It's been almost 5 years since my husband admitted to several one-night stands, emotional affairs, and a "crush" with a fired resident assistant from the rehab he was in. He left his family to pursue the latter.

Since he's been back home, he has done everything right. I always know where he is. He is very involved with me and the boys. He is an open book-I have access to all of his emails and voice mails. He is a loving husband and very attentive.

So...what's the problem? He drives me nuts!!! Every little thing he does irks me. I cringe when he calls or pulls into the driveway. I don't like the way he folds clothes or falls asleep in the chair after begging to watch baseball. He pats me on the head like a freakin' dog and I just want to smack him!

Yes, I'm still hopping mad and he doesn't understand. I don't believe I ever got a sincere apology for what he did to me and our sons. I also know that he hasn't been totally truthful so I have many unanswered questions. He thinks it's time to "get over it and move on." I have triggers almost daily. I look for the OW's car around town. I get sick when I pass the tattoo parlor where I saw them together and even sicker every time I see that dang tattoo on his upper arm. I keep tabs on where she is living and working. It's ongoing...never ending.

How do I cope? Counseling, I know. Not an option at this time. My H refuses, saying we don't need it. Maybe not him. Maybe just me.

I have no intentions of leaving him. I fake it in front of the children. I tell my family and friends what a great guy he has become and how much I love him. I think I do still love him. I can't imagine not being married to him.

I'm confused and feel helpless.

Me thinks u need closure. Have you called Steve?

L.

To get closure, I would need my H to participate. Pretty sure that's not going to happen.

Not necessarily... least not to start. R U willing to call Steve?

I've been thinking about calling him for some time now. I've been hesitant, though. I always thought "time will heal" but I'm just not feeling it. I'm also afraid that if I don't do anything to improve my relationship with my H, then he might leave me. Now that scares me!!!

Hmmm...I don't like him much but I can't stand the thought of him leaving.

Very unsettling. I just can't quite get a grip on my feelings. I know what I want...I just don't know how to get it. Maybe I do need to make that call.

You've given it time, now you should act.

Your H isn't back ...... yet, but you need him t/b.

Hugz,
L.

What about some IC? and have you told H how you feel about needing closure? My H is doing the same thing.He has returned, and committed, but isn't willing to help me find closure- he tells me it is in the pat. For me it isn't. My H refuses MC , but would your H go if it was IC for you? That way he could understand that you need help to heal. My H has said in the past, but refuses now that if I did IC then he would come if i needed him. I put the pressure off him having to reveal info and my H loves to avoid conflict.

That is where you have been for five years. And you will never leave that place until your husband cooperates or you get a divorce.

I assume you have told him how you feel. Or have you? Reality is as reality does and he has not fully connected with the family until such time as he helps you deal with your long term and unresolved issues.

It may very well be that he thinks you will never forgive him and he has his own set of fears he buries rather than face them. Fear of him leaving has put you in limbo and taken all of your power away from a course you could take to find healing and being your own person, as you deserve to be.

Get help. And don't fear telling your husband to man up to what needs doing. You do not feel protected and secure and THAT is a horrible place to be. He is either man enough to what needs doing or he isn't. Time for you to find out.

Larry

Thanks Orchid, cfc, and Larry. 'preciate it. You all make so much sense. Yes, I do need help.

We did go to MC back a few years ago for about 5 or 6 sessions. He would just say he's sorry and it won't happen again. The counselor would tell him that I needed reassurance. He never knew what else he could do. Then, one day, we just quit going.

I've tried to talk to him. He asks me why I am so angry with him all the time. I tell him, "I just haven't completely forgiven." He thinks it's MY problem, not OUR problem.

Not too long ago, I sent him "Joseph's Letter". I think that's the one...about missing pieces of a puzzle. He acknowledged it but swore he had no more secrets. I don't believe him.

Dr. Phil says something about past behavior is a predictor of future behavior. In the last 5 years he has not given me reason to believe that he is not being unfaithful. I do trust him more each day.

I'm just still so [email]d@mn[/email] angry with him!!

Not sure if it will help but you can let him see what a real repentant Xws would look like. Read and send him Trueheart's letter. It's in my sig link.

Mind you, Trueheart was an Xws then turned back to being a good H. He wrote that letter waay back when to my then WS who could careless. Still Trueheart's letter helped many.

My then Ws read it and scoffed. That's about the time I started to use reverse babble. I was furious he c/b so callous. Then again, most Ws' tend to think their sitch is 'unique'. How wrong they are..... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

L.

Tater:

Note that Orchid and I both have Trueheart's letter in our sig line.

