It just seems to be getting worse and worse. Every week or so he threatens divorce, "let's do it amicably, I really don't think I can forgive you, our child is not reason enough, I love you a little but am in a dark place and all I really want to do is bad things to you."

He told me today he doesnt' care if we stay married or not or if we recover or not or really he doesn't care about anything. Every time he threatens divorce I tell him I love him and dont' want a divorce. He stays. His # 1 EN is SF, but he looks at me and says, "I just dont' want it with you."

He refuses counseling, wont' read, just says he's getting madder and madder...

He says maybe time will help but right now the loop is going back to just not caring and he doesnt' know if even time will help that.

This is so garbled, it's me just grasping for anything. Is this worth it to me? If I knew then what I know now....

But on the other hand, I have a list a mile long of reasons why I would be relieved if we were just finally divorced, not the least of which I would at least know what I was doing...he wouldn't be able to "get me" any more. He's controlling and often mean. We can't have a conversation without him disagreeing with me- pretty much on principle.

If he is not committed, or at least SAYS he is not committed, is there hope? Or is the fact that he's still here 18 months after the fact (1 year after admitting to phone sex). I'm dating our trying to recover from last October..and regretting every day the lie of omission...

He says he has no trust and that there's NOTHING I can do to make up for what I did. So should I just forget it?

I am trying trying trying to stop reacting to him and his "punishments." For instance, we were talking today and I interrupted him. He instantly said he would no longer talk on that subject until tonight, even after I apologized. I tried to suck it up, when before I would rant and cry and try to make him talk. Now, I did try to make him talk by "backing" into the conversation, but he refused. But even though I felt treated like a 5 year old, I just remembered he has a right to his own feelings and he deserves respect.

I feel like his child. I am still so mad at how our marriage was before my A that I resent the heck out of him (yes, I know what they say about resentment and poison...). Our marriage sucked then and because of me it sucks even worse now. I will NEVER do what I did to him again. I will divorce him instead, rather than cheat and deceive. No matter how sucky the relationship, no one deserves that.

I just don't know what to do.

HTH:

You need to read Surviving an Affair, (SAA) and His Needs, Her Needs (HNHN) IF you haven't already.

And the next time you H threatens divorce, just reply calmly: "Then do so."

Take away the power.

He is beating you with your EA, and is scoring points and will continue to do so as long as it acheives his objectives, which is for you to be miserable.

100 threats to do something that you are never going to do, are designed soley to hurt. So stop the hurt, and tell him to do so.

Let him be the bad guy. He wants you to do the filing, so you can continue to be the bad guy.

And if you have told him everything that went on, and you have maintained no contact with the OM for over a year, then you are doing your part.

Even betrayed spouses have to change to make the M better.

LG

HTH...no matter what your h feels regarding wanting to divorce you...he will not be the bad guy. You have taken on that role by your actions.
Some people will not and should not be in recovery. Not everyone can get over infidelity. Perhaps your H is one of those people. Perhaps he lost so much respect for you that he really doesn't want to remain married to you. A BS is sometimes so wounded that they cannot follow through on a divorce threat....or anything else. You drove the bus off the cliff...how do you propose helping him?
YOU have every right to expect happiness at some point...your resenting him for how your marriage was pre-affair is sort of ridiculous right now. You lost the moral high ground.
You cannot make up for what you did. Your H shouldn't trust you...but he shouldn't punish you either. Sit down with him and ask him what he truly wants. Let him know that you are willing to go the distance for recovery...but that if he wants a divorce, you will make that as easy as possible for him. Bottom line is, you need to take control of those things that you can. It may be time to try the amicable divorce...ask for his input and work out a plan to move forward together or apart. And NEVER take his child from him...you cheated...you should be the one that is flexible when it comes to custody issues.

Good luck.

Well said, MEDC.

I'm sorry things are going so poorly. Considering that your EA was so long ago, I think you need to scrape some money together and talk to the Harleys. They are the experts in getting a plan together for marital recovery, and I really think you need an expert.

If hubby refuses, then you make the call.

HowToHeal,

I don't believe for one minute that if your marriage fails that you are "the bad guy". don't accept that role. it is that exact mentality that is allowing your BH to act as he is acting. you did things you should not have done. you have owned up to it. you are willing to make ammends. you are NOT a bad guy.

your BH has a decision to make. If he wants to divorce that is his choice. If he chooses to stay, he has a responsiblity to you and your child to recover. Deciding to stay but refusing to work towards recovery is wrong. Some people cannot get over betryal. If he is one of those people then he needs to admit to that and leave. His inability to recover is his thing to own, not yours.

