Hello, Mrs. Df,

It's been determined that you have found this sight and have read Dog's thread. What you don't know is that your H has been through the lowest of the low through all of this and has been asking for any kind of help in trying to save your M. I know that you as well have been going through just as much much agony as he throughout this whole time.

Now I am a somewhat older man having experienced this type of thing also when you were about 7 years old is my guess. I have a son your age. This was the most devestating experience of my entire life up to today and that was 19 years ago. I have lost my father and both of my wifes parents in the intervening time. But most devastating thing that both my wife and I have ever gone through was not their deaths as horrible as that was, it was her A.

We have recovered and now have a great life together with love and compassion and passion for each other.

I know that we have only heard Dogfoods side of the story and I also know that you have a side that you need to tell as well. Just know that what advice we have given is and has been in the best interests of both you and Dog and your Cats. BTW I have 8 of the little ones here and one sits with me while I type here most of the time. My Velcro Cat. She just sticks to me all the time.

But I digress. The advice given here is not intended to be an attack on you, it is not us plotting against you. It is sound advice to help bring about a very real and lasting change in your H. I know that you have noticed a change in Dog's general attitude. He has been much more attentive to your needs, he has made great strides in control and temper management. He has been working out and is getting Buff and he has been working on quitting smoking. I would say that those things are positive attributes for anyone. I also believe that those are going to be lasting changes for the future.

Dog has done some things that you feel are attacking you and OM. Well you need to know that what he has done he has done for YOU. He has gone to bat for you and made it his goal to work at restoring you to the M which you and he vowed to be in together in front of God.

The OM, who has been in the middle of this does not have your best interests in mind else why would he first of all be taking advantage of a M woman who is in a committed relationship and who is vulnerable because of issues that only you know about. That is exactly what happened with my W. An outsider took advantage of her weaknesses What kind of a future could you expect to have with such a man? A man who would most likely end up cheating on you with another M woman. Has this thought ever occurred to you.

You have a strong, loving, much more attentive, and sensitive man waiting for you. You owe it to yourself to give him another look before you throw him away forever. It is not too late to do yourself this favor.

If you wish you could post here to give your opinions. I cannot guarantee how they will be recieved. I can promise that you will get honest and direct feedback and very solid advice. It is up to you if you wish to listen to it.

My email is also listed in the last few posts on Dog's thread. If you wish to talk I can promise I will listen and will respond with my opinion if you wish. I am an honest person with some experience so maybe something I could say might be insightful. I hope you will give what I've said here some serious consideration.

Mrs Dogfood...

What can I say,
You have a good man there, much better then the OM.

You may not see that now, but someday you will and if you proceed as you wish, the day will come when you realise what you tossed aside...

You have a man who loves you with such depth he will withstand enormious emotional damage to keep his promase to you "for better or worse", it always looks easier to simply walk away...

However, looked at from another angle, this is also the kind of man you should know will be beside you fighting tooth and nail delivering for you when the going gets tough... and trust me sooner or later times will get tough... why do I say this, let me try to put things into perspective....

My good friend yesterday buried a 36 year old woman who lost her 3 year battle with Brest cancer... It was one heck of a fight...

Now I ask you, would your OM hang in with you through that?

Would he hang in through the Operations and disfigurement? the 3 courses of Chemo and sickness? Would he be still holding your hand when you are told there are no options left but the morphine drip? I ask you would the OM be by your side when it is time to say good-bye?

From what you H has withstood from you and done for you, I am pretty darn sure I know the answer to the above hard questions... Your H isn't the type of man to cut and run.

Most people hope and dream of finding a love that strong, and commitment so steadfast... You should think long and hard about that...


J

bump

Mrs. Dogfood,

Mr. Dogfood is here because he loves you so much that he is trying to save his marriage even though you want to end it. I can tell you most of us have been there and recovered. My wife told me in October that she wanted a divorce (and I found out she was having an affair), but I came here, followed the advice of the posters here, and we are recovering (hopefully). Your husband obviously loves you greatly because he is willing to fight for you even after all you are putting him through. You made a commitment to be with him till death do you part. Well, guess what, there come times in every marriage where it sucks for a while, but most of the people here that have hit rock bottom have learned how to make their marriage happier than ever. Are you going to bounce around from relationship to relationship once the initial high wears off, or are you going to stick it out and figure out how to be happier than ever? The choice is yours.

