I've finished my first attempt at my Plan B letter. Please take a look and see if it makes sense. One questions right off the bat....Should I use OM's name or just "him"?

Thanks and I look forward to any help I can get.


My Dearest WW,
This is a difficult letter for me to write. I have been working on this for weeks now. I have written this letter with the true love only a husband can have for a wife. Please read every word I have written as it is from my heart.

It is truly sad what has happened to our marriage and us. . I apologize to you for my part in creating an environment that helped make your affair with him possible. I have made many mistakes in the past and cannot change those. What I have been able to do is recognize those mistakes and I have learned from them so that I can take steps to ensure that they will not occur again. I am willing to avoid the mistakes I’ve made in the past and create a new life for both of us that will meet your needs.

The past few weeks have been the most difficult time of my life. The pain and emptiness that I experience everyday is almost too much to bear. My only saving grace is the thought of us someday being together and happy again. Sadly, I find now that is slowly being shattered as well. Before I lose that thought completely I must take some drastic steps.

WW, as you know I am still willing to do whatever it takes to correct the mistakes that we have made in the past and make our marriage together stronger and closer than we ever thought possible. I simply cannot do this until you end your relationship with OM. You must know and realize about the pain and suffering that we have endured because of your relationship with him.
I have said this before, and I want to say it again. I feel that I have been learning ways to be the type of man that I hope you would be proud to call your husband, as I have so many times felt pride in calling you my wife. I so want to be able to put the past behind us, and build a better life together for us and for DD.

In the past, I’ve endured the hurt and pain and I now see that it is soon to drain my love for you. Until you can truthfully and honestly return home and work with me on rebuilding our marriage, I will avoid seeing or talking to you. I will also not be able to help you financially. I will continue to provide financial support for what I’ve addressed in the separation agreement. “Friend” and “Friend” have agreed to help make arrangements for you to see DD whenever you like. But I will not be here when you visit. Except in the case of an emergency, if you want to talk about DD or any other issues, it will have to be through “F” and “F”.

This is not to punish you, it is to protect my feelings for you and our chances at rebuilding our relationship. If we continue as we are now, I’m afraid there would be nothing left between us.
I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you in this way. I can’t continue like this any longer. Knowing that you are with him, seeing the smile on your face and hearing the sound of your voice when you speak to him; expressions I have not seen in many years are extremely painful.

I love you WW. You will always be very special to me. You are the only person I have allowed myself to love so deeply. I loved you more than life itself while we were together, and I continue to do so as I write this. I look back through our life and I now I choose to only remember the good times and learn from the bad. I forgive whatever pain you have caused and hope that in time you will forgive me too. I just cannot be with you or see you while you are still in love with another and feel the need to have a separate life without me.

When you find yourself ready and willing to truly and fully commit to our family, willing to work on a plan to rebuild our marriage, willing to permanently separate from OM, and join me in counseling, I will be ready and willing to discuss our future.

I want us to be able to rebuild our marriage some day. I want us to be able to meet each other’s emotional needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other. We need to build a new lifestyle in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never again be a reason for us to separate. I want to be your best friend, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you as my best friend.

I loved you when we married and I continue to love you right up to this day. I just cannot be with you or help you as long as you are seeing OM.

With my love,
BS

OM. I love WW with all my heart and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy. I will wait for her to give me that chance.

lostsailor, I'm not an expert, but I think your letter is too wordy. It is supposed to be simple and to the point. Express your love, your desire to work on the marriage, and the wish that in order to lose any more loving feelings, that the WS respects the wish for no contact with you until she has completely ended the affair with an NC letter (and of course, she must mean the NC).

You are pouring your heart out here and as touching as it may be to you, and to us, it will sadly probably not touch your wife, but push her further away.

PS I did not mean to criticize without giving an alternative, but wanted to acknowledge your post. I do not feel that I'm in a place to give good advice about what a plan b letter *should* be..I'll leave that to others. I think that if my plan b ever comes, I would probably initially write the same type of letter you have.

Thanks Maddy.....I'm new at this too but what I've found is that even in as little as a month, there are things others can pass along that help. I think I'll back off for a few minutes, re-read and see how it sounds.

