I'm reposting this over here in GQII since there seems to be more going on here.

To recap quickly here is what has happened so far:
Week 1:
1. Confronted WS upon hearing about and snooping to expose affair.
2. H stayed at home for two days after. Told me he loved me, but that everything is too far gone at this point to work. Says I treated him like a coworker rather than a H. Says at this point, he's changed, not the same person, feels terrible for what he's done, and would only get back with me because he feels bad for me.
3. H leaves, tells me he is going to work at biz partner's home. Hasn't come back since. This was on June 10.
4. I call H, find out he's staying with OW. Angry, I no longer can keep my promise of not telling anyone about this as he had asked me to. I proceed to expose the A to his mom, grandma, sister. Then to his biz. partner, former co-workers, and friends.
5. I change the locks and start seeking legal advice.

Week 2:
6. Few days later, H sends me an IM asking if I'm still furious. I tell him that he has been exposed to his family. He is furious. I'm glad I changed the locks should he decide to act crazy (not that he has before). I also change the bank account numbers and cancel his business credit card. I feel that our private information has been compromised since we have been victims of identity theft previously. He keeps insisting OW will not be malicious.
7. H says he can no longer show his face at family functions, how dare I expose the details (he was with a dominatrix), he might as well just start over somewhere new with a new family and friends.
8. I start seeing a new therapist and slowly begin trying to get through.
9. H talks to his mom and tells her that he has been with more than 1 woman and that he's pretty certain that he wants a D. He does not tell me this directly. We do not speak again by phone or email. She told him that he really better take some time to make sure that this is really what he wants. She also tells him that he's not banished from the family, just that nobody is approving of what he has done.
10. H talks to his mom again. Upon hearing of a family BBQ that I got invited to, he wants to know why he didn't get invited as well. Not sure how MIL answered that.

Week 3:
11. I miss my H over the weekend. Frustrated, I set up an OK Cupid account just to see what happens. I'm not planning on doing anything or meeting anyone and I mention the situation specifically in my profile. I later mention this account to my H which he thinks is justifiable.
12. I pick up the book "After the Affair". This book has been so helpful in defining the situation. I purchase the ebook version and send it to my H. He attempts to read it but had problems with file.
12. I go for STD screen and find out I also have moluscum contageosum. I tell my H. He feels terrible, but it's the best of the group to have as it goes away on it's own.
13. Today: I speak again with my H to tell him that he needs to start paying the mortgage again (we take turns and he hasn't paid in 6 months). I resent the ebook and he said he will look at it. He has not downloaded it as of yet. I mentioned that I have been out with his BF and his GF and that his BF and I discussed at great length the situation. I told him I know about how he also was "cheating" on his OW with another OW. OW does not know of the OW either. I could write to the OW and tell her there was another OW, but I think it will just get him angry with me again. I told him how his BF said that it is a lie that he wanted the OW to come to events. H's tone sounds remorseful. I tell him that I'm not sure what to think about all of this, but I believe there is a foundation with us and that it is possible to recover from this. I continue to hear same answers "I feel terrible about this", "I don't see how we can recover from this", "If I come back to you it will just be because I feel sorry for you". I tell him to look at the ebook as it addresses these statements.
14. H still hasn't downloaded the ebook. I talk with his BF at great length and his feeling is that my H never wanted the marriage or to be with me. I don't get it though. I did not make a big stink about getting married. He proposed to me. I didn't ask him to do it. We bought a house together. I just don't see it the way his BF sees it. Sure we've had our ups and downs and it has been a rocky road, but I think there is a genuine foundation there with a lot of garbage sitting on top that needs to get cleaned out.

So after giving this more thought, I have realized some things about the issues within my M that could have contributed to the demise of it. The book "After the Affair" has really helped me look at the issues of our M and what he/I thought were each other being intentionally malicious when we are just continuing to act out issues from our childhood.

So, what do I do next? Plan A or Plan B? He's not in the house but hasn't moved anything. I feel like I need to set a time limit as to how long I will wait until I proceed with divorce to see if he's willing to work on things. I am willing to work on it and he knows it, but he doesn't know what he wants. I don't know when he plans to return. As far as I know, he works at his biz. partner's house during the day and stays with OW in the evenings.

