Post deleted by LTM

LTM,

If u r genuine, your post took a lot of guts and if you mean what you say...then we can share our 'opinions'.

B4 you go and 'offer' to speak to the BS, it w/b best to not be sooo anxious. So it maybe better for you to direct the BS here. How? Hm..... right now, you call Jennifer C @ MB and ask her opinion.

Even if your intentions are well meant....your previous disloyal association which betrayed not helped her M is not well intended.

Right now it w/b best to stay away from the WS. He is toxic to you and himself. He has to find out how to handle his own issues and NOT allow himself t/b dependent on others t/d his work on himself and his family for him.

Where r u in your life? R u ready to move forward far away from the OM and the A? Emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually?

L.

LTM-

Welcome to MB.

If you are genuinely concerned about this woman you need to tell him that you never want to talk to him again, and change your phone number.

Don't contact her. There is no way in he// I would want to discuss these things with the OW in my sitch.

Break contact with this man now and forever.

By the way....you don't have to *go away* after we've answered your questions.

Hopefully the other posters will be able to look past their pain and help you.

God Bless,

-Caren

Sorry....posted msg to wrong thread.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

L.

I have moved on and am dating and doing all my usual activities at work ect... I have no intention of any personal contact with him and as I said the phone calls will end soon. He is an old friend and I will help him over this bump but I have made it clear he needs to focus on his family and find his strength there.
I agree we didn't help their marriage although he insists we did. He has also always insisted we could be just friends which I have never believed.

I have given this a lot of thought, off and on, over the past two years and have not done anything to contact her out of respect for her marriage and my fear of doing additional harm. I think I finally took the chance of posting here to force myself to make a decision by getting your opinions. SO I can put this last lingering issue away and finally let it all go.

They are going out of the country for two weeks starting tomorrow and I am taking a holiday next week so nothing is going to happen for a few more weeks.

Orchid, Thanks for the advice about calling Jennifer, I will look around the site for her phone number.

Thank you for answering my questions with so much respect I appriciate the feed back, anyone else want to chime in? Thank you, LTM

I do not understand your victim mentality to all of this and your need to tell the wife that YOU continue to be in CONTACT with her husband....

YOU do that part...
YOU participate in CONTACT

inspite of what he does or doesn't do..

I have insisted throughout our afair that just friends will never be possible,

So by telling him this you have told him you want to be in the affair.....

period and only..

otherwise why are YOU in contact with him....

and you think you have no control over YOUR talking to him so your plan is to tell his wife that HE calls you...and you accept each and every call..

but she should know this of HIM..

what about YOU ??

Why don't YOU take control of ending this affair which causes great deception to innocent people and stop YOUR participation in this...

I don't get it...run to the wife to tell on the spouse for calling YOU ???

I think that you can't control anyone else...
him
her..
and that you alone are responsilbe for YOUR actions and choices.....
and that's who you need to hold accountable..
not tattling on a spouse to his spouse...because YOU choose to be in contact with him....

ARK

I mean really I don't get this..

you are planning to continue contact for a few more weeks...

AND

thinking of telling his wife at the same time...

even though YOU plan to stay and be in contact...

is this logical to you..

ark

What an astonishingly selfish perspective.

There is only one right thing for you to do:

Get out of their lives. Do not harm them any further. Period.

Anything else is further domestic terrorism on your part.

Just for the record, I think this poster sounds alot like someone who used to post here. The writing style..

I could be totally wrong and mean no disrespect, just my *gut* feelings on this.

Carnation

Leaving aside questions of who's doing what to whom, doesn't the wife need to know that her H is in contact with the OW again? Apparently she believes their marriage is in recovery while the truth is that the affair has resumed at some level. Who else is there besides LTM to tell the BS that contact has resumed? I'm not saying that a long, chatty conversation is in order, but I think by the standards of this board, the BS needs to know that her H has contacted his mistress again, so she can decide what she wants to do about it.

I tend to agree with several of you on this. You asked for opinions, so here are mine.