I do have something to add. It is really, really hard for a wife to change a husband's mind on something like this. Some males have an unfortunate tendency to be hammer headed when it comes to dealing with female emotions, mainly because they don't know how to do it except to not deal with it. Men look for external solutions and when their own core values would require modification to deal with their wive's needs, they get seriously resistant. It just is.

Quite often, it takes intervention to shake them up and get them to do what they need to do. Men are trained for interpersonal relationships with women by their mothers and their experiences with women along the way. In other words, he expects you to change, not him. That is his solution to the problem.

But that won't work in this case. In my opinion, he is set in his ways and nothing will change until he gets a 2X4 up side of his head. So you have to accept him as he is until such time as you are willing to risk turning his world upside down. That isn't what you want to hear, but it is all I can come up with. Perhaps someone else here has a better idea. Life is tough and choices are crazy sometimes, especially if you are the type that avoids conflict.

Larry

Me, conflict avoider? Probably not. I start most of our arguments.

True, Larry...about the deep emotional stuff. He'd rather not deal with it. And I agree, I don't believe he will sit down and say, "OK. Here I go. I'm spilling my guts about everything."

So...my next step is to change myself? My thinking? Should I just be happy that he comes home every night? My IC during our separation said, "If you don't like the feeling, change the thinking." I think I get that.

Or...do I turn his world upside down? How do I do that?

I've read Trueheart's letter in the past & after reading it again, I understand that maybe this is something he should read. I'm going to approach him tonight.

My wife cannot go into our closet without leaving the bathroom light, the toilet light and the closet light burning. That’s the equivalent of a blow dryer on low setting heating up our house all day long. That never used to bother me. It does now. My wife cannot stick her head in the shower while I’m in there without closing the curtain all the way after she leaves. That never used to bother me. Now it pisses me off (because it gets cold). My wife won’t think twice about flushing the toilet while I am in the shower. That never bothered me before. Now it does. I can’t think of anything my wife did for our first 7 years that annoyed me. Now she does.

My wife wants to put the A past her. She doesn’t see the point of discussing it. To an extent I agree with her. On the other hand, I am really angry. I have never seen true remorse or repentance. It may actually be there but, due to her insistence on not talking about the A, it cannot be discussed either. IOW, you cannot apologize for something without bringing up the something.

I am not comparing your H to my WW. I have no idea what his motivations are. I do know that I am very resistant to opening up to her. I believe I now look for things to annoy me so that I will not fall in love with her again. I don’t want to love her because she is not safe. I don’t see that she is doing everything she should be doing to protect me. What I need is protection from a repeat affair. She is not offering that. I don’t want to expose myself to a repeat of the pain I have already suffered. If my WW would be willing to offer me a safe haven, I believe I would be willing to open up my vulnerability. I have tried to tell her this. She doesn’t understand or doesn’t listen.

Most times I believe she is much more over the A than I am. She wants to forget it. I can’t. It isn’t a question of forgiveness. It is a question of protection. Much of the time I wish she would just have another affair so I could divorce her without a second thought and we could each get on with our lives. Unfortunately I also have to accept that my unwillingness to love her again may be the cause of that affair. It is a quandary. I have seen many threads where they say that at some point the WS should lead the recovery. We have not yet reached the point where she is willing.

My WW’s actions are all good and consistent. What I do NOT hear are the words to accompany that. In the early stages, she refused to answer questions about the A. Now that she is willing, I can’t think of anything to ask. I don’t think she understands why she had the A so she is incapable of avoiding the pattern again. You may be much closer to true recovery than you realize. You do need to try to find out what is preventing it. In my case, I believe it is dialogue. I also, like you, believe that if I cannot get past this stage, sooner or later my marriage will end. Not sure who will pull the trigger though. All I do know is that I am not happy.

You have touched on part of the solution yourself. Get back to the basic premise. On this web site, poster after poster will tell you that the A was not your fault – that you could never have made your WS happy. They are the only ones who can make themselves happy. So it is not your responsibility – it is theirs. Now you are not happy. If you take the converse of the above argument, logically then there is nothing that your H can do that will make you happy. You are the only one who can make you happy. So I would say that you should work on changing your thinking to an extent. I’m not saying be happy that H is doing what he is doing. I’m saying that you need to be happy with yourself and what you are doing. Do you like yourself? I like me just fine. It has taken a long time to reach that spot. I don’t want to lose it either. I don’t want to let WW drag me back down into the quagmire.

In my case I am way past where the Trueheart letter could have truly helped me. I no longer see the value in my case. I would also not dig that deep into the distant past unless that is what you truly need for closure. So I would recommend that you seek counseling or whatever it takes to get to the root of what it is that is really bothering you before trying to find a way to fix it.

