Vercing:

It's tough, isn't it, when our spouses turn out to not be the pillar of virtue and strength we believed them to be?

It means you have to work harder, and pick up some of their slack. You have to do things you never wanted to have to do because they have a weakness, or a vulnerability or a lack in some area.

Like specifically spelling out boundaries. I thought such boundaries were things that everyone SHOULD know intuitively. It pissed me off that my husband didn't. In fact, it took me a while to understand and truly believe that he didn't.

Oh, he knew he shouldn't have sex with another woman, but he really didn't understand where the line between a casual friendship or a work friendship and an inappropriate relationship lay. He really didn't. That slippery slope to an affair that seems to obvious to me was not to him.

And so he asked me to help him draw boundaries to be sure he didn't cross that line again. Like you, I found that very unfair. But I eventually accepted it as part of life and marriage.

My H and I sat down and wrote up boundaries for relationships with people of the opposite sex. Really specific boundaries. He wrote a first draft, I added to it and then we edited it together.

At first I balked when he asked me, but then I thought about it and I could find no reasonable argument against giving him the help he asked for. It wasn't going to hurt me or him to do it. I just didn't think I should have to. That didn't seem like a legitimate reason for me to refuse him my help.

I realize that he has and will again pick up the slack for me in other areas. That's what a marriage is about, IMO. Combining our strengths to minimize our weaknesses.

Tru

V,

There is no hostility directed at you here, just mutual frustration. You asked for advice, didn't like what you got, asked again hoping to get another answer...when it was the same answer, from various strangers who have no emotional stake in your life, you got frustrated. It wasn't what you wanted to hear. Repeat chorus.

Realize those same strangers putting so much effort into their thoughtful posts started to wonder why they spent so much time and energy responding to a cry for help, only to be angrily waved off in the end.

I'm afraid I have to bow out too, because offering any more advice seems futile if you are not willing to at least consider another approach to a problem. And, frankly, the continual slams against other cultures is offensive to me and serves no constructive purpose here.

That said, I wish you well.

~Silverwraith

well clearly you have never been to the middle east have you, its not a slam to say Islamic men set vewry tight boundaries on thier women, in some cases even work is not allowed or even driving is forbidden, its not a slam on the culture to say that, its a fact. Its not a slam on other cultures to realize that western values where women are concerned are different than in alot of other cultures in the world.

vercing..

you can't stuck in the minutia...
there's a bigger picture...that you also have to get to...

if you believe you shouldn't trust your wife right now..
then you shouldn't...

your options are to walk
OR
to try to WORK together to rebuild it....

lots of people have...

you can't stop her ever....

you I she he him her shemales hemales.... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />
each of us choose each minute each day..

to do right or to wrong...

YOU have something a lot of BS would give anything to have...

a WS ASKING For help ....

this is not the time to get bogged down this is the time to act...

if you are saying that you believe your wife will always choose a girlfriend who undermines you and your marriage
then you may have to tell her that you can't and won't tell her what to do..
but
that you will not be married to someone who chooses a friend over a spouse....

there's no control in that...
she can and will choose...
then you enter your counter decision as well...

ARK

thank you ARK, i know you are right that I have clear choices.
i am just trying to truly understand what these new realities in my life and marriage mean both for our future and what they mean in terms of how my wife feels about me.

you are offensive to other cultures and clueless as to how to deal with your own M. Your W is a cheater and she is not to be trusted. She should not have any friends that make you uncomfortable or that do not SUPPORT YOUR MARRIAGE.
If you think that being okay with a cheater talking with old boyfriends makes you a progressive man.. you are dead wrong. Your W will earn back trust by putting your M first in all that she does. She will earn back trust by living a transaprent life free of the things that had her ready to spread her legs for someone else. You act as though she was a pillar of trust for 12 years when she was anything but.
You cannot force her to do anything.. what you can do is set guidelines for her being a part of your life. These may include her having to ax some friends that helped her plan A's... or some ex-boyfriends that do not respect the sanctity of your M. ANYONE that is not supportive of your bond should be weeded from the garden of your M. If you cannot see that... you are inviting these problems into your life and M. If you cannot be a strong enough male to hear your W say she needs help with a problem and do what is necessary to protect it... well, that is your problem.
Dr. Harley says it best when he says ... he does not trust his W, nor is he he be trusted. This means blindly trusting... you know what you have been doing for all these years. Keep up the current course and I will be happy to recommend a good divorce attorney and urologist (to help cure your STD's).