1. Send a letter of no contact and copy it to his wife. State that you will not be involved in an affair and you will not be his friend. Maybe you can purchase the books Surviving an Affair and His Needs Her Needs and mail them to them as well. Include the website for here. If you include the website, please have the decency to bow out of here otherwise you will be in contact by finding and reading their story.

2. Change your phone number and your emails, etc.

You have just as much responsibility here as he does. If you don't want to be ivolved with him, don't answer the blasted phone, for Pete's sake. If you sincerely didn't want to be in a relationship with him, you would not have answered in the first place.

I suggest you also get into counseling. Try to figure how out you could do this to another woman.

Maybe I can give you some perspective, maybe not. My husband had a 1+ year affair (of varying degrees of intensity and intention) when he was working away from home. I don't think he ever intended to leave the marriage (only lie and cheat <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" /> ), although his OW very much wanted him to leave me for her.

He moved closer to home, far away from her. During the interviewing process, but while he was "breaking up" with her, which I think was a sporadic process that took months, she called me, then continued to contact me by email.

Her purpose, which she admitted later, was to tip the scales, so I would divorce him, since he did not want to leave me. It does not sound like that is your purpose.

Another difference is demeanor. I don't think one could ever have a reasoned conversation with her about the affair or marriage. She viewed me as the enemy. And when she was talking with me, I could hear the ice clinking, since she was drinking until she was slurring her words. I guess she does that often.

There must have been a more likable side to her. I was told by a third person that she was the fun life of the party, very loyal and very passionate. She was a coworker and very good at her job in a field of mostly males. She was more like "one of the guys" in hanging out and recreational choices. I believe that she fell hard for my husband (and likewise), lavished him with time and attention, because they had unlimited time available without home, family or responsibilities beyond work, and poured herself into him 100%. She believed they were soul mates and in her life she would never love another.

So much for backround. Truthfully, it was good she called, since I thought it was totally finished, except seeing each other at work. While my husband WAS trying to break up with her and work on the marriage (she said this) it was a messier process, on both of their parts, than I was led to believe by my lying cheating husband.

The best case would have been for him to cleanly end it, or share his struggles with me, as a means of accountability, or just so I could make good decisions about my life. But since HE was not truthful, the second best was that SOMEONE was truthful, which in this case, was OW.

Let me say that she lost credibility by completely changing the story in the course of our communication, not that it really matters.

It has been almost a year since she has called. I can still "hear" her voice, day and night. Sometimes I have absolutely no idea what triggers it, but it can actually "freeze" me, or plunge me into despair. So one unintended consequence for the wife may be you are forever stuck in her head. I'm not sure if written communication would have the same effect.

At the time, and for many months after, there would have been many questions I wanted answered. Since she lost credibility, I was no longer tempted to ask her questions, or respond to her communications.

But NOW, I don't really care about the details of the affair. I don't care about what they did or how they felt. I accept that they had a very intense consuming affair. I even heard my hustand say during the worst of it that he would always love her and never love me (although he wanted to stay married). The affair was what it was.

I have no idea at what stage your MM's wife is at currently or where she CAN get without talking with you. In other words, it is a very personal idividual situation that an outsider cannot assess, nor can you, really.

After my husband moved closer to home, they still communicated by phone, almost always initiated by her, usually in the middle of the night (via cell records). My husband stopped answering for the most part, but did slip and have conversations with her as well. Then it appears they went totally No Contact for a few months, after he called her in front of me and sternly said not to talk with him again. (A story in itself) He promised, for the millionth time, to No Contact, but that time he did seem sincere.

Then, a life changing event happened in her life and she called and they talked. Again according to records, she has been calling him and he has not been answering.

How did I feel about that contact? From her perspective, I completly understand. She wanted to share the situation with my husband and test the waters. She told him she still loved him and asked him if he still wanted to be married.

Truthfully, I am not sure how it affected my husband. It appeared it has not affected him much at all. He says it has not. He admitted it was good to catch up, especially on work peers and job situations. She had been dating a guy, and I think my husband would have been relieved to have learned she moved on, but of course I can't look into his heart. He did apologize for talking with her and agreed it was a breech of our agreement and inappropriate. He renewed his promice to not talk to her again....blah blah blah.

