Any thoughts or suggestions are welcome.

Also, WW told the children she would only be able to see them Friday night and that she had made plans with friends for the weekend. This upset me quite a bit considering it was Easter weekend....it sat with me all weekend festering....I finally broke down and sent her a text which read;

"Happy Easter. I asked the kids if you had planned on spending some time with them this weekend. Said you had made plans with 'friends' and didn't know it was Easter. I don't believe that and I see what's most important to you now. I hope you had a nice weekend with your 'friend'. I wouldn't be surprised if your friend was with you now. That does it for me. After all, friends come before family. I'm not very happy with the response from the kids, as you can tell, and I'm not very happy with you right now. Of course, I'm sure that doesn't matter to you either. Oh and thanks....yeah, we did have a nice Easter...even did an Easter egg hunt like we used to do."

This was sent late Sunday evening.

Any thoughts?

You are not helping the situation at all. STOP TEXTING, EMAILS,OR CALLING HER. You are only succeeding in pushing her further away. You want her to see you as the "lighthouse"...you are not "BEING STILL" like I told you. YOu have to get control of this....only YOU can do that...you can only control you nor HER....

Anything you say will justify what she believes....stop it now...if you truly want to save your marriage....

go read Love Busters.....

not2fun

Writing a letter to the OM is bad for many reasons. It gives the OM the opportunity to laugh at how pathetic you are to himself and or with WW. It shows that you are weak. It will make you appear to him that you are to afraid to confront him, the OM that is doing your WW.

However I am against any BH getting into a fight with the OM because it will only get you in jail, lawsuit for damages, in a worse position to get child custody, get put in the hospital.

Even if you can physically handle the OM with no problem the years of dealing with legal issues stemming from feeling good from tearing into him for few minutes will never seem worth it later on.

Hounding WW is not doing a plan A. Fog is so thick that WW will never see or admit to anything logical. Show your WW how you are improving by your actions, not telling. Plan A is the opportunity to show WW how life with you will now be better because you have changed.

Stop making affair easy for her separate your finances now. Cut of joint credit cards. Let her make the payments and insurance for her own car. Tell that her that a WW should not expect to her husband to support a WW’s affair.

I definitely see your points and agree. I feel that if I actually spoke with him, that's what it would be since he is in NH and we live in VA, I would get very angry and just make things worse.

I just reacted the wrong way when she was trying to argue with me on the phone and I guess I shouldn't have let her have it about Easter weekend either, as N2F said.

Also, not paying her auto insurance is one of hte things I had planned on doing. Policy is up at the end of April and I was going to tell her it was being dropped on the van at that time.

The SA she sent to my lawyers office basically gives me everything...house..land...joint items...she just wants the van and for me to continue paying insurace (auto and health) for her until divorce, if that is what it comes to.

Tyk suggested I ask or invite her to do things with me and I did a couple of weeks ago....she declined and I just let it drop and politely ended the conversation.

I feel I need to just wait for her to contact me at this point and be polite and avoid LBs, as suggested, and work on myself.

N2F, do you feel I should ask her to do things with me or just wait for her to contact me. I really don't initiate the contact and haven't with the exception of the Easter text to her.

She stopped by the house today while I was at work and visited with our daughter, who is sick with Scarlet Fever. She didn't stay long and left a mess in the kitchen that I had to clean up.
She left before I got home. We passed on each other on the road and she acted like she didn't see me. Neither of us waved. I'm sure she knew it was me because of the car I was driving is unmistakable.

Hey Wats

I understand what you are going through. Its a constant battle of doing what will get your wife back (being a lighthouse, being "above all this") and doing what's rightfully yours (writing, saying, yelling at them telling them what selfish , filty excuses for human beings they are. How much you hurt and how absolutely they disgust you.) I would be the same way.

But, I also understand how absolutely COUNTERPRODUCTIVE this can all be. If you want your wife back, these folks got it right.
Doing the productive thing right now is doing the RESTRAINED thing.
It hurts, but its for the best.