I wonder what made you choose vercingetorix as your handle.
"When Alesia, city of Gauls, was besieged by the Romans, and the food ran out, it was determined that all those who could not fight were to be turned out. The inhabitants of Alesia, who had given refuge to Vercingetorix and his men, now were compelled to leave the town, together with their wives and children. Starving, they beseeched the Romans on the surrounding walls to take them in as slaves. But the population was refused any refuge and left to die of hunger between the two armies."

This is exactly what boundaries are NOT about. You're not meant to "starve" your WW to death to "win this battle", like Vercingetorix did in 52 B.C.

You, and your WW, need to work together to overcome her tendancies to look for something in OM that she's somehow not finding (or looking for?) in you. Yes, that's what EN's are about of course.

She needs to be transparent. As another poster already pointed out, maybe you won't check up on her - but she should make it very easy for you to check up on her ANYTIME ANYWHERE. After all, if she has nothing to hide, why would she mind? And why would you mind that she makes this possible for you, if it helps her overcome her addiction to these easy kicks with OM ?

If she sets her mind on making all her actions transparent for you, then she has to carefully consider her actions. In the process, she'll become more aware of exactly what she is doing instead of just "going for it". Somewhat like a smoker who starts becoming aware of his/her own smoking, rather than thoughtlessly lighting a cigarette without even noticing it - or the fact that a pregnant woman is sitting close to you, for example.

She needs you as a "mirror" to reflect her actions. You cannot mirror them if you don't want to bother "being there" for her. If it means doing things together instead of her doing them on her own - so what? If it means her giving up certain actions because they obviously lead her to go astray - so what?

You don't have to become a controlling monster; you can do this in a loving way. Ever thought of that? She needs to fight an addiction. Fight with her. Help her.

Why do you continue to make this a gender issue at all?

It's got nothing to do with gender.

Do you not get that if the roles were reversed and YOU were the wayward one asking for help, that we'd be just as adamant on this?

It's not suppressing women...it's assisting your partner when she's weak.

Let's get off the gender kick...it's got NOTHING to do with the issue here.

I agree with Owl. This has nothing to do with gender. My husband of 23 years had an affair. We now have boundries in place. We have boundries I didn't think we would need to have. I never dreamed that he would start a relationship with an old girlfriend. Now, if he gets an email or call from an old girlfriend, he'll tell me about it and together we can answer it.

example: a couple of months ago a friend passed away. I couldn't go to the funeral because of something that could not be changed. At the funeral another old girlfriend was there. He chatted with her for a minute and he called me as soon as he got in his car. He did not give her his number, his email, etc.

We were married for 23 years before his affair happened. Our marriage is different now, but it is a good marriage.

He has worked very hard over the last year to rebuild my trust in him. He is an open book. I never, ever thought we would be in this position.

Because we have boundries in our marriage, does that make me an Islamic husband? I think not.

I think I would be very glad that she offered to let you set boundries. Not every FWS is that agreeable to the spouse doing that.

Have you read about POJA? If you are uncomfortable with your wife starting a business with someone that is not a friend of your marriage, that should be POJA'd. Is her working with this person something you can live with?

Do you know what your wife's emotional needs are?

Since she was boundries, maybe she is asking for you to be a leader. Maybe that is one of her emotional needs. There are more emotional needs than the 10 listed in the book and on this site.

What do you want?

You can not go back in time to the old marriage.

You can only go forward.

If you can not make the commitment to go forward and work togehter to create a new, different, and hopefully better marriage, then you have every right to move on to your own life with out her.

Lol, this cracked me up. My H has this sentiment except that he is the affariee. He resents my asking him questions and doing things like being accoutnable which would help me feel more secure.

What I wanted to ask you is does it make you feel uncomfortable to have to ask your wife to be accountable because you feel you would be trying to control something that you have no control over? And if there is anxiety in the thought of that?

vercing,

If you do not believe that boundries are required for a safe and healthy marriage then why is your wife's affairs even an issue?

You DO have boundries and your wife is asking you to name them, claim them and enforce them. Maybe she is tired of your 12 years of passive, new age, feminist persona. Maybe she wants you to be jealous. Maybe she wants to see that you really care. Maybe she is asking to be reeled in by her HUSBAND, not her feminist marriage partner.

