I believe my H still has occasional contact with OW although he claims NC since last year. Not as much as in the beginning. They worked together then and he was out of state 4 days a week and home (at least in the physical sense) 3 days a week. Now, his job is here in our area and he comes home every night.I often thought he was contacting her, even put spyware on the home PC. Nothing on there, but stupid me told him I knew about his secret e-mail account before I installed it. I found last week that she had asked him to fill out a character reference for her. She sent the form to the office. I threw a royal fit!! Of course, he said that it was "just a form" and it was mailed back to whoever needed the reference. Is he being a "cake and eat it too" kinda guy?? Need some opinions here.

yep

First, are you in recovery? Or are you floating around in a world of gray and you have no idea if your H is still a WH or not? The reason I am asking is because ~ if you are in recovery, you are in trouble.

In recovery, there should be 100% honesty, BOTH of you. It is not OK for you to lie to him and install spyware, and it is not OK for him to lie to you and contact FOW (or receive contact from her and not tell you). This is not recovery.


Hmmm, you threw a ROYAL fit? Wow. How surprising it is that he might not be forthcoming in telling you stuff.

I am giving you a bit of a 2x4 here, because I don't think there is any way for ANY of us to determine, at this point, if your H is fence-sitting or not.

For instance, my H has had NC with FOW for almost a year and a half. How do I know? Because I ask him. We live in a small community, though, and she was my best friend. Sometimes he sees her driving around, and when he tells me, I do NOT throw a fit ~ even a royal one. Even though sometimes I have wanted to. Until about the last 6 months, I really wanted my H to dislike her as much as I did. But now I am at a point where I don't give her any of my power by thinking negatively about her. And either does H. ANYway, my story is that ~ this morning, he most likely will see her up close and in person. He has to take one of our DS's to school registration, because I have to work. Both us and FOW are in the same alphabetical category, and show up at the same time.

I do expect my H to tell me if there is contact, but I will not throw a fit. I will ask him how it made him feel, what came up emotionally for him, if he felt any of that old *buzz* that he used to feel when he was around her. Then I will probably share my feelings about what happened.

Do you understand what I am saying? In recovery, the finger pointing needs to stop, and both of you need to take responsibility for your own feelings, actions, and consequences.

Spidey

OK,Maybe I'm living in denial,believing we were on recovery, but now I have my doubts. Posted here a couple of days ago about learning to trust, too. I guess it's time to take the bull by the horns and live with whatever happens. I have been through PC w/o H. I realize that,yes,he is a "cake and eat it, too" man.He likes the thrill of having his little secret life, and also the comfort of coming home to his nice home everyday. If I think long and hard about it, he's always been that way about things. Thanks much for your advice. Spiderslayer,I know that having a "royal fit" is not the way to communicate, I just went over the edge. Need to learn to control that part of my temper, just seems like I'm getting tired.

Sweetie, I am not saying these things to you for you to feel ashamed or wrong. They are to help you really THINK about what is going on.

I invite you to share your reasons for why you do what you do. Perhaps we can work through this together, get through the "layers," as Oprah says, to understand what is going on in your M. Just because you think H has always been the way he is, does not mean it is OK if it hurts you in the process.

BUT, the change in your M begins with YOU, IMO. Because, you can only control . . . you.

Spidey

OK Spidey, Although I'm not a big fan of Oprah (sorry), maybe you're onto something there. Explain this concept to me, please. I want my M to be better then it was before the A, but I don't understand why it happened in the 1st place. THAT is what I need to figure out, I think. There have been things I have done (snooping wise) that I have not been proud of. I read Dr. H's column on this site about resentment this AM. It was one of the most useful things I've read in a long time. My Mom still is ticked off at my Dad for things he did during their marriage and he's been deceased for almost 20 years, they were divorced 3 years prior to that. I'd hate to carry around this feeling for another 23 years!! Excuse the rambling please.

