Fred

The decision is yours. You have no kids. You've invested 16 months. This is going to be one of the best learning experiences of your life, NOT the best experience but the best learning experience.

Her mother was married 3 times? Look at who she's learned from. This is what she knows. This is what's acceptable to her.

You sound like a stand-up guy. I'm with Pep - Run my brother - run. This is my opinion. This person insulted you deeply by giving that letter to her friends. You've got to respect that fact. Not only that - she insulted your family .. So in her reality, you, your father, your family are the catalyst for her unhappiness. That's BS.

Re-write history, blame everything on you and yours, sleep around, and justify it by saying "I'm being true to myself and God!" ?

Realize your issues. Fix your own issues. Learn from this. Run hard, run fast - consider yourself lucky for getting a "False Start" on marriage. Just my opinion. Good luck.

inshock

Farm,

You are getting great advice here, although it is advice I am sure you do not want to hear. I went back and read your old EN posts and was disturbed by this one.



Get your keylogger out of that computer ASAP unless you have WRITTEN permission from the owner of that computer. Assume everything here is readable (andmight be) by an attorney for your WW. There are HUGE penalties in most states for intercepting private messages if you are not a party to that conversation. So go back and edit out the above statement.

Best of luck

Thanks for all of the advice. I am going to see the counsler we have been seeing today, and I am going to present alot of the advice I have gotten on here. I have removed the keylogger, so that isn't an issue and I will edit my other post. Thanks for all of this advice I have been receiving as it has helped me deal with things so much easier knowing I am getting good advice.

Thanks
Fred

The counseling is pointless right now. I went last night by myself and he said I have been changing for the better. I told him I have some great tools....HNHN and LB's and this board. But he said me making her quit her job is just controlling and I am being stubborn on that point.
She is laying the FOG on him so much that he probably thinks I had to approve her outfit or know where she was at all times, which isn't the case at all. The last month and a half I have been finding out where she was going and who she was talking to because of the change I noticed in her and my suspicions we confirmed. My sister called me because she works in the same hospital room as her and in walked the other man with a big grin on his face when he saw my W, then he saw my sister was there so he wiped it off real quick. He was hanging around after his shift was over and when everyone left. I can't continue plan A'ing with this situation. So do I think back to the past and plan A though situations, and plan B the present? I can't continue having myself be walked on everytime she goes to work.

Thanks
Fred

Fred, earlier I posted the following observation and question based upon what she said (I will quote the relevant part of it below for easy reference). So far you have not answered. It IS your right to not answer, but answered or not it is relevant to potentially recovering your marriage or divorcing, to "doing it your way" or "doing it God's way."





Fred, yes you CAN. But the choice to "do" or "not do" is yours. YOU have a biblical right to a divorce, IF that is what you want. IF you don't want a divorce, then you need to commit to yourself to "do what it takes no matter how your emotions hurt or your mind anguishes 'for a while'."

The big question is whether or not you are going to do whatever it is you choose to do with God or without God. Hence my original question to you, because God's help is not available to unbelievers.

As for the counselor you mentioined, it sounds like an Individual Counselor, NOT a Marriage Counselor who is committed to saving marriages. This sounds like the ill-fated philosophy of "I'm okay, you're okay." But marriage is NOT about "single people." Marriage, (sort of like Corporations) is it's own entity. It is NO LONGER two, but one. It is "one flesh," not "two flesh."

There are things that both husband and wife "give up" voluntarily for each other, for the benefit of the marriage.

Now, on the subject of your wife continuing to work in the OR where this RESIDENT surgeon is working. If he is a Resident, not an Attending, he will rotate off of surgery and leave. Regardless, the "best" scenario is that she not be working with, or have any contact with, this evil man. However, it is NOT the only "way to do it." A lot of that will depend upon you, and the safeguards you and your wife put in place to eliminate ANY contact other than that required in the professional OR setting. It will depend on whether or not you WANT to be married to her and to "get through this time of tribulation" and arrive at a point of a Recovered marriage at some time in the future. Fred, the AVERAGE recovery period is 2 years. Everything you write indicates you can't see past "today" or the "latest current event." That is NOT "long suffering." That is focused on "ME." That's the problem I see that you both have. You are both focused on "ME," to the exclusion of the other and to the total disregard for the Marriage. That may sound a bit harsh, but you are both very young and very inexperience in life, let alone married life as "one flesh."

So the "ball" IS in your court. Your wife already chose to end the marriage when she had her affair. At this point divorce is already a reality in fact, if not legally. ONLY you can choose to disregard that fact and choose to resurrect that which is dead, to start anew, and to take a different path than the one that lead to the death in the first place.

Let me suggest that you see your Doctor and get a prescription for an anti-anxiety med (I used Welbutrin, the same stuff use for stopping smoking). It will cut out the big emotional swings and help you to think clearly and rationally, which is something that you need to do. You need to stop being an emotional yo-yo every time you hear something, and be able to clearly evaluate and make sound judgments for your words and actions.

