I am new to this and so badly need some advice or some encouragement. My husband of just over 6 years has told me he no longer is in love with me and wants a separation (he's not sure if that means ultimately divorce as yet). He is moving out tomorrow.

A little history on us is that we met online and lived interstate - one issue with that is that we truly did not have a conventional courtship living so far away from each other. He moved to where I live to marry me and we have since had a child who is now 2 years old. This is his second marriage - the first ended due to his wife having an affair with his friend.

Trust for me was always an issue with my husband. I have caught him out on many occasions lying to me and whenever I have confronted him about this, he says he lied to "protect me". The biggest issue I have with him is that he has no boundaries when it comes to appropriate relationships with others. I always feel as if he doesn't care enough to consider my feelings and so he goes ahead and behaves inappropriately.

In 2011 he started regularly calling and texting my sister's sister-in-law after I had told him that I never liked her and wanted to stay away from her and her family. I discovered this many months later and confronted him and her about this only to be told that we are "just friends" and that he would stop. The following year I fell pregnant and he initiated a full blown affair with this other woman. He claims this started in Nov 2012 and continued through till April 2013 when I discovered their facebook chats which dedicated their love to each other etc. I kept it to myself and tried to work through it with him, as our son was only 2 months old at the time. He promised he would stop and we started counselling together.

Two months later I found further conversations between the two of them. The affair had continued behind my back. This is the point where I told my family and, he to this day, still is upset with me for not "defending him" when my sister tore shreds off him for what had happened and ordered him out of my house. I was so shocked I couldn't speak! We went away for a few days to get away from home and then returned and within 2 months it was back on again with her, unbeknown to me. I discovered this only in June 2014 (after almost a year of them sneaking around during work hours and after work). They had set up a fake facebook account for him so I wouldn't find out and her 3 children were apparently (according to her) happy for their mother and as religious as she is, when I called her a hypocrite, she said because she was in love that it made things ok and that my husband would have been a better father to her 3 children than their own biological dad who left her in June 2013 when the affair was discovered by the family.

My husband says he is "in love" with her and does not feel the same way about me. I know I have my part to play, and it is only after he said this to me a month ago that I fully accepted this. From the start I felt insecure with him and thus I did and said things which were hurtful. I am a somewhat anxious person by nature and this anxiety led me to be controlling and didn't allow me to truly love him and meet his emotional needs as much as I should have. Using MB terminology, my Taker was at work on many occasions and I used many LOve Busters to drive him away from time to time. I believe the same happened from his end. His failure to meet my emotional need for openess and honesty and to truly feel that I was the only woman in his life led me to shut him down to the affection and sexual fulfilment that he desired.

I am facing a train crash of a marriage and I so desperately want to work things out with my husband. I do not want a divorce, I want his love, I want a united family, and we were also only just 2 months ago planning a second addition to the family. I do not have time on my hands. I am almost 41 and if I have any hope of becoming a mother a second time, I need to do so sooner than later. But I also understand that you cannot rush or push someone into doing something that they do not want to either. I have told my husband that I am willing to change, to speak to him about my requests rather than to make demands, to not embarass him if I get upset when we are in public, to be a more loving and affectionate wife. I have been trying to do these things for the past few weeks now, but he has not cared or acknowledged any of these changes. He has made up his mind that he no longer wants to be with me.

I know it's not just about my end of the deal. Both of us have to be willing to accept this challenge. I just don't know how to show him that I mean business - all he keeps saying is that I won't change and he doesn't believe me and he keeps throwing in my face all of the things I said or did to hurt him over the past 6 years. What do I do??

Well there are reasons for affairs but no excuses.

Dr. Harley would encourage you to expose the affair far and wide. Expose to her family and clergy also.

Please read the Exposure 101 thread in Notable Posts and return here after you have done so.

Hello Jedi_Knight. Thank you for your reply. I have exposed it to our close friends and to our immediate families. I am too ashamed to tell others as I feel I had a part to play in ruining our relationship and I already feel crappy without others thinking badly of me if they hear his version of the events.

