Todd,

When you are feeling better, can we discuss magnetism? I am curious about whether magnetism is subject to periodicity. I do have empirical evidence - specifically, my ability to attract large metal objects while riding my motorcycle.

But I would also like to discuss a) why you should never start a paragraph with the word "but" and b) malleability. Malleability is a property of a material that I have never completely understood. I guess my mind is not malleable enough to grasp it. Even so, it has bothered me for many years. I have studied materials science but this one escapes me.

I viewed FC as somebody questioning herself and, for that reason, could benefit from posting on MB. As I said, she was honest in her way. I guess I hoped that maybe at some time in the future she would change her opinion (or go on Maury Povich).

The problem with (F)WW's who claim to love their husbands but really don't is that they can really trigger somebody in my position (or Todd's). We are full of doubt, have zero self-esteem and are confronted with a WW who says they love us and want to be with us. They have already lost all credibility and completely destroyed our trust. They ask us to believe them or else we imagine that they might (as in Todd's case). When that happens, or minds flash back to the (f)WW's we are familiar with and we remember how they are deceiving their husbands and it makes us think the worst of our WW. I think I could imagine FC as my gemela in every conversation. I believe it could hinder recovery and might even destroy the marriage that might otherwise be saved.

So, I think FC should post on MB. I think FC should have her own thread. I would post on it. Unfortunately she would probably be tarred and feathered by others. But I agree it was probably best that she stay silent on this thread because Todd and I are pretty beat up right now. I'm still upset that some "anonymous" poster was trying to mess with 2regret and larousse.

'Morning TKO!

I've been up & out already this morning getting middle son to a musical try out for a regional event. Eek, that boy is a slow poke!

Pio, thanks for your business advice regarding mass production. Nothing kills my creativity or desire quicker than a commission or the thought of mass production. Believe it or not you're not the first to suggest I make mugs with the name of a near by touristy town on them.

WBBF. Tee, hee. The boat has sailed on that. I actually had dinner with him the other night. We'd parted ways several months ago but have stayed in sporadic contact via email. I like this man, just not as a WBBF (love that phrase BTW). I thought we were on the same page regarding that but he gave me a hug that was a bit more than a friend hug & a kiss that was also. Oy.

2much, I try to make practical, pretty useful things. I'll admit that when I hand build, which I do maybe 50% of the time, I can get kinda whimsical. Not all of my hand built stuff has a clearly defined purpose so if the pieces if they're small I call it an earring/ring holder to be placed around your house in various locations. If it's big, like the black one, it can hold umbrellas. Sometimes they're just to look at like my little naked ladies.

What's funny is that people will take the most mundane things & elevate them to art status. One day I happened to be in the gallery when a woman was buying a plate & a bowl set. I introduced myself & thanked her for the purchase & made sure she understood the pieces were food safe, oven & micro wave safe. She looked at me funny & said, "Oh, no I won't be using these for every day things. They won't ever go in the oven or micro wave, they're for very special use." While I truly appreciate her desire to have my work it seems to me she would see them more if she actually uses them. After all they aren't fragile, they been "baked", as Pio says, tee, hee, to about 2165 degrees F.

Todd, how are you?

Here's a chemical question for you Pio. If I have fired a piece, to about 2165 degrees F, which may be used with food & the clay body contains manganese will it leach into the food?

The only protection you would have would be the glaze. The manganese would, IMVHO, leach if there were no barrier (i.e. the glaze). As to the health issues associated with manganese, I have no opinion.

As posted by me on ENs:

The wife dropped the bomb on me last night that she has filed for divorce. I should be served Monday. She also said something about a PDL to order me out of the house. I raged last night and got her up this morning to rage some more. After I calmed down, I asked her if this was cast in stone. She said yes.

I'm actually taking this quite well. I have sense of relief. She said that there is no one else. I have a bit of anxiety, but not too bad. I am going out with a good friend tonight and will discuss the situation with him further. He has been divorced once.

I told the wife I would make her life a living ****** to pay her back for how she's treated me, but that was during the heat of the moment and I feel that I will be fully cooperative, within reason. I think that I'll even let her keep the house and have her pay me a lump sum to leave. I would consider moving a few towns away from this one (15-20 miles). I want to start over anew.

I'm sorry that I didn't do a better job.

{{{{{{{{booka}}}}}}}}

I don't feel I'm the position to give advice, but if there is no one else, why does she want a divorce?

