What did you write in your Plan B letter?

Do you have an intermediary?

You've only been in Plan B for a few days and the first few weeks are the hardest. After that you will gain strength by sticking to a very dark plan B.

Get the LSA done as it will tie up most of the loose ends and reduce the anxiety as one of the earlier posters suggested.

If you have an intermediary block the email as his emails will return you to the early stages of withdrawal and you don't want to go there once you are out.

I haven't blocked my personal email as I still have a desire to see what she sends me (I probably should block it). Only respond to matters concerining your son and nothing else. Yes/No answere will suffice and under no circumstances should you send an email to him or contact him. You get by on your own and if you need him for something, you do it on your own.

After a few weeks of this you will begin to gain strength from it and build your self-seteem. That is an attractive quality and your WH will notice even if you think he doesn't. It is critical that you remain strong and dark.

My WW has been trying to break my Plan B and although she got me to peek out recently, I'm going dark again now.

Remember in Plan B you meet NONE of your WH needs.

Good luck and stay dark!

Temp -

I have been in Plan B for 3 months and I finally woke up w/a new non victim attitude. The first few weeks are absolutely dreadful. I don't wish that stress on anyone.

I have valued the advice given here but I must say that the block on my WH email has been a blessing. He's quite the coward so I suspected email (or text) would be his vice for hurting me. And true enough he says last week that he can't understand why I never answer his emails.

Well, #1 I could honestly look at him and say "I never received your emails."
#2 If and when my WH decides to change, it will be bigger and bolder than an email and it'll be evident in his actions.
In other words, it has helped me with boundary issues.

It is your choice as to whether or not you want to block his emails. But I am thankful that I have.

Good Luck.
Get some AD's you're in for a rough ride.

Michelle

Hiker and Hope,
Thanks for your quick responses, I will have to think on this one a bit longer. I have my emails set to block right now, as I really don't want to open myself up for breaking my word.

Hope,
I do have an intermediary, and Plan B letter has been sent. I'm waiting to hear from lawyer regarding LSA, and hope to be signing soon. I read in your thread today about wife emailing to try and have a 'pizza party'. Not really the NO CONTACT letter or commitment you were looking for; WTF mate! I admire your strength. Good show!

temp wanted to check in.

seems like you are moving forward. better then standing still.

I hope all is well.

when u gonna change temp to perm? I mean really you can only be temp something for so long. LOL

Hey temp,

Just stopping by to say hi. Hang in there. I just got a lot of bad news from my lawyer today. Turns out in my state, there is not a whole heck of a lot I can do to actually nudge WW towards reality. The rules seemed to be setup to help the WS instead of the BS. WTF?

Anyway, I hope your sitch is going better. Regarding the blocked emails, maybe it is a temporary fix for you. However, I personnally would hate to have missed a potential email from WW saying that she wants to try and has conceeded.

Just a thought. I do agree that your H would feel wierd telling an intermediary something so personnel as that he wants to reconcile. He needs to have a way to be able to break the NC agreement for the sole purpose of telling you he conceedes at some point.

Take Care,

EL

mcm137,
I've got the AD's on board. Been on Lexapro since June. I'm really trying to stay dark, so I think email blocking would be a good way to achieve that. You're right about the approach. He know's where I live, where I work, my address; he's got pens and paper; there's USPS, UPS, FedEx, the Pony Express, carrier pigeons.... If he doesn't really have the time to think 'outside the box' and make a bit more effort (H3LL, I sent him my Plan B letter via USPS), I think he's S.O.L.


Thanks EL,
WTF, mate! So, do you have to file for D in order to 'nudge' wife into a clearer state of mind? OY!

I'll think more on the mail, but I think he has more options to contact me that are still private enough that he will not be showing any outward appearance to his precious friends that he is 'giving in'.

Hey Frognomore,

Well, intersting that you would bring up the name change; I think that it is time. I'll let all know what I choose soon. As tempinsanity was a slight poke at humor in my time of great remorse and weak state of mind, I will probably edge toward some humor with a slant toward reality.

I cannot tell you guys enough how grateful I am for your concern and friendship. It means a great deal, but you probably have already had the same feeling yourselves in your own situations. Thanks bunches!

Temp

TS,

It's best you do what it takes to keep you holding onto your boundaries and keeping you safe.

For me NOT having the OW in my life was my boundary. Once that was in place it was easier for me. E-mails was easier since there was less of an attitude than hearing or seeing him.

We can only make recommendations. You weigh your sitch and do what is best for you. There's no 100% right way.

Just do it with a clear mind, calm heart and lots of patience.

Plan B gets easier because it reduces the hurt. Later you will look back and wonder....why did I wait so long. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Actually I'm a plan B fan!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

take care,
L.

The other great thing about emails during plan B is that YOU choose what you want to respond to. It will drive the WS nuts when they can't rile you up anymore.