Also, I want nothing to do with the OW...unfortunately we share the same relatives as she is related to my sister, and I just want to stay as far away from her as possible. Her parents know what is going on but they are not in the mental frame of mind to do much to keep her away from my husband in future. Both her parents suffer from mental illness.

I know the "reasons" my husband says he had the affair, but he still blames me for pushing him pretty much into her arms. She "was there" for him in his time of need, as he puts it. He said I am more than half to blame. I would never cheat on him doesn't matter what happened, and I find it ironic that he who experienced the very same infidelity with his ex wife, can go ahead and do this to someone else. Oh well.

Jess, move this to the SAA forum.

You can't compete with the addiction of an affair. This isn't about you, it's the thrill of having someone on the side and by sticking around you prop up that dynamic. It's also very unattractive to stick around as his option. He will simply use you as drama fodder to keep his addiction exciting for as long as possible.

You should have been in Plan B ages ago for your own mental health. Women have breakdowns if they try to do this longer than three weeks.

Hi Indiegirl. How do I move it to the other forum? And what does SAA stand for?

I failed to say that since June of last year my husband called it quits with the OW...he says he hasn't seen her since then, but he still loves her and can't seem to get over that. He lived separately until mid December 2014 when we decided to move back in and give it a go. Unfortunately that didn't go as well as I had hoped, both due to my rude behaviour towards him on a few occasions, and also due to the fact that he hasn't truly let go of the OW and can't seem to love me the way he used to (assuming he ever felt that deeply in love with me in the first place). We really didn't connect as a couple and it was only a couple of weeks ago that I realised I needed to get help and started looking into Marriage Builders and read the book His Needs, Her Needs. In his eyes it's too late, but I don't ever want to give up hope. As for Plan B, I was reading another person's forum earlier today and I felt so much like her in the sense that she said that she was scared she'd push her husband even further away if she tried that. I know I can't push him further because he has pulled himself away already, so my pushing would be futile. But I want him to know I still love him and don't want him to leave me or my son. Self doubt is kicking in now, I know that. I am just so scared. Took me so long to meet someone I thought I could spend the rest of my life with, and now we have made a mess of it!

How can people get over their affair addiction??

Dr H says don't read his needs her needs if you are experiencing an affair!

This is not about you and the A is ON.

But most important is your mental health. You need to protect yourself from this abuse.

You should tell your friends.

So what should I be reading instead for some advice or suggestions? I read His Needs Her Needs as someone had ironically bought it as a wedding gift for us many years ago, and it has been sitting in my bedroom for 6 years and I have never bothered to read it. If only I had huh?? Might not be here right now.

I know this is partly about me too though. A marriage doesn't spoil itself completely on its own. I don't blame myself for the affair, but I know I pushed my husband away with my bad habits.

As for my mental health, I know I am under a lot of stress right now. I am trying to believe that my husband hasn't made any contact with the OW since last June, but I guess I cannot follow him or keep him under complete surveillance all of the time. I believe he is suffering from withdrawal symptoms from not seeing her (I may be wrong though), and maybe this is why he hasn't given me the time of day lately and he is quick to point out all of my errors to cause him to want to leave me.

I told my friends about the affair last year but have only spoken to one of our close couple friends who are aware of what is going on at the moment, and my family knows too.

SAA = Surviving an Affair. It is the right book for your situation.

Go to Notable Posts and Read the thread "For the Newly Betrayed."

Then read the book ASAP.

Dr. Harley would encourage you to expose the affair far and wide and then enter Plan B.

Jess, welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. It sounds like he has been actively pursuing women almost from the start. The issue is his philosophy of marriage, which is that he feels free to pursue other women. So of course you would be "insecure." That is the normal reaction to a playah.

Dr. Harley would advise you to expose his affair and then separate and go into Plan B. He will destroy your mental and physical health if this continues. Please take your time and read up on Plan B.

How do you know this, based on what he has told you? Or have you spoken to his ex wife to confirm this?

