Sorry Bugsy..I have not been keeping up with all of the DETAILS of your situation...

Before the PLAN B LETTER, along with MAKING IT CLEAR that you WILL NOT BE FRIENDS, I want to remind you to TRY to MAKE IT CLEAR to HIM that YOU WANT TO RECONCILE and although you know that this will be DIFFICULT that YOU BELIEVE that it can HAPPEN....This is so that he does not RATIONALIZE PLAN B as being your REJECTION of him or your GIVING UP ON THE RELATIONSHIP...

PLAN B is being done because YOU LOVE HIM and you want to HOLD ON to the LOVE that you have LEFT FOR HIM...

Remember: THE PLAN B LETTER IS A LOVE LETTER.....

And..IS YOUR DAUGHTER GOING WITH HIM FOR MEMORIAL DAY????

Thanks for the 'reminders'.

That was the message from LG which prompted me to include that in my email yesterday.

I said, the M CAN work. There IS plenty of room at our house.

Will keep that in mind for the PBL

I am putting cards in lake stuff for Drac and Dear Step Son. DD is with me.

So, what are you planning for you and DD this weekend? Surely some relaxation and fun stuff! Some Godress wear? LMAO

I really have faith that this will work out for you! YOU GO GIRL! WOOHOO! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hey Rin!

We are having the bar-b-que/memorial for my nephew on Sat.

Sun we are going to a different lake. My entire family is going. Sis has a lot up there and we may even camp out. We will also be celebrating my other nephew's bday.

It will be fun

I have pulled out a couple of OLD swimsuits that fit again! 2 piece!

Hope I can till get away with it !

Am going to post my first stab at PBL. I just finished it.

Am thinking next Friday could be the day

Ok, here is my first stab at the PBL.

I am really questioning the part about DSS-and being his sitter- am pretty sure that needs to be cut out

Be kind,,, but HONEST! I get only 1 chance to do this and I want it to be GREAT so the he reads it over and over again


Dear Drac,

This is the hardest letter I have ever had to write in my life.

I want to tell you yet again, that I am so very sorry for anything I did and did not do in the past that helped to bring us to where we are today. I do take responsibility for my part making you feel that it is better to continue your affair with OW instead of working on our marriage.

I was foolish in allowing resentment and hurt feelings on my part come between us. I am sorry I did not know how to tell you what I needed from you and to share my thoughts and feelings with you. More than that, I am sorry I did not every day do everything in my power to meet your most important emotional and physical needs.

I want you to know how much I cherish you, the man I fell in love with. The man who keeps books of poetry in the bathroom, the man who wrote song lyrics in high school that came from the heart. The man who on our first night apart, filled every room of the house with flowers of every variety when I returned from a business trip.

You are the man that looked me in the eye one evening, standing in front of my car and showed me a love unlike any love Id ever known before. That was the night when you told me for the first time that you loved me, and when I realized how very much I loved you in return.

At a time in my life that I had stopped believing I was worth anything, you reminded me with a simple glass rose, that I was loveable, special, and someone to be cherished.

I want spend my life raising the 2 most wonderful children in the world side by side with you, the one who gave me the 3 greatest gifts of my life - Your love, our daughter, and our son.

I am willing and able to make our future better, together with you. I know it can be done, that we can erase the mistakes of the past and to build a new, better marriage, and a new life in which we both get not only what we need,,, but oh so much more.

I want us to rebuild our marriage. I want to meet your needs, to avoid ever hurting you again, and to have the same in return from you. We can build a new life in which everything we do makes us BOTH happy. Then, there will never again be a reason for us to be apart.

I want to be your wife forever, and to be your best friend again. I want to again be the one who is always there for you when you need me for anything and everything. I need you and want you as my husband, my best friend, my lover, my confidant, my playmate, the wonderful father of my children, and my soul mate. Forever, as we promised on our wedding day

However, the only way for that to happen is for you to give our marriage a chance, work together with me in counseling, end your relationship with OW, and never have contact with her again.

Until you do that, I cannot see you or talk to you any more. It has become incredibly painful for me, to the point that I must stop the pain. It is because I want to preserve and protect the love I still have for you that I must do this. If I allow myself to continue the hurt, that love will be destroyed, and I do not want that to happen.

I ask that you not come into our house when you pick up or drop off the kids. I will not enter your Dads house when you are there. If you need to be at our home, please let me know in advance, as I will not be there.

I have included here a schedule for the kids, based on what we have currently been doing. I have begun to feel that you are treating me merely as your babysitter for DSS. You have made it clear that your willingness for me to be a real Mother to him extends only as far as keeping him for you when it is convenient for you. That is not enough for me, so I have included specific times so there is a more defined schedule.