[[[[[[[booka]]]]]]]]]

Don't apologize for not doing a better job. It appears this is out of your control. You have done the best you can with what you have right? You can sleep knowing that you really did your best.

I'll be pray'n for you!

Hi booka,

I'm sorry you're in such a painful situation.

Stph asks a good question, are you certain there's no one else? It may or may not matter, but you may want to be sure just for your own peace of mind.

I don't know if you know anything about my story but ex claimed there was no one else yet he wanted to D. I was never able to confirm he had a GF but many things point in that direction. After a year of a fake recovery he went ahead with the D.

I believe it would have helped me to know for certain (in terms of my recovery & understanding what I was up against) one way or the other if he did have a GF. It certainly would have helped me to work the situation better than I was able to.

Having said that, ex also had his mind set on a new life. His GF may have been part of that, maybe even a big part, but he was anxious for change. He would say otherwise but I think wanting to live another life, so to speak, was a very strong pull for him.

((((booka))))

nams,

as long as you are going to be putting potentially dangerous trace elements into your work, if you do decide to market through Walmart I have just three words for you: LLC.

booka,

I never have read your other thread but will do that today. It really does sound like there is someone else.

Hi Booka,

I am so sorry. I have been keeping up with your thread and know you have been working hard to make your marriage work. I am sorry now that I did not post to you there. Being in my own failed marriage I did not feel I could offer any good advice to anyone else. From now on I will at least post a hug. I've never done one before so here is my first hug to you ((((Booka))))

I'm so sorry Booka, you and I have been married about the same amount of years. I know we never dreamt we would end up here. Jut know you have a lot of good people that understand how you feel to keep you company.

Try to stay strong, some things are just out of our control.

booka,

I just started your thread. I saved it off and will read it in detail. I just wanted to say that I am totally convinced that your W is having an affair from the little I have read - BUT she may be having it vicariously. One of the things I have observed over my working career is that friends of people in trouble can easily get into trouble themselves. IOW, divorce is contageous. Your W spends much time with BF who is in LTA. W and BF talk about it. BF tells W all her complaints about her M. W starts to empathize with BF and progressively project herself (and her M) onto BF's situation. Pretty soon she finds all the problems in her own M that BF uses in hers to justify her A - and BF is HAPPY! That's not a hard sell. So if your W is not in a real A, she has convinced herself that it is the solution to all her problems. She has been breathing BF's fog far too long.

The first company I worked for there was a drafter who got into marriage problems and got divorced. Within 6 months the two people who sat next to him got divorced too. The it started to spread geographically to a couple more people. Fortunately the drafters kept pretty much to themselves in their tight little group.

Booka - I actually read some of your thread the other day. Sounds to me like there is someone else.

Hi Pio,

I just read your post to Booka and it was a light bulb moment for me. My H is in a Partnership. One of the partners has been a long time "player". He quite freely flaunts his various women and his wife quite happily ignores the situation - yes she is aware of his "hobbies".
My guess is she is quite prepared to exchange fidelity for life style.


Now looking back my H started saying things like "variety is the spice of life" etc. when we discussed his partners many affairs. He would then hurriedly add that it was of course his partners opinion and not his. Now, in hindsight I guess my H was influenced by his partner. I can only imagine the conversations that took place over cocktails!

We are the third marriage to disintergrate due to infidelity in the partnership. I was so busy thinking my health was the origin of the affair but perhaps it actually started much earler than that? You certainly have give me something else to ponder.

Thanks Pio.

Edited as I was not being a lady.

booka,

Who is Chris?

Booka,

I have read the majority of your thread. You are a smart person and say you have no evidence of an A. I am tempted to believe you. Your W has been seriously conflicted for some time. I am no expert but I would say her conflict has lasted far longer than I would expect for being in an A. I still think she might be living her friend's A.

I also think you have been spending way too much time trying to put out the match that fell on the cushion and is burning a small hole that you never paid any attention to the 5 alarm fire going on behind you. Your W has been sending you some very strong signals and you have been focusing on details while not seeing the big picture.

Not wanting you to see her naked is a woman mentally preparing for D. It is not a woman self-conscious about her body. A woman self-conscious about her body and having an affair spends all day in the gym working out. Woman having an A (I think) are generally very happy except when they are around you. Your W seems almost as depressed as you.