You are so right! That is an AWEFUL way to live your life. I remember when my H had left us, I was already overcoming my resentment of him, I think because of the way I chose to look at the situation. Because it is all a choice, and it is all about perception. We'll talk about that in a minute. The rest of my story is that I was working at that time when H was gone for a woman who had been D'd for 7 years from her H. She still harbored so much animosity and resentment for him, much more than I had for my H (who I didn't know was coming home eventually, or going to D me) ~ after 7 years! I saw the way this woman lived her life because she refused *REFUSED* to let go of her pain. Instead, she protected and nursed that pain and resentment for her XH, like a baby. In fact, her resentment didn't just harm her each day, the biggest losers are her kids. It's just a bad sitch all the way around.


In a way, you already explained the concept yourself. IF this crisis would never have happened, would either of you ever had the opportunity/understanding/NEED to change? Either yourselves or your M? Many of life's gifts do not come wrapped in nice paper with the word "gift" on them. Many of my greatest gifts have come wrapped in aweful things that have happened in my life. The gift is what you do with that aweful thing. You can push it away, deny it, and be weighed down with it forever. Yuck.

Or, you can really LOOK at it. Examine it. OWN it. Then, when you have wrung each and every learning opportunity from it, you stand on top of it, let it go, and it helps raise you up ~ so you can conquor the next "gift" that the universe gives you.

OK, so, HOW? Well, first, you must not take responsibility/ownership of your FWH's hurtful actions. His A was about him, himself, only about him. Even though at the time (and if he still hasn't healed himself, now) he says you were the cause of some/all of it, you are not. I used to ask my H, "How could you? How could you sleep with her, in our room even, my best friend, and not think about me or the consequences AT ALL?!?" And he just said, "I just didn't." And that is why ~ because I wasn't in his head AT ALL. At first this concept was very hard for me to accept, because who wants to be so far out of their spouse's mind that they aren't even thought about ~ even guilt ~ when having SF with someone else??? I didn't! BUT, even if it doesn't sit well with you now, just think about it. Maybe journal the question to yourself, the concept, and just let it sink in for a while.

Second, which is VERY closely related to the first, you must take your share of the responsibility ~ FULLY ~ of the state of the M before the A happened. I know you have probably heard this concept before, but I believe it has to be taken to another level. I can't remember if this is in Torn Assunder or NOT Just Friends (BTW, have you read many of the A books recommended on this site?), but the concept presented to me was that the more responsibility I took for the A being able to happen in my M, the more I would heal and the more powerful I would feel.

Well, at first when I read that concept, I got sooooo mad. In my head I thought, "If anybody thinks I'm taking one more molecule of responsibility than I already have, they are NUTS!" I had already taken 50% of the responsibility for the state of my M pre-A. I thought that was ENOUGH. And I was wrong.

Right away, I did NOT take more responsibility. But I thought about it. I let it tumble about in my mind. I didn't understand HOW it could help me heal to do that, because my mind vehemently didn't WANT to do that. Then one day, I had an insight ~ an insight into my behavior before the A. Unintentionally, without conscious thought, during our M, I had not only not admired my H (his #1 EN), I had often negatively affected how the man felt about himself. I am not responsible for making my H feel this or that about himself ~ what I am saying is that I choose to be with him, I love him, and I am being accountable for how my actions influenced his behavior. Just as his A was not a personal atteck on me, my behavior pre-A was not a personal attack on him ~ just evidence of both our immaturity, and lack of caring about our actions toward one another.

One book that has helped me a LOT with understanding of these concepts, is "Forgive for Good" by Fred Luskin. It is not spiritual, it is a scientifically developed book about HOW we forgive. If you haven't read it, go get it today and begin your journey of thinking about all this a different way.

What I am proposing does not take anything away from you. You are not condoning his behavior, his actions. You are not "letting him get away" with anything. Forgiving is for YOU, to free YOU. And it is a process. I don't know if I have fully forgiven my H, but I am on a better path than I was before. I know with more time it will happen. That is what is important.


