state of shock, anger. tell me about it, talk about a wide range of emotions. i'm still needing to call my dad tonight to make sure his offer is still good about staying with him. my S told me a couple of weeks ago, that I must feel like i'm out of control (while she was still saying they were 'friends'). Well i'm going to get back and take control, this is nuts.

I've read that several times when i first came to this website. anything i try to show my S, she just gets mad and says i'm shoving it down her throat. i just mention about this site and what i had found and what i had did. she made the choice to do the worksheets then quit after that. I just 'love' fog. should have stay in san francisco. :-)

i'll post up more when i get home. may head home early, not sure yet.

lost

well i tried to get ahold of my MIL and still nothing, i'm going to email both MIL and SIL with hope to get support from them.

my S had the photo album out and open on a old pic of her 1st D with a note saying to 'remind me about this picture to you'

wondering whats on her mind. glad to see she may open up.

Well I emailed my MIL and SIL with what is going on, i still cant get ahold of them by phone.

I talked with my S last night about what she has said and told her that I felt she is still in contact with him. She assured me that she is not. i want to believe this but with all the lies it's hard for me to do.

She had opened more up to me. She had pulled out some pictures when her DD was 3 and told me this is when her life had changed. She is wrestling with some personal issues. She said that the start at that time she was doing everything to make everybody else happy. changing to make everyone else happy but she was not happy. She said she needs to find herself before she can work on us.

I told her that I am here to help her and not to put us on hold, we can work on us, and we can help find herself too. We had a long talk on this here. I told her to seek IC, which she said she didn't want to. I told her about all the different resources that she could use for help.

I told her about moving to AZ and staying with my father until we get on our feet, to which she tossed at me we cant afford to move. Just finding negativity in my solutions.

I talked with my father. I would like some peoples thoughts here on this as well. Right now my S is bascially putting us on hold while she finds herself. I want to work though this and move on, not put my life on hold and sit and wait. My father wants me to pack my DD take what I can, take the new car since I'm making payments on it and put the rest of my stuff in storage and move in with him and get myself set up. Give my wife space to see what she is missing, and relize what is really important to her then follow. that would be the hope. I get a sick feeling on this but I don't want to leave my life on hold either. I get some feelings if I do this the she may just go screw around behind my back, but then again she may really find herself and see that what she has important. I'm confused here and torn to should I do this or not.

I have to say that my S has made stides since lastnight but not sure how long this will take and I don't want to be hounding/forcing her into a decision that may cost me my marriage.

Any suggestions.

lost

She can find herself by looking in the mirror. Ok now that's easy..... I believe u maybe getting duped again. More WS babble coming from her mouth. Becareful.

If she gets you to buy that line she has control and will try to inflict more pain into your life and your plans. U must decide how much more you will allow this vs when she truly gives a good suggestion.

L.

well the suggestion on moving to AZ is from my dad. he says to give her space and see what she decides then.

I feel if I do that she'll blow the M off and never see what is important to her. My dad says he wants me to move the next time I get paid which is this Friday. He said to tell her this when she gets home tonight too. It doesn't sit right with me. I know the needing to find herself is bs. I don't know why she is bring up the past at that time. She had 2 bf's before me and they both were abusive. On the other hand I have just been there supportive over the years.

I told her I never asked her to change for me when we met or got married. I said the only change I'm asking now is to be let back in to her life and for her to work on us. I want to move from here, just get away so we can rebuild us. We have a place we can stay to get back on our feet. Nothing more right now would make me more happy than to kick the crap out of the OM for screwing her head up so bad.

Its going on 5 weeks since my discovery and the input from my family has at first been good, now just from what i feel seeing how long it will take before calling it quits. I hate that. I'm not sure about my S family. What ever they do will then tell me how they really think and feel about me.

My gut tells me to stick in there, then it tells me enough. My gut tells me that if we move it will get better, then it tells me it's going to be no different. I think the negatives are being influenced by my family and the positives are from my efforts.

I have to say after our discussion, i seen a bit of a change in her. Maybe I gave her alot to think about. She ended up crying herself to sleep last night. But this morning she was back to her touchy feely ways again. how it was right before Nov. I just don't know how to get her to work with me on the material I found on this site and start posting here for feedback. I cant force it on her, I know it has to be by her own will, but i'm just going nuts.

My feelings say stay. it says I haven't done enough yet. It says to move and move now for it to get better. but to get my S to go along with it is going to be work. To where the problem lies.

lost

I'm mulling this over in my head, so have responded quickly.