We all have bad things happen to us in our lives. Even by people that are suppose to love us, our parents, our spouses. That does not give us an excuse to act poorly in the present day.

YOU ARE NOT A BAD GUY!!! You are trying. I am proud of you.

I'm with LG, tell him to go ahead with divorce proceedings. Tell him, that is not what you want but you will accept that decision. Take away the power he believes he has with the threats.

Didn't we already give you several solutions in this thread? http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...part=5&vc=1

Did you take any of our advice? I feel like I am in the movie Ground Hog Day. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

HH, if you are not willing to lift a finger to help yourself, you are a volunteer, not a victim. Why do you choose to live like this? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

When we told you the last time to set some boundaries in place, you responded with:


You didn't like that advice apparently, and believe that we should absorb any potential consequences in order for you to even set boundaries. In other words, you want your boundaries observed but are not willing to actually defend them if it means any inconvenience on your part. Not much anyone can do with that unrealistic expectation. If you are not willing to defend it, then no one will be willing to respect it. You want a magic, EASY solution that does not require you to lift a finger. Won't happen.

HowToHeal,

I looked back at the thread ML linked. She is right, there is some very good stuff in there that can help you. I didn't read it all, but the stuff Cherished posted to you was great.

And it is OK that you have not absorbed it all and put it into practice immediately. This stuff is not easy. Keep posting and keep reading. Think about specific examples in your life and see if you can find ways to respond differently and in doing so change the dynamics of the relationship.

this board is a great place to work on this stuff. believe me, i had to be told the same stuff over and over by multiple people and I'm STILL working on it. I do believe I have changed in positive ways but i know i still have times when i don't respond "correctly".

baby steps, know what i mean?

it is clear you hope to recover this marriage. My BH was not into reading or counsoling either. Even still, we are making progress. It is hard for me to see sometimes because it has taken a long time. It's just under 3yrs for me since I confessed everything to him.

keep looking at your interactions with each other. keep looking for ways that YOU can interact differently. Setting boundries does not mean you have to leave the marriage if he crosses them. Baby steps, leave any conversation that starts to become disrespectful or mean spirited. calmly tell him this is not how you are going to choose to interact with him anymore.

do not be agressive, be matter of fact. keep your emotions in check as best you can. and then go do something else.

it's going to take a while. you can only change you but by changing your behavior he will end up changing too, because he will have to deal with your new ways. see what i mean?

I don't believe you are crying victim or asking us to absorb the consequences. i suspect you were not being serious when you posted above "Are any of you willing to take me in?"

i understand venting.

I understand the frustrations.

keep posting HTH!! (i'm still proud of you!!)

for the record, i do not see you as a person who is looking for a magic EASY solution which does not require you to lift a finger.

to be told that is disrespectful.

I hope you can read past the words and just see people here who are wanting to help you.

HTH:


Well said.

Having gotten that out of the way, I read your thread this morning and had the same reaction as ML...did you look at the advice posted to you on your other thread? Have you implemented any of it? Because, when I read this:


it sends chills down my spine. I think what a poor example *both* of you are setting for your child.

Are you still going along with this behavior? Change your steps in this insane dance. For starters, leave the room if he calls you a wh0re - and be sure to take your child with you.

Your EA and phone sex give your H the right to a divorce, though I do not agree that you have to make it easy for him. IMO divorce should never be easy if there are children involved. Is there some reason that you have not called the Harleys?

PK

HH, did you do what Harley suggested in this EXACT SITUATION in his article? [that I posted to you before]

Coping with Infidelity: Part 4
Overcoming Resentment

Recovery may not be complete

Resentment usually appears when an experience of the present reminds us of a painful experience of the past. For example, if a wife had been abandoned by her husband after a fight on a vacation, left to find her way home alone from Jamaica, the resentment of that experience would pop up whenever her husband walks out the door during an argument. Very often, continuing resentment means that whatever it was that caused the painful experience is still lurking in the background. And it jumps out every once in a while when evidence of it's existence surfaces.

The procedure for recovery that I suggest usually eliminates the root causes of infidelity, and that makes it unlikely that present experiences will remind a spouse of experiences associated with an affair. If the only time you feel resentment about a spouse's past affair is when your needs have not been met, when your spouse is engaged in a Love Buster, or when the Policy of Joint Agreement or Policy of Radical Honesty has not been followed, then it's the completion of recovery that's your problem, not resentment.

