My wife of 14yrs had an 18month EA. After discovered, she stopped. Reconciliation was ok initially... she expressed real remorse and looked to try to heal our marriage.

My reactions were tough, I was very tough on her and tried hard to make her feel ashamed of what she did. I also was fairly angry and a bit unstable for two months.

After a few of my outbursts, she seemed to shut off. All of a sudden discussion was about how I didn't meet her EA and never could or would be able to. Affection and physical contact have now ground to a halt.

All of a sudden, things seem on the brink of failure. I've been behaved now for 2wks but little relationship progress... she still shows no affection for me and seems resigned to live in loveless marriage. No interest in taking EN survey or reading books.

Any advice or words of encouragement?

How long ago did you discover the affair? Who was/is the OM? Does she work with him? Has NC been established?

Yes, How are you certain there is no contact? How do you define no contact? Did she work with him?

Did you read my post about the carrot and the stick of plan A?

I know this is very hard. It sounds like you vented your anger and hurt and felt that you had the sanction to express your normal feelings. Now, it is not sanctioned and your wife is in a deeper fog. How are you so certain there is no contact?
Lake

Man in town with whom she did volunteer work. She has stopped all work where he is present and I am as certain as possible that there is absolutely zero contact. Only possibility is she has hidden cellphone or using new email account outside of house... all others comms are pretty well monitored.

Read your last post on Plan A and stick... I am afraid this won't work as she already feels I don't meet her ENs, am too controlling and don't think she is capable. Me outlining any 'plan' is likely to be viewed as further controlling behavior that reinforces the notion that she can't do anything right.

I'd like to somehow get her to see and want to meet my needs at the same time I am trying to learn her needs. She says 'she has shut that part off' (presumably wanting me to meet her needs or meet mine) and doesn't seem willing to do much work to 'turn it back on'. It is hard to keep trying to learn and meet her needs while having none of mine met. Should I just keep trying and hope things change? How long?

3months since discovery. OM is man she did volunteer work with. She has stopped all volunteer activity where he is present. NC has been established and respected... I monitor all comms pretty well unless she is using secret cellphone or new email outside of house.

Thought by now affection and physical contact would start to get better but actually seems worse. She says she has felt this was for long time. Since discovery, I was alternately nice but several times very mean to her to make her feel bad about what she did... get the feeling this may have put her over the edge. I've been good for 2wks now but little progress in affection, physical dept.

How long can this go on? How long should I let it go on until I confront it and ask if it can or will get better? Should I even ask?

Just focus on meeting her needs right and avoiding love busters now while expecting nothing in return. Do this for six months and I promise things will improve. She will notice your change and it will motivate her to change herself. As unfair as it may seem, she's waiting to be sure you've changed your behavior before she starts putting herself out there again. Just make sure there is truly NC or things won't improve, they will get worse.

I haven't had SF with my W in nine months. It is 6 months after she ended her affair. We had problems with SF before her A, so it might not take you as long. It is a true effort in self-sacrifice, but the payback is extremely rewarding.

Thanks for this advice... not sure what SF means but assume it means sex.

She had pronounced lack of interest for last several months prior to discovery... but wow, six months? 14yrs before that seemed ok, though.

Seems like a lot to endure without anything in return... can't imagine it won't kill any love I have for her.

Anyone else with similar story? Is this usual or unusual to go on this long without getting better?

The problem is your wife is checked out of the marriage right now. She is doubting whether she wants to be with you and she is thinking only about herself, making you happy is probably not even in her mind right now. From my experience, I suspect she is extremely vulnerable (or capable) of having an affair right now.

On one of the MB radio programs Dr. Harley said that if your marriage isn't getting better, its probably getting worse. I suggest continuing 'plan A', you need a lot of consistency here. Consider calling the MB phone counselling to get some advice. Things can get even worse, it did for me but now things are getting better too.

Just read the long list of people on this board going through the exact same things. She's checked out of the marriage right now. If you want to stay married, it is up to you to do the heavy lifting of saving this M. You can either resent her for enduring this which will kill the marriage, or you can put faith in your efforts that they will repay you in the end which will save it. The choice is up to you. Generally most WSs aren't remorseful for what they've done until you motivate them to work on the marriage again. This generally takes around six months of NC with OM. The worse you handle this the more she'll feel justified in her own mind of having her EA.

Thanks so much for this insight... your details seem to mirror my story. I'm 38, married 14yrs, 3 kids 9,7,5.

Can I ask how you discovered subsequent As and what her underlying rationale is? I'm a small bit concerned I am being naive as to whether this can happen again. Does she understand the impact to her kids? Esp if you split? Does she care?

Hi,

I warn you: I am on the "other side of the fence" here, so to speak. I had an A in the past; as for the present, well, better not go there.

Re-read your post: reconciliation was ok initially. Possibly because the fear that she would leave you made you be and try your best. Then you got tough (exactly how "tough" I wonder ??), i.e., you gave in to your anger and resentment.
You don't try to make an adult feel "ashamed of what she did". Either they do or they don't.