It seems to me that you can't just move to another state with your daughter. I know it is tempting, but might cause legal problems.

What state do you live in?

I live in OR right now. My dad moved to AZ 6 months ago, so that's where I was planning on going or should say we were going.

My dad say to go there with my DD and leave my W here to figure things out or get her head straghten out then she can decide what she wants to do. It's more I go there I'm there perm, I won't move back here, so it's not a temp move. I thought about this as well. but I feel this about having to change for everyone else and never finding herself like my S said, is that she was forced to change for them.

I never forced her or asked her to change. I feel in love with the person she was. She had direction in her life and knew what she wanted to do. Maybe she fell off the path a bit but since OP came in, she's lost her way.

I found some old movies from when we first move here up to about 5 years ago and it shows a way different picture. From when I feel things started to go south was when my mom decided to move here from CA.

She stayed with us a bit too long and my S was still carrying our child at the time and was feeling closed in on. She started using her DD against my mom. my S would voice her concerns to me then my mom. I was just getting hammered all the way around, then finding out that she was using DD agains my mom really set me off. My attitude changed towards my S and Step DD during that time, but once my mom got on her feet and was out, I forgave them and moved on, but it seemed that my W never did. That is the only turning point to when things started to go sour.

I have pointed this out to my S but really haven't got much of a reply. The more I think about my dad pressing me to leave, the more I want to stay. I feel that it's the right thing to do right now. It's only been a few weeks since I've started on this, and it is draining me but i still have some fight in me yet.

lost

I came through what I hope is a breakthrough in my S. Although I haven’t talked to her yet but will when she gets home.

Ok, so yesterday my wife had the photo album out open to a page before we ever met with a note saying remind me to tell you about this picture when I get home.

Ok she tells me this is when the changes in her life was made to where she was changing for the people around her the way they wanted her to be and not for herself. She pointed at a picture where her DD was in it and all you see is a leg. Pretty close to the same complexion then a pic after that of her lying on the floor with her DD. She said she was living alone at the time. She said the picture with the leg in it isn’t her, and everyone makes that mistake every time they see that picture. Then I ask if you’re living alone and was by yourself that day then who took the pic of you on the floor, the person in the other picture.

I know this person because I ran track against him at our rivalry high school. It never clicked until I walked by my track plaque today. She said she made changes for this guy because he wanted her to be a certain way and same with the person after that (which was the guy before me). I remember her telling me about this person while we were going out. They were to get married, but the other guy who was her friend started on her, making her change and causing them to break up. The other guy was telling her how to live, sleep, work, etc, etc, etc. complete control free. We met in school after she had kicked him (the last guy), but he would like try to make amends and stuff and was abusive verbally and physically. I took care of that when I saw bruises he left on my S which was my GF at the time and left him with a few bruises of his own.

I had to confirm this when I started to look through her old journals and pretty much hit it on the nose. She had told me when we were going out pretty serious, that I was different because I wasn’t telling her how to think, change, etc. Only thing I ever asked her was to be open, honest, and faithful and any changes she makes I’ll be there to support her, the usually relationship stuff. So I think this is something that plagues her, she still isn’t used to being able to think on her own type thing. So this is new territory for her and also that this is the longest a relationship has been for her. The one’s in the past was only 1 yr maybe 2 tops. So I’m thinking that she may not be feeling secure because this is all unknown to her. Maybe I haven’t given her the security that she needed, I’m not sure. But this is an issue I think she’s going to need IC on. I think I hit this one on the nail.

My dad called me again tonight to see if I given it more though on what he had said. I told him my new found discovery. He said to go with it. I’m hoping this is the issue or maybe the key to unlocking her door. I emailed my S at work and told her that I remember about the pic and who it was and what she had said. Asked her how work was, etc, never offered advice, opinion or thought. Just left it as I remembered what she told me. I got back from her. Ok, well talk.

Any input on my discovery, or what does anyone think. I think I struck something in here. Well see when she gets home in 2 hours.

thanks
lost

Well I have made a dent in my S wall. I really really good dent. I have been writing my thoughts down and to what I want to say to her when we talk since all of this plus school had made me trying to remember specifics tough. So I did my usual writing down my feelings. Most were after I watch the home movies we had, when we were friends, getting close, to bf/gf, to moving in together, everything all the way right before we got married.

