So it was an interesting night, I got several calls about exposing to OM#2 and how I destroyed a friendship. I was told how I was evil and vile... I remained calm.

I was told I would never move back in and she would drag her feet on any deal... I remained calm, only spoke of my focus on the marriage.

I got a heated call saying she signed the sales agreement for the house and we could sign our separation agreement tomorrow... I told her I couldn't sign it because I was advised against it... I also said I wouldn't talk to her about separation she could call Mr X my lawyer at 555-1212 when she wanted to talk about that - I told her he has my list of needs and wants and he will negotiate... she got hot about that.... I remained calm.

She called back about half hour later, told me she was dead in side for me, that she would never love me again, that the pain I inflicted on her 2 years ago and in the past 11 years was too much...She also brought up that had lost 3 of her grandparents in a span of a year - her beloved grandfather the day after she found out about my infidelity... I have tried even in the hardtimes to be there for her - she is hard to get close too... but she was blaming me for still being sad over her grandparents.

Anyways she said our compromise is back on... which is we would live in the house together until my youngest graduates high school - which is 12 years...

She ratteld some other things off but she said something about getting our "compromise" written up and seen by my lawyer - I guess she is referring to mutal boundaries that I asked for last time we talked....

Now this morning she called me to tell me that they were playing on the radio auditions for a radio job that she put in for.. and it was a nice causal conversaion - really surprised me.

viking, what exactly is the compromise? If this means you are going to agree to live there while she pursues a single life, that is not going to work. Is this what she has in mind? If so, I would move forward and get the attorney to get you back in legally. With no "compromises."

Good job on not agreeing to sell the house!

(I said yesterday that I'd give you a post today, so that's what I'm going to do. I'm sorry if it's causing you any problems on your thread though. Say the word and I'll get out of your way.)

Anyway, from the looks of your last post... she's all over the place. It's difficult and confusing for you to deal with, but at the same time, I think it shows you that there's a window of opportunity. She's mad at you, of course... but it looks like she has a vacancy sign up in terms of needing a friend. That's something you can capitolize on utilizing a good Plan A.



I imagine that's true. The trick to dealing with that is to the big bulls-eye off your forehead. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Her negative energy is focused on you and your actions. Her resentments, her anger, her frustration with her life.... all centered on YOU. In order to combat that mindset, the reasonable thing to do is to present less of a target and less of a threat.

I spent some time yesterday thinking about what would work for my husband if he were in your position. I have to warn you... I'm a fairly tough customer. If we had gone to physical separation, my husband would've been very hard-pressed to get me to reconsider. I'm not going to rearrange my life and the lives of my children on a whim. If I felt that separation was the only answer, I'd have BIG reasons for that.

We get so sidetracked in the discussion of affairs; how they work, the effect they have on a WS's ability to concentrate on the issues. Sometimes, I don't think we remember that an affair is a symptom rather than a cause. Once the affair is in place, it's destructive and prevents the WS from addressing the primary relationship, that's true. But much as what you said earlier in reference to why you felt you had cheated.... these problems within the marriage exist before the adultery.

When I 'walk a mile', I find that I want those initial problems addressed. I want to be taken seriously, and I want to KNOW that I'll never have to face those issues again. I want to KNOW that my husband is prioritizing my feelings with the same intensity that he prioritizes his own, and that he will always continue to do so.

I don't want an adversary, and I don't want a boss. That's why I don't want to live with him anymore. I want THAT relationship to end.

What I do want is a partner. Handily enough, that's REALLY what my husband wants too. He wants to feel loved and prioritized in the marriage. In a nutshell, he wants the same things I do.

What happened to us... was that he didn't feel "loved" or "prioritized" within the marriage. Like alot of guys who feel emotionally unsupported in their homelife, he felt like a 'paycheck'. He felt minimized in the family dynamic, like an outsider looking in. He wasn't having his emotional needs met. He needed more communication, he needed more emotional support, he needed more sex...and not the obligatory kind, but rather the passionate kind. He needed to feel attractive and desired.

On top of all the emotional concerns, he had medical problems that were causing him daily pain. He had a midlife crisis going on which was causing him some depression. This guy was a MESS.

