Make sure the WS knows it is your H you want back and NOT the WS. Otherwise u w/b in for a long wild roller coaster ride.....that's NOT fun.

L.

***Oh, he knows that I love him and that he can come back. He knows he has an out. ***

You've still gotta make it official or it's not Plan B. Could you post the letter you did send, or compose another one, and let us see what you came up with?
Mulan

Well, our lawyers have just scheduled a pre-trial conference for July. This is stupid. He wants a divorce, he has wanted it since two weeks after they started this affair, he could have stopped it at any point and he has not, he knows where I am if he changes his mind, I'm not sending him anything else that remotely smacks of emotional vulnerability or attachment. I've done that too much already. I have done the best I could, but I am not compounding my errors by sending any more notes for him and his girlfriend to chortle over.

I feel like a fool. I've got to stop coming here and reading stories of recovery and strategy and such. It's not healthy for me. He has never given me *one inch.* I'm grateful for everyone's support and advice, but I'm just angry at myself for even continuing to hope and pray.

This news just hit me like a fist, and I"m upset. I'm sorry.

hoopsie - if you are reading stories of "recovery and strategy and such," surely you have seen that these things take months and sometimes YEARS.

Are you going to give up before you've even started? Because you haven't started anything yet, you know. All you've done is dance to the WS's tune. We want you to make him start dancing to yours. That's what Plan B is about.

Go take a look at your three young daughters and tell me this isn't worth taking six months to two years to deal with.

When they are older, they will ask you why you and Daddy divorced.

"Daddy found a girlfriend and left."

"What did you do, Mommy?"

"Do? What could I do? I just let them go. Fighting to keep the family together was just too hard. I begged him to stay a few times, but he wouldn't, so I just gave up, did nothing else and let them go."

Dr. Phil says you have to earn your way out of a relationship. What have YOU done - not WS, YOU -- to earn leaving this one?

If you give up now, you *will* have to face your children someday. You have three girls - do you want them to think that women just have to take stuff like this and they shouldn't even try to do anything about it?

Whether you get your marriage back isn't really the point, hoopsie. Nobody here gets a guarantee. There are many folks posting here who were not able to recover theirs.

The point is - if you roll over and give up now, you have NO chance of getting your marriage back. And you will have shown your daughters that women should just accept the rotten things men do, be silent and brave, and don't make a fuss.

If you write your Plan B letter and take control of things by following Plan B to the letter, you have SOME chance of getting your marriage back. And you will have shown your daughters that women CAN take control of a bad situation and refuse to just take whatever rottenness a man might choose to dump on them.

There is Marital Recovery and there is Personal Recovery. Even without the first, you must have the second. Plan B is for your own Personal Recovery just as much as it is for Marital Recovery. That's why you still need it. Make sense?
Mulan

You know, WH's WH's position on this from the beginning has been: "I am in a relationship that I don't want to give up. It would be unfair to you and to her to see her while I am still married, so I am getting divorced." In a really sick and twisted way, there is some integrity behind that position.

I read stories of WSs who leave and move in with the OP and are just separated for years. WH doesn't want to do that. Men who cheat on their wives are dogs. So he has two options: stop cheating on me or get divorced and pursue the relationship honestly. He has picked door #2.

At one point I was begging him to go to counseling with me, to stop seeing her for just a little while to give us a chance, and he said in a really snotty tone "And that would not be a betrayal of her, how?" Like, duh, how can I possibly wound her by trying to reconcile with my wife? That would crush her. That would be a betrayal of her. It would mean that I had lied to her about my undying love. Can't do that to a woman I love, now can I?

Obviously, you and I and everybody else on the planet says "And cheating on your wife is not a betrayal of HER, how??" But he doesn't see it that way. He said he thinks of her as his wife.

But I am in Plan B. I have moved to another state, I do not meet his emotional needs, I do not hear his voice, I will not see his face, I know nothing about his life, he knows nothing about mine. I do not accept that a three-line email about the kids is somehow giving him an emotional fix and blowing the whole thing to h3ll.

I have told him over and over that I love him and would take him back, that I would love to recover our marriage. He *knows* that and it has not mattered to him. If I did not leave him completely according to the textbook, then I'm sorry. But I'm not telling him again. That is part of MY emotional boundaries. He has to want to come back, and so far he has never given ANY indication that he wants to come back. NONE.

Hoopsie.......divorcing you will not eliminate the big black stain that is part of their relationship. It will always be a realtionship that came of lies and deciept. That cannot be changed. 97% of these relationship fail! They all thought they were getting together with their soulmate. They all left their partners in persuit of their true love. So, why such a high failure rate??????

Even if his relationship falls through the crack and they are able to somehow make it, it is still build on lies, and he will never be able to seperate from it for ever, as his daughters will always know that he left their mom, that he is a cheater.


hoopsie.....
stop this. stop playing into his hands. He has you believing what he is doing has some integrity. NO! There is no integrity in finding some woman while married, and abandening his wife and children.

My H left and there was no other woman that he left me for at the time, and still it was not the right thing to do. Why, because we made a commitment to each other and that means before giving up, you try the best that you can to make it work. You try first! YOu H did not try....he found another woman to be with instead of attempting to work it out with his wife.

Nothing noble about a man leaving his wife for another woman. If he files a week later or 1 year later does not make a differce. Your H is trying to make his relationship legitimate in the eyes of others, by rushing the divorce, but it is still an Affair relationship!

And, telling you he thinks of her as his wife, is really him just trying to hurt you. She is not his wife. And he is not the only foged out WH who things, that his affair partner is the love of his life.

Hoopsie, I see Mulan telling you to stop accepting his relationship. I agree with her.

Your case is not special. I am sorry if that sounds cold, because afterall it is happening to you, and I can relate. As an outsider, I can tell you that haven been here reading for some time, it is classic. WS babble. Don't give into it. I think at this point you are in so much pain, you cannot see straight. That strength will come with time. But because you cannot see straight, let others help you, let others show you the path.


You can choose to not write the Plan B letter. THere are some of us who did not write one. But let me tell you, that people here can help you the most if you follow the plan that is adviced here. That is the plan that people here know about, they can advice you on it, they have gone through it. THey know what to do and what not to do. IF you follow your own plan, it will be much harder to give you advice. I know, because I am not in an official Plan B, I did not write the letter, my H did not leave me for another woman, and I did see how exactly to apply the Plan B letter to my situation. I just cut contact with him. It means that people here can give me support and they do, but they cannot advice me in a plan of action, when I have choosen to go my seperate way.

I think your case is like most of the cases here, so that is why I would write the Plan B letter.

Daisy

hoopsie, really, there is no integrity in abandoning your family and shacking up with a ho' no matter how you spin it. Thats cute that he justifies it this way, but it is just fog talk. He had a Door #3, and that was to be a MAN, take care of his family, and live up to his committments. He chose to take the sleazy, unmanly way out, though.

You situation is no different than anyone's else here. Some are much worse and they result in reconciliation. Mulan is exactly right, you have alot of opportunities here to save your marriage if you want to try. But the only reason it would be hopeless is if you don't try.

I can understand that you might not care and want to move on, but if you want your marriage, you should at least TRY to save it. Don't give up without even trying.

You might need to give yourself TIME to decide if you still want to be in the M