I know how it affected ME. I HATE that he talked beyond figuring out it was her on the other end of the phone. I don't care if they worked out a solution to world peace, he had promiced ME to never talk to her again.

I visted him alone yesterday. (He comes home every weekend, too) We had a great time. We laughed, we had great sex, we had relaxed conversation. It was all very nice.

When I was driving home, however, I took a mental step back. I told myself this was the same guy that just a few weeks ago talked with her and did not put ME or our MARRIAGE or his own INTEGRITY first. It reminded me I can't afford to trust and I can't afford to invest my heart.

I know that costs my marriage and our recovery. I act like a nice wife, but I am quite honest about my feelings and my inability to recommit emotionally until HE demonstrates complete accountability.

So I'm not sure if my long winded posts answers you question. In one way, if he is lying to her, which he obviously is, then it is a godsend to have SOMEONE tell you the truth about your life, because you feel like you are just crazy, because everything is not quite right, but you are hearing all the right answers from your husband, if that makes sense.

On the other hand, if they are far enough into recovery that the past is the past, and they are focused on the future, then dredging up details of the past is just plain hurtful. I know I stepped away from desparately trying to put the puzzle together a long time ago. I put enough pieces together that I didn't need to know more. But everyone is different.

As for thinking you can tell this woman something that would help her marriage, whether or not this is how you feel, it is condesending. What YOU know about their marriage is what a flawed man told you, filtered through your own lense and then back to her.

My H's OW thought she was educating ME. I believe my husband told her all the things she told me, but he said them during a very revisionist time while he was trying to justify the affair. He was also telling her what SHE wanted to hear. As a marriage recovers, it evolves. And remember there are TWO sides of every story. YOU could enlighten her with the "fact" that she didn't pay enough attention to her husband, or did not have enough sex, or put on too much weight or whatever. Truth is, HE was having an affair with YOU. I'm guessing she didn't feel like much of a priority in her own marriage, even through she didn't know why. It may be kind of the chicken and the egg idea.

It may be best to live well, and concentrate on your own integrity, which means if you do not reengage in the affair, you need to stop talking to this flawed, still lying, trying to cake eat man. Best of luck!

Post deleted by Cherished

That's weird, for some reason all the *ands* in this post are bold and in italics.....

I think a no contact letter might be appropriate here, but I don't think that she should *suggest* that they come to the Marriage Builders site, and I don't think she should send them the books. Think about it, would you really want the OP in your situation to send you info on how to improve your marriage?? That would be a slap in the face.

LTM, you seem like an intelligent person. I think that you should send the letter, and then leave it alone. You cannot be *friends* with this man.

You said that he is an old friend and you want to help him get over this hump....the best way to help him and his wife is to never talk to him again. End it now in no uncertain terms.

I think that I would send a letter that went something like this:

WaywardHusband:

I am writing this letter to you because our continued contact is disrespectful to your wife and damaging to your marriage.

The relationship we had was wrong. It was built on lies and the pain of others.

I do not want to have contact with you ever again. Your responsibility is to your family.

I will be changing my telephone number and I ask you to respect my wishes. You no longer have a place in my life and it is unhealthy for everyone involved for us to even speak on the telephone.

I apologize for the things I've done in the past and I now will do the right thing and never talk to you again.

LTM

God Bless,

-Caren

I just read all the other posts, too. I agree it is about character and not the affair relationship, once that relationship is in the past. I don't discount their affair. The feelings were very real at the time. Personally I don't think it would have worked out longterm for many reasons, but I think they loved each other. It would be nice to be able to erase it from my husband's head and heart. That is not possible.

I'm not discounting it as much as just acknowleding that the past can't be changed, and even what was said in great sincerety in the past, may not be relevant now.

My other thought is if YOU are serious about not wanting to be part of an affair, a letter of NC with a copy to his wife would clearly state YOUR intentions, as well as giving his wife the information (that he is in contact with you) to make her own decisions. If you want to change your phone number, it would be best, but clearly you have a life outside this man. As long as YOU know how to hang up, or not answer, that may be enough. If you think you are weak, then do whatever is necessary.