Understand.

How should I tell WW I'm going to drop the insurance on her vehicle. If I do that will she then change her mind about the house and property....I'm really not sure. As the SA is written now I get the house and property and all joint items that are currently not in her possession. Also, I haven't signed the SA because I had some minor changes I wanted to add. Statements that I wish to modify a bit which do not reflect my standing. I want it to be clear that this is not what I want.

Another thing she just comes over to the house whenever she wants without telling me......I asked her nicely to let me know when she had planned on stopping by but she hasn't yet and yesterday....she just stopped by while i was at work to visit with our daughter, who is sick, and left a mess in the kitchen. Normally I would have gotten home before she left the house but I worked late and she had left by the time I got home.

Should I ask her again to let me know when she plans on stopping by? How should I handle this?

Also, how should I handle the insurance on her vehicle....I plan on dropping it in April but how should I tell her?

any thoughts? on my previous posts...anyone?

Mel, should I think about going into Plan B or try to continue a long distance Plan A.....

The last communication I've had with WW have been texts and they have been basically me apologizing for the angry text about Easter weekend (text posted earlier in this thread).

Thanks to all

No one is writing to you because you don't listen. You keep making things worse. And I'm seriously questioning the amount of self respect you have.

STOP LETTING HER WALK ALL OVER YOU.

That's all the advice you'll get for now. Let me know if you decide to take it and we can talk.

Thambi,

I'm glad I have the advice police on my thread now....:)

I do understand that when she makes contact I need to control myself better but how is she walking all over me? Are you making that statement because of her coming over when she pleases? I thought BS was supposed to make the home a warm and inviting place while in Plan A. I do need to make sure (in a polite way) that she informs me when she plans on stopping by.....again.

Also, if you can be more specific in regards to my self respect and if it makes sense, I will aknowlege it.

One other thing, this is the first response you've made to my post and how can you possibly expect me to take your advice when you are so negative and judgemental.

I wouldn't tell her OR do it until the SA is signed, sealed and delivered. Is insurance covered in the SA?

Wats,

I haven't read 100% of your thread, but enough to know that one of the reasons you are struggling is that you don't actually have a plan. A plan is something you can execute, one step at a time. It allows for minor corrections along the way, but unless you know what your next step is going to be, you have to stop after doing everything and wait until you figure out what to do next.

Plan A is simply this:

1)Meet your wife's ENs as much as she allows in order to increase your balance in her LB$
2)Identify Love Busters in yourself, especially AOs and DJs in order to avoid reducing your balance in her LB$
3)Put pressure on the affair to try to cause its demise by exposing the affair to anyone who might be of influence on either of the two involved. This includes your wife's friends, family, etc as well as the friends and family of the OM. It also includes not doing anything that will enable the affair to continue, such as, paying for her to have a place to live, a car to drive, a baby sitter to watch the kids so she can meet up with OM...
4)When you do 1 and 2, expect to see NOTHING in the way of progress or positive reaction from your wife that can be measured and just know that it is happening.
5)When you do 3, know that it will cause a reaction the likes of which you can't even imagine. She is an addict and her drug is OM. In her mind it has nothing at all to do with sex or any of the things that you are thinking. To her it simply about how he makes her feel. When you try to cut off her drug, she will react like any junkie who is in need of a fix. It ain't pretty.
6)Learn to glean little bits of knowledge from her fog babble while letting the majority of it simply vanish into the air it is made up of. A WS will stuff a skin of truth with a mountain of lies and expect you to buy it all. Accept the truth, which you will be able to identify, because you will know it to be true as well. If she says you ignored her...you probably did, but you already really knew that, right? But you don't have to buy into what follows as to all the years she has been unhappy, never really loved you, married for the wrong reasons, has wanted to leave you for a long time...that is all just bovine excrement.