Revised version. It did read too long and this may do it. Any/all comments welcomed.....
Thanks, LS


My Dearest WW,
This is a difficult letter for me to write. I have been working on this for weeks now. I have written this letter with the true love only a husband can have for a wife. Please read every word I have written as it is from my heart.

WW, as you know I am still willing to do whatever it takes to correct the mistakes that we have made in the past and make our marriage together stronger and closer than we ever thought possible. I simply cannot do this until you end your relationship with OM. You must know and realize about the pain and suffering that we have endured because of your relationship with him.

I’ve endured the hurt and pain and I now see that it is draining my love for you. Until you can truthfully and honestly return home and work with me on rebuilding our marriage, I will avoid seeing or talking to you. I will also not be able to help you financially. I will continue to provide financial support for what we’ve addressed in the separation agreement. “Friend” and “Friend” have agreed to help make arrangements for you to see DD whenever you like. But I will not be here when you visit. Except in the case of an emergency, if you want to talk about DD or any other issues, it will have to be through “F” and “F”.

This is not to punish you, it is to protect my feelings for you and our chances at rebuilding our relationship. If we continue as we are now, I’m afraid there would be nothing left between us.
I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you in this way. I can’t continue like this any longer. Knowing that you are with him, seeing the smile on your face and hearing the sound of your voice when you speak to him; expressions I have not seen in many years are extremely painful.

When you find yourself ready and willing to truly and fully commit to our family, willing to work on a plan to rebuild our marriage, willing to permanently separate from OM, and join me in counseling, I will be ready and willing to discuss our future.

I loved you when we married and I continue to love you right up to this day. I just cannot be with you or help you as long as you are seeing OM.

With my love,
BS

OM. I love WW with all my heart and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy. I will wait for her to give me that chance.

sailor - I think your first letter was pretty close - obviouly taken from the version in SAA, or one close to it. Please consider this version, below. You'll spot the changes. Yes, I believe you should name OM and also mention your daughter more.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">My Dearest WW,

This is a difficult letter for me to write, but it’s written with love and compassion. Please read every word I have written as it is from my heart.

I feel deeply saddened by what has happened to our marriage and us. I apologize to you for my part in creating an environment that resulted in your affair with <OM>. This has been a wake up call for me. I now clearly recognize my many mistakes in the past and how I was not meeting your needs. I cannot change those, but I have learned from them so that I can take steps to ensure that they will not occur again. I am willing to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past and create a new life for both of us that will meet all your needs. Whatever happens to us, these changes are permanent in me and I am a better person because of them.

The past few weeks have been the most difficult time of my life. The pain and emptiness that I experience everyday is almost too much to bear. But I am sustained by my hope of us and <daughter> being together and happy again as a family. Sadly, I find now that this is slowly being shattered as well.

You may not know what I have endured because of your decision to separate and because of your relationship with [OM]. I fully realize that these things were just symptoms of pre-existing problems. But all of these problems are fixable. I have worked hard by myself on this. I still love you, but now I find that it is just too painful for me to continue by myself. Seeing and talking to you is just a constant reminder of the pain that I feel. I just cannot see or talk to you and try to be your friend under these conditions any longer - until you are ready to put this behind us permanently and are willing to try to rebuild our family. Simply put, I am now separating from you in order to protect myself from the stresses and from further pain and to protect my love for you until you are ready to commit to rebuilding our family. I understand that you may have your own pain and that I may be the source of your pain, but these things are fixable if we are willing to try.

Until you can truthfully and honestly end your relationship with <OM> and return home and work with me on rebuilding our marriage, I will avoid seeing or talking to you. I will also not be able to help you financially. I will continue to provide financial support for what I've addressed in the separation agreement. "Friend" and "Friend" have agreed to help make arrangements for you to see DD whenever you like. But I will not be here when you visit. Except in the case of an emergency, if you want to talk about DD or any other issues, it will have to be through "F" and "F".

I am not doing this to punish you, it is to protect my feelings for you and our chances at rebuilding our relationship once we have a chance. If we continue as we are now, I'm afraid there would be nothing left between us.

I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you in this way. I can't continue like this any longer. Knowing that you are with him, seeing the smile on your face and hearing the sound of your voice when you speak to him; expressions I have not seen in many years are extremely painful.

