Please help.
I don't know where to post this but I am in desperate need of just anything you can say to me.
My story is this:
Two weeks after my marriage, I found a letter from my husband to his ex girlfriend, which said what a mess things were, how he wished he'd never married me and that it was an enormous mistake.
I was devastated and the bottom dropped out of my world.
He said if I hadn't been looking and found the letter, things would have been ok.
I was so angry he would blame me.

Somehow we moved on from this, and several years later, I met someone online and he made me feel happy, where my husband didn't. I was crying for help I think... just some attention.
At this point my husband and I had two children.
My hub found out about the online thing. It was only ever emails and chat so we never met but I suppose it was still an infidelity.

Then we moved house, and several things happened, one being the 9/11 thing, which many people used as an excuse for pulling out support from small business, and ours was one of them. We lost clients and work, money etc. I found out I was pregnant...
We'd had a little 'accident' but he hadn't seen fit to tell me that for some reason and the result was our son.
During this time, I was ill with an undiagnosed thyroid condition and I nearly lost our son. Three weeks after he was born he was in hospital with viral meningitis. It was a terrible time.
A few weeks after this, I discovered that whilst I had been pregnant and struggling to look after my two other children and exhausted pregnant self, my husband was actually with another woman, for coffee, lunches and more... though he says he never went to bed with her, but I just don't know if I can believe that.
After that we had some counselling but this was before my thyroid condition was diagnosed and the conclusion was that when the doctor gave me anti depressants, that I was the cause of the problem,., I was depressed and therefore this is what had caused all the issues. I'd driven my husband to the arms of his woman in London.

So eventually I got my diagnosis of thyroid condition...

And we moved country to where my husband is originally from, selling the house in te UK and starting again...

Only things didn't go right. He was chatting with other women online and lied about it when I asked him what it was he was doing. He told me he was testing software but it was obvious he was lying.
Since then I have no access to any of his computer stuff, as he's locked them all up with passwords. He says it was just friendships but that's how it's been all though our marriage... he can't let go of his ex girlfriends or the needy women he chats to.
I was angry after this and in retaliation, put a personal ad online and it was a very angry one...
A man got in touch with me and we met for coffee.... where I listened to him moan about his wife for half an hour before I made my excuses... and left thinking what an idiot I was and that this wasn't the way to fix my lousy marriage.... I made my way home....

...where I find that my husband has been reading my emails, tapping my mobile phone account, accessing all areas of my computer, seeing what sites I'd been visiting, what I'd written on a message board I am a member of...
He rang the man I'd met for coffee and threatened him over the phone...
Oh dear.

So then he was in the UK on business and when he got back, within three hours he'd done it all again... gone through my computer, 'raped' it completely and gone nuts....
Though ironically, I'd vowed to try to repair things.

We went and got some counselling and it wasn't working. When the guy asked me how my sex life was I knew he didn't really grasp the situation and that he was grasping at straws,,,,

So here we are... we moved house recently and I said I needed a break before I'd find another counsellor just to have some 'head space' and chill out a bit... but no, the pressure was on.
My parents are visiting from England and he chose that very moment to start acting up in front of them, picking on me and criticising me... until I snapped and we had a massive argument and he ended (apparently) our marriage...

He tells me this is not what he wants, yet he is being cruel in the extreme and when I got a new counsellor for us, he's turned into mr Nice Guy again...

I do not know where I am at... I'm so depressed today. I am all over the place emotionally and he tells me we're separated yet we're living under the same roof...

It's a mess.

Where do we go from here?

I don't really know what to tell you, I am fairly new here myself, I am only posting to put you at the top to see if we can get a seasoned member to help you.

I would like to see you do plan A, read up on that and give that a shot, order some of the books on here. Make sure u do not tell him about plan A.

DD,

I love your name.

<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Welcome to MB...and yes, infidelity makes a mess in life and keeps making it until you really get what you didn't get before.

Up to you.

Not fully addressing infidelity grows it.

You each have been cruel to your partner...and it seems to me you've both parented one another rather than partnered. Very common--not wrong or defective, 'k?

