E
I realize you and I are different and that we would handle your situation differently.

But, she IS lying. Bet the house. And this OM, who you are trying to be sympathetic to and attribute DECENCY to.... he will laugh at you and he WILL consider your decency and sympathy as a weakness, a vulnerability to exploit. FOR SURE. I know you don't think so, and I am not trying to talk you into it. Just be ready.

But I want to point something out that I noticed when I REREAD your posts. In her letter to the OM, your wife alluded to the fact that she (im paraphrasing here) "loved his crusty exterior and his internal PASSION". Read that line. Over and Over. Can there be a line that DOES NOT decribe YOU? Don't you see, PASSION, EMOTION.....in the RIGHT proportion, its ATTRACTIVE. You are always looking a the situation in a reserved scholarly way. Instead of puffing out your chest and seeing the OM as he REALLY IS, a DANGER to YOUR HAPPINESS, a dishonest, (how many instances of dishonesty have you uncovered ALREADY?) nasty human being, you chill out and try to find the nice parts in him. YOUR WIFE IS ATTRACTED TO HIS PASSION. I'm guessing because you keep yours under wraps.

Look, going off the deep end, taking on challenges emotionally ALL THE TIME is not right either.....But if a man cannot get rip roaring ticked off and throw "understanding of the OM plight" out the window WHEN HIS WIFE IS CHEATING ON HIM, just when will he become passionate?

Obviously with your career and your IQ, intellect has been your weapon against the world. Its just that sometimes, sometimes, intellect gets in the way of whats right and wrong. You can always intellectualize the evil and the selfishness in people. Well, they are like this because...........and if only they didn't suffer as a child as........... it goes on and on and on.
And sometimes this lulls one into a false sense of sympathy.

E, it seems your definately a good guy. I really think your laid back personality had something to do with what your wife finds attractive in this other guy. Just think about it. If you balance your intellect with a bit of well placed ,left hook emotion, you'd be tough to beat.

I'll be rooting for ya.

Gaba,

Yeah, I'm smart enough to recognise that you are absolutely correct. My lack of displays of PASSION is exactly the reason that she went to find it in OM. Unfortunately anything that I do now to show more passion, she sees as a manipulative contrivance.

At her request, I forwarded her the letter that I sent to OM, I think that it was a bit eye-opening for her. I hope that she is starting to recognise that there is a lot more to me than the cool, calm, collected, unflappable, logical mask that I have always worn. We had a few e-mail exchanges as a result of the letter, here's an excerpt complete with typos and poor grammar (I was a bit emotional when I wrote it) from the last one that I sent...

I know that I can come across as cold and logic and unemotional. This was a carefuuly constructed facade, a defense mechanism built over many years that became a habit to protect me from my tru passion and depth. While it stood up well to the tragedy of my brothers accident and subsequent death, the agony of this affair has shown me how weak a defense mechanism it really was. It shattered and crumbled in an instant and provided no defense, no protection from the pain, leaving me totally naked and exposed for the pain to burn and rip through me and allowing past pains that were held back by the wall to come back and burn with a vengeance.

email her back and tell you've started taking boxing lessons. Just in case you'll need them. See what she says.

Any change in you right now will look contrived. The key is keeping up with the changes. Make those changes, you;ll become a better man for them, whether you get back together with your wife or not.

Hey E
how are things going ??
how is your daily family life?
how are your kids ??
jerseyboy

Hi Jersey,

Things remain tense, but thank you for asking. My wife still cries daily. I hate to see her cry and I hate to know that it is because she misses OM rather than feels bad about the A. I suppose that if she is so upset, I should take it as a sign that she hasn't seen OM for a while.

OM hasn't responded to my e-mail of last week.

She is starting to talk about seeing a counsellor which is a big step for her. I hope that she does it, I can't be pushy about it - it has to be her decision. I suppose that there is the risk that whatever counsellor she chooses may tell her to divorce and be done with it. I sincerely hope not, I think that it is unlikely that she will find a counsellor who will agree that divorce is better for the children in our situation. This may encourage her to give our marriage a chance.

I sincerely hope so

{{{eviscer8d}}} I wish it was easier on you. Someday she'll realize how much you were hurting while she was pining away.

