ok Meremortal, can u tell me what other threads/stories could i read that would open my eyes to what u thing my H might have been doing?. im trying to see if anybody else can see, for what i tell here, that my H might be a good guy to continue the rest of my life with. My sister is telling me that i dont see all the harm because im inside this whole situation but that she sees/thinks that im suffering too much here and shouldnt be.
Gosh, i really dont see it and want to continue, is this really so wrong?, how can all of u see it and i dont?
Meremortal, do u recommend me to go to Plan B? , u can be honest, i need to hear what other people might see, thanks

Mm, how do u thing i could deal with the problem more assertively?. I dont know what u mean. did u have the same problem with ur H?

Do u thing it's an addiction to these activities?. My H said he had a tendency to go into these sites cos i wasnt fulfilling his EN.
Dont u think that if i fulfill them he'll stop doing what he has been doing?

Hi Arancha
I just wanted to add to what meremortal said. I recognise the situation she is referring to.

For years I had problems not unlike yours; poor commnunication, secrecy, yelling and screaming etc. I tried to persuade H to go to MC but he refused. At one point we had a holiday together, just the two of us and connected we but as soon as we got back things were back to 'normal'.

During these years I tried everything I could think of to improve the marriage but nothing lasted. I even gave up my very highly paid job thinking that this might help but nothing really changed except that gradually things got worse and the children were acting out the stresses they saw coming from us.

There was never the suggestion of any cheating on his part except that for a few odd things such as an email I spotted on his desk once from someone he had met on a plane trip refusing to meet him for tea him because he was a married man. When I asked him about it, he had a perfectly valid explanation.

Finally he agreed to MC at the urging of someone working with my son who was having all kinds of problems and and we saw her for a year or so whilst we worked on issues and things improved just a little. Then the first nuclear bomb went off when he told me of a 10 year affair that he had right after our youngest was born. To say that I did not have a clue is the understatement of the century. He is a very emotional and rather autistic person and had been able to totally compartmentalise this relationship. The only way that it 'showed' is that he was secretive and that he was not especially interested in working on the marriage. Those were the only clues I had. The MC (who herself said 'generally speaking if men are secretive, it is because they have something to hide) was totally flabbergasted.

But worse was to follow as suddenly, really fast after this first revelation I started seeing clues and things I had never noticed before. There was a phone conversation where I heard a woman's voice in the background. Then there was an unexplained urinary tract infection and finally conclusive evidence in the form of a single phone call record from a VoIP line. I called this number, got a woman, hung up, and then ran a search on the number on a backup of his Blackberry where I found her name and full contact details. He had even stored her dress size (large).

It turned out that he had been cheating more or less continuously for 17 years and that he had become really good at hiding his tracks until the latest A had got out of control because OW had wanted him to marry her. He had kidded himself that somehow he was 'saving the marriage'.

Maybe if I had caught him during the first A which was mostly an EA as she lived 3,000 miles away, I could have prevented the escalation. It was certainly the case that there was no possibility of working on the marriage while there was OW and there was no way that I could understand what the problem was.

Looking back on it, the turning point came when he realised that he could not have an intimate relationship with me whilst there were other women in his life but it took him a long time and lots of MC to see this.

And if I am totally honest, I think that part of the reason that it all took so long is that I only saw what I wanted to see. There were other clues like times when I could not reach him by phone or when he came home with his shirt smelling of cheap perfume. I refused to see because I was stuck in a foreign country with no family support. Divorced, things would have been worse as I would have been forced to stay in a place I did not like so that he could have had seen the children that he hardly knew or go home and leave my children fatherless.

Good luck to you. Finding MB is the best thing you could have done.

thanks a lot for ur answer LTA. Are u still with ur H?. im not sure i understood whether u divorced or not.

Hi again LTA. Can i ask u, what do u think made ur H behave in such a dishonest way?, do u think u were not fulfilling his EN?, do u think he was naturally dishonest and u were just a very good wife to him and he just wasnt worth of u?

Hi Arancha
You should know that I am also new to MB so am not experienced enough to give you advice. The others here have given you great advice but as I thought my story might help you understand your situation, I thought I would post. I am happy to answer your questions but did not want to hijack your thread so will be brief!

Firstly, we are still M and are working with the Harleys.