In Plan A the WS sees the BS as this appeasing doormat, however in Plan B the BS kind of turns the tables on the WS by being the cold and distant one.

I have only replied to critical matters concerning my kids and the answeres were YES or NO...nothing else (with exception of restating my boundaries the other day).

When you are in Plan B you don't meet any of the WS's EN's so you need to remove all the emotion from any contact. The WS hates this! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

The WS needs to feel the consequences of their actions and if you choose to be friends during Plan B it makes it easier for them to justify their guilt. They may even start to believe the BS hates them during a dark plan B and ask themselves if they have pushed the BS too far. Let them think that.

Wow, good information here! Hmmm, I'm beginning to see the benefit of not blocking email. The WH can KNOW that I am receiving his mail, but I DON'T respond. I have to say, that I will be curious to see if he does email, as he has been the one to be cold and distant, taking long amounts of time to respond to emails or not responding at all.

I'm sure that it will be a long while before he attempts to contact me, as he has shown in the past, and I'm okay with that. He initially ran loose like a bachelor when he moved out in July, went to Happy Air (baltimore speak) out late with single friends, blah, blah, yada, yada... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

The silence will be golden for me. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> I won't have to think on him so much. I can re-center myself. I can't believe that for the last couple of days, I have begun to feel a wave of relief come over me. It's almost like I finally quit some terrible job that I had. Whew!

The one negative with not blocking his emails is that you will be pulled back in to the fray whenever he sends you one and it will reduce your $LB even further.

The emails will usually be negative and demanding so don't get pulled in.

Do NOT send ANY emails to him even though you think it may be important.

Make him start to wonder about you so stay DARK!

The last time H and I separated (back in July) I was fairly dark with him. I only saw him when I picked son up or he dropped off, I did not discuss anything beyond LSA and DS (btw, LSA STILL in the works--WH's dragging his feet). It wasn't until September that he started talking about reconciliation. I took the bait, and now I'm in Plan B. I have that two months experience from before, and I will use that knowledge to help me.

I am learning to expect the unexpected and to see WH do things out of his current character. This time around, I will have to be darker (I told him absolutely no contact, physical or otherwise. I did not want to SEE him.) We'll see how long that lasts.

So, I'm in Plan B (11 days and counting--not long, I know). I became interested in the subject of PA behavior as I was reading up on some peoples threads, and it was mentioned. The investigation I have done has lead me to believe that my WH exhibits signs of PA behavior.

My question now is, is it really worth the struggles that I read about to even try to reconcile, if the chance arises? From reading Mulan's post today as well as other's recently, it seems like a HUUUUUGE uphill battle.

Silent,

I read this yesterday and took some time to think before I posted a response.

My respones is this. Recovering from an A is hard enough recovering from an A with PA behaviors is even harder.

I didn't realize what I was up against for a long time. When I read up on it everything started to make more sense.

I couldn't understand why my FWW would do some of the mean hurtful things she did. I mean they really didn't make sense to me. Then I realized it was because the minute I asked her (she heard told her) her mentality was to refute it. She refuted it not because she was right but because I asked her.

Each step of the way almost anything I asked for was refuted then when I got upset she never focused on her wrong doing she focused on my anger.

I use this example a lot to show what I am talking about. My FWW had a picture of her and my OS from the trip she had her A on. She put it right on the Fridge door. I asked her to take it down. She of course said no. I explained it was a trigger to me. She refused. Her response "I didn't do anything wrong that night" My response "when I see that picture, I think of your trip, when I think of your trip I think of your A." Her response "I didn't do anything wrong that night." It stayed up for over a year always with this same dialog.

Now she says "it isn't my fault he hears a song, or sees a TV show and he thinks of my A. Then he takes it out on me and starts yelling." my response "how many things did I identify as triggers that you brought home and how long did it take you to get rid of them?" You are right I can't control the radio or the TV and there were tons of triggers, I didn't get mad at you for those. However on a day I hit a bunch of them then got up to get a glass of water there is the biggest trigger I could ever imagine.

Now flash forward to today. Her only argument for not taking down the picture was a lie. She left the party went out with OM and had SF that night.

When I now want to disucuss how much that hurts. It is in the past. But during that time her PA behavior was a kick in my teeth.

There was absolutely no reason for her to leave it up there except I asked her to take it down. The day she finally took it down she looked at me and asked "are you happy now, I still think I should be able to leave it up."

Now you need to understand that is what you are up against.

To be honest at this point. I wish the FWW would have left me because her PA behavior has really hurt me and made this recovery very painful.

If you think you cannot deal with someone doing the opposite of what you ask or begrudgingly doing it then you can give it a try.

Well, it is a huge uphill battle - but it sure is better than the bottomless pit of trying to battle P/A tactics without realizing what those are or what you are really up against.

I did feel better just to know that this behaviour had a name and it also had a treatment. If nothing else, just knowing all this took the pressure off me and made it much easier for ME to detach - and *that in itself* can make dealing with any WS much simpler, to say nothing of one with full-blown P/A tendencies.