Hi Tatertot,

I understand how your anger over it can happen. It was so senseless that he would do that and not consider your feelings. Looking back, I'm sure he regrets it.

It might make more sense to him if you describe it as feeling hurt rather than angry, that while loving you, he also hurt you when he betrayed you. Anger is hard for him to respond to, while being hurt is easier to understand and work through with you. I am your peer here and I can be wrong in saying that, but that is how I see it when I have attempted to described what I'm going through with my WS. She understands my being hurt over it, but does not want to discuss anything if I say anything about being angry over it. I think anger is a reaction after being hurt, so it makes sense to me to describe it to my WS as being hurt, so she can deal with it better and help me through it, which then helps me to forgive. I have already forgiven her, and it's possible I might have to forgive her again. Her understanding the hurt now, helps me deal with it better now, and might help her realize what she'd be doing to me later if she does it again (assuming she still loves me enough later to consider what it might do to me).

God bless,
CS

I will post another issue I struggle with in case it strikes a chord. I accept that the SAA plan may yield the highest probability of success but it does not demand accountability. It does demand that the BS eventually forsake all the preconceived notions of fidelity in a marriage as being sacred. Sooner or later you have to get over the A or get a D. I, as many, told myself I would never tolerate adultery yet here I am.

But what happens in the case where the BS does a great Plan A, the WS decides to stay in the M but never accepts responsibility for the A? In my mind, that makes the BS an enabler of affair behavior. The WS might think things weren't that good, decided to have an A, BS changes and now the M is okay. In my mind this is dangerous. In my mind, the FWS may view any trouble in the marriage as entitlement to have an A to try to set things right again since it has already worked before.

I still believe that it is necessary for the FWS to be truly repentant or there can never be true recovery to the M. I still see divorce as a palpable reality in my sitch. I have little invested at this point and see value in cutting my losses. I do believe it is critical at some point that the FWS take the recovery reins in hand. If the WS has little invested, they lose little by another affair.

Hi Piojitos,

I agree with your point about the BS looking like they have enabled further A's if the WS's do not think they've done anything wrong and feel they should be able to do further A's whenever they like. There is some variability to it though. I think some of that is dependent on the number of years invested in the M and how much each S loves the other.

In my case, I have decades of time invested and love her very much, while she's said in the past that she also loves me, even right up until the A, and changed rapidly after the A was discovered days later. It's that rapid change that tells me it's similar to being on drugs. That addiction effect tells me that I need to compensate some in how I deal with it, and give her time to figure out what's happened to her and realize how wrong it was to do it. She will only realize this after re-discovering my value to her, how the OM won't be there for her long term, and understanding how much pain she's caused the one that loves her the most, and fulfills most of her ENs.

If I had went the D route right away, I'd have been left with the feeling that I had abandoned her when she'd made a mistake and didn't care enough about her to forgive her. If I can't forgive her after so many years of loving her, who else would? It would be similar to telling my W that I would leave her over a drug problem she fell into rather than trying to help her out of it. I feel I need to try to help my W be my W again. So far, it seems I'm making progress. The most progress seems to be from working harder to fill her ENs, remaining positive while talking with her, and at times when she speaks of the A, to remind her how much pain it has caused me, rather than discussing the A at length.

I'm grateful to the Harley's for taking the time to figure out how the ENs work, the love bank, love busters, and writing up and researching the things I needed to know to get through this (if it can be gotten through). It all depends on how the WS wants to proceed as she realizes what she's done, and figures out her BS still loves her and wants to help her out of the mess she's gotten herself into. I still think she is worth the continued effort, but I've also told her that I don't want to go through any more pain and to please try to remember to have some compassion for me.

God bless,
CS

A good Plan A is truly a selfless act. This is why it cannot last too long. At some point the BS must be allowed to deal with the issues, get closure and it is only the (F)WS that can do that (well - maybe the divorce lawyer can too). For me to truly reach recovery, I need my WW to acknowledge that my feelings have been hurt, that my feelings have value and, most importantly, that she will do her best to protect those feelings from this point forward. Tatertot is well past Dday. Plan A is no longer an option. It is up to the WS to get in gear and take some action.

I have talked to my WW about this. Her response is that I should go get IC. I replied that she views everything now as my problem. She has no problems apparently. I reminded her of all the hateful things she said about me after Dday and all the things she said I did. She says she made that up to help justify her A. I said that doesn't make it hurt any less. An indefinite Plan A will lead directly to divorce or insanity - whichever comes first.

