http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...p;vc=1&nt=7

You should read this passage....

WTR,

"It is hard for me to detach from him. Especially when I see that he is in pain. When he told me last night that there is not a person in the world he trusts, I didn't hurt from the pain that he doesn't trust me. The pain came from seeing what is within him."

Is he your child or your partner? Might you long for him to heal you, erase all your pain because that is what you choose to believe you do for him...when you can't? When God did not give you domain over his stuff? If you're about hurting FOR him...that doubles pain in your marriage, doesn't it?

And you felt pain at his inability to trust anyone...wow...he's totally capable of trusting people...he's choosing not to...see how quickly you buy into his beliefs and make them the truth? Will wear you down, tire you out, all that abandoning you're doing to yourself. Ouch.

His trust issues are not to be solved...they are to be understood.

Your taking on what isn't yours has a false payoff in it for YOU...find it...you may have many...you may even call this love where I call it disrespect.

"I hear you feel angry and afraid that you do not choose to trust anyone in the world, is that correct?"

Listen and repeat benefits the listener greatly...focuses on clarity...it can also benefit the speaker...handing back what is theirs, acknowledging and clarifying or confirming.

Now, to your MC appt...instead of listening and repeating HERE in your post...where you would have noticed, "My H believes...perceives...right now." You refuted...by saying, well I don't think he'll ever get over it...

Where's your payoff in that? Do you feel defended? You weren't attacked. When you automatically react, you're going to smush The Truth under your feet.

What your H believes is that there is an always, never, ever, forever, etc...and as adult humans, we know those are not true. We only know right now. "I hear you saying you believe I won't get over your affair right now, is that correct?"

Would you then respond, if he said yes, as, "Well I don't think you will get over your affair right now, either."

LOL

See? Get to reality...we only have right now. Can't undo the past or yank the future into the present...right now.

What's a more empowering statement?

WTR: I am not over your affair. I want to work through all the ramifications, changes your choice wrought in my life. I choose not to go over it, but through, beside you, as my partner. I want to be beside you, as well, as you work through it.

WTR: I am working on healing and learning. I'm discovering a lot of stuff I didn't know about human relationships.

When you hear "can't"...either in your own thoughts or his words...let that signal you to a lie. Can't says we are not allowed to choose...and we choose, anyway. Replace "can't" with "choose not to..."can" with "will." Your life will be enhanced with reality and truth.

"He says I have rejected him, hurt him, and that he does not trust me at all. He can't forgive me. Honestly, at one point in the session I was thinking an outsider looking in would think that I was the one who had the affair."

Please remember "projection"...where we tell another human, see in them, that which we really have in ourselves...from the bible, taking the plank out of our own eye before addressing the spec in another's. It's a useful, God-created tool...

If you listen and repeat, you can hear projection:

"I hear you saying that you believe I have rejected and hurt you and you choose not to trust me not to reject or hurt you." Can you know in your own mind that choosing to have an affair is the ultimate rejection and punishment...destroys trust? Again, know a lot of what he says is about himself...not you. And vice versa.

If you've judged, DJ'd a lot in your life (believing it was good not disrespectful), then others will have felt great rejection...same for you trying to fix their stuff...change their feelings, beliefs and perceptions...so you have rejected. Humans do. You may not have intended to do so...and did it, anyway.

Now you know better and will do better. Testing is not love at all...we cannot prove love. We don't feel loved when we are least giving it. We feel the most rejection when we are rejecting ourselves. We feel the least trusting when we do not trust ourselves.

It really isn't about you, right?

Question for you is...are you willing to forgive him...when he owns what he did, knows why he chose and why he will not choose to betray your marriage again? No can't about it...all humans have the ability to forgive.

Know what you know and believe.

Took almost two years for me to BELIEVE my DH...I listened, repeated, then later, repeated with filter...I chose not to believe anything he said...not to take it inside of me and believe it to be The Truth...and now, I have chosen to believe he is being truthful of his own stuff...where I reserved that and loved anyway...trust really isn't necessary for intimacy.

When you get that inverse, reversed feeling...know it for projection. It is.

You have not been in authentic Plan A...you have been in enmeshed Plan A. Authentic envigorates, celebrates and is like learning to fly...those are the feelings that follow...the other tends more to feel like a wornout doormat.

One focuses on you...the other, on your WS.