If you want to communicate with me about the kids, or any other matter, including the schedule, please send only email or text message. I can no longer take your calls and would prefer no voicemail messages unless it is an emergency. All communication in regards to legal matters can be directed to my attorney.

I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you this way. You must realize the suffering I have endured since you left and your relationship began with OW. I never knew that this type of agony was possible, and I can endure it no longer. I still love you, but I cannot see you. It hurts too much.

I loved you when we said I do, I love you even more today. We CAN have everything we always wanted from our marriage, together, forever.

If you choose this as well, I will gladly talk to you about our future. .


Ok- bring it on

Bugs,

I think it's really good.

Still

That was a really great letter. Sounds like he really was a good guy!

beautiful letter -- but boundries not firm enough.

Do you have NO ONE that can be an intermediary? Really Really think hard about this....you need one more than most, because he already freely communicates with you via messages and texts and e-mails. This won't seem like much of a separation to him....

Also work on refining the boundries with DSS.

OH! And when you asked him to let you know about being in the home when you aren't there...I don't know I would do that. I allowed that for my WH, and then found out he had been looking through ALL my stuff.

Just a thought....

Still & HM -

Thanks.

He was/is/can be a GREAT guy. If not, why in the world do any of this? Right?

That is what I wanted to remind him about. That he IS caring, loving, compassionate. That I knew that then and want it still.

Does that make sense?

I want to remind him of the H he can still be to me.

Lexxx

Thx for the input.

I will need to give it all some more thought.

Originally my Sis was going to be my intermediary but decided she would not be comfortable with that.

Most of my closest friends are also co-workers who have to interact with Drac and I could never put them in the middle of this

Whay types of things did you have in mind re:DSS?

I did not post the actual schedule I have drawn up.

It includes HIM having to pick up DSS from the sitter himself except the night I keep him overnight

Remember, too, I will be moving out of town in a couple of weeks which will eliminate many of the potential issues.

He will have FULL respponsibilty for DSS except for my every other weekend. I decided I am still going to do that for both DD and DSS's sakes

Bugs:

My Thoughts:

I want to tell you yet again, that I am so very sorry for anything I did and did not do in the past that helped to bring us to where we are today. I do take responsibility for my part making you feel that it is better to continue your affair with OW instead of working on our marriage.

How about:

I will begin with apologizing for the errors I made early on and in the middle of our marriage. ***You can't TELL him anything*** Some of my behaviors/actions were not conducive to our long term realtionship. In the past year, I have learned so much about these behaviors, knowledge that I never had access to before. I hope you have seen the many changes I have made recently. I believe that you will see even more of them when you return home full time. ***Never aknowledge OW Except to end the A with her***

Outside of maybe being a little more explicit in your boundaries, and what it will take to have him allowed home, I think it works well.

You will not be able to:

Visit the house
Enter the house (No wiggle room here!)
Communicate with me though any method except for TM's and EM's. And only in regards to the children.
etc.

Unless you:

End all contact with OW (FIRST)
etc.

Everything else is great.

LG

It's lovely, but it's too long. Trim.

There's probably a little too much romantic stuff. The rule of thumb I've always heard around here is to keep that to a minimum because the WS (especially the WH) is not in a place to hear it anyway, and it clouds your essential message, which should be: I love you. I married your for life. Continued contact with you under the current conditions is killing my love for you. In order to preserve any remaining love I have for you, I must discontinue contact until you agree to rebuild our marriage. Here is how logistics will be handled.

You must have an intermediary. If you'd like, we can help you locate a third party trained to serve as an email intermediary. Trading emails and texts is still contact. Please, please re-think that plan.

Definitely take out the "I feel like you're using me as a babysitter." Instead, reiterate that you consider yourself to be the boy's mother. While you realize you have no legal rights to visitation, you've outlined a visitation schedule in the hopes that WH will see the value in letting the two of you continue your relationship.

I SO appreciate the input!

I have decided to give it a day or 2 to settle and get all P0V before submitting Versions #2. So, am holdong comments for now

FIL came by for a few minutes tonite. Told me something New and Insteresting

Drac told his Dad that he knows I do not TRUST anything he tells me.

FIL replied 'why should she after your have lied to her so much?'

Drac had no response

Questions - is this a minor crack? Drac had stopped talking to his Dad about us, because he KNEW Dad would tell him the truth which has been in support of Me.

Or is he playing us BOTH?

Drac told Dad that the reason he and the HO split was NOT because of my stance on the lake trip, but because Drac came to me at the hospital when dear nephew was there!!!???

Oh, the wonderful world of Fantasy land...I hope that I'm not too hopeful about your sitch...but I think that things are going well for you...