If you think HE is weak, but you are not, then it is HIS problem.

Remember that most here are in raw pain. I understand you did not do this TO another woman. You made your own choices for your own reasons and you have to pay your own consequences. While I think affairs are wrong and everyone involved gets hurt, I think it is useless to paint the OW as the bad guy.

You are asking us for permission to let this betrayed wife know that her cheating husband is once again in contact with you, after promising his wife he would not contact you ever again.

Then, if that prompts his sickened and shattered wife to throw him out, he'll run straight into your arms. Then you can say, "But it's not my fault! You all told me it was okay to tell her!"

I think that's why you're here.

You don't need us to tell you to simply hang up the phone the instant you hear his voice.

You don't need us to tell you to block his emails.

If you truly did not want contact with this man, you would not have contact with him.

Please make a real life for yourself before it's too late. Stop helping to destroy other families. Stop forcing an innocent woman to live in h*ll every day of her life wondering when you and your stench are going to float up again. If you want a man, find one who is available.

But you already know all this, and you don't need anyone here to tell you.
Mulan

OK, don't mean to start a debate, but this would be my suggestion for the letter, since I would make it all about YOU:

Married man,
Resuming our contact, after NC for X time, is unacceptable. We can not be friends, as you suggest, and I will no longer engage in any type of an affair.

I will not accept contact for you ever again, nor will I attempt any contact with you. You no longer have any place in my life.

X

(I just think it is pointless for YOU to take responsibility for their marriage, or encourage your MM to take responsibility. All YOU can really do, is tend to your own integrity in this situation.) Again, best of luck.

LTM,

Honesty appears to be a really primary need for you...to be honest. I would like to help you, because you're here, and they aren't.

I thought I was a very honest person...what little pride I had came from that. It was jarring to realize the many ways I lied to myself, so well I couldn't see my own truth.

You're not alone.

I have since figured out my self deceipt began a long time ago as a way to protect myself from my own condemnation. I want to show you how your perspective aids in misting reality.

"I never wanted to "steal him" or hurt his marriage."

As children, we believe if we say we don't want that toy and steal it anyway...well, we're okay because our intention was good. We didn't want to...it just happened. If it is external from us, it isn't ours, we're not responsible. Our parents work hard at teaching us consequences to show us our power in this life...but we don't hear power, only negative effect. And they mess up by emphasizing intention "I know you didn't want to hurt your brother, but..."

Owning your choices gives you power against self deceipt. Owning your consequences is the road to redemption. And will give you the answers to your own questions.

"My actions did hurt their marriage. I stole AP--his attention, affection, conversation and SF." That's owning you filled the ENs so his wife couldn't. That is in the past. You stopped stealing and injuring from an innocent party. Once you had contact again, so did the theft and pain.

"I even turned it into a long distance relationship to lessen the frequency and intensity."

Your honest self urged you and you compromised with yourself. Your self needs to be honest and for 16 years, you harmed yourself, tore it down, bargained and stabbed that self. You did this to you--you're worth more.

Your honest self didn't give up on you.

"You can all imagine the devastation this caused for her, him and me."

Here is the biggest lie you tell yourself to protect your heart. The exposure did not devastate...your choices did. Your choice to be in the affair caused incredible pain to her. His pain, he caused himself, and yours was yours. She was innocent. Know this. Own this. Your choices did that. You can choose different. Same power. Better results.

"He and I spoke sporatically in the months following and I urged him to step up and do the right thing."

Most affair partners say this, even as they continue to stab the BS in the heart with contact. This is the deceitful lie you tell yourself. Your influence on him mattered. It never did. Each word you say to him says that the A is okay, contact is okay, and your self deceit is shared because he knows it isn't and hence, hates himself for it. You helped a friend to hate themselves. He helped you to hate yourself. You each gave the other permission. The encouragement was a lie to your choices.

