Member
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 1,757 |
 I am mortified...that I am STILL here with this guy. Though I even fear coming over to the SAA forum, I think I am going to have to move my thread.  Gloveoil and Happy, I know.I am really like this alcoholic. I cannot believe...myself. DH and I have BOTH been trying this week, focusing on all of the things we have been talking about. The last few days have been great. DH thanked me last night because he sees that I am trying (he says) and I see that he is trying. The bookstore did not have The Five Steps to Romantic Love workbook so I had to order it. It will be delivered to my house in the next few days.
Do you think he's a distaction to you in your idle moments?
Do you spend time thinking, "if he says X to me, I'll say Y?"
Do you feel hesitant about mentioning your feelings to your DH?
I could go on with the questions, but I'll stop there. You get my drift.
If the answers to all or any of the above are "yes", then you've got a problem that you can't bury.
Reading the books & trying to communicate better & express your needs & meet his needs is not gonna work, because there'll be this unspoken "what-if" inside your mind, preventing the kind of crystal-clear honesty & completeness of effort that you need to devote to saving & restoring a marriage.
When I was a few weeks into my (at the time) EA, it got to the point where I could see where it was headed. So I resolved to end it. Even went so far as to tell OW it had to end. Took my wife away to a B&B for her birthday weekend out in the country, and we spent some great time together. I thought I'd beaten the infatuation.
But when I got back, OW resumed calling, and I resumed taking her calls. And in another couple of weeks, my resolve was gone. PA. For the upstanding, church-going, family-man. You'd never have guessed until it was too late.
And y'know what? The following month, OW's husband asked her to go away with him on a research trip to New York. He was asking her to spend time with him. He didn't know about her affair with me then, and he must've thought that her previous affair with an ex-BF was "only" an emotional affair. But he knew his marriage was in trouble, and he was making an affort. And his effort in going on that trip went in one ear & out the other. Because his wife was hedging her bets by having me as her secret affair partner. And her effort (if you could call it that) was also compromised by this. And my effort with my wife? I felt at the time that it was sincere; but it was undermined -- I undermined it myself -- through my concealing of my conflicted emotions (i.e., not coming completely clean to my wife & by not cutting OW out of my life completely at that time). I was hedging my bets. And that is an invitation to disaster.
Its good that you & H are communicating more. But you can't be half-way about it. You can't hedge your bets & still save your marriage. You can't cultivate secret infatuations & still save your marriage. You can't expect your H to believe that you're committed, when he can surely sense that something is amiss, even if he can't put a finger on it. And you can't expect that his efforts toward you will appear to you in the best light, if you continue to allow yourself to mentally contrast them with some half-real, half-fantasy guy (husband's friend), with whom reality (the place your husband occupies in your life) can't compete on a level field. You can't try to put some MarriageBuilders principles into action & expect a great result while flagrantly contravening other principles. That's like a cancer patient trying to exercise to get in shape. You can train for months & build up your cardiovascular endurance to a point, but if you don't take care of the softball-sized tumor in your chest cavity, eventually & in the not too distant future, you ain't gonna run well or feel well, or be in good shape, or live long.
"Trying?" You can talk, or you can do. As Yoda said in the movies, "There is no 'try'."
Me: FWH, 50
My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold
DD23, DS19
EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09
Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009
Married 25 years & counting.
Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband.
"I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol
"Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
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