Tully,

You are lucky to have Sugar on your thread. She is dead on with her latest post as she has been with many of her posts! You did the right thing. Don't let TA put doubt into your mind.

I haven't asked you for some time now....how is your LB? Do you feel like there is something in the tank still? I hope that there is because just like Sugar I am really praying for a good outcome for your M and that WH will wake up soon!!!

Mindshare

Perfect!!!

Perfect!!!

Perfect!!!

Perfect again!!!


Oh, lovely. Now YOU are the bad guy.

I had a similar situation with my ex... my daughter wanted to come live with me and we were in court setting up an agreeable visitation schedule... The Ex's new MIL was there and she started talking to ME about what times SHE wanted written into the agreement for HER to see my children. She's the step-grandmother (if there IS such a thing) and she was talking to ME about HER visitation?!! I know how angry you felt, Tully.

I told her that the visitation would be set up between me and the childrens' father, and that if she wanted to visit the girls she could arrange it with him, just like I arranged visits with my extended family during my time with the girls.

Not sure that would really apply in your situation... except you could possibly say "I understand and appreciate your desire to see the children. Unfortunately as their grandparent you have no visitation rights. If you want to see the children, discuss that with your son."

Then he can set up a visit through the intermediary and he can take them to his Mom's if he likes.

I do know how you felt though. I'm a very NON confrontational person and my blood was boiling that day. I get angry now just thinking about it.

You did SO AWESOMELY!! Go put another gold star by your name on the big MB chart

Agree, agree, 100% agree!!!!!!

Having to move is NOT your doing at all. It is your WH's doing. Why, oh why is it SOOOOOOO hard for people(MIL, etc.) to understand that YOU are fighting for your marriage and that your *H* has violated the sanctity of that marriage, NOT YOU!!!!!!!

I am amazed at how many people think you should just be willing to hang around and let your H do as he pleases till he can make up his mind. And that SOMEHOW *youare the bad guy because THEY are also affected by HIS BAD BEHAVIOR. Why don't they get on HIS BACK?????????? U.N.B.E.L.I.E.V.A.B.L.E.!!!!!!

Sheesh!!!

Keep up the good work Tully!!

Here's a thought (this is what I hear from my MIL): "there's just nothing you can do!" So apparently when your WH has an affair and in deep fog leaves his wife and kids, there is nothing I can do, except take it and be ok with whatever he wants for the kids sake.
I'm so sick of this mentality! I even got this from my IM (hence I am looking for another!) Hint! Hint! anyone???

Anyway, it is at times a fogged-up world. Waywards can do whatever because it makes them happy and when we remove ourselves from the dysfunction for our mental health, we are apparently the crazy ones...
I don't know, that sounds crazy to me!
BF439

SugarCane, I've tracked this thread intermittently from the start, and I've now gone back to check the whole thing and make sure I hadn't missed something. I don't think I have, although I stand to be corrected.

There seems to be a point at which a temporary retreat to Ireland - something that Tully had contemplated before MB - came to be confused with Plan B. I get the impression that Tully hoped that Plan B would bring her WH rapidly to his senses, so that the stay WOULD be a temporary one. However, as Plan B is a dangerous step to take, even according to the Harleys, I think this action needed a little more consideration before it was carried out.

Before that, the ongoing plan was to ask WH to move out, leaving the children in their own home. Tully felt that it was possible that her WH would not comply, but as far as I'm aware, she never actually reached the point of asking him to do so, and the issue of pursuing this was never raised on the thread after the Ireland plan was mooted. I think it's a great shame that it wasn't, because even if a France-based Plan B had been ineffective, it would have given more time for the children to adjust to the situation while still in a safe, familiar environment, and it would have given Tully some respite from the pain and a chance to plan properly for Plan B.

You need a plan for Plan B; the emotions distort time and judgement. 'I will take this course of action until <date>; I will assess progress by <criteria>; if progress has not been made I will <action>.' Frankly, you need it for Plan A too. Otherwise you end up in an open-ended, disempowered, agony-filled mess, or divorced within weeks of D-Day. Simply finding a way to cut off contact with the WS is not Plan B. I have a sense that Tully understands this quite well.

I'm wondering (with apologies to Tully, because it will not help her confidence) how many of the primary contributors to this thread have successfully carried out a Plan B, or indeed recovered a marriage?

Tully, now that you are where you are, I think you need to get planning. Let's say it takes a month for your H to sort his head out. How would you proceed in that case? The one-month benchmark goes by; what's your plan for, say, the next six months? If he doesn't work out what to do by then, what is your ultimate deadline? A year? Two years? I hope that this is not how it goes for you, but it doesn't benefit you to not have a plan.