I also ask myself how much of a role alcohol plays in this. You noticed yourself that all your problems occur during or shortly after alcohol consumption. Alcohol is a strong depressant although it affects different people in different ways. From your thread I get the impression that either a) you two spend way too much time over at the neighbor's drinking or b) you don't go that often but every time you do it causes a problem that you feel you need to post about which reinforces the idea that your problems surface around alcohol.

If your W is not in IC, she should be. MC would be a secondary priority for me. So she says she is filing or has filed for D. How long will that take? Do you think she would consider an alternative plan in the interim? For example, instead of moving out of the house, agree to stay in the house but under a very strict set of guidelines. You could negotiate the guidelines but things you might consider are no SF, zero alcohol consumption (for both), no contact with LTA GF, one hour a day (or less) of quiet conversation on any subject.

At one point in reading your thread I got the feeling that your W has been unhappy about things for years and something has triggered her to make her think that the solution is to get out of the M. Has she seen her OB/GYN? Periods every two weeks is inconvenient if nothing else. Your W is asking for D but what she really may be asking for is help. She really does seem to be trying to get your attention. To an extent she has done it but, again, you may be focusing on the wrong things.

If you cannot spend time with W alone, spending time with W and DD is almost as good as long as it is not at the neighbor's house. You say you have trouble dating your W because you don't have anything to talk about. Not unusual in a marriage. Can you do something more physical or romantic or something that interests her rather than just go out to dinner? Maybe you could double date with stph20 and go to a NASCAR race. Hard to talk with all that noise!

My mother had a cat. It was the most unfriendly cat I have ever seen. We never saw hide nor hair of that cat. The cat, for some reason, suffered a very high incidence of UTI's. Whenever that cat had a UTI, it would walk out right in front of where you were sitting and pee on the carpet. Your first reaction is to swat the cat, throw it outside and remind it where the toilet really is and then go try to clean the carpet. Problem is the cat keeps doing it. You finally decide to take the cat to the vet. Vet sees the UTI and tells you your cat was simply trying to get your attention to help it out of a problem it could not solve on its own. It needed help but didn't know how else to ask.

I think your W is peeing on your carpet.

Booka,

I forgot to mention but definitely wanted to add that you should ignore anything she says about not loving you for years, never having had an orgasm, etc. That is typical of rewritten history. She is recreating her past to help reinforce whatever decision she has made or is making. It means absolutely nothing so don't be distracted by it. I know it hurts a lot. Been there, done that, cried on the T-shirt. Just remember - it isn't real. Someday, if you two get through this, she will look back and tell you she doesn't know how she could have believed those things she said. But that is the least of your worries right now.

Preface: When I read a long thread like this, I don't read much of the replies. I only try to read your posts and the portions of other posts you felt important enough to respond to. That way I can keep a certain continuity. I did go back and read a few of the more interesting replies. For the most part I see you and W both have some fairly serious communication/relationship issues. I also see those have been pretty well expressed to you. The fact that you are in IC is great so I won't try to get into any of that myself for the moment. Just setting priorities.

Random thoughts:

I'm on about October 2nd at the moment. For a long time your W has been the one controlling SF and you resented it. Now she has changed the program and you can ask for SF. You no longer seem to want it. This is your little shot at revenge. You're going to show her! You have her right where she wants you!

I was curious about Prison Break. You seem to have watched it a couple of times at least. It didn't seem to bother you when you watched it on 8/21 but you went ballistic when you watched it on 9/12. Curious.

Your family's relationship with your neighbor seems odd to me. Can't quite put my finger on it. If I were to suspect an A though, he would be suspect #1 on my list. At the very least, they are really good drinkin' buddies. They don't seem to need you along at all (and often you aren't there). You find no unusual phone records or emails. You have her work hours pretty well pinned down. Have you considered clandestine surveillance video? Look, I could spell out all the "curiosities" I find with the neighbor but I don't want to make you paranoid. You can't argue the fact that DD13 is around. In my experience, many 13 YO girls want as little to do with parents as possible so W could have a lot of unaccounted for free time – especially since you run off to the gym every morning, W likes morning SF and DD13 is a late sleeper. Neighbor supports her EN for alcohol. I understand that Dr. Harley recommends not even trying to work on the M until the other addiction is addressed. If she is an alcoholic, there is not much chance of marital recovery until that addiction is taken care of. Just ask ToddAC.