You seem to be kicking and screaming over a very basic principle which is present in any healthy relationship. It's time to get your head out of the sand and realize that whatever you have been doing for 12 years has indeed not worked... it has FAILED.

Setting up healthy boundaries kept one of our kids out of jail

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

Pep

.... that is NOT to say our other kid went to jail !!!

LOL

look when i say i am agaionst boundaries i mean enforced crap like no male friends no bad girlf friends etc.
i never said we shouldn';t discuss that we shouldnt be screwing other people etc or having secret dinner dates.
These boundaries of behaviour were always understodd, my wife is a fundementalist christian, she would flip out if i suggested gays could marry. She would go off on a tirade for an hour explaining why loosed women ruin families.

her first attempted affair was with an old boyfriend whose wife was cheating on him for 3 years with his best friend, we discussed every evening what a horrible ewvil women this woman was, i was here every day with her. all she did was talk the talk and walk another walk.

Just to let you guys know how well this boundary thing is going my wife just called me to tell me she was on her way home from work, i heard a deep voice in the background and i said who is that. "oh thats bill i am just giving him a ride home"

great boundaries, we have discussed at length the acceptable limits of a marriage with her priest, father, mother , sisters and MC as well as about 8 months of endless droning conversations.

I cannot live as a man who is so threatended by any male or even non-freindly female. how can i live in am arriage waiting for me to slip up and let the wife do it again.

Our limits were understood for 12 years, trust made them flexible, the flexibility was used against me. But so is the non flexibility, beacuse after the first attempt came another, after the extensive conversations about limits and guess why?
Resentment, she made sure the second attempot was deep in my face and hurt me deeply and she did it on purpose to acheive that aim.

i guess i am just bitter

You do not get it- you had no boundries for 12 years or if you did they were very lax. Maybe it is as you said that trust made them flexible. However, she betrayed that trust. She has to prove herself trustworthy. Again, you should not have blind trust- no one should. If that is what you want, it is very likely that that trust will be betrayed again.

I think you are confusing trust with boundries.

When she said she was taking Bill home-what did you say? Did you say, "WS, you know that it is inappropriate for you to have conntact with a man" Or did you say "oh well, whatever"?

She is ASKING YOU, BEGGING YOU fro boundries and you refuse to listen to her.

Have you read His Needs Her Needs or Surviving an Affair?

I have asked you that before but you have yet to answer it.

I would guess you have not as this is spelled out so well in the books. Maybe purchasing the books and reading them would be a good thing.

My husband is a Christian too. Many of the FWS on this site are. That has nothing to do with this. When a person is in an affair- they are not themselves.

Based on what you just have written then it is pretty clear that your wife gets off on hurting and disrespecting you. How pathetic that she says she needs you to enforce boundaries against her desire for other men. She has now done this to you twice.
Fool me once - shame on you.
Fool me twice - shame on me.

She has in effect told you that she is incapable of enforcing boundaries and continues to engage in questionable activities. She clearly believes that after all of the pain she continues to inflice on you; you will still accept it. No consequences to her actions equals no motivation to change. Why you would wish to remain in such a marriage with someone so hurtful toward you is beyond me.
You have a choice to accept or not accept this. She seems to feel you are a doormat. Are you?

Ver

I don't think you are bitter.

It seems as though your FWW is acting like a child. You tell me what to do and I will do it.

There is not a person on this planet that would say A's are a good thing before they do it.

If you were the WS things would be different. That is the problem.

You know before my FWW's A there were two people we knew that had A's.

She had very harsh words for them. But when she did it those things did not apply. Funny how standards change when you are the adulterer.

One night we went to dinner together and the neighbor she bashed non stop for his A got a D. She wanted to tell the BS but didn't because we didn't know them well enough etc. Plus she got the info from another neighbor so it was second hand knowledge.

Anyway we were at dinner and she said so they are getting a D. She asked the neighbor if it was because he was cheating on her and the neibhbor said yes. This was after her A. She said she did the right thing. I couldn't believe what she was saying. Then she realized she had an A and she was telling me that the woman did the right thing. Then she said well that wasn't the only reason. He had bad hygene as well.

I almost fell over laughing. She was judging someone very harshly for having an A meanwhile she had just ended hers a few months earlier.