Keep your pace...I'm wishing you the VERY BEST...you have truely done an outstanding job...I believe that it's just going to take some time for him to catch up...

It's hard facing the facts...really hard being a WS, having been there myself...no one likes to admit their mistakes and that takes a lot of courage and strenght...

Hold tight ot what you have now...you're in a good place I think! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Dang it..I had a long post to you that I lost..

I would start with the "I LOVE YOU" part..you want to START and END with a BANG to MAINTAIN his interest in this and to make this LETTER..SPECIAL...



So I would start with this....

Then the "I'M SORRY" part..but I would clean this up.. You say...



Don't take responsibility for MAKING HIM FEEL..only talk about YOUR FELLINGS and BE SPECIFIC using his language.."Sorry we didn't do it 3 times a week"..I'm exaggerating here..but I wouldn't say the psycho mumbo jumbo about meeting PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL NEEDS..you want to CATCH HIM and have him to REMEMBER THIS...I'm sorry that I didn't say THANK YOU when you did XYZ for ME everyday...WHAT MOST MATTERS TO HIM, SPECIFICALLY, do you think???



Make this part PERFECTLY CLEAR in it's own sentence. I will not see or talk to you again until you end your affair with (the HO) FOREVER...

Then explain why....



THIS IS GOOD!!





Too wimpy. Too much asking. Make your B TIGHT AND DARK..He will try to break it. DEMAND RESPECT NOW. DO NOT ASK FOR IT!! You absolutely must have an intermediary with this guy. I wouldn't do PLAN B without an intermediary. Persist and persevere in trying to find one.



END WITH A BANG, BUGSY..expressing your LOVE for him...BE SPECIFIC..recalling a SPECIAL SONG..a SPECIAL TIME..a SPECIAL PLACE.."I still can imagine us together at X again someday...I still hold that memory in my heart for safekeeping and don't want it to be destroyed"....

Mimi:

Excellent points.

Bugs:

Isn't it great to see how effective your Plan A has been?

Any response to your Email of Wednesday evening? Or did Drac talk with FIL after that and then you had yesterday's convo with FIL?

Point out that you can TRUST HIM TO MAKE THE RIGHT DECISION.

You are dropping serious bait.

And there is conflict in Affair land.

Drac has had to CHOOSE YOU over HO in regards to the trip to the lake and visiting the Hospital.

HO: "How can you do that, THAT's BUGS telling you what to do...."

Drac: "Yes, but I HAVE to, It's the right thing to do...."

Recently, every time Drac needed to choose, between you or Ho, he choose you. ANd this was for the important things. Lines in the sand as it were.

Does FIL state that Drac is at his place more? Have you seen the light bulbs unscrewed?

Make your points about admiration, your ability to trust him again, and the changes you have both been thru. OK?

Remember, Plan B is part of the process around here to really shake up the WS. You may be hitting him just at the right time with this. (And, you might not even have to do it, he just might return on his own) But, if he does come back into the fold, and then relapses, hit him with the Plan B letter. "BOOM!"

LG

Thx for all the PBL input! Mimi, you know me well!

Next week I am going to print it all out and do the edits, then re-post.

LG-

No response from Drac to the email

His talk w/FIL was after that

Yes, Drac did choose me, I guess. Yet he resents ME for it?!

Do I say I trust him when I really DON'T?


I can do tons of admiration, but the trust thing is something different for me right now.

We did talk for a bit this am, and he seemed to hang on a bit on the phone, not wanting to go as he usually does.

Gotta run - am at DD's school

Ltr

I think what's meant is that you are putting your faith in him to make the right decision...you CAN trust him to do the right thing...

make sense?

He's in an interesting place right now.

Affair with HO is on the rocks. Probably he is trying to re-establish it. She is LB'ing. He chose you (hospital) he chose DD (lake trip). And she doesn't even know about the booty call!

So she is imploding. Demanding that he choose her.

Meanwhile, you are Plan A Goddess. That is why he was with you the other night. He is testing your side of the fence.

But he's still in a world of conflict. He's definitely considering you. But he's trying to get back his high (HO). And he's thinking about how far he's gotten in this divorce process and he's scared to backtrack.

I think his conversation with his father was about that. Bugs doesn't trust me. He's wondering what it would take to get your trust back. Or if he could NEVER get your trust back -- and whether he would be happy living under those conditions.

I think you need to get a message to him that your restored marriage would be on a level playing field. That he won't be "bad drac" and you get to be "good bugs" for the rest of eternity. That you won't be scorekeeping (with him starting out negative 100). That you won't be throwing this in his face for the next 10 years.

(That was a major consideration for me as a WS...)