Have you been reading Harley's books? His Needs, Her Needs....Surviving An Affair...Fall in Love, Stay in Love...Love Busters?

Read all the articles on this website...so you can get a picture of what a healthy, intimate and thriving marriage can look like. Don't know what to set your goal at if you can't conceive of it, correct?

Sounds to me like both of you have been wounding and re-injuring each other for a long time. Your choice to call a truce. Your WH/BH isn't your enemy. He's your partner. You're his. As long as you give yourself permission to act cruelly with your retaliation affairs and search out infidelity (justifying it), then you will see his cruelty moreso than your own.

I advise setting your goal for clarity...so you can really see you're half of this marriage and this mess. He didn't rape your computer...he snooped. You didn't. You ignored. Knowing what your spouse is doing is important to partnering...so you can know "the truth" on your own...verifying. Not knowing because you are blindly trusting isn't healthy, either.

Proving who has been more injurous in the marriage isn't a healthy goal, either. Doesn't prove anything except that both of you want to hurt the other enough to stop hurting you.

Get your bars set high...interview counselors...challenge them to do their most excellent job...and challenge yourself to do the same for your half of the marriage. Learn about respect (not admiration-kind of respect), owning what is yours, sharing what is your truth and knowing it's different than The truth, 'k?

Learn about embracing conflict, making boundaries around yourself and boundary enforcements...you really can recover from infidelity in your marriage...even many. I know from experience.

Takes you truly being sick of doing your same patterns, same reactions and wanting to experience life in a whole different way.

You can do this. Welcome.

LA

Sounds like you guys are in a vicious cycle in hurting each other beginning from day one. You can remove yourself from the cycle. You've come to the right place for help.

You've got some learning to do, some decisions to make, and some actions to take. It doesn't have to be done today. LA gave you some good starting places.

Welcome to MB.

Thanks.


So I see... it's now a cycle of distrust all round.


Ok... how on earth did that happen?


No books... I just arrived on this website last night after typing 'save marriage' into Google. I hit on something about infidelity and it was the first sensible thing I'd seen in months of reading and seeing a counsellor.


Very true... and I have been reading though find myself wondering if this is possible...

I don't think I ever gave myself permission...


And that's ok? How is that? I've read people on here recommending putting sniffer software on computers, which incidentally, he did, recording my chat with a friend in the City. Ironically he couldn't work out what it said because even though he's a computer programmer, it was too heavily disguised and it would have taken him months to work out what it said... a very exciting conversation about which house to buy.
In the country I'm in, it's illegal to put that on other people's computers and to hack into their mobile phone records.
I'm curious because I felt as though every boundary had been overstepped... that I had nothing left that belonged to me after he did that.
I don't think it's ok to violate someone's space like that.

[quote[You didn't. You ignored. [/quote]
I didn't ignore my husband's affair... and nor his internet chatting with needy women. He often was in London on business and he told me he was meeting up with this woman for coffee or whatever. I objected and objected, said to invite her to our house to meet the family if it was innocent (she didn't want to come, strangely) and he kept on saying it was just a friendship.
In the end it was me that blew the covers after finding a receipt for somewhere that he'd been with her... .
But you also need to take into consideration that at that point, I was exhausted (heart palpatations and hospitalisation) plus looking after two children and trying to survive... I nearly died having my son... I had an abrupted placenta and it was touch and go... I nearly died in the ambulance.
I've climbed out of a ****** hole of bad health over the past 5 years.. lost weight, started running again etc.

I never ignored the affair.

Well after finding the letter two weeks after the marriage, I was never blindly trusting,...
But I have no clue what my partner is doing. He's seen legal counsel about divorcing, I do know that, but his computer is completely locked down to me (not surprising as he's a software engineer)and if I asked for access, he wouldn't give it to me.

Well that's where it is now. Yes.


well I'm seeing a counsellor this morning... with my husband. I am tired of the screaming man pointing a finger in my face... so I did what he wanted me to do and now he's turned into Mr Nice Guy again... That scares me because this appears to be about control rather than love.
This counsellor says that she'll tell us if she thinks there's any hope of recovering this marriage because given that he's gone down the divorce route, and told me we're separated, she thinks things are 'advanced'
...