I feel like I've been in Plan A prior to knowing about the affair and my H has commented on noticing improvements. I've done a lot to make improvements and continue to do so. So I'm thinking Plan B? Should I wait a few days and write the Plan B letter? I feel like I'm in a holding pattern waiting to land.

HDL,

Just wanted to acknowledge and welcolm you to MB forums, a place most of us never thought we would be a part of.

I'm sorry to hear of your WH's behavior, but got to ask, do you really want to R with someone who seems to have such abberant sexual behavior? You've been M'd for 3 years and his first infidelity is 2 years into the M! This doesn't bode well to his commitment to you or your M.

You have said that you met in 1997, that's 11 years ago. Did your WH display any of these tendency's prior to your M, or is this all new?

I would start protecting and seperating finances, and contact an attorney about a LSA. Also, are there any exposure targets on OW's side of the equation? Parents, siblings, co workers, etc.

dont mean to alarm you, but you said:



Did you also have an HIV test? It would sound imperative to be followed up in 6 mos. with another.

Sorry for your pain. Not sure what else to advise.

All Blessings,
Jerry

This is new behavior that occurred as a result of him having a mid-life crisis and me not meeting his emotional needs or being a good spouse. I have owned up to my share in this and have realized that the things he has become were how was to him the whole time.

So I'm working on that and have improved. I also got an HIV test and it's negative. That is the only thing I got from him which if you are going to have to get something, that is the best to get because it goes away and there's nothing you need to do other than abstain.

Any more opinions on which way to go on this would be appreciated.

I wrote him an IM today asking if he would like me to pay a past-due bill on his behalf since he hasn't been here to take care of it. I also talked to him about the dog and told him that I hope he is doing well. I thought that would be a good thing to do since I think I'm still in Plan A.

Whenever I talk to my H's BF, he tells me that he thinks I'm wasting my time because my H does not want this M. I have to ask myself though is that really true? How does his BF know? Only my H knows for sure and right now he doesn't know what he wants at all.

If any of you can please check out my original post above and help me decide how to move forward, I'd greatly appreciate it.

A friend of mine says I'm being too nice. Guys like the chase. The minute I am not interested in him anymore is when he will come back. I suppose that supports Plan B theory.

Anyway, please help if you can. I'm doing everything right now to work on myself, but this is a really hard time.

Maybe you should decide if you really want him back.

HDL,

I'm sorry to say from my POV, you should immediately go to a very dark plan B.

Your WH has bsically been cheating in your M for over a year now and has shown no real remorse nor reason to change. In short, he is cake eating and getting all of his needs from OW and You.

Time to knock him off the fence he is sitting on top of. A very dark Plan B will show him exactly what he can no longer expect from you. But you must read up on everything on this site about plan B. It is a very hard thing to do and requires planning, seperating finances, and an itermdiary to filter out your WH's babbling that you don't need to hear.

You must, in the plan B letter to him, outline each and every one of your conditions for R to take place and not deviate from them. If you do, he will not take you seriously.

Sorry to say but, even Dr H states that infidelity this soon in a M, and no kids, it is usually better to divorce and move on. It is difficult enough to restore a M that has some real time invested in and children. But in your circumstance, this would seem almost imposible.

Your choice, however, but keep in mind plan B usually does not work in a M that is fataly flawed and is at best, a last ditch effort. It still may be your only hope, as long as you view it that way.

I do wish you well,

All blessings,
Jerry

He wasn't always like this. We have a foundation. When I pull back all of the layers that have been added up, for me, there is still something there.

Perhaps everyone else is seeing it differently though?

It's just so confusing and unsettling.

HDL,

Are you sure there weren't always varying degrees of his acting out? You met him on the internet so he was not a rookie. Is it possible he was just better at hiding it from you? It doesn't seem feasible that he would go from being a good H to escalating to a dominatrix overnight.

I'm so sorry that you are going through this. Addicts don't make sudden changes. Are you willing to be in this cesspool of addiction relapses the rest of your life??