Once you have snooped, found out all that you can about OM, exposed to his family, exposed to her family and friends,(a pastor at church, both his and hers would be great if it applies) and have weathered the storm that follows, you really only have three things you need to do in order to execute Plan A properly.

1)Meet her ENs
2)Avoid Love Busters
3)Have no expectations

It will be her not reacting the way you had hoped that will kill you in the long run. It will be you expecting her to react a certain way and not doing it that will leave you feeling helpless and impotent.

So you meet her ENs, avoid Love Busters and expect nothing in return.

Do this for about 3 months, with as few slip ups in the LB department as you can manage (your real goal is to get rid of all Love Busters) and if the affair still continues, then be ready (as in have a letter written, an intermediary lined up, an LSA ready to go into place...) and go into Plan B.

And when you get into Plan B, you must remember that it will not be in order to change her that you do it, but for you and you alone (and your kids as well) since it will simply be removing the drama from your life so that you can live a life with a bit of peace while you wait for the affair to implode, which statistically happens within two years. If after two years of Plan B she is still with him, you move to Plan D and get on with your life.

You do not have to react to everything she does.

You cannot reach her by logic, reason or pleading to her sense of history, faith, memories of your life together or any magic bullet that will turn it all around. It just won't happen that way.

Show her by your actions that you are willing to make changes to yourself in order to meet her ENs and avoid LBs. No words, only actions.

You struggle because you ask for advice, then do something completely different, get results you didn't expect, and your hopes are destroyed. Then you ask, "What now?" and are given advice, which you don't follow, but instead do something else again. Even if you follow the advice, you try to add to it or do something beyond what was advised and get it thrown back in your face. Until you can put together a specific plan and execute it day after day whether she is doing anything you want her to or not, you are not doing Plan A at all.

My advice to you, which you have not shown a tendency to follow when given, is to call the coaching center to talk to Steve or Jennifer. Either of them can give you more useful and custom tailored advice in 45 minutes than you can glean from this board in a week.

Your marriage didn't get to this place in a week or two and nothing you can do can get it to where it needs to be in a that time either. Give a real Plan A three months, evaluate how you feel and if you can go three more do it. But be ready to go into a very dark Plan B if the affair escalates or continues beyond a set date. You can't fix her and you can't change her. All you can fix and change is yourself. Begin there and have some success and she might see it in time, before it's too late. If you keep trying to fix her and the marriage instead of trying to save the marriage first, you will end up without her and the marriage.

Kill the affair first...

Salvage your marriage second...

Fix your marriage third...

If try to do the third first, you will fail to do the first and second.

You have three tools to use:
1)Meet her ENs
2)Kill LBs
3)Have no expectations

What you do with these three will determine your likelihood of success. And even using them perfectly does not mean you will succeed. You must out affair her affair partner. You must expect nothing in return from her. You must be strong, decisive and know what to do so that you can do it when you get the chance. And if you ask for advice, either follow it or ignore it, but as long as you keep trying to change it into what it is not, you will be looking for legal advice before long.

Read these two threads by TMTS:

TMTS Struggling

TMTS Learns, Grows and Succeeds


The second is longer than the first, but will show you what a roller coaster this is and might just save you the time of having to start from scratch.

Call Steve or Jennifer. That is the best advice you could follow.

Mark

Mark, thank for the response.

What makes this so hard for me is that WW has moved out and it seems there is nothing I can do to meet any of her needs. I did get angry Easter Sunday and sent that text to her which was full of DJs.

I have exposed to friends and family as suggested early in my thread and for the most part I have been kind and polite when we talk since she has moved out. Before she left there was a lot of begging and pleading.

Do you feel I should wait for her to make contact with me, as ML suggested or should I invite her to do things with me as Tyk suggested? She has been the one to initiate contact these last few times but it has been for child matters and SA talk

And to answer Princess and cover the SA stuff; WW has written SA and the insurance statement reads I will cover health and auto insurance for her until D if it comes to that. My lawyer and I haven't gone over it together yet but the SA, as written, also gives me everything with the exception of the van that she drives now. I haven't signed anything yet.