I love you WW. You will always be very special to me. You are the only person I have allowed myself to love so deeply. I loved you more than life itself while we were together, and I continue to do so as I write this. I look back through our life and I now I choose to only remember the good times and learn from the bad. I can forgive whatever pain you have caused and hope that in time you will forgive me too. I just cannot be with you or see you while you are with another and feel the need to have a separate life without me.

When you find yourself ready and willing to truly and fully commit to our family, willing to work on a plan to rebuild our marriage, willing to permanently separate from OM, and join me in counseling, I will be ready and willing to discuss our future. These are the conditions I have set for myself necessary to end my separation from you.

I want us to be able to rebuild our marriage some day. I want us to be able to meet each other's emotional needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other. We need to build a new lifestyle in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never again be a reason for us to separate. I want to be your best friend, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you as my best friend.

I loved you when we married and I continue to love you right up to this day. I just cannot be with you or help you as long as you are seeing OM.

With my love,
BS

OM. I love WW with all my heart and I am willing to do whatever it takes to make her happy. Do the honorable thing by allowing our family a chance to rebuild. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">WAT

WAT....I did notice the changes as they certainly jumped right out at me. I'm impressed with the changes and although my mind/heart are not the most focused right now, I do believe I'm going with that one. This is so difficult and the withdrawal I can expect to experience will only be lessened by knowing it's coming. As always, thank you for taking the time to help those in need and I only hope that someday I can help someone too.

Experienced MBr's....Something I failed to ask before. The added paragraph to OM. Should I just mail OM a copy or hand deliver to "it"? Should I give a copy to OM's mother based on my earlier posts that she is "a friend with me on this"?

Also, I haven't called OM's mother back but I believe I'm going to since the last lie was about me being a MC. I want to make sure she knows that this is still going on. Good idea? Bad idea?

I believe the note to OM should be hand written on a signed copy of what you send to your wife. A similar note to OM's mother can be made on a copy of the one you send to OM, thus showing both notes.

Hand delivery probably has more impact on OM and he can't deny not getting it. But this entails a lot of drama that you're trying to avoid by going to Plan B.

WAT

LS,

I think all versions of your letter would work. I agree the first was a bit wordy, but as it has evolved I think you have a good letter. As for the logistics of who and how to deliver the letters, I really don't have a good piece of advice. I think WAT offers a good suggestion on this one.

You are doing good LS. I have the feeling that writing that letter was helpful to you. Many feel that way for it allows them to state things they need to say and it is a love letter.

Hang in there.

JL

Thanks JL....You're right. It did help and in my other thread I asked about going with WW to see the apartment. I received both sides of the spectrum - not only no, but he%$ no and yes, it shows caring and concern. So I combined the two. I did go with her today and looked at the apartment. I let her know that it saddens me and hurts to do this. Almost feel guilty about the academy award performance but it actually helped knowing that I had planned this before. I felt more like an inspector than her husband. I checked the security, offered options (I learned a few threads ago to let her make the decisions - even the bad ones), and basically provided care, support and options for HER decision. WW was certainly perplexed. WW said "I thought you were going to help me make a decision about which apartment". My response "I can't do that. This is something that you have to decide but I have a decision. Stay with me, have no contact with OM and help rebuild our M". She smiled and I know that some of the reality hit. As I was driving her back to work, I could see the pain in her face with the decision SHE has to make. I know it's little, but I think what I've learned here is making an impact. I'm not holding my breath as I still don't believe anything she says and only 50% of what I see. The California wind does seem to blow the fog away just a little every now and then and that is my confirmation that what I've learned and applied from all the folks here works! The end result may not be or it may be what I'm praying for but at least I'm prepared for the ups/downs.

I'm continuing to Plan A my a$$ off and if it comes to Plan B, I know I'll have made an impact and all the while bettering myself. BTW, I went to the gym today for the first time since D-Day. You guys are right. Exercise helps clear the heart and mind even if only for a little while.

Thanks for your continued support and I have a feeling I'll be posting more questions very soon as Plan B appears to be coming.

God Bless All of You!!!!

That was a good way to approach the apartment thing. Very good.

Keep up the good work and no matter what happens, you will come out of this with your head held high.

All things considered, it's much better being the BS.

WAT