I would bet, given his behavior toward the opposite sex in your own marriage, that either he had affairs or they both had affairs which facilitated the end of his first marriage.

You already know he has been dishonest with you about many things throughout your marriage, so you can reasonably assume he has filled you full of crap about the demise of his first marriage too.

This describes a man who is still in an affair. I'm sorry but he is continuing this affair, just as he has all of the other times he told you it ended. He is continuing to see and compare you to his lover, and you cannot compete with this, nor is it attractive for you to.

You should not be 'trying to believe' him.

That is a dangerous and delusional stance. Anyone with sense can see he is trashing his marriage due to the love of the chase.

There isn't anything YOU can do about it, by competing with him and showing him love. That will only prop up the affair.

The affair is an addiction which a real marriage cannot possibly compete with. Everything is happy and perfect there and they lie through their teeth to each other to keep it that way. They only say nice things to each other and the only complaints are about you. That's why he needs to be on again/off again with you. His mistress likes the competition and it's all they have to talk about.

So allowing him to go back and forth doesn't help. You should allow the affair to become very unpleasant, because that's the only way to stop it. Exposure is the best way to kill the A for good.

If you were to go into Plan B, there's a better chance that the relationship will become real. Most affairs die a natural death because the fantasy is not sustainable.

However someone with your husbands history will probably bounce from one marriage to another. He will go through wives like Kleenex. The only way to find out is to go into Plan B and wait for the A to die a natural death.

Jesse you can't afford to be scared right now. You have to be a rock star for your little son. you have to hold the bar high if you want any chance of his having a daddy he can respect one day.

Tell him you love him SO much in your Plan B letter you cannot stand the pain and will not be in contact with him until he commits to you and your son properly.

Then stand back and you will see what he is really made of.

in Plan B you will be far more attractive, creating a far more attractive life and you will be a better mother - because you aren't being horribly abused!

Of course you were a bit rude while being blatantly cheated on!

I've asked the mods to move your thread to Surviving An Affair and I strongly recommend you read the book of the same name.

I am very concerned about how long you have been in Plan A. You can only Plan A for three weeks without harming your health. Dr H has outlined the symptoms it causes and in a few years on this forum I have even heard of betrayed wives losing their children to the OW because of the mental strain. One poster who helped me when I arrived here is dead now - she fell in love again but the years of Plan A with her first husband caught up with her and she died far too young of a sudden heart condition for such a young and vibrant woman. Her son had to leave his beloved stepdad and go live with his dad and OW stepmother. Who had both turned into drunks.

How long has it been since you ate or slept well - or felt happy? How high is your anxiety around him?

The A has an expiry date. You should keep yourself happy and well while it approaches. Don't become haggard before your time.

I don't see any mention of you exposing OW? I would do that and expose to anyone else who may be effective. Then I would go into Plan B. His moving out is the perfect opportunity to Plan B because he will leave expecting to come and go as he pleases. Once he is out you should change the locks and communicate only through va third party. You should only agree to drop these measures if and when he is ready to send a no contact letter to OW and commit to a recovery program.

OW will then be responsible for meeting all his needs by herself and exposing her before you disappear causes trouble in the A and starts the process on a bad footing.

This thread explains Plan B

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2482787

The purpose of Plan B is not to punish your spouse, but to protect you emotionally.

Jess,

You wrote, How can people get over their affair addiction??

They never do, a former neighbor of mine talked about her alcoholic husband and how he had to face the fact that he would always be alcoholic for the rest of his life. So it is with affair partners the unfaithful remain addicted to them for life. This would also apply to you or I if we had gotten into an affair.

In one of Dr Harleys radio shows he said that the unconditional approval a cheater get from their affair partner is a very very powerful psychological force.

Gamma

Having a child would be a horrible idea. I hope you are not so desperate that you would bring another child into this nightmare.

x 2

I don't see much hope here. For your son's sake I hope you go into Plan B and file for legal separation/divorce if you need financial support.

Thank you everyone for your advice.

