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Whoo Hooo!!! Your very own thread!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

As I told you on the other thread, I think it is a very wise choice to Plan A your husband...What did he list as his top ENs when you took the questionairre?

I would also ask you to look at how you used OM...I know you feel angry that he used you...But let's look at it from the angle that as a married woman you shouldn't have made yourself available to be used, yanno? You did know ahead of time who he was, even if that knowledge only included that he was willing to get involved with a married woman...Start with owning that Maggie and I think your anger will begin to turn to indifference...OM shouldn't be relevant in your life at all...Being angry with him keeps him as a focal point in your life, KWIM?

How is your husband dealing with all this?

Mrs. W

Good for you Maggie starting your own thread!

Why did you and your Husband not meet each other's EN's after you found MB?

I think Plan A'ing him will be a good idea for your marriage.

Post deleted by maggiemagster

Post deleted by maggiemagster

Your H blaming OM is pretty much a defence mechanism for him. He will eventually see this differently but it's OK for him for now.

Committing to your marriage is one thing (a good thing) but it's not enough.

If the underlying problems in your marriage are not addressed, this will recur.

You really should do the questionaires and make meeting each others EN's a priority. That will build your love for each other and put your marriage on a secure foundation.

Would he be willing to read and post here Maggie?

This can't be swept under the rug...His resentment will get in the way of recovery if he does that...Right now he is at the greatest risk of having a revenge affair...

Here he can get the help he needs...If that happens I would advise both of you not to post on the other's thread...

Mrs. W

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Another reason to commit to a recovery plan and affair proof your marriage is that statistically your husband is the most likely person in your marriage to have the next affair...especially, if you just "sweep it under the rug". Imagine the justifications and rationalizations he can conjure up once presented with his own opportunity to step out of the marriage.

Something to think about.

Good luck Maggie...we are pulling for you.

Mr. Wondering

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Well Maggie do you know what his top ENs are?

You know you might put it into perspective for him saying, "I want to help you heal from the hurt that I inflicted on you...I want very much to meet your needs in the way that you want them met...You are important to me...We are important to me...I want to affair proof our marriage."

How do you think he would respond to something like that?

Mrs. W

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I agree with MrsW Maggie.

Just you do the questionaire for him to identify his needs and work on meeting those needs to the best of your ability.

Hopefully he will respond in time and will be open to meeting yours.

I don't think you can or should force anything. You seem to have the right idea here.

Not sure if you know this or not Maggie, but Dr. Harley says that we are all wired to have an affair...All it would take is for your husband to allow someone to start meeting his needs and blam...He is in a very vunerable state now whether he knows it or not...

Imagine if you will that some female at work were to tell your husband that her husband was cheating on her...Your husband then decides to share his experience with her...Little by little boundaries fall away...Presto, Affairville...

You both must have plans in place for an affair not to happen again...The conditions in the marriage that made your affair possible must be removed or it could easily happen again...MB has lays out those plans nicely...

Would he be willing to read Surviving An Affair? Something that is great is getting His Needs Her Needs on CD to listen to together on a roadtrip...You can pause to talk at different intervals...

Mrs. W

Hey maggie. Glad you started your own thread. Mrs Rock almost started one too. We'll see. She has posted on my thread a couple of times just recently.
I hope things are going well for you!
Rock

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Dear Maggie,

I am a formerly wayward wife. My marriage did not survive. Much of your story sounds familiar to mine. After my first A, my husband "forgave" me but he really wanted to just bury his head in the sand. He and I never really worked out the problems we had before the A.

As you are saying, you now recognize where you had rewritten your marital history during your A. But...please don't disregard all of it due to guilt for your A. Does that make sense? In other words, much of what you went through leading up to the A and you becoming unfulfilled is still true and will still be true now. You probably didn't rewrite that part. The part about feeling lonely as he worked late nights, feeling strange about earning more money, and feeling the needs that weren't being fulfilled as a loss in your life...it doesn't sound like those parts were rewritten.

My ex-husband loved me, no doubt, but he and I were not wise enough to realize that love was not enough. We did not put in the work that is needed to create a happy and loving and affair proof marriage. Eventually I had more affairs later in the marriage, but I never told him about them, and then finally I left and we are now divorced.

I can't really say I regret that I am divorced because I am happy now and I am with a new man and we are putting forth the effort it takes to have a happy marriage. However...what I regret is that when I was in YOUR SHOES, the very shoes you are in right now (post my first A and my husband was burying his head), I regret that we didn't go into immediate marriage counseling and stick with it. I regret that we didn't dig up all the things we needed to say to each other and say them. I regret that I was so happy to just be forgiven and felt so guilty that I fooled myself into thinking "everything is fine now". It was not fine, it was just in hiding.

I can see that you are really struggling to make sure that doesn't happen to you, so GOOD JOB. But please - if you aren't in counseling, you need to be, or eventually you may stray again. You need both IC and MC.

Your anger at the OM is misplaced, and you will know when you are truly healing when you no longer feel that way about him. When you only feel apathy and nothing more for the OM is when you are finally moving forward - a step at a time.

If you really want to stay married and find ways to be happy together, dig into yourself and find out more about YOU. Why you did this (the real reasons, not the incidental reasons), why your vow to your husband wasn't truly sacred (there is a reason for this, you need to find it out), and why you are letting your husband bury his head again (do you still feel so guilty that you feel you don't deserve his full attention?)

Swing Dancer

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It's a term LA and her friends coined when they were referred to as Psychobabblers.