Meanwhile, I'm cooking along thinking I'm a pretty good wife. I'm taking care of the family, the home, the dogs. I'm working outside the home and helping out with the bills. Like so many other women, I've got alot of plates spinning in the air. I'm covered up in terms of completing my daily 'to do' list, but I'm managing to muddle through each day. My husband is not a child. He can do for himself, the kids can't. Heck, the dog can't.

My husband has slid to the bottom of my list of priorities and I don't even realize it. We're fighting alot, because I don't understand what his beef with me is. It doesn't make sense to me. And because his complaints are loud, and his words are poorly chosen in anger and frustration... it all sounds like b*tching and whining to me. The worse he feels, the more noise he makes. Finally, we're adversaries living in the same house.

I try to keep the peace, but in order to do that... I'm avoiding him whenever possible. This frustrates him even more, because now he's in a situation in which he's not merely living with unmet needs.... he's being ignored. So, he keeps turning up the volume, and I keep running away. Finally, he gives up. He's NEVER going to get what he needs from me, so why bother? He starts looking for it elsewhere.

I'm sure that all that sounds like a cheap excuse for bad behavior. But those are the facts. Hindsight being 20/20, I can't avoid the truth. Yes... he's guilty for making a poor decision. But the whole time I thought I was being a good partner, I really wasn't.

On D-Day, I saw a lawyer and when I confronted my husband, I wanted a divorce. I wasn't playing games, I wasn't giving him an ultimatum. I was done. I was ready for him to fight me, but I wasn't going to budge an inch. I had been mistreated and ill-used, and there was NOTHING he could say that would change my mind.

Initially, he wanted to argue his case... but I wasn't having any of it. I didn't care enough to even fight with him anymore, so I shut him down whenever he tried to bring up the marital issues. They were a moot point. It was over.

And when that sunk in... it broke him. Instead of b*tching and whining, what I was hearing was raw, emotional pain. I was hearing for the first time what my inattention had caused inside him. Much like Dr. Harley's article about Why Women Leave Men, I found myself inside a "room of his house" where I'd never been before. It was a room where he doesn't have defensive walls, a room where his pain resides.

I suddenly found myself sympathetic. I couldn't bring myself to hurt him anymore. He wasn't my enemy. I loved him. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

This was new information to me. I didn't KNOW that I loved him like that. Sure, I loved him still... like a family member, the father of my children, a guy I had been familiar with for over 20 years. He had just given me the old, "I love you but I'm not in love with you" bag of crap the week previous to all this. And it hurt like a b*tch... but on the inside, I kind of identified with it. You could've knocked me down with a feather when I realized that I was still "in love" with my husband.

And I would've walked over hot coals for him in that moment.

Once sympathy for each other was loose in the room. He'd have done ANYTHING to make me happy. If it meant divorce, that's what he would do. And to be honest, it was the same for me. I'd have given him an amicable divorce and wished him well if that's what he wanted. But if it made him truly happy... I was willing to rebuild the marriage too.

I'm not interested in being the one who makes his life less than what he wants it to be. I'm not interested in being the target for his frustrations. I want to add to his life experience, not subtract from it. I want him to be happy. I love him. And when I told him all that... he laid his head down in my lap and submitted his worries for my attention.

Now, the path he was on was going to hurt him eventually. Like you sized up the OM in your situation, I sized up the OW in mine. She was a narcissistic cam-wh*re. A person sick enough to crave the attention of random men in order to satisfy her need for validation. She had a long list of men she was stringing along, and it still took some time for my husband to see that this person was NOT his "friend". The fog persists, even when we have a 'breakthrough' until after this realization is made. Dealing with this part of the process took more patience than I would've previously thought I had in me. But to fail, would leave him at her mercy. And I was NOT going to let that happen. So, even though I hadn't been to MB... I found myself doing what could loosely be described as Plan A.

He had been starved in terms of having his ENs met. I lavished my attention upon him. He was still in the fog. I showed my light like a beacon. I dropped the reins, and let him make his own decisions. I had unwittingly allowed him to cast me in the role of 'Mother'. So many of his earlier negative responses were due to the authoritarian control that he perceived me to have over him. It didn't matter that those perceived controls were an illusion on his part. It felt true to him because he believed it.