I re-read your post, Mark and it will be, as you stated, by my actions not words that I will be able to meet her ENs. I have already begun this step by selling the car I bought against her will, taking care of the children....cooking, cleaning, washing clothes for us and basically taking care of the homefront.

Thank you and I will contact Steve or Jennifer.

You mean there isn't anything you can do to make her change her mind, right?

My point was that you can only change what you have control over and that is you. You're changes will make a difference to her in the long run.

There is an analogy, told by Steve Harley that I have repeated often around here. I refer to it as Rocks in a River.

You arrive at a swollen stream, at or very near flood stage. You need to reach the other side, but there are no bridges, boats of ferries near by. You pick up a large rock and throw it into the river and watch as it vanishes beneath the waves. You throw another behind it and again it disappears without a trace. Another follows and also is engulfed by the flood and on the surface it seems that the rocks have been swept away by the raging current.

But when you examine it rationally, you realize that the rocks can't really be disappearing. This isn't magic water, just water. Your rocks must be making a pile under the surface, but you can't see them yet.

You throw more rocks, 499 of them in all and still there is no sign of anything being different. But as you throw the 500th rock into the same place, the very tip of it protrudes through the waves and you can finally see the result of your hard work. Now you have a beginning and a way to build a bridge that can get you to the other side.

The changes you make to yourself are those rocks. You might not see them having any effect, but you need to keep throwing because they aren't vanishing into oblivion like you suppose, but are actually accumulating beneath the surface and one day, given enough strength to continue to that point, you will add but one more action that will show immediate results and when that happens, you will have the hope to continue.

But if you give up, or take away all the deposits you have made into her LB$, the pile is wiped out and you have to start all over.

When I worked in the power plants many years ago, we had a saying...It only takes one aweshit to wipe out ten thousand attaboyz.

ANY love busters on your part deplete her already overdrawn LB$. You must make deposits at every turn, with every opportunity and in any way you can conjure up. At the same time, you must completely eliminate the overhead of discussing the relationship and marriage and make no withdrawals of any kind. If you can last long enough, your balance will reach a point that she will begin to like you and with that she will allow you to meet additional ENs. With enough deposits your balance will exceed the romantic threshold and she will start to have feelings of love for you once more. This is not magic, it is maybe science and certainly requires learning the art of doing small things that add up to much while not doing anything that will make it all blow away.

Have you read my entire musings thread? Some of the links to other posts don't work right now, but the ones to other resources on this site and others still do. But even if you don't read it all, at least check out the early posts about Plan A and B. You really need to get a handle on what this stuff is all about or you will have no marriage left to save.

Just trust me on this and work hard at following the advice these folks are giving you.

At this point, I would give your wife a few days before I contacted her. But the reason is because you need the break to get your poop grouped before you show her the new you. That is what you need to do right now; reinvent yourself as the caring, compassionate, sharing, loving, strong, confident husband of her dreams. That is who can win her back, not some pathetic, whiny, pleading and crying complainer.

Have you looked through TMTS's threads yet. He was right where you are when he arrived and today he is a regular on the recovery forum. I can't promise that you will make there as fast as he did or that you even make there with your wife, but you can live through this and come out the other side a better man and husband, even if it ends up being for your next wife. I know that isn't your intention right now, and I am not suggesting it as an option either, but you need to be certain that you have left nothing undone that can be done and feeling lost, hopeless and helpless is only going to make things worse.

On my musings thread you commented on my bible skills. I am but a broken down old Sunday school teacher. The real message is not in the delivery but in the deliverance...

Since you began the subject, I assume you believe in the bible and the God who produced it over many generations. I am also a believer in Jesus as the Christ, the sacrifice once for all that God Himself supplied for the forgiveness of sins.