I had forgotten some of the things that we did, but I was surprised at how fast all the memories and emotions and feelings came back to me. I was just like wow. My S comes home, I bring up about the picture and told her what I had thought. No arguments or any corrections in my thoughts. I read her what I had wrote on my thoughts which one was “If I can give us a new beginning and we can start over, would you be willing to do it without finding any negativity or problems with it?” She didn’t answer on it. I written a few poems in my book too about here. I used to love to write and have been working on a book for a while too. When I read her the poems, she asked if I wrote those or if I found them somewhere. I told her I wrote them. She was taken away because she didn’t know I had that creative side to me. I told her there is probably more that she may not know and I want to share them all with her. After the poems I read a passage to her, which I told her I had to look to find, which was our wedding vows. I just read them, the section on the rings and the symbol of love and the vows to taking her as my wife. She was like, “Our vows”. I seen her light up like I had given her something that she was yearning for.

I then put the movies on. And she was look at how long my hair was, and how thin she was, going on and on and asking questions as to when was this, what stage was this in our relationship, etc. Things she has forgotten all about. I told her most of these things I remembered but not quite all of them and told her I think about this all the time. It was about 3 – 4 hours of footage. There was some footage to when we first moved here to OR with our first Christmas together and that was when we had a good snow storm here and a white Christmas. We watched the movies, talked and relived those memories. Then we went to sleep.

This morning we got up and took DD out for ice cream. We just talked about everyday stuff, but felt like we were connecting. When she was getting ready to goto work, I walked her out to her car and asked her what she thought about the movies. She said she enjoyed them. I asked her about my question on a new beginning and told her I was serious on it. She said yes. I told her I would share more with her on that when she got home.

So I’m going to take my plan of going to AZ and all of us staying with my dad so we can get what bills we have left here paid and get our own place debt free. My step mom said last night that they are more that happy to watch DD any time we need so we can rebuild our relationship. Going out and start dating again and going out with friends together again. We have a few friends that we had here that have moved to AZ and we’ll be pretty close to them.

Could I get some input to what everyone thinks. I feel some progress was actually made here and actually feel like I can see the road again.

Thanks
Lost

Well, you haven't actually told her your plan. So I can't give you an opinion.

Would you be able to go to school and have a job in Arizona?

Would she be able to work?

Remember, it is hard on the marriage to live with parents.

I'll be able to goto school and work at the same time. My classes are online at UMASS Lowell. She knows part of my plan on moving to AZ and is up for it. I know living with my dad will be hard, but i'll have close to enough money to get into a new place when we get there. Just would need a few weeks to get the rest. My dad said he may have enough by the time we get there (to help us out) to get into a place.

My S will be able to work. there are several places that are hiring right now that she has excellent background in (financial) and know she would be able to get in there. I have an open offer there right now from a friend there. Job pays alot more than what i make now so that is a plus and cost of living is actually less than it is here, another plus.

I told my S my dad and step mom are more than willing to take our DD anytime we need to get out, plus my grandpa is there too who is willing to help. I told her we can go back to 'dating' again and getting back our love. She's all for that. One of the issues here is, were so sick of living here we have been trying to get out, but always found a reason why not to go. This is a good kick in the butt and take a leap of faith, just like when we moved up here. She understood that too.

This just lit her up, a light i haven't seen in a while. I'll talk with her more on this when she gets home tonight and see if we can come to an agreement we both can feel good on.

Another bonus too is my step mom is a councelor so she could give my S some IC if she wishes or is comofortable with it. time will tell.

lost

Just be sure that you are not trying to solve all of your marital problems by moving. You will still have lots of things to work on.

We still have work to do, but it will get us away from here and ensure that OP is not in the picture. If the EA is still going on, it will die from the move. if the EA is still going on, she has made it very hard to tell. I have a friend who now works that dept or has been there at the same time she went, works same shift too. keeps an eye out and hasn't noticed anything. no time gaps anymore either. she's home by 1045 - 1050p every night. If she's not up for the movie i'll see how she feels about my dad's suggestion on me going down and starting out (with our DD) and let her figure out what's important to her. basically a plan b. i don't feel comfortable for that though. I can go both ways why it would be good and bad.

right now it's more just talks to see what we will do. we had planned on moving late feb early mar anyways, just moving up the timetable now.

The things to work on, i'm ready for and been ready for the ride. i still havent heard anything from mil or sil, i know sil will be at work tomorrow and will chk her email there. i don't recall if she has net access at home or not. i don't remember or whether she checks the personal acct i sent it to besides her work. MIL just hardly ever checks her emails but cant get her on the phone either.

well see how that goes too.