The girls know the situation, but do they (especially the oldest) understand that they may be in Ireland permanently?

Now, WH2LE:

WH2LE, this seems to me to be dangerously close to the kind of rationalisation that waywards use to justify their actions. As in, 'I had to lie to you because you'd get angry and overreact; ie it's your own fault I deceived you'. Tully certainly was entitled to take a stand against her husband's non-protection of the marriage, but there were other actions she could have taken apart from moving the girls to another country without warning. WH didn't 'make' her buy plane tickets and fly out, any more than Tully 'made' him cheat with the OW. It's a subtle distinction, but important.

TA

tully said:

"I honestly don't think I could go back and cope alone with both the physical and emotional strain. I have friends in France but it's not the same as my family here."

She had the opportunity to take refuge with family and she did. The physical and emotional strain weren't going to help her be the mother her girls need. I'm sure the girls miss their father but they are in a good place. The girls would have been more affected seeing their mother stressed out to the hilt had she stayed in France.


Not a plan A or B survivor because I did not need them. However, I have recovered my M.


Agreed but the immediate reason for leaving was to get away from the stress of WH's abuse. Questions of this nature have been brought up before. It's not like she's been gone 3 months or something.


This would be premature to mention to the girls. It's only been a month and as you said what's the plan???? No need to suggest the move is permanent if tully hasn't even decided what her timeframe is.

TA,

I must say that my wording there was certainly poor. Of course tully's H did not MAKE her move. I am sorry if it appeared that I was blaming her decision on him.

My intent was to point out that IF her H had not had an affair, there would have been no need for ANY kind of a plan, let alone a move to Ireland.

No, I never had a need for Plan B so I have not successfully carried one out. Neither has Dr. Harley. He also has not experienced infidelity. He has also not experienced a recovered marriage because he had no need to. Yet, we believe he knows his stuff when it comes to these matters.

And I think I said before that I believe that IF I had ever felt forced to Plan B that my marriage would NOT have recovered. My H is an "out of sight, out of mind" guy.

Whether tully started out thinking of Ireland as a temporary retreat and then changed her mind to call it Plan B does not seem to me to be really that important(just my VHO). Only tully knows how much of the situation she could stand by staying in France. And her children are not IN a strange place. They are surrounded by people who love THEM and their mother.

In the US, people have moved to other states in order to achieve Plan B.

I think everyone who goes to Plan B hopes their WS will wake up fast and come to their senses. But the fact that Tully's H did NOT(yet) does not mean he won't or that Plan B won't be successful.

Personally, I have thought a great deal about what I would have done if I had discovered my H's affair BEFORE he ended it. I fully believe that I would NOT be married now. I could not have done Plan A for even a few days. I could not have stood knowing for CERTAIN that there was contact or sex between them while I was waiting for him to wake up. And I know that if there is ever any contact, that my marriage will be over. But that's just me.

Tully gave Plan A a good 10 weeks. Her H continued in his wayward ways. So she went to Plan B. She has had some difficulty going completely dark, but that seems paar for the course.

I believe that if tully's MIL wants to get angry at someone, she should be angry at her SON for cheating, NOT angry at tully because tully felt it necessary to move to a place where she felt support. The MIL's hurt is another one of the consequences of adultery, not of tully's poor planning.

We are just of different opinions that's all. Thank God there is room for all of us here. Hopefully, tully will pick and choose what she needs and leave the rest to the wayside.

Blessings to you. I hope Tully feels the great love and concern for her that is here.

TA,

On November 4, p25 of this thread, tully wrote

The male colleague of my WH came here this afternoon and he talked a lot of sense. HE thinks that I shouldn't talk about sharing the children as this, for him as a man, is divorce talk. He thinks that I should make it absolutely clear that the choice for WH is between his family and OW and not between her and me. He thinks I should probably go to Ireland instead - that the situation merits it and I'm starting to think the same.

There are several advantages of going to Ireland
- better emotional and practical support for me and the kids
- much, much easier to black-out on Plan B
- more of an electoshock for WH.
- he will stay in the house here and so it will be much harder for him to bring OW here than it would be for them to set up a little love-nest elsewhere. Friends would keep an eye on him and call in to see him.
- there are no legal ramifications for me especially if I don't hide where we are, tell him that he can come to see them when he likes and also send them to school there.
- finally the step for him to come and bring us back is bigger and would be more indicative of a real intention to sort things out.