"I know I have to set my boundaries, and then enforce them. I am honestly struggling to figure out what they are."

Internal struggle can hand you the perspective that your marriage is struggling...know the difference. Until you define your boundaries around you, which match your the standards you live up to, and predetermine your progressive enforcements, both for not living up to your standards or for others crossing your boundaries, you will struggle. And it's about you, not the marriage.

Talk about marital boundaries...what protects the marriage separately from what protects you or him. Speak of how you've felt like LBing big time, and stopped yourself, not because you felt like you wanted to protect him from LBing...you decided to honor the marriage, anyway. Authentic choice you made.

And I know you have.

Acknowledge truth about MB..."Yes, if I did not have my standard to not develop secret relationships online or in real life, I could fall prey to an affair on MB. I set my boundaries...I will not email men, married or not, nor chat with them in IM. I will post back and forth and stay honest...that's where I practice being O&H, feeding my real self and not striving to protect my self-image nor serve it in anyway. I do it for our marriage and myself."

Be O&H...give him links to all your posts...not the password for your screen name; passwords to all your email addresses. Be transparent.

Talk about how great you feel partnering instead of parenting...not hiding stuff from him...speaking your stuff, sharing who you really are. How brave and loving you choose to be; that he doesn't earn your love nor punishment. Own all you discover and share it, in ownership...to be shared, not judged.

Thrive, WTR. Only you are in your own way.

Say at the point which you both have learned and recovered, if in two years he feels rejected by you posting on MB, then you will not do that...until then, it's part of your self-help books, MC and personal recovery. Tell him you are sure of all Harley says...especially the four rules of marriage and the rule of protection...when you've really gotten separate and equal, you will be delighted to protect him from your choices then...not now. Now you're just seeing all your choices, all the time.

Smile. Thank him for being present, to be shared with.

You don't fix marriages really...you build or rebuild them.

Are you really angry he's not focused on fixing you? Fixing your feelings? Your thoughts? Your fears? Your perceptions?

I discovered a ton of anger and resentment in me...FOR me...made and stamped by me...because my beliefs were just that...he fixed me and I fixed him...and look where that got us?

LOL

Told each of us that we were broken and the other was broken.

And we weren't.

And you aren't.

And he isn't.

Consider what resonates in you...what hurts sharply, like a broken rib..."When romantic love disappears, replace the person." Constant abandonment. Ouch. Okay...that's his...what do YOU believe? What DID you believe? Why feel sorry for him not knowing how to love...or what it is...do you? Bring your focus around, time and time again, and discover, not judge, these same questions inside YOU. That's self-love. That's learning to accept and love YOU.

My WH said all those same things...and he's with me...and was...by choice. He remains in MC-now-IC for over two years...weekly. He's committed for him...which is gold to me. I admire and trust him...at times I forgot I didn't "have" a man...I was grateful he chose to stay, to work on, fall back, move ahead, dance in circles...and stayed...while I learned and defined my boundaries, enforcements, standards, got my own balance...sharing my stuff every step of the way...and listening to know not to judge.

We can look for every reason to leave...through our wayward eyes (which is when you feel entitled, fueled by resentment and lack of respect)...and stay, anyway.

Because we love, even when we don't feel it for all the pain and resentment weighing it down, beyond our feeling's reach...still there...still true. Choose to believe you're loved...he loves you...no proof right now. Choose to love him, from your own choice...not entitlement...and act from it...because there is no replacing...people are not replaceable...you are not the cause, control or cure for him, nor he for you...no one is...so replacing the person doesn't solve a thing...replacing beliefs does. Which is why we can stay married a lifetime, as partners, and grow, side by side.

Know this for you...as you pidgeon-hole him as emotionally unavailable...you are pidgeon-holing you...if you want to end the marriage so you won't be betrayed again...guarantee yourself, you will be betrayed...because you betray yourself. We take ourselves with us...we recreate same stuff until we get all that we control...and what we do not.

Talk about the cure for our fear of abandonment and intimacy! LOL...if it's not them, but us...then we have thriving in our future. If we remain in the belief our partners are the problem, then we are condemned to repeat.

That's what I learned from my cheating ways...and I believe it with all my heart. Loving ourselves enables us to fill up and overflow with love...not dig it out of others...free yourself.