When your wife finds out that you have exposed her, she will be furious. Be prepared for that. And I mean REALLY angry. She will tell you all kinds of mean things.

So you are going to have to ride that out, and then POJA moving to Arizona. I don't think this is going to be as easy as you think.

i dont think it will be easy either. but i'll know tomorrow for sure if they really care or not. I'll be home finishing my finals. I hope i do get their support, but also i want them to know it wasn't all my fault in our marriage falling apart. i had told them to contact me first before they act out so i can breif them better. the letter i wrote to them wasn't enough but just more of a detailed summary. so depending on tonight going smoothly and they go with the letter. i can have them hold off if they choose the support. i'm not sure yet. i can just go over all the possible outcomes.

Don't expect much support from her family. It happens, but not very often.

ok, been a few days since I last posted. I have been doing the usual snooping. also I did get ahold of my MIL and SIL.

First with the IL's. My SIL wants to remain neutral but encourages us to get help. Bit of a better response than what I was expecting. My MIL, on the other hand is giving all the help I can get to keep our marriage. She gave me some insight to her past that I kind of knew but not in detail. This helps expain why my S is acting the way she is. Not to go into heavy detail on this, the reason why she puts up walls and pretty much retreats when things get hard is because of what happened to her when she was like 15 - 16 yrs old. During that time her parents were splitting and divorcing and at that time she was pregnet with her 1st DD. She didn't really have anyone to talk to during that time and her mom then split which left her with her dad. Her dad didn't want to deal with it and kicked her out. She later ended up moving in with her BF/dd father (later to be her 1st husband) family. They would rip her down anyway they could (these people thrive on others misery and need to make people feel worse than them so they can feel better). She ended up moving out into her own apt, shortly got married (because of dd). her mom said that during this time she saw the walls go up and since then, anytime something would get hard, she would put up the walls and retreat. never really faced her problems. she told me alot more (another book to write) but said she felt in someways responsible for this for not taking the time to be there for her, support her, etc.

so S is going to need some IC. her mom said that I can break that wall down, but be ready for alot of emotions to come pouring. She gave me the tools I would need to work on that. I tried to take a stab at it and hit a nerve with S. I was just testing the water to see what kind of reaction i would get. I haven't had the chance to go further with this since we had butted heads on mon, tue, and wed this week.

on monday, we talked abit about the movies again. also i told s about moving and the other option of me going down and getting setup while she figures herself out. i told her i didn't want this, it was just an option. i gave a couple of other options as well. then she got mad, thinking i was set to leave. so it went round and round with how she is hearing me, but not 'hearing' me. I had been following the cell phone pretty close, text msgs, minutes, etc. I asked her who she was texting today (monday), because i only got 1 message from her and set her 3. There was like over 20 messages. She said it must have been the alarm clock reminder. I pressed more and she said just a few friends at work. I checked her phone and only my messages were there (sent and rec). I had been sharing stuff with her, trying to get her to open and share with me. I read her two poems that i wrote. she then kinda laughed and got snippy with me over them. I asked her then if she was in contact with the OP still. she said I told you we don't talk about our relationship (my S and I) anymore, just the idle chit chat, weather, news, movies at our desks. I said you agreeded to no contact. I told her I had the feeling that she was still in contact and what was posted here as well. she said then your idea of no contact is different than mine. i told her i read it word for word what no contact meant. how could you not understand, no contact for life. she got mad rolled over and went to sleep.

tuesday she got up early, took our daughter to school then came up to me while i was working on school work and offered help (this doesn't happen). i felt more like that she was doing this because she was called on it. she has done this several times every time we knocked heads. so i didn't bother to really take it all in. she was glued to me and acting like she did when we first met. normally i would have played with this all the way through, but given where were at, i couldn't. she knew i was still mad. she went to work over time, then came home after a few hours and we went to the mall. joking and goofing around and stuff. we get home. check the mail and i'm looking at this envelope like, this is from our bank. it's an atm card. i didnt even have to open it. but the acct is in my name not hers. this was in her name. i asked her about it, she said she did it when i was going to leave and take money with me so i can make it to AZ. I ended up going off the hook. major love busters and a half. before i went off the hook. i made a chart from -10 to 0 to 10. telling her 10 is complete bliss, 0 is neutral and -10 why bother, its over. I told her i'm sitting at a -9. being true with my feelings towards her. she didn't say anything. i think she was pretty shocked.

then i pressed more about the bank acct and the extra min on her cell phone. she told me that my supervisor stopped the OP on monday and wanted to talk with him. he made some excuse to get away. called her and wanted to know what to expect, like i had put some plan in motion. i'm like you said you talked at work, now you telling me your on the phone. all these lies is getting too much. if he's that parinoid over my sup wanting to talk with him, this tells me your still really involved with him. I said, if it was nothing he wouldn't be that parinoid.

