NIWTD

I hear your frustration. But I also hear the voice of a highly controlling person - someone who wants the world to work as HE requires it, in HIS time, in HIS way. Can you hear that bark in your voice? Listen very carefully.

Your posts show little understanding of your wife. Worse, they show little DESIRE to understand your wife - all they express is the desire to have her meet your needs. You claim to be meeting her needs, and I'm sure you sincerely think that that's what you're doing. But how do you know what her needs are? If you're being so massively dishonest with her, then she can have no idea who she is as a wife, and all the signals she's getting will be nonsensical. Right now I can guarantee that she's confused as to what her needs are - because what she 'knows' consciously about her relationship with you is not what she knows subconsciously about the distance between you. The needs she'll have when she learns the truth about your committment to the marriage - to the vows you made, that is, not the hollow shell of 'appearance' that you have - will be almost impossible for you to meet. Perhaps you're scared of that?

At present, you are trying to control the situation to your advantage. You're withholding information that would give her the right to leave you, while insisting that she meets your requirements. You would have little leverage if she knew the truth, and I think you know that.

As yourself why you haven't told her the truth. Why you REALLY haven't told her - not the standard protestation of not wanting to wreck the children's lives. Dig deep. Look close. Own up.

You claim to love her 'fiercely'. Really? Love is giving, love is kind, love respects. You are not kind, you do not respect her...ergo, you do not love her.

You are telling her and yourself some huge lies, NIWTD. You need to look at yourself. Hard.

TogetherAlone

what are the needs she chooses not to meet..

can you give more info on that...

can't address the specifics if we don't know them....

how does she treat you

is she kind to you

does she do things with you

do you charm her socks off....

do the two of you spend time doing tings....

do you sweep her off her feet...

do you do windows.... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

ARK^^

Every day that you do not tell her is another day you are lying to her. Until she knows the truth, her marriage is a lie based on a lie. The charade is that you're lying about who you are. She believes she is living with an honest man, faithful man she is not. She is living with a man who lies to her every day. She has a right to know to whom she is married.


And Willard Harley, who is a marriage counselor who SPECIALIZES in adultery and has an amazing track record, recommends otherwise. He is one of the top MC counselors in the US for a reason. However, even if 5 MC's suggested lying about it, they are wrong and cannot defend such a stance.


This is not about you, it is about your wife. She has a right to know the truth about her life so she can decide if she wants to chooses to stay married to you. You have no right to deny her that right. To do so is incredibly disrespectul, manipulative and cruel. She is not a pet, she is human being who a RIGHT to make her own determinations about her own life.


That is a silly question. But let me ask you a question. If she doesn't know, how will she know that she needs to protect herself from you? How will she know that she should not trust you? You have done this before, and justified it with unmet needs, who is to say you won't do it again?

But what would she want? Does she ever get a say in all this or is she just a pet who has no rights or choices about it's own life? A little puppy perhaps?




It doesn't require a life of contrition, but it requires REDEMPTION; that you STOP the wrongdoing. You have not stopped the wrongdoing. You continue to lie to your victim to this day. God cannot forgive you until you repent. It is not enough to stop the adultery, you have to be honest your victim about what you have done. You want to keep the secret and continue to lie to her for your own selfish purposes. You want to selfishly keep around until she is not longer useful to you and you can dump her. That is hardly the behavior of a remorseful person. That is the behavior of a cruel, manipulative person.

Willard Harley, the founder of Marriage Builders:

"From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better. "
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5060_qa.html

Well, she shouldn't trust him. He's quietly making plans to dump her a few years down the road. That would make me EXTREMELY uncomfortable as a spouse.

But I don't want my question to get lost in the shuffle: What are you asking that makes her say, "I can't"?

Who exactly is "in pain" on this thread? Who exactly is "stuck in horrible situations in their own personal life?" Whose words are you attempting to negate without ever addressing the point but through invalidation via their supposed "pain?"

And what does that have to do with anyone's point? The supposed "pain" of any poster is not the issue and isn't relevent. But I would like to know who is "in pain," and who is "in a horrible situation."

By name, please.

Possibly there was no constructive suggestion. I was making a list of your actions in the hopes that you would see the destructiveness of your actions and how it did affect your wife during the affair and how it is probably still affecting her. What you did was purely selfish and regardless of what you say or think it did take away from your wife and kids. I was pointing that out. The mere fact that you have to ask "what needs was I not meeting" tells me that you have no idea what your wifes needs are even today and you don't really seem to care to find out. What you did was wrong and you admit that, but yet you have not sought forgiveness and a clean second chance from the person you wronged. Recovery only works when both spouses have the information they need and your wife does not and you have no intention of giving it to her because it would hurt YOU and that is all YOU care about!