My WW seems to be slowly coming out of the fog and starting to work towards R. We are using the MB principles to rebuild our relationship. She has just started to fill out the LB questionnaire, she has committed to working on this and the EN questionnaires with me.

She has said twice now that she is sorry she has hurt me, the second time she cried while she said it. This helps a little, but most of the time she is emotionally distant with me, although always polite and nice.

We had our first phone consultation with Steve Harley last week. It went fairly well, he said initially we are in information collecting mode for the first few sessions. We were impressed he spent an hour and 40 minutes with us during this first call. I saw her notes she took during the call, she told him the same things she told me recently; we are incompatible, and she doesn't understand why I am interested in R when I was in withdrawal from our marriage for the last few years (which I was).

The two things I am trying to do here is to prevent splitting up our family, and a small part of me thinks maybe we can start a new and better relationship to take the place of the old one.

I guess the reason I am writing is that I just don't have a good feeling about where this is going. I don't feel like she is putting as much effort into this as she should be. I know I should be happy with the progress, but I feel like I am at a very low point right now. I find myself thinking about life without her and moving on.

One thing that has me bummed out is that I discovered she did a search on her computer for "dissolution attorney" (I still monitor her computer). She only spent a couple of minutes on the search, but I don't know if she is doing other research on the phone, etc.

We have not started any IC or MC, although my wife has mentioned looking into IC for herself. We are both somewhat ambivalent at this point and have doubts all of this is going to work out.

Hang in there, you are very early in this. You have the best counseling in the Harleys.

Don't expect her to be remorseful right now. That will come later.

Are you spending 15 hours a week without the kids, doing fun things together?

You are about where most are at this point in time. The Harley's will guide you down the narrow path to a new relationship. Look at all the success stories here and you will see where you can be with work and the application of the guidelines toward relationships.

Most WS play with the idea of running, this is sometimes perceived as better than facing the music. This too will pass in time, most of the time. You choose to save the relationship through how you act and interact.

All the best. . .

Larry

Believer has brought up something that is crucial to recovery. The 15 hours per week of Undivided Attention is the key to rebuilding your relationship and making it what it should be.

When we have a crisis, we tend to want to fix the problem at the expense of all else. The difficulty is that as we work on fixing it, we are not taking care of each other in the way it needs to happen for romantic feelings to be created and sustained.

It is more important to implement the MB principals than it is to discuss or teach our spouse about them. They can be implemented unilaterally to begin with and hopefully, as the feelings of love return, our spouse will begin to show interest in what is causing the changes to take place in us and choose to follow suit on their own.

Discussions about the relationship and counseling sessions do not count toward this 15 hours, BTW. These are things that while they are necessary, do not make deposits into our (or our S's) LB$ and they can even make withdrawals due to their very nature.

Dr Harley has a very good example of how the 15 hours of UA per week works in Fall In Love Stay In Love. If you don't have it, I suggest you look into it.

When a couple spends time together doing recreational things, they tend to meet each other's ENs without even having to think about it very much. It meets his need for RC, hers for Conversation, which leads to showing Affection, which usually leads to SF before all is said and done. It is what you did when you were courting and is a natural for most people.

As time goes on, you fill each other's LB$ and your Taker begins to allow your Giver to express itself a bit more and soon you are able to actually begin to use things like POJA and PORH to rebuild the relationship. But it all starts with spending time together building your love for each other rather than trying to fix the problems first.

If you build a house, you build the foundation first and worry about the roof at a later time. Our relationship with our spouse is damaged at its very foundation by adultery and we must begin there to rebuild it.

Mark

We try to spend some during the week doing fun things, but it's nowhere near 15 hours. It's a challenge during the summer with the kids home from school. It's unfortunate this all came out just before summer. We did go out last Saturday for a few hours and listened to music and later went for a beer and talked. Last night we played badmiten with the kids, when they got bored we played each other for while. Then later on we played a game of Scrabble.

Thank you for the advice, I will get the Harley book mentioned from the library tonight.

The 15 hours a week are important. If you don't want to go through this again, you need to find ways to work towards this goal be it babysitters, cutting back hours at work, etc.

Withdrawal from LTAs take AT LEAST 6 months. She doesn't give more to recovery right now because she physically cannot give more due to withdrawal. You need to be patient and have faith that the feelings will return. You also must verify NC.

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