Jeremiah 29:11 I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans to prosper and not to harm you; plans to give you hope and a future.

Joshua 1:5 As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you or forsake you. Then he adds, "Be strong and courageous" which is repeated several times in the next few verses. One thing I have learned is that when God repeats Himself, it is because He wants to make certain that we get what He is saying.

Psalm 55:4&5 My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death assail me. Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me. Verses 16 - 18 But I call to God, and the Lord saves me. Evening, morning and noon I cry out in my distress, and He hears my voice. He ransoms me unharmed from the battle waged against me, even though many oppose me.

If you have a bible handy, read Psalm 102:1 -12

Thanks, Mark.

I do need to get smacked a round a bit sometimes and I do appreciate the responses. I do need to re-focus and get into a solid Plan A and that is what I intend to do.

WW called me Saturday and I missed the call. I called her back a few minutes later and she wanted to know if I had gone over the SA with my lawyer. I told her we had scheduled an appointment this week and politely ended the conversation after some small talk. No, I repeat..no relationship talk at all and I was the one who ended the conversation.

Hello everyone.

I'm still here and I've been trying my best to stick with a good Plan A. I've been concentrating on making changes on me and keeping myself busy with projects around the house. I'm actually getting a lot done and with my son's help I've remodeled the hallway bathroom and I'm nearing the completion of re-mortgaging my house in just my name. I've sold the car, which will save me roughly $500 a month and with the re-mortgage, I will be saving an additional $200 a month.

I haven't been contacting my WW and if we do speak, when she makes contact, I've been kind and caring. I did get pulled into some relationship talk on the 12th of April and I remained calm and in control. She commenced to tell me things that I had said in the past that hurt her. The things I said were not terrible or anything that would end a marriage and they were said during confrontations in which she said some hurtful things also but I didn't bring that up and I told her that I was sorry and hoped she could forgive me.

Just yesterday she texted me and asked where I was at regarding the SA. I texted and told her I had an appointment with my lawyer on the 28th of this month. She replied with anger 'What! You had yet another appointment last week!' (My lawyer had to cancel last week) I replied, 'Best I could do. lawyer didn't show. Re-scheduled.' WW replied, 'Whatever. Put it off all you want. Doesn't change anything.' I replied, 'Okay.' No response after that. I wasn't going to be drug into an arguement nor was I about to apologize or beg and plead.

How do you think I handled things.....should I make contact or just wait, as I have been, for her to contact me?

trying to keep this close to top for any responders

Thanks

Hi everyone,

I've been doing pretty good. I did ask WW if she wanted to go to the movies a couple of weekends ago with me and the children. She declined and I just said okay.

This past weekend my younger sister graduated from college and WW was invited to the graduation ceremony. WW showed up and she looked very very thin and she wasn't feeling well. Our children sat with me and we didn't even know WW was at the graduation until it was nearly over. I had bought tickets to eat lunch with my younger sister and family on the college campus after the ceremony was over. I had tickets for me and my three children but my oldest daughter didn't stay. I offered WW the ticket for the luncheon and she accepted it. She looked as though she was going to cry a couple of times when I looked at her. We spoke very little but I was kind and WW actually stayed with my family after I left with my middle daughter to go home. I was being very kind to her and everytime I spoke to her she seemed to snap back at me. Also, when we were standing around I slowly moved closer to her and our middle daughter and it was just WW me and our daughter standing together. We spoke briefly and WW quickly moved away and went into a nearby building where my younger sister had gone to use the restroom leaving me and our daughter. WW seems uncomfortable to even be near me for a short period of time. I was fine and laughed and joked with family and friends. She struggled.

Yesterday, May 11th was WW's birthday and Mothers day. I did send her a text saying happy birthday and happy mothers day and I hoped she felt better. No response.

Just checking in....I'm making it one day at a time. Will soon deliver my Plan B letter. My plan is to deliver it by the end of June if things don't change.