If I were in her shoes, I would have shut off too. You know, when something like this happens, banging the other person's head against the wall (figuratively speaking of course) will get you NOWHERE.
She must already have said she was sorry what? a zillion times? Give her a break.

Decide for yourself: either you can forgive (ok, not forget) and try to resume your life as it was pre-A (I assume your M was good before the A, right??) or you cannot live with this and you need to remove yourself from the picture.

Stop banging her head against the wall trying to elicit an affectionate reply. Obviously, it won't work.

Sorry, I thought you people might want to hear an opinion from the "enemy".

BB

Bubblebath, but do you know anything about recovery? He is looking for opinions on recovery.

MelodyL,

Call it what you want. As I see it, he is looking for opinions on his situation.

He thinks that getting "tough" "mean" etc. will make her ... what?
He's all but drumming his fingers on the table and counting the days until he gets his old (sex) life back.
She can feel the pressure, believe me.

BB

I really appreciate you walking into enemy territory here because I need to get her perspective on what is going on. Please post back.

I got pretty tough emotionally... I told her what she did was selfish, pathetic and naive b/c all he was looking for was to get laid. She would try to stop the conversation and I would go on about how sleazy he was, how little he really knew her, how little he ever really did or could do for her. I told her, 'If you think he is so good, call him up and see if he leaves his wife and comes over and see if that is what you really want'.

I realize now how harmful that was... makes her defend him and fulfills her revisionist history that I am the bad guy who is mean to her and can't fulfill her EN.

She has said she was sorry many times, that she was ashamed of what she did, that she is sorry she hurt me.

I think I have a problem with two things:

1) While she has said these things, it hasn't seemed that she has really 'touched the pain' that she has caused me. Don't know if this makes sense but I need to know she truly understands the depths to which she hurt me and is deeply remorseful for that. I want that so that I know she loves me... you hurt inside yourself if you hurt someone you love. If I see she hurts inside b/c of the pain she caused me, I will feel more comfortable that she really loves me. Now that I write this, I think I am sounding like a psycho.

2) Revisionist History: She progressively treated me badly during EA (emotional distance) to which I responded as fairly unsupportive to important things in her life (time with friends, activities she enjoyed). Understandably, she interpreted my actions as fulfillment of a new vision that 'I am never supportive of her'. We've discussed this but she can't seem to accept that her treatment of me lead to many of our current problems. And she has lumped in prior real (but not monumental) problems in our marriage, her own personal bad choices and this into one big... "I'm not happy when I am with you". I am willing to take my lumps for what I've done but in reality, it's not all on me but she puts it all there.

I get it now that I can't beat her up and expect affection in return but I have three questions for you:

1) Did you go through a similar angry response and how quickly did you get over it (if at all)?

2) Did you experience real remorse and did you express it?

3) Did you experience 'revisionist history' (at least that you know of) and how long until you saw this and/or confessed this to your spouse?

BB - You hit it on the head... I am practically drumming my fingers on the table. Don't need sex per se but some affection in return would be nice. I sort of hope she'd want this to return as well...

Can you (or anyone else, for that matter) respond to my post above? After your A, how long until feelings of affection returned?

LTH:


You have been married for 14 years.

Your W had an EA that lasted 18 months.

On Dday, you threw everything but the kitchen sink at her. (I know, you tried to pull it off the wall, but you couldn't quite manage it... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />)

My BS did those things to me.

And then, because she was aware of MB, as was I, (discovered three days before Dday) She slowed down and then stopped.

I apologized alot. I showed my remorse. I revealed all that she wanted to know, and more....

That gave us a place to start from, and to rebuild and recover a M from.

You haven't gotten there yet. Nor has your WW.

But you are here at MB. And you haven't been LoveBusting your W for 2 weeks.

So you still have a long way to go.

Your WS became vunerable to an EA long before the EA started. There were problems and issues in your M that have never been addressed, even to this day. Your W chose an A to fix these issues, which is wrong and 100% her choice. But the Marriage for the first 10-12 years was between you two.

How did my BS and I get past the first month after Dday? By reading His Needs, Her Heeds,(HNHN) and she read Surviving An Affair (SAA) (I read some over her shoulder) My W loves to read so she read some other books as well. We also attended the Marriage Builders Weekend.

And we learned how to be radically Honest. How to accept that some parts of our spouses are just the way they are. (Not the Adultery part!)

Did my W have to do a 180% change in herself to suit me? Did I have too? No. I would say that she changed 10% and I changed 25%. But oh, what a radical change that was and the dynamics in our Marriage improved dramatically.

About some of the things in your post:

"Touching the Pain" I will never fully, completely account to my BS for her pain. Understand that you, LTH, have the ability to set this hurdle. The higher it is, the more difficult to get over. And you can wait for your BS to finally hurdle it. Will you then reset it at a higher point? What would it take for her to finally "touch your pain" Be realistic. And it shouldn't be a hurdle. It should be a gate. She will one day enter that gate, and you shut it behind her. She then can feel safe. Will your "pain" be fully healed at that point? NO. But that is when the forgiveness can start.