"The right thing was to work on their marriage and stop the afair, I agreed although I was crushed at the loss of my friend. We had no contact for over a year."

Here was your real road to redemption. You managed through the pain, healing yourself, owning your actions, began to seek attention, affection and other ENs from legitimate sources. You were on the road to great personal recovery. Then you abruptly detoured. You suddenly chose more devastation, loss, and lies for yourself. Why?

Because of trauma or potential trauma in your life? The year was smooth until the bump? Wouldn't that mean that you didn't heal, understand, still had pain and wanted out of it, that you would give yourself permission to restart the A with contact? What have you done so bad in your life that you aren't worth redemption?

Why are you so defective? You're human. You learn every day or runaway from learning. That doesn't make you bad. Making destructive choices doesn't make you bad. They remain bad choices.

You are no different than anyone else...God made you whole, complete, lovable, and wonderfully made. Before you say a word, take a step, choose an action...you are loved.

Your fear of intimacy is also a self-betrayal. So is your belief that friends support even if it destructs. Destruction is not supportive...friends bring out the best in their friends...they do not support self-destructive behaviors. You handed this man you claimed to love a drug and said, "Get addicted again, come on, shoot up" with each word from your mouth. That's not love. It is evil.

You are consciously choosing evil every time you pick up the phone or send an email. You don't want to be evil, but that intention doesn't amount to truth because your actions are. Please stop. Five years is what you're facing to rid yourself of no contact will get you where he isn't a blip on your radar. You will be showing him the respect for his choices, actions and beliefs with no contact.

You will have a shot at doing honesty to you, to others and being able to defend your honesty boundary without confusion or frustration.

You can do this.

And no to your question about contacting her. Why would you want to inform her of what you continue to do? Isn't that like tormenting insects in a sink?

LA

I really appriciate the feed back here and it does agree, so far, with what I was thinking. To add some clarity we were in this relationship 16 years, which is longer than many marriages these days. It was not cheap, meaningless or easily tossed aside. I honestly believe if it had not been me it would have been somebody else who may have caused chaos in his family, I did not want that and still don't.
It is not MY responsibility to save their marriage it is up to them, they took the vows, and have always had a strong committment to a LIFELONG mariage. They will make it despite his behavior. I will not not answer his phone calls as he will not ignore mine but I have made it clear that this is not a "friendship", no longer an "affair" either, we are "just someone I used to love".
I feel very badly for her at times because she has her hands full with a wandering husband who has a high need for attention but is not good at being clear on what he wants and pouts when he is feeling a bit neglected. The good news is he is 16 years older than when we met and not feeling such a strong need to wander, so maybe when I am gone they truly will be alone in their marriage for the first time in over 20 years. I wasn't his first long term mistress but with gods grace I may have been his last.
I appriciate you all taking time with me despite your own pain. I have thought more than once of encouraging them to read the books or visit this site but I agree with you that there is no way to do that with grace and good intentions. I also hear you all saying that there is no good reason or way for me to approach her without causing more pain. Believe me I will take that into consideration as I think through these final decisions. Thank you all again for your time and respectful replies. LTM

A husband and wife are one. Biblically, that's a statement many don't understand. When an A flares up and one gets slapped (hurt badly), the other feels it. That's one example of how the H&W are one.

Now when a WS takes their M relationship and goes makes others with OPs, the BS feels it.

Does the OP create the pain the BS feels? Hm....let's see.... the OP certainly contributes to it. The OP is an accomplice to it.

There is NO escaping the FACT that the OP DOES share in the pain the A causes the family....whether that pain is emotional, financial, spiritual, mental, etc.........the OP is an accomplice. If the OP isn't doing the stabbing directly themselves (as some have), the OP is holding the tools and cheering the WS on.

ALL OPs share the responbility to the demise of the M. Just the degree may vary.

The best thing an OP can do is shed the OP skin and STOP being an OP 4EVER! Let the WS either fix their M or set his family free from his destructive path. It is up to the WS to shed his/her skin.

Remember, we can't fix others....we can only show and help. Your help as an OP w/b best to leave and NEVER look back.

L.