And MB has PLANS that if followed WILL restore romantic love...That is why you MUST begin building it by spending AT LEAST 15 hours per week together which includes recreational companionship, intimate conversation, affection and sexual fulfillment...Talking about the affair is NOT included in those 15 hours...I'm not saying that you don't need to do that, you do...BUT, realize that doing that depletes both of your Lovebanks and you MUST do the other to fill them up...Make Sense?
Simple, but not easy, I know...

Is it really details that you want Try, or do you want her to admit that she was indeed hung up on this guy? I think you know the answer to that, but just want her to be honest with you about it...Because it doesn't ring true for her to tell you that he wasn't "all that" now, does it? It will be a hard fact for her to come to grips with too Try...No one likes who they were as a wayward...Many BSs don't want to know and many FWSs don't want to admit that the feelings felt in an affair are REAL FEELINGS...They just don't exist in a real life setting-but you do feel them-that's harsh...It took me a very long time to get that...

Take Care Try...

Mrs. W

As always MrsW your insight is right on. I think that is part of ILMH truly being honest with herself most importantly and with me.

Beyond that, I still feel as if she's not being completely open with me. Maybe that's just my last year of life with her taking over my rationality, but it sure feels like there's something else there.

I have told her not to "protect" me by leaving anything out. I'm not sure if she's there yet.

My sense is that if she truly opens herself up to me, to allow meticulous scrutiny, that it would be quite liberating for her. She has always internalized things and my belief is that "her way" of handling things has proven to be much less than ineffective. When I tell her that she can be a better person, that I support her in that pursuit, part of that I believe is letting go of her habitual way of dealing with things and developing a more open and insightful way. I believe I can help her with this, and I am more than willing. She has to initiate however by sharing.

I always kept my inner most feelings to myself prior to falling in love with ILMH. Once I realized how much she cared for me and how much I loved and trusted her, it was easy to share these previously unshared thoughts and feelings. Boy, can I tell you how liberating it was to express my fears and vulnerabilities to someone who really cared. It made me feel for the first time that I WAS ok.

I want her to experience that too. She has an opportunity to turn her life around. I know she is strong enough to do it. I simply hope she wants it too and is willing to do the work necessary to achieve it.

I have trouble looking her in the eye sometimes because I know she sees my hurt and dissapointment in her. She can resolve this if she is open to moving beyond her current comfort level. I've told her for years, and truly belived that she saved my life. That we were meant to be together.

Sadly I am left to question that now. Through her actions over this last year she has destroyed my (our) life. Our only hope now is that she can become a better person than she was even before this transgression, and that I can become better too. That we can do this together, and rebuild a better city on the scorched barren grounds where our once beautiful utopia stood.

I thank you and all the other posters from the bottom of my heart for offering your help

TTH,

You've been here 6 months now. You've studied and learned the basic MB concepts. Now it's time to implement them...

Yep, recovery requires dealing with things like emotions, honesty, past lies and all of that stuff and every bit of it rips you apart...both of you...

But I said before and Mrs W just said it again, if you will DO what Dr Harley teaches, what he has spent so many books rewriting about so that additional folks can grasp it's simplicity, you WILL feel better. Your love for your wife WILL return and hers for you. The respect, the trust, the loss of the pain will all take longer, but it will be by rebuilding your love for each other that you will save it or break it.

You know her ENs by now...Meet them. She knows yours, she needs to meet them. You can tell when you are about to let loose with a DJ or AO and can stop yourself. She can maybe do the same. Those are the things you both need to keep doing MORE of, not discussing the affair.

When was the last day you went the whole dya without discussing the affair once? When did you last sit down and hold her close while you just watched some mindless drivel on TV? When was the last time you went for a walk in the park and just talked about the trees and flowers instead of "recovery" stuff.

The WORK of recovery is in three parts.

1) Your wife must find a way for you to feel safe with her once more. She must earn your trust so that you can trust her again.

2) You must learn to deal with the anger and resentment that comes from being betrayed. She can't undo what she did, you must find a way to deal with it and get past it. There are things she can do to help you, but you are the one who has to find a way to forgive her. If you don't, you are headed for divorce.

3) You must build your love for each other back up. I'm not talking here about that "commitment" level where you both decide that you will stick it out no matter what happens, but the feeling of wanting to be together, spend your lives together, can't wait to get home to see each other kind of love that actually fuels an affair. But it is also what brought you together in the first place. It is what made you want to get married. It was what fueled your relationship in the beginning.

It is what can save your marriage now...

Schedule 15 hours per week to do something fun. It doesn't have to be a weekend alone in a motel or a trip to the Canary Islands for a week, just a walk in the park or an afternoon at the mall window shopping. Or take a trip to Menards and dream together about that kitchen remodel that you once thought would make one of you happy...Or just sit and watch TV for a couple of hours with nobody else in the room.

Don't talk about the affair. Don't discuss the relationship. Don't plan what you can do to discover more details or why she had a failure in her ethics that allowed the affair to happen.

All that stuff needs to happen, but unless you do the former, the latter will not mattter because you will no longer be in love with each other.

This is EXACTLY what makes Dr Harley's methods of recovery different than others. He wants you to be in love with each other...passionately, totally, excitedly, hopelessly in love.