I get the idea that Tatertot is waiting for something to happen that may never happen. As long as the WS has things going pretty good, why upset the apple cart? At this point in the process, the WS and the BS may have two diametrically opposed views as to how things are going. Exactly the same as they were before Dday except at polar extremes. Before Dday, the BS thought everything was great and the WS thought the M was over. Now that has gone the other way.

Gosh, guys! You both have given me a tremendous amount info to think and mull over. I agree with so much that you both have written.

I do need to separate anger and hurt, but they both do go hand in hand. I guess I feel angry because he hurt me. Does that sound right? And I'm angry because he know longer wants to talk about the hurt that he caused. I do remember feeling that if I so much as minimized any of my distraught feelings, that he would think it was okay to wander again. I'm over that segment.

I also believe that we are past the point to bring in Trueheart's letter. I don't think it can affect him anymore. To the best of my knowledge, he is no longer in the wayward mindset.

Piojitos, though my D-Day was 5 years ago, the statement you made about the acknowledgment of feelings is so right on for me too.

We all have anger and hurt feelings but I'm further out there. I have 5 years of faithfulness from my H who also believes that his actions of worthiness far outweigh anything he can say. Instead of saying, "I do understand the hurt I caused you and our sons. I am truly sorry and will spend the rest of my days making it up to you all", he will send me flowers, coach his sons' baseball teams, make dinner, and encourage me to spend $150 on a handbag. He will say, "What else do I need to DO to prove it to you?"

Maybe I've got this all wrong. Maybe actions DO speak louder than words.

Cliff,

I get what you say. I also have invested time in my relationship with my H and we have 3 wonderful sons. That is more than enough for me to try so hard to forgive him and heal our marriage.

I do have issues accepting the addiction part that so many here talk about-affairs are like a drug. My H is also a recovering drug addict. My viewpoint on that is even with his drug he made the choice to engage in risky behavior. And he had time to get out before he became addicted. He knew it was wrong before he sniffed it up his nose and he knew it was wrong when he met up with that nasty co-worker at her house. And he made the choice to continue.

I made the choice to stay with my H and keep our family intact. I stood by him during his drug rehab stint and his foggy crush on the woman he left me for to pursue.

Would I be happier if I had D'd him? It doesn't matter. I have 3 sons that do matter. That's why I stayed. I told him that I was accepting him back because of our sons but added that I would work toward a stronger union between us. I want my children to grow up in a home with both parents who love and respect each other.

Get over it or divorce him? No...I need to just get over it. I do have boundaries and deal breakers...no more drugs and no more women (he had 1 PA and several EAs).

I'm sorry to gripe so much. My H is home and is being the best H and father one could ask for.

I pray that your W and Piojito's W will see the light and begin the road to recovery.

Tatertot,

I wish I were as pragmatic as you and I mean that as a compliment. Most of us find this place when we are complete wrecks. Here we find hope. We are given a plan(s) to follow. We are coached into believing that, if we follow these plans, we will ride off into the sunset with our FWS and live happilay ever after. Many times that even works. But when it doesn't work, some people will tell us that we (the BS) have failed and we simply didn't follow the plan well enough. That is a real self-esteem builder. We blame ourselves for the A and we blame ourselves (with coaching) for the stalled recovery.

The fact is not all people are alike and we don't all fit the mold. MB is a great plan. The result just may not always be what you hope for. We are then told to wait. But for how long? Yesterday my WW told me I should think about IC to help me with my problem. That was telling. She views it as all my problem. She created it but she won't accept any responsibility for helping resolve it.

Tha fact is I don't have that bad of a deal. It isn't what I really want but my DDs are happy. My WW is also doing her best to be faithful and wants me to trust her. She expects me to just get over it. Some days I can. Other days I cannot. Funny thing is from my POV my WW has a great life. I wish I could have her life. Sadly I cannot. Sometimes I feel bad for supporting her in her lifestyle - like she is undeserving of it. I may or may not ever be able to get past this. I don't know. Will time help? Maybe. I have recently begun communicating my concerns thinking that would help. In my case it has not. In my mind, that makes me view my WW as selfish. Selfish behavior is what leads to affairs. So I view my wife's remorseless behavior as entitlement to have another affair. I won't tolerate another affair. Some days I wish she would just have one so I can send her packing. I envy my coworkers who try to call their wives at home and, when they don't find them there, don't immediately begin to wonder what they are up to. I don't have that luxury any more.

So I have to wait to see if things get better, wait to see if I can simply "get over it" or wait to get a divorce. The operative word is "wait". From where I sit, I think you have your head screwed on pretty straight.