Hi everyone,

I normally post on General Questions, but recently I've had "D-day #2" and it's almost every bit as bad as D-day #1. STBXH moved out of home a little over a year ago. Three months after that, he told me he had a "friend" he'd been seeing for about a month. I didn't know about MB then, but although I was heartbroken and felt violated and betrayed, I continued what I'd been doing: behaving in a warm, friendly, pressure-free way. When I finally found my way here, everyone asked me, "How do you KNOW the A started two months after he left?" I was 99% sure it had. Now that I've been served with D papers, some things have come to light, and it appears that everyone here was right and I was wrong: the A has been going on AT LEAST since he left. Hence... D-day #2. I've made my way here because I FEEL like I've just found out all over again, and I'm having a hard time coming to terms with it. I feel like I'm back to square one.

But I'm not. Not (the good news) in my personal progress, and not (the bad news) as far as applying MB principles go. I feel like the horse has well and truly bolted. Although I didn't know about MB, what I did for the seven months after he left was essentially a Plan A. My behavior was (almost) exemplary, despite his increasing rage and abuse towards me. On 30 December I could take no more, and went into Plan B. But here's the thing: I never exposed. STBXH exposed himself, after he told me, starting to show the OW around town and having her as his escort at functions and such, so he pre-empted me. Also, truth be told, I was ashamed to tell anyone other that the people close to me. Back then I believed, as I had all my life, that in almost all cases, when a spouse has an A, that is a reflection on the marriage, and not on the unfaithful spouse. Now, I have been served with D papers, and our 20-year marriage will be over within a couple of months at the most. What I want to ask about is this: in Longhorn's excellent pinned post, he says that "Dr. Harley’s plan has an excellent chance of working if it is applied in a narrow window of opportunity you have after discovery to break up the affair and win your spouse back. Sometimes, though, the wayward spouse becomes entrenched in their adultery and never come out of the fog."

How narrow IS the window of opportunity? Did I screw up royally in not exposing and doing my damnedest in trying to break the A up? How long DOES it take before a WS becomes entrenched in their adultery? I know that nothing's written in stone, but I'd appreciate an honest opinion about this. No need to spare my feelings. I just want to know.

Thanks.

No one has anything to say?

I am no expert and hopefully pepper will post a reply, but I think exposure is part of Plan A. I truly understand how you are feeling: look at your second post 15 minutes after your first. Every day seems like an eternity, every hour an eon. Seven months is a long time. I'd be interested in the answers to your q's also.

River,
I think it is extra slow on the site this weekend due to Father’s day; an obviously extra stressful holiday by definition for a vast majority of those that have a need to post on this site in the 1st place. Oh the irony.

Also you may want to actually move your thread to General Qs II; instead of just posting the pointer that caught my attention.

So I am not an expert either, but from what I’ve read; I think that there are repeated windows of opportunity that occur in cycles. So I would tend to think that there would never a period of time that would be considered “too late”, however you may be required to modify or even create a plan that can be (re)executed on the cusp of the next cycle.

I too will be interested in hearing lh & other’s 2 cents.

--d2m3b.

I think you'll find that's 12 hours and 15 minutes, Thorstein! LOL! Thanks for the laugh, you actually had me wondering for a minute there. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

Thank you both. I'd forgotten it's Father's Day weekend in your part of the world. I'll wait and see what the week brings.

RiverTam, I never did expose at his work either... they all knew the OW & WH's version of "their marriages weren't working" though I'm sure! ha.
Has he shown any sign of wavering about his decision to be with OW in all this time? In my sitch, WH was often second-guessing his decision (OW = psycho in our case) and getting pulled toward our famiy, and then toward OW. In the end, even her pregnancy didn't lure him back to her though. The deciding point that brought it all to a screeching halt was when I filed for divorce. Couldn't take the fence-sitting anymore. Less than 2 months later he was home, and things have been good.

Does your WH seem confused and depressed, ambivalent? Or has he remained certain of the separation all this time? I think, IMHO, that would reveal whether there is still a wide-open window of opportunity.

MSA

Thanks for your story, MSA.

No, there's been no confusion or ambivalence. Depression, yes, but not the other. We had two months where things weren't great, then three weeks where they were horrible (in comparison to what they normally were), and then he decided to go, from one day to the next. He said it was OVER, and anything I said or promised came "three weeks too late".

River, as I recall, I got that line from something I read in SAA and which was strengthened by something I heard from Dr. Harley on his radio show. I can't find the reference in SAA now that struck a chord with me. I wish I had that book as an E-book so I could search it. Oh well.

So, how long is a narrow window of opportunity? I don’t know, River. I don’t think it’s very long at all if you’re talking maximum effect.

Let me ask you this. How long do you have to correct a child’s aberrant behavior after catching the child with an empty cookie jar? If you let it go for a while, you can recover and do a good job teaching the child how he or she should behave…but it gets harder the longer you let it go. If a wayward spouse sees little or no immediate consequence for what they are happy doing, there is no motivation to change. My opinion…there are only a very few days or weeks to get things going before the “child” can no longer be taught what is right and wrong.

Yep, that makes sense. Thanks for your honesty.

I wish I'd known. I wish I'd known that this is what unfaithful spouses do, and I wish I hadn't listened to him and believed him when he said there was no one else. I wish many things, which are absolutely useless now. It is still HIS shame, of course, but I was so incredibly naive. I was thinking about this today. This has never happened in our immediate family, or with any of our friends, or even in our social circle; I was a child, just totally unaware. Almost everything and everyone immediately around me from the moment I was born taught me to always be trusting and never suspect.

Sigh... consider me grown up, innocence gone.

You can't change what has already passed but you can get an education. You're that child slipping her hand in the cookie jar too, you know. You got your hand slapped (as it were) and now you know what to watch for and how to better read people and their motives. As Grandma used to say, "Live and learn," right?

Yeah, I know. No knowledge is ever wasted, but it's always sad when your innocence is taken from you. Not just that, but STBXH has INTRODUCED this element into our future generations. I'm the first person in a few generations to suffer this in our family, and this is my children's legacy now. It's a legacy I NEVER wanted them to have. I wanted to leave them a legacy of trust and security, but this man has taken this from me.