Hi all,

Well, yesterday my wife made an appointment with a counsellor for thursday. I'm quite worried about it. I'm not sure what the counsellor will recommend.
We talked for a long time yesterday evening, in a nutshell here's my wife's thoughts.

1) She does not believe that we ever had the "truly in love" feeling that is the basis for a sustainable relationship or something that we can go back to. This is the feeling that she has for OM. - She may be right about this although I think that we were a lot closer to it than she believes.

2) She does not believe that we can ever have it because there is too much history and baggage to overcome. Prior to the affair she gave all that she had to our marriage. Now she is used up and has nothing left to give.

3) She cannot happily be married to me knowing now that something better can exist in a relationship. She does not want to turn herself numb and deny herself happiness by staying with me. She believes that such a living environment would not be good for the children.

4) She does not believe that marriage counselling can create "the truly in love" feeling. You either have it or you don't and we don't.

5) She believes that she has lived her life up to the point of the affair driven by guilt and a sense of responsibility for my happiness.

6) She is fighting a very powerful sense of guilt that is driving her to 'give in', turn herself numb and resign herself to being unhappy with me. She does not want to act out of guilt. She hopes that the counsellor will help her deal with her guilt.

7) We are in a waiting game - she is waiting for me to realise that we have no future together so that we can have an amicable divorce with the least negative impact on the children while I am waiting for her to realise that we should at the very least try to see if we have a future together.

8) All of my attention to her, affection, etc. is fake and not sustainable. I am completely neglecting my own hurts and unrealistically focusing on her.

Not sure where to go from here....

I don't know if this is right advice or not, but the first thing I thought of was to print out the info here on what a wayward spouse says. Because she's saying it, word for word. Highlight the words she has used, and highlight the info about how they rewrite your history so they feel justified. If you can find it, print out some info on how people who DO say that, and go on to reclaim their marriage, say they are thankful their spouse stood by them and waited it out, for the fog to clear.

Nothing major, she won't read pages full. Just some paragraphs. If you have to, read it out loud to her.

cats,

yeah, I don't know if showing her the WW manual is the right thing to do. My wife is almost as stubborn as I am. Showing her that she is acting predictably might strengthen her resolve to carry on waiting. This guilt thing is also a big issue. She cannot feel as though she is caving in to her guilt (and rightly so). Although, to be honest, I'm okay with any reason that gets her back to the marriage since we can then build on better reasons to stay in the marriage.

I'm not sure how to get around that.

Any suggestion eagerly considered....

Evis,

Here are some thoughts to consider.

First, what kind of counselor is she seeing? An individual counselor a marriage counselor? You want it to be one who is pro marriage?

Now to your points.

1) This sounds like a person who is in the middle of an affair. Many of us have heard the exact same words. This is not unusual.

2)Yes, you can have it. Me and my wife are proof as are many other examples you can find on this board. To get it the affair needs to end and no contact established and then hard work to recover. It is very possible.

3)And you, Evis, deserve the same and want the same. Tell her this. You want to be loved and cared for as well and you feel that the BEST scenario that can happen is that it happens with my wife. Tell her you will fight for the BEST scenario because it is possible.

4)Marriage counseling can help solve problems in the Marriage. Help identify and resolve destructive cycles in your marriage and help you reach your goals of a strong marriage.

Dr. Harley tells us that there are 3 goals in marriage: to create a fulfilling lifestyle that is fulfilling to both of you, to avoid being each others source of unhappiness, and become each others greatest source of happiness.

5)So how can this be your fault?

6) An affair is a destructive act to all.

7) If you want to fight for it, fight for it and tell her so. Put the burden on her to divorce. Don't do it for her unless you want to. Follow your plan.

8)Tell her that this is the most painful experience you have been in. All this must be for something. I will become a better person because of this. I have to for myself. Whether it be with you or someone else I am going to be the person that I have always wanted to be not the person I was.

She is worried that you will hang the affair over her forever. Also, you will need to process all the pain. Though, it likely won't all come out until you are either recovering your marriage many months from now or she leaves.

Have you read up on Plan A? Also, what is your plan for exposure? Please make progress in these 2 areas.