Fred, every one of us here KNOWS what that "yo-yo" is like. We lived it. We also know it lends itself to EMOTIONAL, not rational, reactions on your part. And emotional reactions are almost always detrimental and result in things like "I wish I had never said that." But remember, words once spoken cannot be "unspoken" anymore than an affair once committed cannot be "undone."

Thank God for forgiveness and the ability to NOT let "past actions" define who we are NOW, or who we will be in the future. All any of us has is TODAY. Make the most of it, one day at time.

God bless.

She has had sex with a man that she sees on a daily basis and thinks you asking her to quit is controlling? See the idiocy of this statement. See the fog. She has to get away from that man and have NC with him or you cannot recover your M (if you want to, given all that I have read you may be better off to run from this one).

Once again I would out him at work via the HR department and cite my sister as someone who can provide evidence or confirmation. I can help you do this if you want to; jefferyrwebb@tds.net

You need to take ownership of the decision of whether to stay married to this woman or not and then that will help you decide what to do. If you do want to stay M to her then it's time to fight, break up the A relationship, help her get her head out of her rear end (she can't) and more.

Foreverhers
On the God side of me...I am not a religous man. I don't believe in a specific religion, but I do believe in a Higher Power, that being a God. I have always believed that the energy in my body doesn't die when I do, where it goes, I don't know, but I know it goes somewhere. I believe in the energy of the people who love me and have cared about me will help me, that is my higher power. I know it is a touchy subject with people and I respect your comments. I did start taking zanex two days ago which is helping me quite a bit.

But I can't control the yo-yo with her working there. No amount of medication can. The counsler told me she is so scared that I won't change and be the same person I was and that she just can't trust that right now. I told him I agree, I have to earn that and my plan A will help me learn it and implement it. He replied that I don't trust her, which I don't and have good reason too, but I told him she could start earning some trust back, but not in the situation we are in. He said I am being controlling in her eyes. I told him how do you trust an addict in the exact situation she became addicted, with the exact same person she became addicted to? I can't stop the YO-YO in that situation. I am going to think long and hard today about fighting or walking, because either way I can heal myself, but I can't do it going from one to the other.

Fred

Thank God! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" /> I understand your spiri2al position, and respect that.


More importantly, you can't control her, but your choices can influence her decision making process if she really does love you enough 2 save this marriage.


Your counselor is a dangerous idiot. Fire his @$$. You don't need counseling, you need marriage coaching with an emphasis on recovering from infidelity. You may think that the Harleys are expensive, but they are very efficient. You'd be best served with a marriage coach, not a counselor.


Whatever you decide 2 do, this counselor is going 2 delay you achieving. FIRE HIM.

-ol' 2long

Fred, thank you for your response. It helps greatly in formulating what I may, or may not, say to you.

You may be familiar with the story of the "Good Samaritan," even though you yourself are not a Christian. So let me simply say that help is offered in the "same vein," that is, you are wounded and bleeding, physical and emotional hurts are real, and help can be afforded in that arena regardless of whether or not the injured person is a spiritually "born again." The resources YOU have available to you are entirely your own, and they are finite. Whether or not they will be "sufficient" I can't answer, but in general they will be "taxed" to the limit by the "I factor" that is inherent in all of us.



Okay, having said that, you need to fully understand what Boundaries and Standards are, and are not.

To be simplistic, Boundaries are those things that you will not allow someone else to do TO you. You establish "reactions, penalities, consequences, etc." to a violation of those Boundaries that are independent of anyone else's Boundaries. They are YOURS, and they will govern your relationships and interactions with everyone outside of yourself.

Standards are those things that you embrace, such as morals and ethics, that impose restraints and allowable behaviors upon yourself. In other words, they are those things that YOU will NOT allow yourself to do to others.

It is obvious that there are differences in your own Standards and those of your wife. (i.e., "I will, or will not, engage in adultery as a way to deal with 'problems' within a marriage.")

You CAN, have a right to, establish a NO CONTACT Boundary for your marital relationship AND you have the right to establish the consequences of a violation of that Boundary.

An example, a friend of mine who's husband had an affair has established a Boundary of no contact of any kind, that is initiated by her husband (not accidental, such as the OW just happening to show up somewhere where he was), anywhere. The consequence for that violation is "the end of the marriage." And she is quite firm in this resolve, completely inflexible I would say.

For me, I have the same Boundary of NO Contact with my wife's OM. Yet I "endured" 4 years of occasional contacts, confronting my wife as to the total unacceptability of ANY contact each time. There IS, as I told my wife, as limit to which I will be patient, and that "limit" is a willful intent to "rekindle" any aspect of the affair. Beyond that, I set my "consequence" to be one of "patient endurance and slow progress." It took 4 years of Recovery, but she finally "understood" and "saw the light" as the last vestiges of the mental addiction faded out and she truly saw the affair for what it was, and that she needed to put MY feelings ahead of hers or the OM and his family's.

Once that "clicked," we finally moved from Recovery to Recovered...and you should hear her today!

Fred, only you can decide what to do. Only you can decide to what extent you consider YOUR wedding vows to be "binding" upon YOU, regardless of circumstances.

Folks here will tell you to "leave," to "run," to "stay," to "endure," to "change," to "plan A," to "plan B," etc.