I had to take the "bulls-eye" off my forehead. This wasn't even a ploy at that point. I truly didn't WANT to be the cause of his life being unhappy. If he wanted out... there was the door. I didn't want him if it meant him living out his days viewing himself as a prisoner.

So I dropped any behavior that could be perceived as "controlling". That's not to say that I didn't set boundaries, because I did. But I kept them pared down to the bone. Just the things that I couldn't live with and still remain on in the marriage.

Because he was an internet cheater, I insisted that his "friends" be kept in cyber. No phone calls, and NO in-person visits. I wanted our personal information kept private. I wanted full access to his computer activities. But since I'd never heard of NO CONTACT or EXPOSURE, these were not things I insisted on. I didn't care if he fed his ego flirting with other women on-line, but the flirting with the one particular OW had to stop. Weirdly enough, the fact that I didn't insist on NC worked in my favor. In short order he was able to unmask her for the troubled individual she really is. It didn't hurt that I was sitting there next to him predicting her tactics one by one as she attempted to reengage him. There isn't any 'old flame' burning there today. He was fairly disgusted with what he saw, and he saw it for himself too. He can't pin that disillusionment on me.

Like I said, I didn't know about NC or Exposure either. I never "exposed" him. I did request that he talk to his two best male companions though. I felt like he needed some additional support. So he talked to them, and he felt better afterwards. His side of the family doesn't know ANY of the details to this day. But MY side of the family knew all about it. They were instrumental actually in me catching him out, as well as supporting me in whatever decision I needed to make at the time.

I'm sorry this has gotten long. But I wanted you to see that my husband and I were successful because we put our weapons down, and STOPPED escalating the conflict.

There were still bumps in the road, but once we accessed our sympathy for one another we were able to prioritize each other's needs as if they were our own. My husband didn't live within my boundaries because he was afraid I'd leave him. He did it because he knew it would hurt me if he didn't. That's the power of Sympathy. Even in the face of our red-hot negative emotions, it can unlock our 'love' feelings.

You can't make your wife sympathize with you. But when YOU sympathize with her, you take the bulls-eye off your forhead. You're no longer a target for her animosity. And as she begins to feel loved, supported, and prioritized, the possibility that she will reciprocate in kind increases. You are no longer her adversary. You are her friend.

This isn't easy. It requires that we prioritize the other person's needs AHEAD of our own, at least for a time. And while we're doing it, we sometimes feel like a complete schmuck, filled with self-doubt and afraid we're being used. But...to me, this goes with the territory when you're in Plan A, something of a necessary emotional risk.

From What Are Plan A and Plan B: Here


You said you're fairly confident that the OM is not a factor any longer. But even without an active affair underfoot, there's still a need for Plan A in order to combat the unmet needs and annoying behavior. When you read through the linked information again, you'll see that the words "negotiate" and "negotiation" are a part of the process. The adversarial tone that we see so frequently on infidelity boards is absent from the actual written information in the MB Basic Concepts section.

We can't expect success when we allow ourselves to operate from a fearful place. What I learned in my situation is that I had nothing to fear. The worst case scenario in terms of 'Marriage' had already happened. The marriage was OVER. But.... the actuality of it wasn't as scary as the possibility of it. Once the marriage was over, I had no place to go but UP. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

This allowed for a NEW marriage, a new understanding of one another. Neither of us wanted the old relationship back anyway. Why would we? It sucked.

When you face down your fears and you explore the worst case scenario, you find your strength. You realize that yeah... it's not your first choice to end the relationship, but you know you'll survive it and you'll be okay if it happens. The fear dissipates because you KNOW that you're gonna handle whatever comes up.

The fear is what feeds the negative emotions...anger, resentment, impotence. The negative emotions are what prevent us from seeing with absolute clarity. They keep the landscape murky, and they sap our positive energy. The negative emotions invoke our TAKER, making us behave in an oppositional manner. When you face down your demons and eliminate your fear, you slow the influx of energy feeding the negative emotions.

You have alot on the line, Viking. You're worried about keeping your family together, and keeping your finances straight. But the fact is that if it all goes to pot... you and your family are still going to survive. In the big picture, if the bank forecloses on the house, it won't deprive you or your family of oxygen to breathe. If your wife divorces you, it's not going to make your kids stop loving you.