Did you get a chance to read the links in my sig line? One of them is a fairly short article which is very helpful, and the other is a lengthy MB thread which is still ongoing. If you're short on time, you can start of page 53 of the thread and then read the rest later.

Hang in there - many of us are dealing with this and seeing small miracles as the P/A behaviour gets blown away and THEN the MB principles can work.

What questions do you have? TruBluz, Silverpool, Myschae, frognomore and many others here have experience with this also.

Hang in there!
Mulan

This was my approach/point of view.

I GOT DARK, DARK, DARK.

I had to because I was weak for him and would fall for his schemes to bring me out.

When my H finally wanted to reconcile, he had to really STRUGGLE to get in touch with me.

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

Thank you Frognomore and Mulan,
I have been reading up on P/A behavior as well as your generous threads. I've read most of the links in Mulan's sig line, and will begin the task of reading the last thread tonight.

I feel very alone, and have for much of the last year; when reading about P/A behavior, a door opened and light shone on the behavior of my WH during the last year. Since I started Plan B, I have been diligently posting and reading, asking all of the questions I care to and have. I feel, now, a sense of detachment that was not there when I was in my WH's presence. I feel Plan B is the only way to let go, and let my WH find his own way. I have always felt that I made all of the decisions, and then, when things didn't seem great or to go his way, I would get basically blamed for the resulting 'fallout'. I am SOOOOOOO done with this.

Example, we were married for 5 years when I decided that I wanted to talk about having children. We had discussed this before, and both agreed that we wanted to enjoy our marriage prior to children (keep in mind that we had been living together for 4 years prior to marriage), and after our fun, we would try to conceive and have a child. I quit smoking and stopped birth control. We then got pregnant, WHAMMO! Things were okay until after DS was ~2yo. Then H started to talk about the fact that he never wanted kids. Truthfully, our support network was nil. My mother had passed away in 1997, my dad was off the deep-end in alcohol, as well as my sister; his adoptive mother and father were also gone, and his birth mother was a wreck in alcoholism. We were pretty much all we had, except friends. So, fast forward to WH's A. He says, I never really wanted kids, you did, and that is part of why our relationship is over. Well, I was crushed. I thought we both agreed that having children was good. Looking back, I think he just went along, because he felt he had no say; like I was the boss, and he HAD to do what I said.
Now, he loves spending time with DS! Having him never was the problem. Meh! There are many other examples, past choices to not move away, go to school, unfinished projects, problems with managers, etc.

I think he feels like he 'gave up' a lot to be with me. I never felt that way; I felt that I made a choice to be with him, not that I gave up others.

I am learning to accept that WH will probably let his thought process get the best of our M, and never do the work required to save his love for me. I do not feel like Plan B, for me, is for him to find his way back, I feel it is a way for me to let go.

OK. I'm getting confused.

How is PA Behavior SPECIFICALLY different than GARDEN VARIETY WH BEHAVIOR?

I guess that I need to clarify that my WH's P/A behavior is something that I have always recognized or described as his 'pessimism'. He would drop doing a project because the project was too much, and it was that something was 'going' to go wrong. He talks about 'Murphy's Law' when something goes wrong, he doesn't examine how he may have contributed to the outcome. He will talk about how his supervisor sets the wrong tone for him, and blame her for his unhappiness, but he will not engage her in a conversation about his unhappiness. He will not look at how he does not get paid what he deserves as a product of working in an Non-profit, but he blames his supervisor for not recognizing his stellar work. I could go on and on, including me in his group of adversaries. This is not a 'new' behavior. He doens't exhibit ALL classic signs of P/A, but from what I've read, not all people exhibit in the same way.

There are so many things that he has done during the last year plus that I truly chalk up to Wayward behavior, but I cannot ignore his attitude and pattern behavior prior to the A.

Wayward behavior occurs when your wayward, P/A behavior is there all along.

I'll have to think on this some more when I have more time to devote to my answer, but I wanted to get something out there now, to help clarify my question.

Nearly all WS use P/A behaviour to enable their affair and control the BS in reference to the affair. Once the affair is over, the P/A behaviour ends, too, and then recovery can begin.

But some WS use P/A behaviour to enable their affair *and* at virtually all other times as well in reference to the BS. Even after the affair is over, the WS keeps up the P/A stuff to continue controlling and very often punishing the BS. This prevents any sort of recovery from ever taking place and explains a lot of the misery and suffering that we see on these boards, even when the affair seems to be over.

That's how it is specifically different. That's what we are trying to address.
Mulan

Silent, and HopeThisWorks I'm seeing myself in your posts. I have not written a Plan B letter, but hope I can do some self-healing. I can't deal with his P/A behaviour and he has hurt me enough. Going dark (2 days and counting) is really really hard. i hope it gets easier after a month. Good luck to everyone.