Thanks. I'm so sick I am done... I told him I wanted to end it last week, but I have three children and I don't want to hurt them.

DD,

You found MB the same way I did...thank you for choosing to choose those words to search.

I know you can see where not addressing infidelity grows it, causing distrust. It does a lot more than that. It's a deep injury and takes a lot to heal. Compounding the injuries isn't healing. I know you know that. Distrust is only part.

As you read Harley, you'll discover his opinion that blind trust is as harmful as no trust...fits a great rule about being human--nothing to an extreme, either way. In the middle, there is reasonable trust...verifiable trust. Because each of us has our half of everything.

Which brings me to snooping...you are married. You are in one union. You aren't "other people"...what you do, think, believe, perceive and feel affects your union. So does your BH/WH's stuff (that's what I call that list...our truth, our stuff, is what we think, believe, perceive and how we view (perspective). That's our truth...not the truth. What we do are actions which can be judged. Our truth cannot. Because it's ours. Actions put us into play with others...what we do and what we don't do are actions. Same for what we say...verbal actions. Feelings result from all of our stuff...directly to us from our beliefs. They signal what we're believing at the time.

You cannot make your partner tell you the truth of their actions. You can't make them even tell you their truth. No human is that powerful. We can only make ourselves share, be open and honest (O&H)...do our half.

If you commit to transparency...which is telling your partner where you are going, who you are speaking with and what about, who you are emailing...staying committed to openness and honesty yourself...then he can slowly rebuild his trust in you...not to blind level. Same for him for you. The thing about lying, which infidelity is based on, is that it isn't just to our partners...it takes lying to ourselves to where we don't know our own truth anymore. We get lost in a fog. We aren't trustworthy...except we can be relied upon to build our resentment, the fog generator, and to continually fuel our entitlement from it. And convince ourselves our partners' made us do this or that.

They didn't. They can't. Not in human design for anyone else to make us anything but a sandwich.

Remember that.

And your partner wanted to know The Truth...only way to find out is to verify...and I put a keylogger on the computer, went through the trash, my DH's car...you name it. I paid for an intelligence service to get a background check on his OW. Was this invasion of his privacy? No way. It was finding out the truth when I finally understood that he could only tell me HIS truth, share his self-deception as the truth.

Accountability builds trust. My DH told me that because I checked his cell phone I helped him out. He knew I would check so he wouldn't call OW--because I would know the truth of his action. Helped him break the addiction...which A's are addictions to feelings...actual chemicals released in our bodies...and during withdrawal, transparency and verifying are what a loving partner does for themselves (to know the truth and to stop believing they can get the truth out of a foggy partner) and for their marriage.

Learn about privacy within marriage. What you won't do/say in front of your partner, only behind their backs, is an attack on the marriage.

How does parenting one another happen in adult relationships? Simple. What's the first love relationship you had in your life? Think waaay, waaay back.

Please get these books...and thank you for going to counseling, reading and seeking...what you've already done. Something in them helped you get here...like a trail you followed...nothing wasted, 'k?

Why would your BH/WH have to hack into your mobile phone records? In America, marital debt is shared. If you get a cell phone, then the couple is responsible for payment. Means that both have access to the records, its usage.

Say your partner was a drug addict. Would you put a keylogger on the computer to find out his supplier or connections? Hack into his mobile phone records to know the truth...and to expose the truth seperately from his truth...his justifications to get what he needs, his addiction?

When married, we're in a contract of intimacy...which means that keeping secrets, not being transparent, open and honest, is deceiving your partner, your marriage and yourself.

Doesn't sound like your BH/WH was doing the diligence with the intent to save your marriage. Don't know. Can't say. Just through your filter, that's what I perceived. What I do know is that to not verify the truth is harmful, as well. We're three years past DH's A...and last month, I checked his cell phone. Wasn't about him...it was about me. I did it in front of him.

Which brings me to permissions...what we permit ourselves to do and not do. You gave yourself permission to do what you did...the ad, the EA, the breaking your vows yourself...which we make to ourselves, committing to what we will do in marriage, not based on our partner's actions. We hurt ourselves, too. Part of your pain, emotional exhaustion and frustration are you betraying yourself...between you and you.