Please consider taking care of yourself. Perhaps doing a Plan B so that you can reserve some of the love that you have left for him while you focus on digging deep within yourself to find out why you would think that you deserve this kind of treatment?

The MySpace, the games online....it's all part of the addiction. He probably has been at this for quite some time and he will just continue to take it to the next level and when that doesn't give him the "fix" that he needs, he will search for more. The fact that you have an STD is a BIG RED FLAG that you are in DANGER!!

Maybe you can attend some Alanon meetings and get support on realizing that this addiction has nothing to do with you.

WHY?

You need to stop enabling this creature. And for Pete's sake, don't have sex with him anymore!! THIS time you didn't get anything "that bad" as an STD, but what about next time? This is not something you want to take a chance with, especially these days when antibiotics aren't as powerful because of overuse and that's if you happen to get something that can be treated with antibiotics.

You have been doing Plan A for how long? It's time for you to do a dark Plan B, IMO.

Thank You DM and OnlyUcan,

I was just about to put a call out to someone who has done a plan B. I myself, never had to do one. Also, HDL needs a woman to come along side of her to help her thru her ordeal.

HDL, I understand your thinking about the foundation of your R with your WH, but peeling back layers is like peeling back the layers of an onion. Sometimes it makes you cry!

Your WH's unfaithfulness blew the foundation of your M into tiny pieces. You will not be able to reconstruct this without first repairing the foundation. If your WH isn't up to this, there will be no R from this. And, you cannot do this alone!!

After infidelity, it takes two very strong people, working side by side to put Dr H's plans into effect. One person cannot do all the lifting. IMHO, that it what you are attempting to do.
You are not Superwomen.

Please listen to others now, who have been where you are, done that, and have the TShirt.

You need to get completely away from the drama of your WH's adultry.

You need to become a whole person of your own again, just as you were before you met your WH.

All Blessings,
Jerry

HDL,

Here is something I just clipped out from someone else's thread.

I hope he will not be offended, but is from Dr Harley himself and may make a lot more sence to you:



Dimply juxtipose(sp) the genders here and you may see yourself in the mirror.

All blessings,
Jerry

Just to clarify a few things:
1. I haven't had sex with my H since December.
2. When my H and I met on the Internet - was at a time when nobody met on the internet. It was a different environment then. We didn't even tell anybody the truth of how we met for a few years.
3. I felt that contacting him and paying his bill was being helpful and considerate (avoiding LB). I'm not being defensive and actually found it insightful that this action was enabling.

Regardless of any of this though, the writing is on the wall but it is just too painful for me to read. I'm depressed. I'm on antidepressants, am seeing a therapist, have been doing things to get out of the house and keep occupied, but every now and then it just hits me and it hurts. I know this is not about me. But it still hurts regardless. Some days are good and some days are bad. Today is more of a bad day.

All the therapy, books, etc in the world can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped.

I know I need to let go - but to actually do it is very hard. Especially since we've been married in 2005. It's rather recent in the bigger picture of how long we've been together. He proposed to me. He obviously wanted it or he wouldn't have done it. Maybe he did it because he thought that is what he should do. I don't know.

I'm not feeling sorry for myself, I just can't help it if I feel down in the dumps. I need to come up with a plan for myself (outside of divorce) but I just don't know what I want to do next or where I want to go. I don't want to move back home to my home state - it would only make me more depressed. I work for myself and just signed a few major contracts with big clients. I don't think that the one would care if I moved, but they like me to come in for meetings. I'm established here professionally.

I'm angry that the selfish behavior I've been dealing with has touched all aspects of my life and is going to impact them in some way. It's not fair. I know, life isn't fair, etc etc.

Today I am feeling sad and depressed.

So I'm writing today because I need to vent. I'm now on Plan D. I'm very depressed. It is a beautiful day here and I've spent half of it crying and feeling miserable. I know it's not me, etc. etc. etc. But the bottom line is that I feel bad in a lot of ways. Upset, depressed, undesirable, deceived, etc.

My husband and I take turns paying our mortgage. From January to present, I've paid the mortgage for the entire time. He keeps letting it get taken out of my business account which is a no-no to begin with. I've asked him to stop, but he "forgets." Today I called him and told him that it got taken out once again. I had asked him to pay the mortgage for the next 6 months to make up for the fact that I paid the first half. He said "I shouldn't have to pay when I'm not living there." Uh.... hello? His name is on the title! So let me understand this correctly... if I had my own mortgage and decided to live in Florida for three months or whatever, then I shouldn't have to cut a check to my mortgage company because I've not been living in the house. HELLO???

He said he wants to meet with me on Sunday to discuss divorce options. After I got off the phone with him, I called my lawyer and told her I'm ready to retain her and proceed with the petition. We are both named as owners on our business which was established prior to the marriage and I have 75% ownership and he has 25% ownership. Well from what the lawyer told me, as of the date of our marriage, that didn't matter and we each had 50/50. In 2006 he started a company with a client that was working with me originally. That company is now slated to do very well. Well he thinks he's so smart, but the lawyer also told me that I'm entitled to 50% of his share in the company and she is going to write up in the petition that since I helped with the business and it's on it's way to taking off, that I should be awarded future gains from it. So we'll see what happens.

All in all it's going to run me about $10k to get this divorce going. It cost us $3500 for a beautiful beach-front wedding in Florida with excellent food and so forth. This is all BS. It is not what I wanted. I married to stay married. I had 7 years in with him at the time. He wasn't like this then. Sure we had our ups and downs, but he wasn't like this then. He said to me today on the phone that we were very goal-oriented in the last few years - that we were focused on making money for our business, buying a house, getting nice cars, getting a dog, and then... he got bored. He felt he had it all and there was nothing more. He felt that he missed out on his dating years. He wants to date. Uh... huh? I don't see this as being ok. You don't marry someone and then think... hmm, ya this isn't for me, I need to get some things out of my system and date. I need to relieve my kinky desires to seek out a domanatrix and "fall in love" with her. I struggled at a time with the idea of having a kid because of the new business he was starting up and because I had feelings then that he was starting to check out. I certainly wasn't going to have a baby to keep him around. He tells me that it's my fault that I was "giving him sex once a month" which is not accurate entirely and there were times where I was on medication that diminished my sex drive. There were times when I had a sinus infection for 2 months and I didn't feel good and I told him that. He thought it was an excuse because "you just don't like sex." That's not true. I'm tired of him and his absolute thinking about what I do and don't do - what I like and don't like - how I should be and shouldn't be. I'm not perfect but I've done so much to work at meeting his needs. I just think when I hit the point, he raises the standard just a little higher, so that I'll never really be able to do it. Because he just doesn't want me to begin with.

I can tell you all that my strong hunch is that this crazy lunatic of an OW he has is freshly divorced and is planting everything in his mind. This isn't him talking.

He said to me that he doesn't want to go back with me because he feels good about his life now, he feels free, and he wants to date people. He said he doesn't see this OW as a "long term thing". How about just saying "I shouldn't have gotten married. I didn't know what I was thinking. I didn't know what I wanted at the time. I screwed up. Instead of taking the easy way out, I should have sat you down and expressed to you how much you not having sex with me and so forth was pushing me away." The problem is he says he did. He did but he never expressed it in a way that convinced me that it was serious, that I wasn't doing my part. People kid, people poke at each other, and laugh about it and make sarcastic jokes, and I'm supposed to read in between the lines and figure out that he's on the verge of wrecking our marriage? Ok, so I f'd up and deserve this then. I must not be that smart. I didn't meet his needs. But I will tell you all that for the past year and a half, I have been meeting his needs as best that I could. He doesn't like me anymore. I'm too "goal oriented". It wouldn't matter what he said. I'd always be too this or too that. Anything for him to justify his behavior as being ok and reasonable.