But they are all opinions. YOU have to decide what to accept and what to reject. YOU have to decide what your own Boundaries and Standards will be, regardless of anything your wife, or anyone else, says or does.

All I can tell you right now is what you are hearing from your wife is standard and typical "fare" from all Wayward Spouses who are still wrapped up in Fog or who are self-absorbed in Withdrawal and all the perceptions of "what they have lost."

You, Fred, have to choose. You have to choose to fight for your marriage, as messy and as hard as that may be until you "win the fight." OR you have to choose to "surrender" and consider the marriage just a "skirmish" and not the "decisive battle" in the "bigger war" of you and marriage to you in general.

But one thing is certain, you DO have to choose. And once you have made the decision, let your Standards help you with "enduring until the end" and "persevering" in the course you have chosen.

Fred, there IS a "Supreme Being" or "Higher Power." But He is not some nebulous "energy" or "force" that bends to your will or anyone's will. He CHOOSES, and has established the Boundary that is Jesus Christ. I pray that through this time of tribulation God may bring your heart to an understanding of His very real and ever present reality, and His capacity of omnipotence in helping those who abide in the Boundary He established.

Whatever you decide 2 do, this counselor is going 2 delay you achieving. FIRE HIM.

Ditto.

You will learn that there are a lot of naval gazing "seek your bliss" counselors who do little besides set up amicable divorces.

...and, as we all know, there's rarely any such thing as an "amicable divorce", though I do know of a few myself. (they take a lot of hard work and must be "earned", they can't be achieved in a case like this where the WS simply "walks").

-ol' 2long

Amicable = we have beat/shamed/coerced the objecting spouse into cooperation.

when a person in the middle of an adulterous affair is seeing an "IC" ... what you get is a TON of "I " statements ... IC can be dangerous to marriage if it is done with a counselor with a bias against marriage !!!!!

and, trust us, there are MANY ICs with a strong anti-marriage bias

Your young immature wife is in full selfish mode (as witnessed by her multitude of I statements in her silly letter) which her IC has likely encouraged

Harleys have stated that IC work can often be detrimental to marriage because the focus is very selfishly on "what will make ME happy"

and NOT likely to be focused on "what will make me noble, kind, loving, a better partner"

HER therapist is likely filling her head with CRAP ! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

Pep

Thank you all so much for all of this advice. I have no-one to talk to this about and lets face it, if you haven't gone through it or are going through it, you just really don't understand the emotions/feelings/thoughts. You are all stand up people in my eyes for taking your time to help others, when the only reward is that it will help someone through these times. I am forever grateful for this. Someone said it best..."this will be one of your greatest learning experiences, just not the best experience" I do need to decide a path and stick to it.

Fred, as you are pondering that "path," remember that this is primarily a Marriage Building site. We try, to best of our limited abilities, to BUILD marriages, to "rebuild" if you will, after the tornado of infidelity has ravaged the marriage building. Why? Because we have all felt the effects of similar tornados and have had to deal with the loss and the rebuilding efforts. For those who have reached the "rebuilt" stage, I think you will find them unanimously saying...."it wasn't fun, but it WAS worth it to have built a new and better home/marriage."

It does not get rebuilt overnight.

You don't start with a finished product and then just move in.

You start at the foundation, make sure it is firm and secure, and then begin to build. Over time, it will be build and ready for occupancy, but it may still require some "touch up" or "redecorating" from time to time to keep it "fresh and new appearing." Left on it's own, marriage tends to follow the Second Law of Thermodynamics, just like everything else. It takes work, guided by plan and design, to keep the marriage hale and hearty.

That will be true whether it is your present marriage, or perhaps some future marriage. Which one will still depend heavily upon you.

God bless.

You must be an engineer as well.

"The entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium."

Fred

lol, no Fred, not an engineer, just an old science major and continuing student of the lifelong school of "hard knocks." Being more than twice your age, I have been enrolled in that latter school longer and have perhaps have had more "subjects" thrown at me along the way. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />




Otherwise known as a "heat death." Sort of an appropriate metaphor for a marriage with the "useful energy" being "lost" to the affair partner. It reaches "equilibrium" in divorce. The "Marriage Energy" is no longer available for "useful work."

Left to it's own, that is the inevitable result. BUT, you have an intellect and can "intervene" if you wish.

God bless.

Man, I thought I had escaped Themodynamics. Man does that conjure up bad memories.

Fred,

How are you doin'?

I am doing alot better. Going to go through with a divorce as she does not want to work on our marriage and I have made the choice as not to fight for it. She is going in to file and I think I may take a transfer at work so I can heal myself and LEARN from this. She is just to immature and I don't think I could ever fully trust her to be the mother of my children. I have looked back at her past and if ever anything major happens she always takes the easiest way out and runs from problems. So I am going to let her run, as I felt I have done more than enough to stop her and give us a chance. I am going to establish a no contact with her except through email to coordinate all of the moving of things and divorce and such. Thanks again for all the great advice, though I know I still have a tough time ahead of myself to get through this.

Thanks
Fred