Good to know. It's the seat of your power.

God designed humans with choice. We are new, every day, because we have constant choice. We can choose to remain having the same life experience, or change it--by changing our choices. We are not who we were.

I found identifying my permissions and changing my choices changed everything.

I understand feeling like my space is violated. It happened often when I was violating my marriage. That signal isn't about what my DH was doing--it was about what I was doing. I wasn't being honest...I was telling him he was making me miserable. I put all that was mine on him...and had for 15 years, trying to change him.

Like using sand as a cup--kept pouring in the water and intensifying my anger I couldn't get a drink.

Cup your hands, DD. You cross your boundaries...and when you do, what is the remedy? You can't know how he can amend his crossings until you know what you hold yourself to doing when YOU do, can you?

Before coming here, I had no idea about boundaries. In my last A, my DH went to a lame counselor who said we needed boundaries. He asked me to make one. I said, "You can't go a week without talking to me." I made it around him. During my A. That's not a boundary.

I, like you, threatened to leave several times, with no intention or planning to do so. It was to get him to stop, change, start--not me. I said "I'm done" a number of times...words said, no actions taken. Because I wasn't done. I was reacting to my feelings. Reacting, not acting. I gave myself permission to live life in reaction to what I was feeling instead of tracing those signals and KNOWING what I was believing at the time which was generating those feelings.

Living backwards. I backed into a lot of sharp objects and backed my marriage into them, as well. I did a lot of damage. You're not alone.

You didn't ignore finding the letter two weeks into your marriage. You confronted, acknowledged, found out all he was thinking...got the help right then necessary to really connect and communicate, so that you were safe for him to tell YOU what he was busy telling a fantasy, not his wife.

You didn't ignore his choice to see this woman in London. You objected. You stated your boundary and didn't enforce. You didn't expose to the woman's family, the company he worked for that he was having an EA...which is what it is when he puts anyone ahead of the marriage. Or you. Boundary enforcements are predetermined and progressive. They aren't to control...they are to acknowledge and respect your H, back then, was choosing to have an A. Up to you was your choice to expose (honesty shared and acknowledges actions), Plan A (some do this intuitively), counsel, and as he continued to choose OW, then you accept his choice and file for separation, stating after all the other enforcements, you are doing so to save the marriage, and go to Plan B.

You couldn't do what you didn't know then...you are able to do so now. To define and know your boundaries...trick is, you have to dwell within them, also. You must respect your own for you to enforce them around yourself. It's a constant, unyielding two-way street.

Takes choosing to live from respect to experience it. To respect (which is acknowledging reality in harmony with your beliefs) that you cannot make your WH/BH ever choose anything. He chooses. You choose. You can't make him. He can't make you.

You found a letter, you found a receipt...and your WH accused you of snooping, of injuring yourself...played the blaming game. Now you believe the same. Because he snooped. Can you see the parallel here? Often, we switch with our partners in these roles...all part of the blame game. Eliminate blame from your marriage.

Reality is--you choose, he chooses. Humans do and do not. That's it. Consequences follow. Get out of the way of his and open your arms to your own. Life will change. Part of recovery and rebuilding a marriage.

When I said you ignored...he had many affairs, didn't he? Online, in his own head, fantasies? It can be what is our habit to keep distance, soothe destructively, and continue our horrible comfort zone...it's a coping skill, not a living skill. All it gains us is continuing in our loops, making ourselves prisoners of our own cycles.

You broke his affair through proof? Do you believe that by proving to him he was having an affair, that ended it? That's my perception...may not be what you meant.

It's okay to know the truth without working at making him know it, too. You knowing is enough. That's what verifying is about.

And you say you were in a physical, emotional and mental state of exhaustion at the time. That's really brave, DD. As brave as coming here, opening yourself up to learning...you've got the tenacity to save your marriage. To learn and do all you can so that whatever the outcome, you will know you will thrive. It's a choice.