Now, I'm not telling you that your goal in saving your marriage is unworthy. Never that. All I'm saying is that if you fail.... the world keeps turning. Once you've lived in that moment and conquered your fear of it, the panic that you've probably been feeling can't hinder you anymore, or make you behave in an adversarial way. Your eyes are open and you're seeing with clarity.

It's faith, Viking. Faith in God. Faith in yourself. You're going to handle whatever comes up in terms of THE BIG PICTURE, and you're going to do it with God's love in your heart. That's what makes it possible to let the fear go.

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

LJ...I have no other words than thank you.

I would like your permission to take your post as is and send it to my wife.. you have taken how I feel and expressed it better and sweeter than I ever could.

Thanks you agin for the post

and thank you all for being MB

Your welcome, Viking. The post was for you. Use whatever you can of it. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

She's back on message, eh? When the topic is her, she's congenial and calm. When the subject is anything else, she blames you--even for her grandparent’s death. This is pretty typical, and illustrates the self-centered nature of all wayward spouses, but particularly your WW, Viking.


********


Notice she blithely assumes you had accepted her “compromise” at some point in the past and she has the power to approve or disapprove it. I suppose this is her way of negotiating with you on the contents of that letter you gave her suggesting you come home because the family resources won’t stand for two homes. Is that the way you view it?

As Melody pointed out, if that compromise includes being married and acting single, it isn’t going to work. Melody has been out here for many years and has helped hundreds of couples recover their marriages. If you do nothing else, Viking, pay attention to what Melody recommends.

Don’t be distracted by a compromise that appears to push the problems even 12 years down the line. You can’t give her that or it will create problems and discord later down the line…and it won’t be 12 years either. It could be next week, or next month.

You’ll be tempted to accept. Some people will urge you to do it and negotiate afterward. After all, it gets you back in the home, which is what you want and need, doesn’t it? Twelve years is a long time, you might think. Anything can happen in 12 years. It would give you a long time to work on these things, right?

Actually, the compromise she proposes is a delayed time bomb and it’ll explode sooner or later and wreck havoc in your marriage. The family structure will be bombarded with additional OMs because she will continue to troll for them. She’s shown what she intends with OM#2, hasn’t she? Trying to sweep her infidelity under the rug in the name of a compromise just isn’t going to work. She’ll find OM#3 pretty quickly…perhaps down at her new “dream job.”

By the way, this business of being “dead inside,” and the “last 11 years” having been a disaster, particularly the last 2 years, etc., etc., is classic wayward spouse drivel. Darn near any reference to a time period is rewriting history--the good times are all ignored and the bad times are all magnified into catastrophes. She has to deny any feelings for you in order to justify the things she’s been doing.

In a weird way, that’s encouraging because it shows buried deep inside her somewhere there is a core of integrity that has to be fed lies in order for her to indulge herself with an adultery. MB principles, as opposed to other and more haphazard techniques, work to nurture that sense of integrity and bring it back to the forefront. When that can’t be done effectively, when one caves on one’s boundaries and the fantasy is left intact, the marriage limps to a solution that is ripe for fracturing again down the line.

I think you decided to give her until your attorney returns tomorrow to respond to the contents of your letter, right? I think you’re in a good “negotiating position” with the alien. The alien wouldn’t have thrown up the “compromise” again if it sees a more advantageous way to accede to what you’re saying and still keep it’s options for continued adultery open.

Stay strong, Viking. Remember, you’re not dealing with your wife here. You’re dealing with an alien. Dr. Harley didn’t place his techniques for a strong marital recovery in the last half of SAA by accident. You have to banish the alien first, then work with your wife to build a stronger relationship than either of you ever thought you could have. Hang in there, pardner.

By the way, Viking, can I suggest you go back to your old thread for posting? It's getting a tad confusing keeping track of what appears on two threads. My concern is you may get advice here that doesn't take into account the long history on the other thread. That can create confusion and may well get you sideways in your recovery plan.

Wow, Lady jane- great post!

Yes LH I will go back to my origional post on my whole situation.

I already got a response from her on forwarding LJ letter what a wacko the alien is