Okay now I am up to Oct 26 and I see that stph20 may actually be your soulmate over the NASCAR issue.

Your W's IC and her have agreed that all the problems are pretty much yours. It could be that her IC is an Oprah junkie. It happens. It could also be that her IC is trying to build trust. I saw this early with our MC. She pretty well sided with WW on every issue and beat me up pretty badly. But later on she shifted all her efforts to WW's problems. I think she wanted WW to feel comfortable in the relationship and think of MC as supportive of her behavior until she was in deep enough to stay. She then kicked me out of MC and went to IC with WW.

Just remember that nothing is what it seems. You (like me) way over-analyze everything. You also try to apply logic where none applies.

I great woman once told me to believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. I think that applies here too.

Events are conspiring against me. First one of my three remaining 9V batteries for my Makita drill bit the dust. This last weekend, I find that battery #2 no longer takes a charge leaving me with only one battery. I happen to be in SACO and I see a Makita 18V drill. Probably twice as good as my 9V drill. It is lust at first sight. Today I check the web and see a BHP451 lithium system. I am in awe. 560 in-lbs of pure raw torque!!! Then I scroll down and see the LXT402 and LXT600 kits!!!

And WW has me on a no-new-tool diet. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/teary.gif" alt="" />

Seriously this brings up an issue I have been contemplating for some time. It gets back to EN's. WW forced me to stop using the computer as one of her requirements. I stopped. What I found out is that creating chlidrens' games really made me happy. I loved making things that were creative, smart and could help children do better in school. WW has taken that away. For good or bad, I love my tools. WW has taken that away. So it seems to me that I am having to sacrifice a lot of the things I really truly like to remain married to a WW that I don't really and truly like. And it occurs to me - there is something seriously wrong with this picture.

For the past few days, WW has been working like an olympic athlete. Bedtime comes and she is out in five minutes - hardly even a "good night". Yesterday she ran 5K in the morning, made lunch, said she was sleepy in the PM and would take a nap. She picked me up and I asked if she slept. She said no because she talked on the phone for an hour with a friend and then it was time to pick up the girls. We all do homework and then we help the DDs paint their new bird houses. She puts them to sleep, comes in and says she feels really bad and has to go immediately to bed and wants to go to sleep. I asked why she couldn't sleep in the PM? Why didn't she just tell her friend she was tired and needed a nap? Why, instead, is it okay to check out on me - her husband but not her friends. She spent far more time talking to her friend than with me.

She said she really feels bad every night. I said she seems to feel really good all day long and it is only when she is alone with me that she feels bad so I must be the cause. I say that if she is that unhappy with me, we need to look for alternative arrangements because I'm not particularly happy either. She says she should see a doctor because she is dizzy a lot. I agreed she should. So far she has talked to all her friends about her problems and has decided she is anemic, has an inner ear problem, a thyroid issue and maybe a yeast infection. I say it is great she is getting all these "diagnoses" but she doesn't seem too interested in actually solving the problem. This AM she tells me again she might see a doctor. I say fine but I no longer have any patience for any of this. She says it is not her fault. I say when I married her it was in sickness and in health and it never occurred to me to not support her before but she checked out on the marriage, she invited someone else into our marriage bed so I had the right to check out as well and I wanted out. I guess it was the "taker" in me voicing his concerns. I complained that it seems my only function is to work to make money to provide her a home, food, clothes, golfing, travel etc. but that I hate everything my life has become. Except for the DDs, there is nothing in my life I want any more (I didn't tell her about the Makita drill).

She offered to bring me to work but I told her I didn't want her driving in her weakened condition. She called and said she may try to go see the doctor today. We'll see if she actually follows through with it. She said we should start recording all phone conversations again. I said there was not point since she knew where every public phone was and where to buy phone cards 24/7.

Today is not a good day.

Hi everybody!

I am not caught up on the thread...I will when I have a chance.....but hope everybody is OK. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

...been busy with friends trying to make up for WS's absence to celebrate my birthday....I am finding that they're overdoing it a bit... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" />

Needless to say, WS used it as an occasion to 'test waters' again to see if I can help him do some 'cake-eating'.... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

If any of you are curious, here's the link (sorry don't know how to 'name' links yet!):

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...e=0#Post3128340

...again...admittedly, proof of my low tech knowledge.... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

...and I can't say I am not enjoying the attention! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />