Yes you do Try, you just seem to continue to want to walk past the one that can help you the MOST...Your GREATEST support system is in your VERY repentant FWW...ILMH is your strongest ALLY...You must stop treating her like she is your adversary...

Additionally, you have the incredible and professional Steve Harley to help you navigate through this...

I also know that you have a group of men that you email privately with, as Mr. W is one of them...So you DO have a place to "vent"...What you don't have is a bunch of people to tell you what sometimes in your anger you'd rather hear...Instead, you are lucky enough to have a group of men in recovered marriages helping you...Men that have walked where you currently are walking...IMO, that is a very great thing to have...


As stated above, you have Steve Harley and the men in your email group...That is much more than many have Try...You are in a position to protect ILMH from your anger...I hope you will use your resources to do so, just as I hope that she will do the same...To do otherwise would be to knowingly hinder your stated goal of recovery...


I believe you will find the best people to confide in are ones that have walked a mile in your shoes and now have what you want...A recovered marriage...Since you've chosen MB, it would be especially beneficial to you to get help from those who followed that path...and again, you have Steve Harley...

As for looking for ways to improve your situation Try, really you have to look no further than following the MB program...Have you considered doing that? Meeting needs...filling each other's lovebanks...avoiding DJs and LBs...

I keep hearing you trying to adjust the program to suit you...saying that you believe that this or that was left out by the Harleys...Wouldn't you agree that the Harleys likely know a little bit about what it takes to recover a marriage from infidelity? I'm not trying to be smart Try, I'm just begging you to stop trying to reinvent the wheel and get you to invest in the program wholeheartedly-Jump in with all fours...If you work the program, it will work for you...REALLY...



Hmmm...I'm not sure I did misunderstand you...You said:


~emphasis mine

Maybe I missed it, but where in there did you say that you wanted to recover because of your great love for ILMH? All I saw was your saying that your ONLY reason for attempting recovery is your son...

What I am telling you is that that likely HURTS ILMH very much to read...Now you may say, "Well tough, she hurt me first!" And okay, that is true, but how will hurting her now HELP your recovery? How will it help you specifically? How will it help your son?

I just remember Mr. W telling me in early recovery that even if we hadn't had our dd, he still would have wanted to recover...It meant the world to me...It HELPED our recovery...


See my answers above...

I'm glad to hear that punishing ILMH is not what is going on...


Then I would ask Steve EXACTLY what he meant by that Try...I would specifically ask him about posting openly angry or resentful posts on the forum which ILMH also reads...I'd be very interested in hearing what he has to say regarding that, and I know that others would too...It would be great if you would be willing to share what he tells you...

How long does he say that the wound needs cleaning? How exactly is that accomplished? After you have all the details, does he really advocate going over and over them? I just know that Dr. Harley does not advocate that, so I'd be surprised to hear that Steve does.


Try, MB has very specific PLANS on how to restore romantic love...How are you guys doing with those?


I'm very glad to hear you say that Try...I very much want the two of you to be helped...Recovery is a TANDEM effort...It takes the two of you pulling together as a TEAM...Become allies, not adversaries...Lay down arms...See each other as human...Empathize with each other...


I'm sorry if I've misunderstood you...I just believe that I see you thrashing around and I want to tell you to be still...to count your blessings instead tallying your hurts, if that is at all possible for you, and really in order for recovery to be achieved it must become possible...


It's not "disdain" Try...It's others flinching when we see you shooting yourself in the foot to the detriment of your stated goal...When we perceive you "wound picking"...When we know that no matter how many times you go over the affair in your head it will NEVER be a good thing...So we say, "why?", only because we know the joy that awaits you on the other side, once you stop fighting to try and make the affair "different" or "acceptable" or "changable"...to make it something other than what it was...which was ugly, horrible, painful, wrong, unjust, [insert other suitable adjectives here]...To continue to revisit it will not change it Try...If you are looking for things to HELP your recovery, then stop revisiting the affair and start working the program religiously...doing that and allowing time to work it's magic will help immensely...

I wish you both nothing but the best, and I sincerely hope that you know that...

Mrs. W

Try,

Mrs. W just gave you all of your answers in one post. Please read it a couple of times...there is so much awesome advice offered!!

I wanted to add...if you do have a very close male friend or family member that you feel would help you through the hard times-one who lives close and the you feel would really HELP you with recovery (and NOT with comisseration- ie: "ILMH better feel darn lucky you didn't kick her to the curb" and other negative input), then by all means, tell him and lean on him. But, I truly believe you have a LOT of GOOD, RECOVERED people here offering you support and who will steer you the right way through this incredibly painful, difficult journey. W2S and I are still working through this as well, Try, so I "feel ya!"

But, I agree with everything Mrs. W said about being careful about the way you express yourself here, lest you hurt or disrespect your wife, who is now (once again) your LIFE PARTNER, CONFIDANT, BEST FRIEND, ALLY, and the ONE PERSON who can truly help you heal above all others. It has been said that this time period is so hard because the person who hurt you worse than anyone ever has, now must be the person who helps you heal. But that's where the plans come into play. Work the plans...

You are going to be OK, Try...

I think everyone is making more out of what Try is saying here. First of all there is no abuse going on verbally or otherwise to me. I believe his statement about attempting to recover based on our DS is just this, that in that moment of D-day revelation DS's right to an unbroken home was what made him decide to recover. I know that I am the reason Try wants to recover. He loves me. I don't think it would work any other way. He wants our marriage to be better than it ever was and believes it can be. He wants to stay for me because our love for each other is simply too strong to waste.
Sure there is a lot of pain and anger, but I am the one that caused it and we will have to work through that.

He is coming here to get some encouragement. He needs that right now. I don't feel that he is punishing me with his anger, so please don't think that. He is trying....

I have to jump in here to clear a few things up.

First of all, I resent the implication that I am abusive to my wife. The only abuse that has taken place in our home in ten years together is that which I ENDURED from my adulterous WW for a year. She is no longer Wayward, and we are working together to recover our love and our marriage.
There have been a number of references to laying down swords, her being a "whipped puppy", me "punishing" her, abusing her, etc.

This is false, and I can not allow this misperception of the state of our marriage to continue. It is simply not true. The closest thing that I have done that could be construed as abusive is that on two occasions (in over ten years together) I threw an FU directly at her. This was the day after she confessed to having sex with RB once, when she admitted that it was actually 3 times, and that he had been to my home without my knowledge about a half a dozen times.

The second time was approximately 3 weeks later as we were going through the "timeline" of her adultery as an assignment from Steve H. I admittedly allowed myself to get really upset with her and blurted out FU again. I want to state again that these are literally the only two insults I have EVER thrown at her in OVER 10 YEARS. It was inexcusable, but I would suggest that considering the circumstances, understandable.

The following day I spoke to ILMH and apologized profusely for insulting her, and vowed to not again say anything disrespectful or insulting towards her. I have NOT since, and she agrees with this. I ask her frequently to let me know if anything I do or say is disrespectful, and she assures me that I have not since. This has not happened since 3 weeks after the most Recent D-day.

During that initial 3 week period after D-day there were a handful of times where we were discussing the "A" and in sensing selfishness and justifications from her I did get angry and raised my voice at her, but did NOT directly insult her.

I know some things that were said were hurtful, but it was the truth about her actions that was painful for her. Again, that all happened within the first 3 weeks of discovering the true nature of her actions, and has NOT happened since. I would suggest that if I didn't love ILMH as hopelessly and completely as I do, that I would NOT be that upset.

Take that for whatever it's worth.

Please do not for one more moment believe that ours is an abusive relationship. It is simply not true.

We are attempting to recover from a horrible stage in both of our lives. Let's try not to let the posts regarding that get so far out of whack...

I also want to clear something else up.

I do have anger.

In my great Showcase Showdown of grieving the loss of my innocent and pure marriage, the big spinning wheel stops on many many painful emotions. Hurt, Anger, Resentment, Despair, Hopelessness, Shame, Frustration, Sadness, Dread, Dissapointment, Weakness, Bewilderment, Grief, Frustration, Pity, Helplessness, the list goes on.

It also, albeit infrequently, lands on Love and Hope.

But I want to make clear that the lions share of anger that I have is at POSOM, and mostly at MYSELF. What I mainly feel for ILMH is Sadness and Dissapointment. Not for myself, but for her.

Her mother and her father were adulterers, and I know that that is the last thing she ever wanted to become. I KNOW this. It is part of why I grieve so much FOR her. I have an overwhelming sense of duty to protect her, and I try as I always have to do my very best at that. With one grave exception.