As you read more on this website, you'll learn in the Love Busters (LB) section about Disrespectful Judgments (DJs). This was my crucial area. After discovering how detrimental and self-destructing they were, I revoked my permission to do them. I was stunned at the change in myself and my life. I had previously lived a life based on DJs...on assumptions and mindreading. Identifying these really changed my perspective.

You have an important one about his computer in your post. That if you asked, he wouldn't give you access.

The important part isn't what he would do...it's about what you're willing to do or not. What you decide...to really save your marriage, or to exact more revenge, extend your exhaustion, continue the blame game or not. When you decide fully, then you may experience very different outcomes. He may well give you full access.

My vision would be for you to sit down with him, across from each other with nothing in between you both...and hold his hands in yours and say, "This is what I've done, thought, felt and believed. I had no idea how destructive I was to our marriage...I wasn't owning and doing my half in a healthy way. My focus was consumed on you. I am learning how to live differently, to love by choice, and act on my choice. How to define and enforce healthy boundaries, and marital ones. How to remove blame from my perspective and respect others as equals. I'm going to be transparent with my stuff, and know my truth separately from the truth. In doing so, I know I'll better see the difference between your stuff and my own. My heart's desire is to recover and heal from our previous marriage and break our old patterns. I know I only control my half, my own. I choose you, as my husband, to love and will act on my love. This is what I've done, why I did it, and why I won't do it again. These are my amends."

Won't do a thing to change him. Will drastically change your life, how you respect and love yourself, build your own self-confidence, understanding, take your feelings of love to a depth I don't believe you've truly experienced before (I hadn't)...and your world will change.

It would affect your mothering, partnering, friendships and relationship with your FOO. It's a process, not an event. Feels like an event, though. You will experience incredible intimacy because you act intimately; knowing your stuff and sharing your stuff with the one you chose, you married and choose every day to partner.

Control comes from fear, DD. When we react to fear instead of knowing, where it comes from in us, holding it and not acting on it. Love isn't fearless...because humans are not fearless. We are brave...which is holding our fear. Acting anyway. You chose this morning to go to counseling. Not because of a screaming man and his pointing finger. He can't make you do anything. You chose. Know your power...it's in your choices. Know your human design and its limits. Your real responsibility as a human and what you cannot be responsible for--what you cannot control. In that choice to learn and act from your new knowledge, you will find a respectful, loving, aware life experience. No more exhaustion from your own choices...healthy boundaries and peace.

Yours by choice. No third-party can diagnose if your marriage stands a chance or not. You choose your goal and act accordingly. That's it. You don't control outcomes. No one does. That's the fantasy of controlling that which you cannot. Find a counselor who won't participate in that fantasy. Read Harley. Many, many couples have been to where you are now...we were...and we didn't divorce. There are couples here who did and then reconciled afterwards.

It took one spouse to save the marriage. They changed themselves...not to accommodate...to thrive.

Your WH/BH fell in love with you...and he can do so again and again. You can also fall in love with him, repeatedly. Part of our design. When we act from love, we experience loving feelings. The feelings don't tell us how to act. That's part of the mess you're experiencing--living from them, not from your beliefs directly.

You state you are done and you are not. For you consider your children, their welfare, what you are teaching them, how you want them to be, when great adversity and conflict arise. To date, are you proud of what you've shown them? They've experienced the infidelities as well. Please don't think it's hidden from them. It will affect them for their lives, too. We are as sick as our secrets...part of being human. We pass down our stuff...as it was passed down to us. When we change ourselves, that's passed down as well. The ripple continues. I don't believe it stops. Up to us to choose what kind of ripple we are really making.

Please revoke your permission to say you're done. I did. Really helped me in my own self-honesty. I wasn't done. I learned that what I didn't understand from this marriage, I would carry forward into the next relationship, again and again. That really brought home how powerful I was in my own life. That it is not who I marry, it's how I partner.

Everything you would do to save your marriage would add to your life, enhance it. You take it with you. For instance, if you committed right now to using "I" statements only.."I believe" "I feel" "I think"...and listening to yourself aloud...to hear what you truly believe, feel, think...that's ownership. There's no blame in it all. Valid stuff, shared. Takes someone brave and true to themselves, their goals, though, to do it.

I believe you are both.

LA