Just to clear up a few things, I'll add some more info. Last June my husband told the OW to leave him alone because he just wanted to focus on his son, thinking it was over for us as I kicked him out. He kept in constant contact with me during the 6 months that we were separated and he regularly came to visit to see our son. We did a lot of "family" stuff together too for my son's sake. It gave me hope that he wanted to restore our marriage and he also started to feel lovey dovey with me too during that time. In December we said let's give it a shot and he moved back in, after we both agreed to try and after a stupid ex-counsellor we had insisted we do it by the end of Sept instead of later that year. The counsellor's advice was "bite the bullet" and move in together and try to work on the marriage. Only problem was we had no specific program or were taught no specific techniques to help us through this transition. We stopped seeing that counsellor and started seeing another, but I've always felt we have never been given any practical advice as to what to do next. We truly were "winging it" so to speak, and that I believe has cost us a lot. We both went back to our old ways, me being controlling and nagging him about smoking and other stuff. Some of the nagging was about people he befriended on facebook and I would ask him why he would do that and he needed to watch his boundaries; or it might be about stuff that needed to get done around the house or . I got upset with him about various things on a few occasions in public and had a go at him (which he hates). I know I need to keep disagreements and deal with my anger in private and I need to control my outbursts. That's the part of me that I want to work on improving to be a beter role model for my son. He also complained that we haven't resolved the affection and physical intimacy that is missing between us. On the other hand though, it often felt to me that although he was physically there with me, he sometimes chose to assist others or think of other's feelings (including his own) at the expense of mine. I think that, together with my doubt that he loved him as a husband should, as well as occasional reminders of the betrayal, just made me feel more bitter towards him at times.


Anyway, with regards to the OW, we have not uttered a word to anyone she knows about our marital rift at this moment. For all she knows we are still together and I would like it to remain that way. Otherwise I know she will be sniffing around trying to get her hands back on my husband. She "loves" him and in my honest opinion, would take him as her partner in a heartbeat! She has three dependent children which are in their teens and she lives with her parents at the moment as she doesn't have any money to go elsewhere. She came out of a physically abusive relationship, so my husband is her "Knight in shining armour" to save her from a life of misery.

My husband just left today...moved all his stuff out this morning and told me he just wanted to be alone and isn't keen on chasing any other relationship at the moment. He needs "time to clear his head". I sometimes want to just let him go to be with this OW so he can see that reality isn't as pretty as the fantasy he created with her. He might soon get sick of her and realise his errors. I worry that I would never want him back if he chooses her first over me - I would feel like I was second best always. He recently told me he wishes she would do something to really stuff up so he could hate her and be done with the positive feelings he has for her at present. My biggest concern though is if he does chase her (which he promised he wouldn't) or if she does chase him and he lets her, what if they truly are suited to each other? Where do I go from there? I'm left to raise his son on my own as I will never ever accept this OW in his life, I know I'll become a bitter woman.

I told him today I loved him and hoped he would return home soon. He said so do I. I know if this were to happen we would definitely need a plan for recovery. How soon do you even begin to discuss this though? I don't know if I'll ever get a chance to but I am hopeful. As for Plan B, I cannot go through a third person. It's just not in me to do so. I can try to stick to Plan B as close as possible but there are things I'd have to omit for my own peace of mind. Also, some parts of Plan B do not fit my circumstances. The OW and my husband have not been communicating at all these last 10 months and when my husband did return, unfortunately I didn't make the changes needed to meet his emotional needs and I also didn't control any Love Busters which I know I was guilty of. So all in all, we didn't follow the traditional Plan A model. I only recently discovered this website and the book I read so didn't have the help I needed 10 months ago. When I did ask my husband to stop seeing her last year he agreed. He showed me any communication she tried to have wither him including voice messages left on his phone. He also changed his phone number on my request. She tried visiting his house several times and on every occasion he informed me of this. It's just he can't shake the feelings he has toward her. He promises he hasn't acted on these feelings since when the affair came to light in June 2014. To be honest, I have often checked his phone history and he was open about his facebook password and email password. It's just that everything I do is another love buster which seems to have completed deleted any potential love points I may have ever had with him. My goal recently has been trying to build those points back up again so he can start showing me some love too. I honestly feel that he is in a state of withdrawal from the affair addiction and it's hitting him badly as I haven't completely and frequently enough met his needs that the OW was fulfilling a year ago.