Well, I was thinking more along the lines of logic.

'You say we never had it good, you were never happy, etc., but you know what I found out when I was researching to see what I'm doing wrong? I found out that every time a person has an affair, physical or not, they rewrite their own history. In other words, they tell themselves that there weren't any good times. It's what their mind does to justify having feelings for someone else.' Then show the paragraph that has the exact same words she used.

If I saw the exact words that just came out of my mouth, written down who knows how long ago, by someone who never even met me, it would give me pause.

Only you know how she would react. But at least it would be showing her something that might start rolling around in her head.

TJD,

thank you for your thought...

The counsellor that she is going to see is both an IC and an MC. Almost everyone is telling my wife that she is not think clearly (except her friends who ended marriages by having affairs). She feels that all of the people who are telling her this have a vested interest in me or the children and are neither listening to her position nor understanding how she feels. This is very upsetting to her and she feels that she is thinking very clearly.

She did say that if the IC also tells her that she is not thinking clearly, then she may reconsider.

Evis,

Ask yourself what your wife values the most as it relates to you, your relationship, your history, your family, your lives, etc.

Ask yourself what your wife values the least as it relates to you. Not only now but complaints she may have in the past.

Leverage those things that she values and would lose if you divorced.

Improve yourself or minimize the effect the items she complained about.

My wife wanted "true love" just like yours. The OM bought touched her heart with romantic movies and music that was thoughtful. Things that I used to do and was very good at but with responsibility and a busy life did less and less.

So, I leveraged our history, our family, our love when we married. I became a better dad and the dad I had always talked of being by simply spending more time with our boys(I still do to this day and it is awesome). 1 month after D day I bought her the song "Remember When" by Alan Jackson as it spoke to our dreams we had when we were dating. It painted a vision of hope for the future and connected us.

Just more ideas I guess.

Cats,

I have told her that the affair itself and most of what she has done and said could have been predicted as could have most of what I have done and said.

To be honest, 6 months ago my wife and I would have had very little respect for clinical psychology, believing that it was an attempt to apply logic to emotions and that this just couldn't be done and anything that a clinical psychologist predicted would not apply to us.

While I still believe that it is a grey area of science, the examples that I have seen have made me realise that emotions can generally follow predictable patterns. This gives forums like this and books like Dr. Harley's a lot of credibility in my eyes. My wife isn't there...

This may sting a little:


You lack passion from your wife's perspective

I am a woman (last I looked)
What women want from their man is to feel desired - passionately desired

This situation begs you to do things that are uncomfortable for you (at first)

Think of 50 or so different passionate ~~~> UNCOMFORTABLY passionate things to say/do to your wife

Cover her bed in rose pedals
Write a love note on the mirror
Place one flower inside her purse

Tell her that you want to dive in her eyes and never come up for air

Nothing is off limits

whisper naughty/unexpected/shocking things in her ear

alternatives to "I love you"

I adore you
I desire you
I want to taste you
I want to climb Everest with you
I want to go so deep inside of you I get lost
I want to make love with you in a teepee

......

you get the idea

this will only be difficult at first

push yourself further than you think you can go in the passion department

Pep

And pick up and read some Harlequin novels, to see how women really view romance - whether they admit it or not.

Hi Pep....

I think that I am a lot more passionate than my wife sees, and certainly a lot more than I have expressed over the years of our marriage prior to the affair. Anyway, doing what you describe isn't really uncomfortable for me and it feels right to me. Some of your suggestions are great new ideas and I've already done (and continue to do) a number of the other things.

However, it feels fake to my wife who hasn't seen this side of me before (because I was very good at hiding it - I thought that that was what men were supposed to do). She sees expressions of love and passion as a contrived ploy merely to get her to work at our marriage. I suppose that it's a kind of Catch 22. The more I show affection, the more she feels that it is fake. BitiIf I don't, she could argue that it proves her point and it was fake.

Anyway, she's going on a trip to Boston this weekend with our neighbour who is fully aware of our situation. I'm a little nervous about that. I'm sure we will be discussed at length. Fortunately, I think that the neighbour agrees with my position although she understands how deeply in love my wife feels with OM.