We have ALL done this stuff. I'm not saying you are bad, or that is shouldn't have happened. That is the space you were in then. What is important is that you don't get STUCK in a space. Resentment even is a phase to pass through, it is natural, part of the healing process. It brings up questions that need to be answered within yourself. That is the thing about all this, the answers to How? and Why? are all within you. Your H might have his own belief about that, his reality. And perhaps someday your ideas will converge and become more alike (that has been my experience, the further along the path of recovery we get, the more alike we view the whole A), and perhaps not. But you can only control you. You must lead by example. You heal yourself, and your H will see your actions, and it gives him the opportunity to heal himself. But you can't wait for him to get on board. This is for YOU.

So, that's a lot of info to heap on you at once. Please post back with your thoughts.

Spidey

Spidey--Sorry it has taken so long to reply to the last post. That was a lot of stuff to absorb! Between your post, and a conversation I had with my Mom the other day, I've had quite a wake up call. I found that I was dwelling on the past and my resentment towards my H for the A. I, too, wondered how he could "do this to me, to us?" I realize that he was in a very strange place in his life, perhaps the A was a cry for help. There's a song by Queen that I'm very partial to (I get alot of inspiration from music) called "Save Me". The chorus says "save me, save me I can't face this life alone, save me save me, I'm naked and I'm far from home". At the time of the A my husband was both physically and spiritually far from home. He often said to me during the weeks following D-day that he felt as if he were drowning and only I could help him. I felt as if the whole balance of everything was on me, and I was frightened that I would stumble and everything would fall apart. I'm proud of the fact that I didn't turn my back on him when he needed me most and when he made it impossible at times to love him. I even heard the "I don't think I love you anymore" speech. I remember looking him straight in the eye and saying that I didn't believe him. I used to think I avoided conflict, but when I recall some of the events during that time, I find that I did confront him, just not in a confrontational manner. There were a few times I lost it (which I have a tendancey to do when I'm totally fed up), but for the most part I let him talk, and rationalize his actions all the while making sure he knew he could come home again. I know this post rambles around a lot, but I'm organizing my thoughts. I know for certain that I can't keep dwelling on the past, but live for today and look to the future. I am going to re-read HNHN. I read it in the beginning (should have seen his reaction when he read it), but my brain was such a wreck then, I think I absorbed 1/2 of it. I'll look into those other books, too. Thanks for all your patience and help.

You are welcome. My H and I are big Queen fans, too ~ I know the song.

It is so interesting to me how easily we can become derailed in our own recovery efforts. I am happy that you came here and started talking about it, and talked to your mom.

One of the hardest things I had to do was stop asking the Why and How questions ~ to myself. I believe it is called acceptance, and it is a very pivitol part of the healing process. It is a hard lump to swallow sometimes, but over time the whole thing starts to look soooo different.

You are right, it probably was a cry for help. In "Passionate Marriage" by Schnark, he says that when we get into trouble in our R's, we often create very intricate, very specific crises in our lives ~ kind-of like acting out our problems, because we are so overwhelmed and/or ill-equipped to deal with our problems.

Reading HNHN again was key to my acceptance process. My H read it with me, did the questionaire in the back, and we finally understood the "message" of the A. This has made us both feel very powerful in our recovery, because his A no longer seems like this collosal accident that could happen again if we aren't paying very close attention. Because nobody pays very close attention all the time. We were both so afraid of what would happen if we weren't super-vigilant at all times.

As with a lot of couples, I think, we had subtle communication/interaction patterns that were destructive to each other, and therefore our relationship. We didn't do them on purupose, but until our M came into crisis, we didn't even LOOK at our own actions very hard, we didn't TALK about our feelings very much. Now we know how to do all of that ~ we educated ourselves.

I'm not sending FOW a Thank You card or anything, but I honestly cannot think of a single other event that could have propelled us forward in our M, in our own personal growth, as the A did. For years we both thought maybe we weren't quite getting as much from our M as we could, but we were unmotivated to do anything about it. And that is simply not the case anymore.

You rock! You are doing great.

Spidey

Gee Spidey-- You must have a crystle ball or something. Your relationship with your FWH sounds alot like mine, especially when it comes to communication. Thanks for the words of encouragement!!!