"Revisionist History" LTH: Your also fat and ugly. And you fart at inappropriate times. Like at church. LOUDLY.
Is that revisionist history? Is it based in fact? I don't know, do you Fart? What's the point? During the steps to an A, the WS needs to justify thier actions, that are completly off thier moral compass. So they blame you for EVERYTHING. And every little thing that went wrong in the past is magnified. Remember, this is fogspeak. You have to ignore it, just like my first line of this paragraph. But, and this is the very important BUT, you need to listen to the complaints, and start discussing them with your W. I rewrote our history, and my BS cerainly had her own issues that had been bothering her thoughout our M. Those issues, hers, and mine, needed to be addressed. And once we started going thru them, in a OPEN and HONEST way, we really got our M moving in the right direction.

Q1: Angry response? I didn't have this, because I came from a completly different direction because I knew about MB before Dday, and so did BS. But, your WW anger is understandable from the way you treated her. She did wrong. She knows it, you have told her and told her. Now you need to start moving to a new place. She will come along. Her anger will fade, she is just cornered right now. Withdrawal is setting in and she will get better.

Q2: Oh yes. But she needs to feel safe in being honest with you. That made all the difference in the world.

Q3: See above. Your Marriage wasn't sweetness and light before your W entered an EA. You never want to go back to "how it was", that was a M that bred an EA. How are you at revising history?

And how long for affection to return? How long will you not allow her to show it? I'm not being harsh here. Listen to jmwc95 on this one. His WW after 9 months, still hasn't had SF with him, but is being affectionate (I Think!) I had SF with my W 5 days after dday. But we destroyed many barriers between us in those 5 days. The safer she feels with you, the faster this will return.

Sorry you have to be here. But you have the best chance of fixing this M here.

You and your WW can pick up the tools needed to do it.

LG

cool, I will leave you in Bubblebath's hands and move on, but I will warn you that she is a ACTIVE wayward and knows nothing about recovery. She knows how to be WAYWARD, but does not know how to recover. But if you want some help from those who understand recovery using Marriage Builders principles, let us know. Take care. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

edited to add: listen to LousyGolfer. He is a WS who IS in recovery and understands MB. He will give you good advice.

L2H,

You are looking for answers. Understandable. Come here to get a perspective, but make no mistake: this is going to be a battle for you, by you, and about you. This is about control. And this is about learning to control only that which you can: yourself.

Poeple stray for a variety of reasons. Aside from real pshychological problems, not meeting EN's is pretty fundamental. I'd encourage you to make a project of this for yourself. Get yourself a project plan. Around here, they call it "Plan A." Read up.

You do the EN questionnaire for her (and keep it to yourself). Use it to plot and execute your plan. You meet her needs without ANY expectations of her. Do this for a month and you will start to see how easy (even fun) it is -- a truly selfless thing that a spouse can do for his partner. Execute your plan to make you a better you. Make yourself irresistable and fun.

Until you can do this selflessly, and for the right reasons (e.g. you want to be the best YOU can be for your family), you won't be able to accept any effort by her GRACIOUSLY. Entitlement runs rich and deep in the proud. Sounds like you are both pretty steeped in pride (disquised hurt) right now.

This is your wake up call. Don't make it about her actions. Make it about her. Make it about you demonstating with action that you are the one she needs to have "the affair" with - the real stuff you are asking about follows.

Let sex go. Show her that she is important, not sex. The OM did.

You can't put a timeline on this - only a limit for yourself. If you buckle down for 3 months, I believe you will begin to see results (assuming NC is in place) -- in 6 months you could be on your way to REAL recovery. But, don't put too many expectations in the results from her during those initial months - put that burden on you!

Just my $0.02.

Best of luck.

Peace.

Pls don't read my post that way... I deeply value the advice I am getting from you and others and need to continue to get that advice. I don't think I am seeing things too clearly right now.

I am also struggling to try to see the 'other side', though... figure out what my WW is thinking so I can better execute my Plan A.

At this point, I have one goal... recovery.

«Now that I write this, I think I am sounding like a psycho»
No, you don't. You just sound fed-up, tired and on edge.

Regarding your second problem I think you have gotten yourselves into a (bad) habit of accusing each other back and forth. Have you tried to take your part of the blame? How does she respond to that?

1) Did you go through a similar angry response and how quickly did you get over it (if at all)?
No angry response; my husband is a very peaceful and loving guy. I am the one who is a restless, psychotic, anorexic, nutcase without a sense of morality. All in all, I think we are just terribly mismatched nowadays. Different from your situation I believe.
I was consumed with guilt ALL ALONG. Just that. Although, yes I think I tried to distance myself so that he would not feel anything was wrong. Stupid, I know, but instinctive. I know I am doing the same stupid mistake right now.

2) Did you experience real remorse and did you express it?
See above. But as I told you my situation is very, very different. I have had a very, very bad relapse with a different man. I feel myself "falling" and bad. You just don't want to know the details.
I don't want to bore you with my story but in a nutshell my situation was and is that I feel my H would be better off WITHOUT me. I don't think this is your case.

3) Sorry don't know what you mean by "revisionist history' but then I am not familiar with a lot of the "jargon" here.

BB