Using resentment as a way to control and punish a spouse

I'm convinced that what's kept the resentment of S.R.'s husband alive for so many years is that he has found it to be an effective way to control and punish her whenever she doesn't do what he wants. Whenever they have a fight, he brings it up, and it causes her such guilt that it gives him a decided advantage in winning the argument.

By this time, I don't believe that her affair is the problem that she thinks it is. Instead, it is an issue that her husband is using to get the upper hand in his relationship with her. It probably shows up the most whenever she has been reluctant to have sex with him. It throws her off balance whenever he mentions it, and makes her feel guilty, wanting to make it up to him somehow. He may also bring it up whenever she is winning in a power struggle he is having with her.

What she describes to me in her letter is abuse, pure and simple. There is no excuse for the way her husband keeps bringing up her moment of weakness she experienced years ago. He is disrespectful and abusive.

I suggest that she look him right in the eye and say to him, "Listen Buster, do you love me? Do you want me to love you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? If the answers to any of those questions is 'yes' you sure are going about it the wrong way. You are not doing things that I admire, you're doing things that I find disgusting!"

What if he says, "Fine, then lets just get a divorce and end it all."

To that I would say, "It's up to you. I married you for life, but if you want a divorce, it's your call. If you want to be in a love relationship with me, however, you're going to have to treat me much better than you have been treating me. You must never again bring up my affair, and if you are upset with me, you will have to treat me with respect until we can solve the problem. If you are upset with our sexual relationship, I want us to discuss it as adults and solve it with mutual respect. I refuse to be treated like this, especially by the man I love."

My advice to her husband is to never mention her affair again. It's a good example of one of the enemies of good conversation, dwelling on past mistakes. Whenever you keep bringing up your spouses past mistakes, you not only make your conversations incredibly unpleasant, but it cannot possibly lead to a resolution of a conflict you may be discussing. And as soon as his resentment doesn't pay him any dividends -- no longer helps him get his way -- he will find that it hardly ever occurs to him.

Hanging on to an unpleasant thought because it helps us somehow is what psychologists call "secondary gain." It means that even though the thought is unpleasant, it gets you something you need, so your mind keeps it around for its usefulness. There are many unpleasant thoughts that have this characteristic, and I have helped many people let them go by helping them destroy the usefulness of the thought. Making sure that S.K.'s husband never gets what he wants by bringing up her affair will help him overcome his resentment."
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5062_qa.html

The bottom line is that if you have a boundary you have to be willing to enforce it or is it not boundary at all. If you are not willing to do anything to ENFORCE it, then the natural consequence will be ABUSE. Abuse that you made yourself AVAILABLE FOR. There is not much we can do if you won't help yourself.

True support comes NOT from helping you STAY in an abusive situation, but in helping you take steps to REMOVE yourself from this abusive situation if need be. I will not make you FEEL good for not enforcing your boundaries, especially when you have a 4 yr DD for whom you are responsible. Your responsibility to her - AND YOU - is to take steps to STOP this abuse, even if it means leaving. There is no virtue in staying in an abusive marriage.

really good stuff here HTH.

read it well. read it and absorb it and find ways to start implementing it. and know it will take time. but YOU have to starting doing something different now to make that change start.

NO ONE here wants to support you to stay in an abusive situation.

I do not believe you are asking anyone to help you FEEL good about not enforcing your boundries.

You are looking for answers, ideas. the above article ML posted is an excellent one for you. keep reading, keep posting and START IMPLEMENTING!!!

ML, HTH has a DS, not DD.

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to post that I am an old poster that has changed some of my pertinant details so my BH couldn't find me here, as he threatened to divorce me if I continued posting, but I could still get some advice...I used to post under M r s R o b. So my child is a 2 year old girl, but I think much is the same- married 7 years, he's 15 years older, I'm the main breadwinner...it has not gotten better.


Anyways, it's a moot point at this time (a moo point, anyone watch friends?) He is divorcing me. He says he loves me, but not enough. He doesnt' trust me and is not willing to see if it ever comes back. Here's exactly what he said, "You've put me through ****** every night for 5 years, then you're a ******, you promise to stop then do it again (a NC issue on my part, I told him I'd stop, then continued contact for 4 more weeks). THen you don't fully disclose til a year ago. THen you pick and pick and pick and don't leave me alone. I'm done with you. I am rejecting you as a person (he really said that. Those words exactly). I can't take you anymore."