Vercingetorix,

WS are illogical.
It's not until they get over their addiction that their logic returns.
OW in my case thought she wasn't doing anything wrong (having PA with my H) because it "felt so right".
She was my best friend (or so I thought) at the time, so go figure!

WH thought it was ok for him to keep chatting with women on the internet.
He even set up a meeting with one of those women. All without my knowledge, of course.
He gave women a ride home, too.
He thought that was all ok, just as long as he didn't have sex with them!!
He couldn't understand how hurtful this was to me.
And that "no sex" probably just meant "no sex YET".
It was also funny that all those "innocent" meetings and chats were with women that were exactly the right age and appearance and character he fancies..
As if he was shopping all the time !

In fact WH in my case never got out of the fog and the self-justifying, he didn't want to know about any boundaries.
So when I found out he went to P's (again) I drew the line and now he's XWH.

I would have been thrilled to know that WH would have wanted to be transparent.
But he would have needed to go into counseling as well, because it seems he had an addiction to sex (no emotional involvement, just going back for the thrill).

the transperancy has been there all along, especially after the first affair. It did nothing, she still found a way to flirt, secretly talk to and set up a secret meeting. Evene after that it was, "gees i didn't know i was doing anything wrong, it was innocent"

Thats the way it has been all along, i finally got alot of the real truth about how these things started by playing psycho - therapist and raging until i got the truth.

Once we got that we could see how, not only had she been thinking non - innocent stuff from the very begininng of both attempts, and she even exoplained what she was doping to several of her freinds. Not knowing you are doing it is a lame cover story just like calling it all innocent.

I still don't see how walking away from the very thing that we built our relationship on (trust) is going to rebuild our relationship. i feel like people are applying standards to my marriage that are for people married for 2 years or something.

How can i rebuild up that trust if i don't do it by trusting her? If i simply disallow everything that makes me nervous i will not only build lots of resentment but i will also build absolutly zero trust points.

I have no problem with boundaries like, no secret meetings with other men, no giving your phone numbers to anyone etc.
But me having veto power over her friends is pointless, pathetic and most of all impossible. If i can't trust her when i am not around then nothing i do or say is going to stop her, in the end the responisiblity for rebuilding this trust between us is on her. i can try to help but i cannot do the work for her.

Some of the histlity shown in this thread to me is perplexing, eagle even said he can understand why she wants another man over me, thats really nice coming from someone in my similar position. I could say some pretty choice stuff back, but i prefer not to go there. Lets just say you wouldn't have the balls to say that to my face.

I also greatly resent people on this thread telling me that

1. i am unwilling to work on my marriage because i realize the futlity of trying to smother someone into stopping affairs.

2. I am being stubborn becasues i don't accept the crazy boundaries you guys tell me must be enforced?

3. I resent the attacks against feminism, freedom and trust is what i built my relationship on with my wife. She fell in love with me for my values and my character, if i suddenly said to her "oh by the way you must clearly outline all unalloable things in our marriage as i can no longer control myself from commiting acts which destory my happy family, she would be gone so fast my head would spin.

I know that my old marriage is dead, its the first thing isaid when i found out about the first affair, i also oredicted more. But i am not really interested in having a relationship with someone i have to monitor like a small child. I very much hate the person i have become, checking cellphones, reading emails , its pathetic and frankly very disrespectful of me to do it. But once you are forced into it you cannot stop.

The only way foir that to change is for her to come to a realization about her acts, thats what the truth part is all about. if she can't love me again as much or the same as she did for 12 years , then she can never behave the same as she did those 12 years either and i will just go thru this over and over.

The same is true of me here, she cannot hold my hand and make me forgive. I cannot ask her to help me do the right thing for our family, I HAVE TO DO IT. its my respnsiblity not hers. She can help set up the forgiveness with honesty and by rebuilding the love bank, she can stop doing the things which cause this hurt. But in the end only i can do the forgiveing and let us move foreward.

problem is i have reached inside myself a good 20 times now to forgive and move forward only to get hit in the face with a lie from the past or another attempt at an affair.

The problem is she does not love me the same, no matter what i do or say her heart has turned and once that happenes only she can bring it back, if it comes back EA's and PA's will not be an issue. If not all the boundaires and control in thew world will do nothing but prolong the inevitable. only giving trust freely and having it not be spit back into your face builds trust.

We're not telling you to stop trusting her.

We're telling you to stop BLINDLY trusting her, which is what you did for 12 years.

Do you understand the difference?
Mulan