Interesting - Why are you no longer bound by your word? What "authority", "rule", "law", "ideological thought" leads you to think that way?

I am not challenging you but trying to understand. The concept of not being bound to an adulterous spouse is religious in nature.

MoDaisy,

I'm hard to offend, so no worries. We made a set of promises to each other. She broke her side, so that essentially cancels the agreement. I think we all recognize that I would be justified to get a divorce.

The gray area for me is that I am pretending to be something I am not. In that context I still feel obligated to uphold my promise to stay faithful to her. My biggest problem now is that I am living an implied lie. I've never said things to her about forgiveness etc, but I act like I am a loving husband.

I think that she started being nice right around the anniversary of her breakup with the OM. I don't know the exact day but I know the month.

IMO, you DO love her....do care about her feelings...


See?


You don't start here.

You start w/ her A.

Marshmallow,

You caught me. I don't hate her. I just don't love her. I look forward to when the marriage will be over.


I understand about the A. I need to think about it. You guys say it would be safe so I need to think. Could I write it down? I'm afraid I'll tell everything once it starts coming out.

I'm taking the boys on a camping trip and leaving soon so I won't be able to check back for until Sunday. I want to thank you for your help, I have alot to digest this weekend.

One last question, for Sunday.

What percent of people can get past the affair? I really think that I can not do it, but I've never really spent time thinking about it.

6YL,

Start by sharing w/ her that you know.

And then ask her what if anything she is willing to do about it.

Stay focused. Stay in control of the conversation.

Keep it right there.

Yes, if need be write the question down.

Then state the truth, hand her the question and ask her to think about the question you've written down.

Tell her to take her time.

If she wants to take the conversation further than you want to, then simply tell her, you aren't ready to talk about it any further right now.

You set the pace.

6yl,

Wow. I do feel for you and your family.

My H is the one who had the A, but like you he was hanging on in what he perceived to be a loveless M until the kid were grown. Then he was going to D me.

I cannot tell you how angry that makes me still. Yes, I was responsible for some aspects of his unhappiness. But a lot of it was resentment he built up and fed for years, totally a work of his sense of entitlement. (Today he would tell you our 30 years together has been mostly good.)

That's just it. Feelings of love wax and wane. Your W may realize today that she owes you and want to try to make it up to you. But she has no idea what to do, and you haven't been willing to be honest with her about that! How can she hit a target she can't see?

No one wants to spend their life raising a family with a nice, conflict-avoiding spouse only to be dumped when they are nearing retirement age-- without ever having gotten the truth about what the spouse really thinks. That is cruel, abusive, and cynical on your part. Far better for you to work now to fix the problems in your M.

Yes, your W caused you great unhappiness. What have you done to get to the root of the problems of your M? What have you done to become a better husband? You share responsibility for the state of your M that led to the affair.

Your M would improve greatly with a dose of truth. Truth on your part and truth on her part.

I do think that there are many good reasons to try to restore love between you. Lots of people here, myself included, are recovering happily and see big changes in their spouses-- after having suffered really awful treatment. People in affairs are not in their right minds. They act badly and treat their loved ones badly. So if she has "come to" and wants to become the loving W you deserve, you need to do your part and become a loving H to her.

Yes, please call the coaching center here to talk. They will talk to just one party.

"I think we all recognize that I would be justified to get a divorce."

Yes, you were entitled to divorce your wife when you discovered she was committing adultery.

But you chose not to.

You have assured yourself that you are entitled to remain married but to not allow the marriage to be real or recovered from the adultery.

IMHO you are not justified in doing that to your children.
They deserve to see their fahter doing the best he possibly can to model a healthy, successful marriage for them to emulate.

You say you stayed for the children...
then why not give your marriage your best effort, for the sake of the children?

6YL,

You really need to get all this sh*t out on the table if you want to heal. She needs to be honest and own up to the affair. She needs to apologize. You need to decide if you want to move forward AFTER she confesses.

Honestly, if she won't confess, I wouldn't throw away 6 years of my life.

Why not give it a try, as long as you're resigned to stick it out until the kids move out? Why purposefully keep the M bad, and stay in withdrawal, when there's a chance you could finally get the M you want and deserve?

She may be not telling you because that is the advice a lot of people give - that it's better to keep the secret, even if it's eating you up inside, and that you're doing a favor to your spouse by protecting them and enduring the suffering and guilt yourself instead of sharing it with them.

BTW that is NOT what MB recommends. But it is what a whole lot of people (not on MB) recommend.

So she may be not telling you, in an effort to do the best she knows how to do to make things work with you.

She's not being H&O (honest and open) with you. You aren't being H&O with her either. You might as well; you've got nothing to lose, not really; and you've got everything to gain.

Ad PA = Physical Affair, in case no one else mentioned that yet. EA = Emotional Affair.

She said this to you during her affair? Around here we call that fogbabble. When the WS "rewrites" marital history and DECLARES that they have NEVER loved their spouse, blah, blah, blah.

Once the affair was over for her and she went through her own withdrawal (and depression) I bet if you had asked her then, you would have heard a different version. Instead, you've clung to what she said in the heat of her looniness.

You guys sound like you're both conflict avoiders. Make nicey, no drama, I'm okay, you're okay... when you're both (at least one of you) miserable.

Why live like that? Life is too short? Think your kids don't know? Think again.

Get this out in the open. Start a dialogue. An honest one. Go from there. MB can help... whether you recover or not.

I read it to mean that that is what he is thinking about right now because he has been just going along and hanging in there for the kids.

He was posing the statement as if this would be what he was saying to her, in other words.