This from the person who called me a quitter becasue I was looking for a job with better pay.

LG, I would never take our child away, but he said he doesnt' want to be around her much. He'll have to work too hard. I begged him not to punish her because he was so angry at me, and he said, "that's right, play the baby card." He said that she'd be better off without him.

Once, a few years into our marriage, I told him that when I started to feel insecure and was starting to become upset, all I needed was a hug and a "it's going to be all right." You know what he told me? That he wouldnt' do that because that would be "rewarding bad behavior." THis from the man who told me he'd divorce me if I didn't have as much anal sex with him as he wanted (it was exclusively that for a long time. I objected, he said to make regular sex great, but when I tried that he said he "wasn't interested in that.") He then "took that back." This from the man who threatened to take my older kids from my first marriage off his health insurance because he didn't like how I dealt with my ex (I dealt with him reasonably), or to divorce me if a child support hearing with my ex didn't go my way.

MEDC, I know I have no moral high ground, but if you knew all the circumstances you would see that, although I tortured him by my insecurities, which I am addressing now (and I believe many of them came from how he treated me,I wasn't this way before we married, but now I question everything), that I went through a LOT with him. Did I mention that he left me in the ICU while I was being given a drug that would potentially kill me to break up 7 blood clots in my lungs? I am just venting here to make it seem like I am not such a bad person. I KNOW WHAT I DID IS NEVER JUSTIFIED. I KNOW I KNOW I KNOW. I just hoped that he loved me enough to work on our marriage, but he will not, unless him telling me I'm F***ed up in my thought processes and I should just shut up, lose weight, and have sex whenever and however he wants, is working on it. And that is what I got for 7 years. WHatever my feelings on anything were, they were f***ed up. Pretty much on principle becasue they were my feelings.

None of my friends (the few I have that he will let me talk to. I couldnt' go out with friends becasue I should have been home to have sex if he wanted.) like him. My parents REALLY dont' like him and never have. One girlfriend told me I needed to leave him because she was afraid he'd become physical.

They all know what I did. My friends, my parents- I told them. And they still feel I'll be better off without him.

What I did is wrong. I have taken care of it spiritually with my bishop. I have taken care of it with the Lord. My bishop told me that if BH couldnt' forgive, although I brought the consequences on myself, his inability to forgive is all on his head, and not my responsibility. I have taken steps within myself to never do this to anyone else again. I DO learn some things. Two nights ago when he told me he'd divorce me, and then last night, though, I went right back to what he calls "nighttime angst" where I just cry and rant. THIS is what I need to stop. I feel so invalidated by him. Like me as a person just doesn't count. But I DO. Many people love me and even like me.

I guess there is nothing I can do now, and really, why do I want this back?

It's pretty obvious that I didn't plan A at all. I just barrelled on through and cried and R talk and begged. I am so ashamed to think that if I had done a good plan A he would have been able to heal. OTOH, my EA notwithstanding, if he is unwilling to meet any of my EN's on principle, what kind of marriage would we have had after the plan A period was over? There is only so much you can do before the taker emerges.

I wish wish wish I had found MB BEFORE our marriage. at least, if I ever get into a different relationship (not looking particularly fun at the moment), I will have the skills and the practice with my own self and be able to have a happy, healthy relationship.

If your H and your marriage are truly as you describe I cannot imagine why you choose to remain in the situation.

You're describing someone who isn't an earner, isn't a good father, is a selfish sex partner and an unsupportive spouse. And you're posting here in secrecy, which should tell you something about your relationship.

Some IC might be in order to determine why, rather than end the marriage, you chose to escape into an EA. Maybe that will give you the insight you need to make better decisions in the future.

Good luck.

PK

I don't think you are a bad person. The "bad guy" comment was in response to implying that he would being the bad guy if he filed for divorce. There are quite a few FWS here that have put themselves together in an admirable fashion...and it is the BS that is using the affair like a hammer. Your H's abuse needs to be answered with "asses and elbows"...that's all he should see as you walk away until all of his behavior changes! And I mean ALL of it.
There is no high ground to be had in these circumstances short of both parties taking the opportunity to work together towards recovery or treating one another with dignity through the divorce process.
As far as why your insecurities reared their head after marriage, there are times that people become insecure only after they have a lot to lose. You can most likely figure all of that out through IC.

Best of luck to you.