The foundation of your marriage is love. That is dangerously damaged right now. You have to fix the foundation or the rest of the house will fall down. You can paint it, remodel it, completely redo the landscaping, buy all new appliances and if the foundation is lacking it will all be for naught.

Fix the foundation first!

If you do, you will find three things will happen.

* You will be able to get quicker answers to your questions because she will feel more like being totally honest with you and you will be more willing to let her answer in her time as she is able instead of trying to force answers she herself might be struggling with.

* You will find that many of the things you have running through your head that you can hardly grasp let alone explain, will begin to slow down, even stop long enough to identify the REAL issues rather than the symptoms. Much of what are right now huge issues will vanish as if made of smoke.

* You will both be able to find comfort in each other when you are down about the whole thing. You will once more become each other's best friend.

Right now, you discuss the affair, anger ensues, resentment builds and you walk away more frustrated than before you began...How's that workin' for ya?

Take a trip without once discussing the affair.
Spend a weekend doing something for fun with no discussions of infidelity or lies or deception or any of this other stuff.
Make a date to go out...dinner or something you both would enjoy...maybe a concert or a comedy club...something you would do if you were trying to win her hand in the beginning when you first met. You go wash the car or something and let her get ready, then go pick her up and take her out.

And whatever you do...

Don't talk about the affair at all during the entire night!

Trust me, in the morning, you'll both feel better...or be too tired to function...one or the other...

Take a break sometimes...

Just so you know...You will have really bad days around six months post D-day and again about the one year mark. They pass...if you are having fun and rebuilding your love...

Mark

Mark.....

Another AMAZING post....you should copy it and put it in your TROUBLESHOOTING MANUAL.....I myself will have to read and re-read and re-read this....good stuff...

TTT....

You said something above about you feel like she is not being honest with herself.....NOW that is exactly how I feel and where we are at....but I am finding that I (and probably you too) need to give this some time....

Hang in there...

not2fun

That is also exactly how I feel. We are now precisely 4 months after D-Day and, even as close as yesterday, I still dread coming home and hearing something else. In my case, nothing knew has been given for almost 2 months now, but I still get that gut-wrenching feeling every once in a while that she is going to turn to me and drop another bomb by "fixing" one of her lies.

I don't know what to do about that, but I will read this thread in anticipation of someone to tell us a) how to help that feeling, and b) when it finally goes away. Right now, I find it hard to give my total love to FWW since I am flinching every time she looks like she wants to say something.

Mark et al,

Thanks so much for your support.

I don't mean to imply that ILMH and I are only dredging up A stuff without spending fun time together. My posts really reflect my thoughts and concerns.

ILMH and I do spend time NOT talking relationship and just having fun. We do more and more of that as we move on together. In fact tonight is our cooking night together. Very romantic, fun, and a great way to just gbe together doing something we both enjoy.

Also, we have actually scheduled 1 hour twice weekly to discuss A issues so that we have a time to address the work part of recovery while not allowing it to monopolize our entire time together. It is seeming to work quite well.

We had a really productive (though long) talk last night where I stressed the importance of increasing the level of openness and honesty, and she shared more of their sexual activity. Turns out she was having trouble telling me more because she was so embarrased.

I was struggling with imagining what/ how they did it. The reality is that he was really bad at it and even at the time she thought it was "disgusting" and in fact she says she pushed him off of her one of the three times because it was that bad.

Can I say it is a real relief to know this. Here I was agonizing over what they did when the reality is that she truly did not even enjoy it. I can tell from the look in her eyes that she is being truthful about this. Just as I can tell when she's not.

Needless to say we are both feeling much better this morning. Me because the reality is much less troubling than what I imagined, and her because she's realizing she can be more open with me, and she knows I feel better.

Pulling in the same direction is so much easier...

Mark,

I laughed out load with your "How's that workin' for ya?" It's so simple yet, so poignant. When we are caught up in the emotions of recovery, it is easy to forget to look at what we are doing as a choice...but it is. We choose how we react, even if it doesn't feel like it sometimes.

I was stuck where you are TTH, and I got to the point where Mark's question came to mind. I realized that unless I changed how I was approaching this, we would continue to get the same outcome.

It's hard, but try to put the A in the past and really FOCUS on your M NOW...build it, nurture it, grow it. Have faith that the problems of the A will work themselves out if you work on the relationship of your M and apply the MB principles. It seems counterintuitive to "ignore" the A, but in a sense, that's what if feels like you do. You put it aside and say, I'm going to work on my M and if problems arise, I will address them related to our M not related to the A. The A is the past. It will not change. I must work to make the future different.

Wow...sometimes I surprise myself with my philosophy...

Thanks all for your kind thoughts and concern.

What I was sharing was really what was building up inside as I am working through my umpteenth iteration of "Stages of Grief".

As this is a forum dedicated to helping to ease the burden of those who struggle, I tend to post mainly about what I struggle with, not so much about the good stuff. I am realizing that I'm not giving an adequate description of the entirety of our relationship.
We are both committed to making this work, and are doing more and more positive things together, and are counseling regularly with SH.
I apologize for falsely giving the impression that all is bad between us.

Certainly there is a lot of work to be done and I am still reeling from this situation. BUT we are pulling in the same direction now, and each day I think we both feel closer to one another.

The advice support and ecouragement from those of you out there who have taken up our cause has and continues to help immensely.

Peace to all,
TTH & ILMH Together