Because he hasn't loved her for that long because of the affair and there are only 6 years left for the last of the brood to turn 18.

Charlotte

I dont have much time, and wont be back on the computer until Monday, but:

Here is the thing I would like to leave wtih you for now:

My sister and her H were married for about 30 years. Good times and bad. They had 2 kids.
About 8 years ago my mom died, and then my sister lost her job. She became depressed and started drinking every day.
At one point I talked to her H and said "Jim, Cathy is drinking too much, what are we going to do?"
His response was "I plan to leave her after the kids are out of the house. I can't deal with her drinking any more. But I don't want to owe child support every month. So I am waiting (about 5 years) for the kids to leave, and then I will file"

My sister died about 6 months later. No big sickness, no car accident, she just died in her sleep. Her oldest was 18, youngest was 15.

My brother in law has never frogiven himself. he was planning to D her as soon as he could. he was just going through the motions at home. He was a decent H, decent father. Provided for the family. He didn;t cheat. But he had given up on his M (to his defense - my sister was drunk a lot of the time). But when she was gone, it was too late to try to re-build their M. He is so filled with grief and guilt he has started drinking himself to death.

Your W is not a drunk. But she is still a W who has done something stupid. She may be an idiot - but she is still a woman, and still mom to your kids. ANY relationship you ever get into will be tough. Dating as an older, single father is tough, Getting married, and inviting your kids to spend half of Christmas with Mom, and half with you and step mom is tough. Any relationship will be tough. May as well make this one work.....

You loved her once, you can love her again.

I'm about to head out for camping. Thanks for all the stuff for me to think about. I'm going to spend the weekend and really try to think about if I can get past the affair or not. I'm not sure it makes alot of difference in what I do next but I want to have spent a little time thinking about it before I start opening the discussions.

I do get that I have to do something. My wife made sure to get boys out of the house early so we could have SF before the weekend away. I know she is trying hard, but can it just be too late? How do I ever think that it won't happen again?

I'll have some time to think this weekend.

You don't need to figure out if you can get past the A right now.

You've already decided you want to stick it out 6 more years. We're just asking you to give MB a try, maybe those 6 years needn't be as horrible as you think.

ETA: And you needn't decide that, without confronting your W and telling her you know about the A.

6YL:

You learned of the A 10 years ago.
You think it ended 9 years ago.
3 months ago, (F)WW started really trying to reconnect with you.

HHMMM... Maybe she found this site?

Maybe she realized that the rest of her life was going to be this way and if she stayed the same, that it was a lousy marriage?

Maybe she has her OWN 6 year plan and figures she should have fun in the meantime?

My wife? She was on the same plan. Get the kid thru high school and her job was done. She even had the plan that the divorce papers would be handed to me at the same time as my son's HS diploma.

This site destroyed that plan.

My W found it a couple of days before D-day.

I had been having an PA for 4.5 years at that point. Our M was a wreck. I believe my son didn't KNOW what a real happy home was. He was always expecting some sort of drama between his parents.

This site changed all that.

Flamingo called me and said, "you need to review this site, it can really help US." She usually only ever said "help YOU" Meaning, *I* was the broken one and *She* was ok. This was different. I could tell.

Dday happened two days later.

But WE were both different by that point.

She had learned about EN's and HNHN and what had been going wrong on her part in the M.

I was learning about the reasons for A's, how they are the same in SO many ways and that it wasn't special at all. I read the opening chapter of HNHN that they have on this website and was blown away.

Years of fog and bad ideas about what a M was, were blown away. The missing pieces of WHY we were like this, were revealed to us.

(My story is posted here..It's curtains for LG, if your interested.)

However, and this is what I really wanted to point out.

Our relationship changed. Our Relationship that our SON saw changed as well. I still remember the hurt in my 12 year old son's eye's when Flamingo told him, "Your father has a girlfriend"

Now? Three years later? Our son walks up to US in the Kitchen, and WRAPS US in a bearhug. He no longer walks around with the fear of the next "eruption". He sees two people who really DO CARE about each other. Who hold hands, snuggle on the couch, kiss, and act like teenagers sometimes. That HAS affected his world.

Your children have missed that for ten years.
Your Children will see it for the rest of thier lives. Or the next six years, THEN you drop the bomb. And then they see something that is even worse.

How can you make that choice? That is a choice that is as selfish as your wifes choice to have an affair. Especially since you say that you have lurked for awhile.

But you DID POST. You DO realize that it isn't a GOOD PLAN.

You can forgive her. You can get to a better M after this. There are many around here who have done it.

I hope you enjoyed your trip. Now its time to go to work.

LG

Who initiates the SF?

Was there a time when your WW cut you off from SF, and for how long?

If she is no longer good enough to stay married to. Then why have SF with her?

You built a barrier to protect yourself. I don't think it's too late and I bet as you continue to have SF (something that was completely missing), that barrier is going to start to thin.

You were hurt and it never got resolved. It's a natural reaction to protect yourself. And being numb is a reaction to the trauma. Just like dealing with PTSD.

Be open to the possibility that you can start over.

OnlyUCan and others,

I do not initiate SF, but I am enthusiastic. I'm still a young guy and everything still works well so I go along. I can see waht you say about a wall and I do have some fear about getting hurt. I think maybe the change is too new for me to trust right now.

I am going to ask tonight about why the change. In a nice way so I can maybe get a straight answer.

TheRoad,

My wife initiates SF daily.

Yes during the PA and for about 6 months after about 1.5 years. Up until 3 months ago maybe 2 times per month.

I'm staying married until the kids are grown.