Mrs DF,

Though I actually feel that this may be a case of waisted time, and though it may be counter productive...

Yep, you caught us red handed. We HAVE all been conspiring together in an effort to save your marriage, which you seem so ready to discard without so much as a goodbye.

We have been teaching your husband terrible things he can do to try to win your heart and get you to stay with him forever. These things have included how to respond to anger from you by controlling his own outbursts as well as how to examine himself to attempt to remove anything that might be standing in the way of your attraction to him. We have been instructing him in covert activities like doing nice things for you, cleaning up the apartment, offering whatever he can to console you in your grief over the prospect of giving up your "soul mate", the OM.

We here at Marriage Builders are a devious bunch. We routinely tell people to NOT give up hope when their spouse disregards their vows. Since ALL wayward spouses seem to do and say the exact same things when confronted and in the following days, we do tend to tell people what they can expect.

We also tend to agree with Dr Harley's teaching that love is something that is built and not just happens on it's own. We have seen countless numbers of cases where the wayward spouse has said they fell out of love and found someone else. In the end, it always seems that the opposite is true. When you set about building a wall between you and your husband in an effort to keep him in the dark about your "friend", you began looking for justification in your own mind. After all is said an done, you KNOW that adultery is wrong. You KNOW that lying is wrong.

So you have modified your own ethics to allow you to continue with what you are doing. You began small, likely with an attitude of "Why can't you be more..." (fill in the blank). One day, you told yourself that you wouldn't be doing this "If only he wouldn't..."(FITB) The real eye opener came on the day when you first shared with OM that you weren't happy with your husband "Because he..."(FITB)

You reached the point where you told yourself that all of this was your husband's fault. You had someone you could share your darkest secrets with and just knew that it was magic. Unfortunately, that is about the time your husband found this site and began to ask questions.

Interestingly, his first posts hinted that he may actually want to just kick you to the curb, but those who had already been through this were telling him that he should try to save your marriage. There were even those that had the audacity to try to predict what your reaction would be and suggest that you would refuse to give up OM, ask for divorce, tell your husband that you never REALLY loved him, that too much had happened for you to ever get back together... As I recall, someone actually told him that when pressed to end your "friendship" with OM, you would be so mad that you might actually throw things.

We told him that he should do awful things, like get in better shape, stop working long hours away from home and be more attentive to your needs. We suggested that he do slimy things; be nice to you and attempt to SHOW his love for you in the way he was acting.

Yes, we have been found out. We're such an awful bunch of disgusting people who have been fighting for our own marriages so long, we can no longer see that in your case, it HAS to be different. ('scuse me while I barf!)

As for your knight in shining armor. Didn't you notice that the shine was from all the grease? Anyone who would start a relationship with a married woman for any reason is a slime-ball, not a prince. Between you, the two of you have caused more pain in the last few weeks than most people experience in their entire lives. (I know from pain, I had surgery last Friday) You have accomplished the most selfish act imaginable, at the expense of your husband. You think this will lead to your own happiness, but take a look at what it has meant so far. I don't mean what DF has endured, I mean what you are going through yourself. Did you foresee all of this when you started? You should have, because this is how it always goes with adultery. That's a biblical term, in case you weren't aware, and is actually something that God felt so strongly about that He warned against it in His "Top Ten List". God actually suggested that it is on a par with murder.

You might not believe that there is a God, and if I'm wrong, I will have the same thing happen to me that will happen to you, but if I'm right, you will have to stand before Him some day and answer the question, "Why did you do this?"

BTW, I saw three articles in the paper this past week in which a man found his wife was having an affair. In one, the man shot OM, in one he shot his wife and the OM and in the third, the OM was arrested for trying to kill the husband at the request of the wife who was also arrested. These are pretty typical endings to this kind of story. Only a few men and women can overcome their own grief, fear and desire for revenge and actually try to save what their spouse has so selfishly destroyed.

Welcome to Marriage Builders, by the way. You will find that lots of folks here have been right where you are and have lived through it. In some cases, their marriage is better today than they ever thought it could be.

Of course your case is different, right?

Mark

bump again