I will live forever with knowing that I could have prevented this if I had acted swiftly according to my gut instincts, and confronted POSOM immediately last August. I did not. I allowed my head, and wanting to do as she wanted, overule my instinct to intervene to protect her. I will live with the pain of that horrendous and unforgivable decision for all of my remaining days.

This is where my real anger lies. Not WITH her, not AT her, not ever. I DO feel resentment at her betrayal, and anger at what she did, but I DO NOT beat her up with it. I DO NOT hold it over her head. I DO NOT punish her with it. Whether you all here believe that or not, I KNOW that SHE does.

Now, what this post was SUPPOSED to be about was finding out among those recovering, how many friends/family members were confided in, and did it help. Can we stick to that?


Peace out.
TTH

TTH,

ok, I think you cleared things up in the questions I asked you yesterday....so here is my answer....

Exposure....

I exposed to my dad, my sis, my MIL, WS uncle, BA/friend of WS, my BFF, and a friend on my DS baseball team.

Was it helpful?? Sometimes yes, sometimes no. Would I do it again?? ABSOLUTELY on everyone, except the baseball mom. Have they been helpful in Recovery?? No, not really.

The thing is when you tell family members you are close to, they end up in resentment FOR you. That has been REALLY REALLY hard for us to deal with. Of course, WS and my family have had a rocky relationship since day 1. Does that mean I wouldn't tell them? No, because they were my life-preservers throughout the months of his A and crap he put me through. My family was for me.....

So, this probably doesn't help you. I can see now why exposure is a double-edged sword and why BS are warned on "how much" to expose.

Oh, and DD14 knows. She over-heard the fight on Dday 1, and eventually under the advise of her IC I eventually told her the truth (we tried to "gaslight" her if you will at first. Even I wasn't so sure what to do. Its sometimes hard to know when thrown in the lions den....finally, she and her IC let me know she didn't need to be treated like a 3 yr old and should know whats going on.). Do I regret telling her??? Yes and No. No, because she deserved to know the truth, especially when she had some of it anyway. Yes, because I hate seeing what it did to her, especially right afterwards. But, I will say it did help her in the long run......

not2fun

Thank you n2f.

Let me ask you, do you feel at all like you are living a lie with those who do not know?

Is it difficult to keep under wraps?

How do you feel in general about keeping this secret?

Thanks again. Please don't feel the need to answer if you're uncomfortable.

Peace,
TTH

The only one's who know are our 2 priests, her IC and our MC.

TTH,

Sometimes I do feel like I am living a lie, but I suppose that is because we are not fully recovered.

But then our sitch is different. My WS moved out during all of this. EVERYONE knows we were having diffuculties, just not the extent of what they were. But for a lot of those people are supportive of us trying to work on our marriage and our difficulties.

I will say as time moves on it seems less and less like a lie. Right after our confrontation day, it REALLY seemed sort of false. Now, as each day passes it seems less false and more real. I think its the "fake it till ya make it" in practice. At first it was faking, and now it is more WANTING to do it.

Is it difficult to keep it under wraps?? No, not really. Mostly because more people know in my sitch than yours.

Now, I can tell you, that there are many times NOW I wish so many people didn't know. and that the ones who did know, didn't know so many details......it has made things more difficult for us in recovery.

Keeping this a secret??? unfortunately its not such a big secret. I mean, it is to people we aren't close with, but not with ones we aren't close with.....

I don't know if that helps....

not2fun

ps...oh yeah, I forgot to add that I exposed to BOW H. Well, she beat me to it, only by one day, but she didn't have a choice because WS knew I was trying to get a hold of him (because he was following my thread on here....) and she knew she had run out of time....

BUT...I talked to him anyway. Oh, and when I found the emails to each other later on (continued contact...) I forwarded those to him....and THAT I do NOT REGRET AT ALL.....and I got some heat from WS for that because he had kicked her out, but I stood my ground, toldn WS that it was NOT my fault, only theirs.....

I told my FWW's parents, sister and aunt. I told them only because I hoped that it would have some influence in getting her to end the A. It really did not have much effect.

IMHO, this is a bit of a catch 22. I think recovery would be/have been easier had I not exposed. However, recovery is not possible without NC and NC is usually not possible without exposure.

Because of this, I would say one should expose to exactly the number of people it takes to get NC (always including OP's spouse if their is one). Once you have NC, any further exposure can only do harm.

