lovebusting big mouth....who would YOU pick?

Blindsided, many things you have shared that you have texted and said to her are so much like my STBX who was 12 years older than me.

If he didn't tell me so, he "could have told me so". Honestly, I came to almost feel like throwing up at the sound of his voice, eventually.

Very much internally focused on establishing his superior wisdom, life experience and maturity.

In doing so, he was proving anything but.

Can you see her as an equal, or not? If not, let her go.

You have the advantage of being separated, ironically, so you could focus like a laser on love bank deposits during all of your interactions, much like you you would toward someone you wanted to date.

Instead, you have just been lovebusting and trashing your opportunities.

If I were to bet, seeing how often she reaches out to you, after 6 months of love bank deposits and kind overtures, she could start to be attracted to you again.

You have to behave like you did when you were trying to get her to date you, and show your best side, not your bitter side.

In fact, you have to eliminate your bitter side entirely because it has no place in a relationship.

LOL.. that made me laugh. I hear ya.

Glad it struck a funny bone.

Blindsided, you have some hard questions to answer. I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts on them.

Here are my thoughts:

xW asked me to keep the girls through Sunday night so that she can attend a funeral. A funeral for the POSOM's relative. So this "reaching out" is obviously nothing of any substance. She is probably trying to make nice so that we three can all be friends, and that will NEVER happen.

Everything else in my life is going sideways. Everything. Job, business, EVERYTHING. I am not up for this again. Not again.

All options are still on the table.

You seriously need to stop pre-judging and assuming what's on her mind.

Bindsided, please answer all the questions (above) that I asked you.

That will help you make a decision on next steps.

Stop allowing momentary emotions to keep whipsawing you back and forth.

I just went through everything going sideways too.

I lost my job, my STBX left, my kids were hurting, my dear dad almost died several times, my daughter gave herself to a creep with assault tickets who was on drugs because "there was no use saving it since everyone gets divorced anyway", a daughter in several fender benders that I didn't want to spend savings on to fix, ...you name it, God allowed it to pile on. You should see what my car looks like right now.

Looking back, I can see a purpose in all of these things.

I had so many crises flaring up everywhere that I had no brain cells left to nurse the bitterness I felt towards my STBX, and by the time this was all over - I had let it go.

Even when my STBX broke into my house to use my computer to correspond with about 20 women on match.com, I could not even care less. All of my bitterness was gone.

Now that my lesson has been learned, my dad is doing well now, my daughter's relationship with the creep has been disrupted and terminated, I have a new consulting contract and everything else has been resolved WITH the resentment and bitterness eliminated from my life.

Also, I interact with my STBX with the kids very cordially and I no longer mind when he is around. The sting is all gone.

My heart is finally at peace - it had been full of bitterness and resentment for a long time! It is so wonderful, and I really wish you could find that place too (without so many crises preferably).

I would just encourage you to give it all to God so he doesn't have to turn up the heat so far in your life in order to redirect you.

You need to answer the questions I asked you so you can make a decision and come up with a plan. Having a plan is a major step towards clearing your mind of the intense bitterness that has been coming through these posts for the entire time you've been posting.

I want my family back together. I want my wife back. That is not going to happen. If I am destined to be bitter the rest of my life, I guess that is what I have to look forward to. I don't know how to "let it go". Sorry.

I made a commitment. I cannot reneg even emotionally, even though she has done just that and has used the courts to keep me away so she can get the one need that she has fulfilled as much as she wants.

This site and Harley's books are for people who BOTH agree to work things out. She never will. I am an idiot to think otherwise.

I'm having a hard time reconciling your statement above with all of your posts on this board - because you hate on her all the time here.

I can understand that. I am venting on here, remember. The feelings I have for her are more in the form of a potential. I loved her when we were together, even when we were not getting along. The frustrating thing for me is that she was making demands of me all the time, demanding sex, demanding that I get a job, like I was some sort of magic job fairy. She wore my self-esteem down to a nub, and that is why I left for a couple days to get away from that pressure. I could not take any more rejection and keep my sh*t together. She took that as my "leaving her" which of course was not true. I was removing myself from that situation to keep the peace, mrs or less. She just used that to justify screwing the POSOM and the rest is history. I can tell you that whatever I have been saying here, it probably pales in comparison to what she has told her friends, and especially the POSOM, as evidenced by the BS he posted on his own cheaterville billboard. He was obviously fed a bunch of lies as well. But it's amazing how that relationship keeps going like the energizer bunny.

Before I read Harley's books, I didn't think there was any reconciling a situation like this, which made it harder to digest. Now that I understand why things happened, I am certainly willing to work things out. So she screwed a guy, I had a LOT of partners before I met her. I am not proud of it, they just kinda add up over the years.

Anyway, she obviously doesn't feel like she is in some "fog". She probably feels like God is giving her what she was supposed to have in the first place, and she is not going to let go of that.

Venting. Yes, as in smoke coming out of a chimney. That's all this interminable thread is: smoke. No fire. No action. No commitment to Marriage Builder's principles, with the exception of an occasional ember of reason, which gives readers false hope that you are going to take some kind of action that will help yourself.

Please stop posting here if you are just going to vent and do nothing. You're just taking up space and time.

Exactly.

You do realize, that is a choice you're making, right?

Oh, you poor, poor grown adult man. How did you ever endure so long with such a mean spiteful woman? She expected you to WORK? She expected a grown man to work? What a horrible demanding woman!



111 pages now. If you removed the affair, put you two back in the same house, and set your wife to posting here, I would tell her to kick you to the curb if you weren't working and behaved in the manner in which you "vent" here.


You post like the biggest jerk husbands that have come through this board in my time here.


And when you get called out for acting like a jerk, you roll over and start mewling about the victim you are.


Would you want your daughter to marry a man who behaves the way you do? Would the way you treated your wife be acceptable out of your son-in-law?


You can barely say a single respectful thing about her any time you post.

The sad thing is, some of it is because you are trying to be hopeful--- I just don't know what for. And you are desparate. Look at your reaction to even the hint that she was "reaching out."


You've been at this for a year-and-a-half, and you still haven't learned the whole meaning of no expectations. You still haven't learned to control your anger.


Instead, you reward your anger with "venting."


A year-and-a-half here, man. And you've swatted away every hand that's tried to help you. And "Vented."


****, bravo.

Blindsided,

I'm very sorry to see you in such a disarray. Will your job with the state be reactivated, or are you now having to seek a job elsewhere?

I am going to go beyond what others are posting to you and tell you that I think your hostile attitude toward your ExW and toward yourself is probably due to your sketchy employment and the financial strain over the last several years, and her complaints and dissatisfaction with you not providing adequately for your family. In this time I think that financial insecurity and lack of confidence in a husband's ability to provide is huge turn-off for most wives.

You just seem to be treading water now w/o a job, and you're not a spring chicken. I was in my 50's when my long-time job with a company was eliminated back in the 1990's. I will say that I was shocked and uncertain and even depressed for a short while. Fortunately I didn't cowtow tho - I studied, got admitted to a grad program in accounting and finance (totally different field than I was in), completed the courses with good grades and got a job in finance with a company for the next 13 years. I had the support of several relatives and friends, and had the support of my wife when she saw I was striving to provide for us. I am blessed, Blindsided, but it took a helluca lot of hard work and commitment on my part as well.

So, where are you at?? You say you want your family back, but you ain't going to do it with wishes.

Tom