Something is seriously wrong in his brain. This is the hardest thing I've ever had to go through in my life. I don't think I have it in me to go through this pain ever again to want to ever marry someone again. I know you'll all have something to say about it - but right now at this moment when it's nice out and other people are living their lives, I'm sitting here with my laptop and half-functioning. Do you think he's moping around? No. He's about to go to his business partner's cottage presumably with the OW and have a wonderful fourth of july. His friends tell me to move on. His family tells me to move on and to protect myself. His sister tells me, when one door closes another door opens. This just makes me cry. Nobody can figure out why he doesn't want me. It's probably because I'm too easy. I'm in an unhealthy relationship. Maybe I'm holding on so desperately because of unfinished business from my childhood. Perhaps I'm co-dependent. Perhaps I just had this romanticized idea of how things should be once a marriage happens. Perhaps I am so dominant that I don't want him controlling me. I admit that after we got married I felt that I didn't have to work so hard to earn his attention. But this was at the time his World of Warcraft addiction kicked in. I'd give anything for those days again as opposed to this. At least now I'd play with him.

I can't go back to him at this point. His sister said to me, even if you did, what would that be like? Would you actually be happy? How could you ever trust him again and have a rewarding relationship with him? You'd always be thinking "is he lying" "what's he up to" "where is he at". My trust has been shattered. I am so paranoid I don't believe anyone anymore and what they're intentions are.

It's so frustrating at the thought of having to start your life over. I'm tired of this. It's been going on too long and it needs to stop or I will never regain my sanity.

I told him that I have nothing more to say to him and that I am refusing to meet with him on Sunday. I can't talk to him anymore at this point. He has a tone about him that is condescending. What did I do to him I deserve this tone and attitude? He cheated on me! He gave me Moluscum Contagiosum!! He flaunted this woman in my face trying to get her to get me into a three-some for god sake!! And what did I do? Bought him presents from trips, went to the sex store and bought and tried naughty things, and so forth. I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. I can't take it anymore. No more. It's got to end.

I'd love in a heartbeat to just snap my fingers and be somebody else. This pain is way too unbearable. Cheating, lying, flaunting her in my face, running away from problems instead of facing them, being drawn to a disfunctional woman because of his own unfinished business as a child.

Ugh the pain. I'm going back to sleep for a while. I needed to vent.

just a few things that you need to hear.
First:

this is a load of BS. Excuses, justifications. You didn't meet all of his emotional needs. OK. That does not justify his A. And there is no way I would agree with you that you were not being a good spouse. None of us is perfect. I would be willing to bet that he was not a perfect H. But you didn't cheat on him. You didn't throw your M out the window.
What if you had gotten breast cancer, and spent 6 months on chemo. You would not have been able to meet all of his emotional needs then. Would it be ok for him to lie, cheat, and abandon you then? How about if you got into a car accident and spent 6 months in the hospital? Ok to dump you? Leave you there to heal by yourself while he moves in with some dominatrix?

The same thing applies here.

You could have been a better W. Ok. He could have been a better H too. And that does not make it ok to cheat.
That is what marriage is all about. We will each have our ups and downs, but in M we committ to supporting each other through those times.

I am sure he was a good man before (and that good man is still inside), but I also suspect he had a porn addiction before. This acting out did not happen over night. And he admits that he wants to "date" other women. I don't think he is planning dinner and a movie dates. If he was just looking for dinner and a movie, he could have that with you.

I would like you to consider the possibilty that his likely porn addiction may have affected your SF. for about a year before my Ex left, he was asking for more and more "stuff" that I was not comfortable with. I would try to talk calmy with him - but he would get angry when I was not instantly ready to do whatever he wanted. I became more uncomfortable - and he became more demanding. so when he finally did leave, I felt guilty. I was sure that if I had just done everything he asked, he would have stayed. And that is what he told me as well. He said that I just did not know what true intimacy was.

Let me tell you right now, that as it turns out I do know what true intamcy is. But he did not (does not) have a clue. True intimacy comes from being fully committed to your partner, and sharing with them.

My ex has been through a long series of cheap, shallow relationships. the "fun times" did not last.

You are miserable right now, but this will not last. He is "jolly" right now, but that will not last. You will be happy again, and your happiness will last a long time.
But his happiness will not last. This is a short season for him.