She got mad again. i told her, you said you would read these papers (material on this site). I told her, this crap with him stops tonight. you agreed with no contact. i was stupid for not going with a letter. i said, a letter will be written now and be sent to him. this will make me stop being such an a$$ over this. he is the person who stands in our way to recovery, etc, etc, etc. she just went to bed. i took her cell phone away then called her on him calling her, which she called him. she cleared out the call history but never cleared out the last number dialed, which was his. i gave her the papers and she left them on the bed. i then cut of internet access so she couldn't try to pull this warning him ahead of time then write the letter, then go back to the way it was.

Some time around 10:30p tuesday night she was reading the papers. I gave her the 4 parts on couping with an affair then the basic concepts. she browsed the basic concepts before so the affair papers were more of an issue with me. the next morning she got mad because i took the phone away and couldn't get online. i asked her if she made her decision on the letter. she got mad and started yelling. i'm like you can't run away from your problems, this needs to be faced. she picked up her stuff and walked out the door. i'm like, you goto his house don't come back.

after and hour, i took a trip over there just incase. she wasn't here. i go by her school to advise them if she comes to pick up our DD, to contact me, same with our after school daycare. they pick up our DD from school. i said if shes not on that bus or if S picks her up call me. Both places are only a few blocks away from where we live.

S came home and i appologised for my attitude. I then said, instead of going off on her, i should have asked how much of the material she read. which i did. she told me how much she read. got through all 4 parts of the affair. i asked her if she now understands why i'm thinking the way i am. she said, its no big deal, they are just friends and she can't have friends, etc, etc, etc. I'm like, funny, if you really read this, you would know this is the usual response. i had redid the worksheets and then gave her a side by side of beginning nov and now. i told her look at how much change has happened in 5 - 6 weeks. i said, i shouldn't be the one having to tip toe around and 'begging' for you to stay. really it should be the other way around. i never did anything wrong accept not meet all your EN. she got mad and tried to knock some more heads with me, this time i remained calm and level headed. I explained my position and that until the letter is written and in place, i won't accecpt any of her LB deposits. she started to cry after that. I told her i just don't feel they are real, she only does it when she gets called on it. she said shes tired of me treating her like a 12 year old and doing all of this to her. i'm like, its real simple. the issue is OP, you want me to stop what I'm doing to you, then you need to write that letter. i said action speaks louder than words. i also said, that her time then needs to be accounted for. cell phone, time away, etc. i pointed out in the papers, she's in no position to neg. this.

she then just sat and cried and i had to leave the room before i would say something that i didn't mean. i went off to start laundry and started cleaning the house. she then came over to me and started being all nice and cuddley with me. even last night she cuddled up to me in bed and held me all night. same with this morning. it was nice and i really want to accept the effort, but i dont now if it was sincere or bs. no letter yet has been written. so i'm planning on bringing this up again tonight.

she said monday night that she didn't want to move because she wanted to see how far she can go in her position. i think she wanted to see how far she can keep OP. but well see what happends in the next few days.

Lost

one more thing. is there any examples of no contact letters. it might give her a push in the right direction incase she has writers block. lol

Oh, that's easy. A no contact letter should say that she made a HUGE mistake, loves her husband, and is working on her marriage. It should state that she will not contact OP for any reason, and doesn't want any contact from OP ever again.

It should be short, business-like, and not sweet.

cool, that's what i thought. maybe i'll write up a template or general letter for her. she just called me on her lunch break and asked if she could vent. Told her that is what i was here for. so she vented about what was going on at work. She also has shift bids starting up next week for her dept. she agreed that she will take on an earlier shift to help work on us. right now she works 2p - 10:30p. she said she would goto 12p - 8p, and try to get weekends off. i told her the 2.5 hour difference will mean alot, this way i'm not staying up all night trying to get some time with her and being dead in the morning. i work 7a - 3:30. kind of i work 9 - 5 and she works 5 - 9 never together.

also with her going to the different schedule, she will get put on another team, away from OP, she brought that up too. So I'm hoping this is the steps in the right direction. Time will tell. But i was surprised she called to tell me about how her day was going so far. she hasn't done that in 6 months.