Secondly, I am sure that the A's started because we were not meeting each others ENs. It is not necessarily the one whose ENs are being met least that cheats, it is the one who is the most vulnerable. In his case his father was a serial adulterer and his mother accepted this behavour. This seems to be a very common pattern and I just pray that my son can break the curse.

Is he naturally dishonest? Well he is naturally secretive. Whether he can change this behaviour is something I have yet to learn. He does want to stay married but I am not sure that I yet know why.

thanks a lot for ur time LTA. do u see the Harleys in person or do you just phone them?. im thinking in phoning them since i cannot go to America. How is it helping ur H to talk to the Harleys.
Isnt it just like any other coucelling you might have been before?

Hi again Lied_to_again, how is ur Thread called and where can i find it. i would like to read it since ur H's behaviour seems secretive as mine. thanks

Hi Arancha
We do counselling by phone with Jennifer who actually lives in the Philippines so face to face would be tough!

The counselling is very different from anything else we have done firstly because it addresses different issues and secondly because it is pro marriage. The counsellor we saw before kept asking me why I wanted to stay in the marriage. As I did not, it was difficult to answer that one!

Here is a link to my thread http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/sho...part=1&vc=1
regards

Hi Aranchaa,

I will try to answer your questions:

"ok Meremortal, can u tell me what other threads/stories could i read that would open my eyes to what u thing my H might have been doing?"

In general, just about any thread here will contain some info revealing the similarity between WS's, how what they say and do sounds so much the same it's as if they are all using the same script. It's sort of uncanny the way WS's all sound pretty much the same.

But there are also a few threads here that address the specific problems such as serial adultery, EA's, talking to women online, etc.

"im trying to see if anybody else can see, for what i tell here, that my H might be a good guy to continue the rest of my life with."

Deciding your husband is a good enough guy to stay married to is one option, and so is deciding he isn't and divorcing him if you uncover proof that he is cheating; but there is also a third option: acknowledging he has some problem
behaviors which can and should be addressed so that you can have a healthy/happy marriage. MOST of the posters here are willing to work to save their marriages in spite of acknowledging that their WS's are doing things which are inappropriate. I'm not trying to say that your husband doesn't maybe have some good points too. But denying he has some problems that should be addressed will not save your marriage. His problems will only get worse unless you some boundaries are set and his behaviors are addressed.

"My sister is telling me that i dont see all the harm because im inside this whole situation but that she sees/thinks that im suffering too much here and shouldnt be."

Your sister knows and sees more than we can and she may be right. But again, acknowledging that there are problems does not necessarily mean you have to choose between divorcing him because you will not accept his behavior, or staying married while just accepting his behavior.

"Gosh, i really dont see it and want to continue, is this really so wrong?, how can all of u see it and i dont?"

Maybe your sister is right? Maybe you can't see it because you're too immersed in it to have any perspective from the outside?

It could also be that to believe what the evidence points to is too scary or awful for you to accept? You may feel as if you don't have much power to do much about it anyway?

"Meremortal, do u recommend me to go to Plan B? , u can be honest, i need to hear what other people might see, thanks"

It's usually recommended to do a Plan A first. IMHO you should expose what you know so far to family and friends while trying to gather more info about who your husband is in contact with and what they talk about. Of course, if there is danger of physical violence, then it might be better to go into Plan B sooner.

The counseling with the Harley's or with a MC who uses MB principles would be a good idea too.

I was thinking Aranchaa...

When I was still married, and not wanting to divorce my WH, I pretty much only got two kinds of advice from others:

There were those who wanted me to see how badly my WH was behaving and to therefore divorce him.

And there were those who wanted me to forgive and forget and stay married to him... to give him another chance.

(OK there were also some who wanted me to stay married to him but to cheat on him - have a revenge affair!)

But very few people know about MB principles, so hardly anyone advised me to fight for my marriage using a systematic approach.

MOST people will tell you to just do what you FEEL LIKE doing...

When listening to advice from others, even people who love you like your sister does, and even some professional counselors, kepe in mind that MOST people are not aware that a plan such as the one outlined here at MB's even exists. So most of the advice you get from others will either be to dump your WH on one extreme or be quiet and ignore what he's doing on the other extreme. Obviously neither of those exremes will result in a happy, healthy marriage for you and your WH. So why not give the MB plan a try?