It doesn't seem like you are here to follow Marriage Builders so I am not sure what you are asking. Do you have a question for us?

She knows - the A has been on this whole time and your H has moved out to pursue it.

While laughing down his sleeve at how low your standards are. He knows the more he removes himself, the more you will chase.

How can you honestly consider meeting his needs when he is abandoning you and your son?


Come back when you are serious.

Your husband is addicted to having his needs met by two people and he is delighted with you because you are on board with this plan. You can't get any love bank deposits in as an individual - because you are now part of a blended bank account. Whenever you meet his needs it goes in the 'BW and OW' bank account.

He gets a family life with you and the thrill of side action with her.

Oh he has to move in with you/separate from you periodically to keep you both happy - but you are both on board with this plan.

The key to this plan is getting you to act 'secure' when he treats you like a concubine he only needs to visit regularly.

It isn't possible for you to make any love bank deposits as an individual and as his wife until he is home every night, has changed his contact details and is on board with recovery.

He is addicted to her for life and he knows it. A recovered wayward knows how to avoid the addiction - an unrecovered one knows how to keep it going. Being out of the house he is free to contact her whenever he likes and of course he will do so. It also makes you desperate and willing to accept crumbs. Win win! As an addict it will be impossible for him to avoid this temptation to have both women and he has no intention of trying.

Are you going to act happy, pleased and delighted when he visits you like a concubine? Do you have any idea how ridiculous and weak you are going to look trying to meet his needs while he is abusing you?

If you want to look attractive let him have ONE more piece of cake and make it good. Let him put your son to bed and then sit down to dinner with him looking your best. Talk about your best memories. Slide over your conditions near the end and tell him you have a plan for restoring the love in your marriage and it involves him being in the house. He will say no and you will gracefully accept his no.

That should be the last glimpse he has of you before Plan B. Not demanding, but not a doormat either. And certainly not his concubine.

[/quote]

From your description, you haven't committed any lovebusters. All you've done is tried to get him into marriage recovery. But the only way to do that is to step away until he decides to do so and let him face the consequences of his actions on his own.

You should also insist on the elimination of social media.

And so would you from the sounds of it. You have let your WH dictate everything and he knows you will accept crumbs.


He has chosen her over you and your marriage...more than once. Sorry if that sounds harsh but that is reality.


If you become a bitter woman that is your choice to be so. Again you are letting your WH dictate your life which is very sad.

You don't need to Plan A, you need Plan B. Since you aren't willing to do that and will accept crumbs there is no hope here. This is Plan Doormat and marriage at all costs.

I will echo what others have already told you:

You need to expose the affair and enter plan B.
also, he has probably been having sex with this OW the whole time.

After 3 weeks it's no longer Plan A anyway. This poster has been in Plan C for months - the plan likeliest to lead to divorce.

Dr H frequently warns about Plan C.

What is Plan A?
Being the best person you can be, in a challenging situation.
Not love busting and yet being firm.


What is Plan B?
Closing the door on being involved with the toxicity of your spouse's affair.
Creating a life for yourself and any children that has some joy and optimism for the future.

What is an IM? Someone who is agreeable to being the communication tool regarding finances and issues with children.

Why can you not do these things? Your situation is not unique in any way.
You are not unique in lack of ability to implement it all.

You implement the plans when you choose to have the best life possible given the circumstances.

Bravery to act like you can do it is the main trait you need to do it.

It is your life to live yet Marriage Builders plans will help you survive the mess.

Thank you everyone for your support and advice.

I agree!

Bringing an innocent child into the world as a part of your broken marriage is not the solution.

Tom

What is your plan?