Hi armymama! So nice to see you! Congratulations on your upcoming anniversary!

Welcome to MB.

It isn't a good idea for you to dump your need to be alone on him suddenly after his own day that was probably full of mixed experiences. If he was looking forward to being together with you and the boys before their bedtimes, it might have been a bit insensitive for you to hand them to him and walk away.

It seems that the problem wasn't that you were looking after your own kids all day, but that you'd been teaching other young kids. Is there a way of refocusing your job so that you do not have so much face-to-face time with little ones? (Forgive me, I'm not sure what age-group "PreK" is or what the alternative might be.) Are your own kids of school age? Why are you with them until shortly before you go to bed - aren't you able to get at least two hours between their bedtimes and yours?

There are ways to brainstorm the problem, but you cannot begin to do this until you have discussed the whole issue with your husband. It is not a good idea to deal with this as and when it comes up - that leaves your husband thinking "Is it all about her? What about my needs?"

Dr Harley recommends planning the week together so that you both get time for work and travel and time for things that are important to you, including family time and dating. You could plan time for solo interests - nothing that is dangerous or risky to the marriage - in a way that does not imply that you need to get away from each other. You wouldn't have to plan every single week if you got into a routine that suited the stages your kids are at now.

I recommend reading His Needs Her Needs for Parents which will give you a wealth of ideas to resolve this problem.

I am not Dr. Harley of course and you should surely carry on your conversation with him and ask him directly. It is great he is supporting you directly.

But i can say that Dr. Harley has regularly been skeptical of 'therapy' that revisits past traumatic experiences. Why bring the past into the present? These experiences are a red herring and not the problem. They did not impact your marriage before the affair, did they?

The problem is the affair and not what happened in her childhood or in previous marriages. Please ask Dr. Harley his position and share with us if you are willing.

Despite this list, posters here would prefer to take Dr Harley's advice, based on his experience with couples, which is much greater than yours will ever be. Did any of those marriages 'survive and thrive" through the affairs which some of them inevitably went through? How would you know? What if they simply did not tell you?

Even your personal experience with your own 3 marriages confirms Dr Harley's observations. In your first marriage, you had an affair, ended your marriage and married your affair partner. In that second marriage, she had an affair and ended the marriage. In this third marriage, your wife has had sexual encounters with her therapist. All these affairs have been facilitated by the long periods of time you have always spent away from home. I have no idea how you can defend spending 50% of the time away from your wife with this history. It's hardly a recommendation, and one would think you had learned by now.

Thank you- yes- I think it’s terrible.
I just asked him & he said he would talk to Dr Harley- he will do anything and doesn’t want it to be me pushing for our help.

So he will write an email tomorrow he says- I’ll let you guys know when Dr Harley will talk to him then.

Reason:
Tomorrow- he already set up a date to read through the entire start of Dr Harley to try to understand what he is saying. He wants to wait to read that and fill out questionnaires so he knows what this is all about.

If he doesn’t really become serious about this- then I already have my exit ready.
Thank you for the replies!