Include self-time on your schedule...to read, learn, contemplate, meditate, self-nurture...reading those Bradshaw books is a great choice, IMO. Smile! You're loving yourself when you do!

LA

familycomesfirst,

Thank you for the link. But please spell it out for my dense brain. I see the struggle faced, and the need for strength, and the typical WS. It's just that we are so far from the affair and d-day. I don't know where to go from here.


LA,

I'm reading, and reading, and re-reading. Every post. It is not easy to change 38 years of acting, reacting, and thought processes. But I want truth in my life. In my own thoughts and actions.

I need to find my payoffs. I am truly beginning the process of looking inward. My childhood, previous relationships, the old wounds that cause me to react. And the fears that I face. I know the first is that my family will be ripped apart. And the fear of losing someone that I love. I have no doubt this fear comes from the death of my mother when I was in college.

I gained a lot of happiness in my life from my Plan A. I have lost weight, and focused more on my appearance, something I have wanted to do since my children were born. I have found that the friends I have shared the events of this year with, are closer friends, and I have welcomed those relationships. And I have found great strength to be able to act in a loving way when that love was not returned or appreciated. It showed me that I can love without feeling love in return, if I choose to.

And yet, to face the truth, I wanted my Plan A to make him recognize his love for me again. So it was about him.

I want to find loving detachment. It is a great struggle for me. Detachment for me often comes from anger. Right now, I feel anger at my husband for his choices. That he chooses not to work on this marriage. Not because he can't, but because he won't. If I push aside all the excuses and judgements, and efforts to fix him, I come to the bottom of the pile and find all that is left is his choice not to.

I don't know how not to be angry about that. My taker kicks in and says "It's not fair." That I am willing to give to him, and that he is not willing to give to me.

But I guess the good thing is that it is healing anger for me. I don't feel angry outbursts ready to pop, or any desire to confront him, or accuse, no anger reactions. I guess it actually feels like it is about me. About not being afraid to be angry at him.


I just have so many thoughts to sort through. Thank you all for posting to me. It really helps.

Things are so calm here compared with my post last month. But I wish I could say they are better. Calm is nice, but they are calm because my husband is doing exactly what he wants to do.

I am checked out for the moment. Actually, most of the time it feels pretty good. We took a nine day family vacation, which I really enjoyed. And it gave me some perspective on this relationship. For nine days, he had no computer. No chat, no porn, no searching for women on adultfriendfinder. It felt so peaceful for me to get in bed at night. Not hearing the keys of the computer typing away while he chats with available women. Not feeling like my feelings or our marriage were under attack. Feeling safe for a change.

I am so sick of this dance where I have to catch him, confront him with proof, and then we do this little dance where he changes enough just to get me off his back. I have told him clearly that his computer use hurts me deeply. That it is a reminder to me of his affair. He spent 2 hours last night chatting away.

I don't spy anymore. Our entire marriage he has used that computer in a way that is disrespectful to me and to our marriage. I'm done snooping. I know the truth of his actions, and that is enough for me.

I think my anger just started to boil 3 weeks ago when he told our MC that the kids come first with him. The same kids that he was willing to abandon in February to go raise someone else's family. Maybe I am making a DJ, but right now I don't care. If the kids came first, he would work his a** off to keep their family together.

He has chosen to keep change his passwords, delete all internet history, and engage in secrecy. And this time I am letting him. I have untied the rope that holds him here, and handed it to him. And if he wants to use it to hang himself, so be it.

Maybe I am still being weak by allowing this in my home. I guess that there still is a part of me that hopes he will have a lightbulb moment and realize that he is about to lose everything. And that he will care.

But mostly, I am just letting go. I find that when I don't make excues for his actions, try to fix them, or feel personal rejection or hurt by them, I find there is nothing left but his selfish choices. I have never felt my love bank drain so quickly before. Maybe it is better that way.

Obviously, I am still not getting loving detachment. It actually feels like I am about ready for Mulan's plan F!

I just can't understand. The affair has been over since March, but he just won't commit to this relationship. I don't really think he wants to leave, but he seems to want to stay on his terms. Just like the old marriage. The one that was so terrible that it drove him to an affair. But seems to be fine from the perspective that he does anything he wants to do.

I'm just venting today. I can't really get my thoughts straight right now.

It's like the affair has ended, but the mentality stays. It is just an uphill battle and I am tired of climbing.

Is this even worth saving?