In hindsight, I am dissappointed about how the people I exposed to reacted. This does not mean I regret doing it, just that I had hoped for more from them. I don't feel comfortable speaking with my in-laws much anymore.

Finally, on this, I do let my FWW know that while I do not plan to "expose", I also won't tolerate lying about it. This does not mean that eventually everyone will know. It just means if we are going to engage in a discussion about our marital situation with an outside party, we tell the truth, or we don't discuss it. I don't feel it is dishonest to tell someone that you are not going to talk to them about something.

Hey, Try!

OK...one thing I did want to say, and this is just my opinion...

If there is a case where ILMH made you out to be the "bad guy" during her foggy days (to her mom for example), then it is up to HER to make things right with ALL of those people. Now, I say this not knowing if it is true or not...you have not really made mention of this specifically- I was thinking more about OUR situation. ILMH has asked many times on this forum what it is that she can do to help you heal. It is a frustrating question and is hard to answer because every case is different. I know for ME, I had told my mom some stuff, very vague and victim-ish, and with the emphasis being on how BAD our M was blah, blah, blah. Also, my brother had been asking us to come visit him for a long time and was pretty upset with me because they had been in their new home for over 2 years, and we had not gone to see them. After I came here and began de-fogging, I made the decision to tell both my mom and my brother the TRUE story of what I had done, how horribly I had hurt my husband, and WHY we hadn't made an appearance in so long.

Like I said, this was not something W2S would have ever asked me to do, but for ME it was the RIGHT thing to do. Now, none of this may apply to you, but when I re-read some of this thread, it occurred to me that at least part the reason you feel unsettled in this area just MAY tie into ILMH and the way she portrayed you during her foggy time. Will it help in recovery? I don't know...I DO know that W2S was moved by the fact that I was willing show this kind of willingness to restore TRUTH to the people who were MISLEAD during that time. So, the bottom line is...if she did this with anyone, she needs to step up to the plate and make things right. Of course, she doesn't have to go into gory details or even be all that specific...but she SHOULD take FULL OWNERSHIP of the fact that the M suffered and that there were obvious difficult times, which she laid at your feet to save face.

Like I said, just IMO-- and I hope it helps!

Thank you all for the helpful posts!

FYI, I'm feeling a lot better today than yesterday.

Here's hoping for another good one tomorrow!!!

Just another thought on this and take it for what it's worth as my M is not in recovery. One unexpected benefit of exposure that I got was that it virtually shut down gossip, which can actually be worse. Because I openly told people what happened, they didn't have t sneak around my back to find out and the subsequently spread their version of the truth which, as we all know, gets "stretched" out of proportion with enough telling.

Another thing, your DS is only 3? By the time he's old enough to understand this will be old news assuming you do recover. If not, he will need to know the truth in order to understand that it's not his fault. But there's no need to tell him anything now.

This is what I was trying to convey exactly. At the time of my exposure, I didn't really understand the ramifications of it. And because of exposure, it has caused problems in R for us.......

But again, I will still do it again, because the ones we are having trouble with now, were my greatest allies and support during my WS A.

A definate catch 22......

not2fun

ps...glad to hear you are having a better day TTH. And just so you know, I am so TOTALLY ROOTING for you and ILMH....this is all very hard. I know.....

Try,
I haven't posted to you before but I have been following your and ILMW's threads. I'm glad to hear you're feeling better today.

I wanted to just chime in and tell you that I exposed to OMW and the HR dept of WW's and OM's company on d-day. They were both subsequently fired and OM has since moved many states away. That was all the exposure that was necessary to end the affair. We did expose to our children although they are much older than yours. I did, however, after finding out that my wife was pregnant w/ OM's child demand that she allow mutual exposure to our small Bible study group of 7 couples.

I did this for several reasons. First, these are our closest friends and I really needed to be able to turn to them for support. Second, I knew that my wife would need support as we faced trying to recover our marriage and deal with her unplanned pregnancy. It has worked out great for us. But, these are very close friends and I knew they would be supportive of both of us.

The support I've gotten here at MB has been great, but the support I've gotten from those friends has been invaluable. The folks here at MB have been able to help me with the specifics of recovery, but there's nothing like having a close friend that you can go to and just vent when things are bothering you. The women in the group have also been a great support to my wife as she tries so hard to recover our marriage.

To answer your question, I do think it sometimes helps recovery to expose to a close friend who can help you deal with your emotions. But, I think you need to be sure of your friend and your motives before you expose.