This has to be fast as he'll be here soon but I also found out today that OW has sent an email to the lab she was supposed to go to to say that she will not be going before the 1st Dec at the earliest.

I'm taking a huge chance here that he will fight to get us back. Do you think he will or will he choose her? The colleague who I talked to today said that in his opinion they are so badly suited that it's impossible that the relationship could work even if all the other obstacles weren't there.

I just wanted to hear your opinions on this. I'll sleep on it and the colleague is going to ring me back tomorrow to give me his considered opinion but I wanted to hear what you all have to say. (end quote)

I see no suggestion here that the temporary retreat to Ireland that tully was indeed suggesting at the beginning of the whole thread "came to be confused with Plan B".

From about p15 of the thread, tully moved to the idea that Plan B would be necessary to protect her from her H's ongoing affair. For much of that time she worked on a plan to stay in France, but she was working on a solid Plan B and she was warned by many posters about the dangers of an incomplete Plan B followed by false recovery. She was also warned that letting her H stay at the house when seeing the children would feed his cake-eating tendencies and might prolong the affair and her trauma.

tully saw potential problems with being able to be completely dark in France. She did not want to expose herself to more effects of his affair as she knew that this would be damaging to her health and recovery.

You say,

"the issue of pursuing this (France) was never raised on the thread after the Ireland plan was mooted. I think it's a great shame that it wasn't, because even if a France-based Plan B had been ineffective, it would have given more time for the children to adjust to the situation while still in a safe, familiar environment, and it would have given Tully some respite from the pain and a chance to plan properly for Plan B".

TA, tully's moving to Ireland WAS a properly planned Plan B. The purpose and risks of Plan B were thoroughly examined, and tully chose to go to Plan B to protect herself. The fact that she went to Ireland does not make it not properly planned!

Again, you write "I get the impression that Tully hoped that Plan B would bring her WH rapidly to his senses, so that the stay WOULD be a temporary one. However, as Plan B is a dangerous step to take, even according to the Harleys, I think this action needed a little more consideration before it was carried out".

What action, TA? Plan B, or the move to Ireland? How much more consideration do you think tully should have given Plan B?

Plan B is the recommended action after Plan A has been tried and the affair is ongoing. Dr Harley recommends that women go to Plan B after 3-4 weeks, because of the risks to the emotional health. tully's Plan A was executed for about 4 weeks and her love for her H was beginning to suffer. She planned Plan B for about 3 weeks from the time she fully accepted that the affair was continuing.

The "danger" is that Plan B might throw H more securely into the arms of OW. This danger was understood by tully and the contributors to the thread from the outset. If the BS is not willing to risk this danger, she is effectively saying that her course of action will be to outlast the affair while living with her BH and watching him come and go with OW.

Some BSs might choose to do this, and it is true that most affairs burn out within two years, so the BS has a reasonable chance of outlasting the affair. However, Dr Harley devised Plan B for BSs who cannot or will not wait like this while trying to live a normal married life. Plan B is a way of waiting for the affair to die while removing the BS from the marriage and thus protecting the BS's health and love bank. However, the affair might thrive or the WS might become so angry or so distant that they never wish to return to the marriage. tully said many times that she would rather have no marriage than one in which her H felt the need for his "great love", and stayed with her and the children only from duty. She FULLY understood that he might not return to the marriage, but she was willing to take that risk.

tully was fully planned and prepared for the benefits and risks of Plan B. In that sense, Ireland was only a technical detail that would protect her in the best way. It was not itself the Plan B.

I do not accept the suggestion that we contributors, few of whom have tried Plan B and some of whom do not have successfully recovered marriages, encouraged tully into an ill-understood or ill-conceived plan.

It is AWAYS hoped that Plan B will "bring the WH rapidly to his senses", so that the separation will be a temporary one. This is no more true for tully than it is for anyone. Are you suggesting that she should not have gone to Ireland if she hoped for a short separation? I cannot see any logic in your statement, if so.

You seem to be suggesting that she should have stayed in France and risked an ineffective Plan B. You are more or less saying that an ineffective first attempt at Plan B would not have had serious consequences and might have had benefits: "even if a French-based Plan B had been ineffective, it would have given more time for the children to adjust to the situation while still in a safe, familiar environment, and it would have given Tully some respite from the pain and a chance to plan properly for Plan B".

Plan B is a risky strategy and it must not be undertaken lightly. It should NEVER be undertaken with the attitude that if it is not implemented properly the failed attempt can work as an adjustment period for a second attempt. A solid Plan B gives the BS respite from the pain of witnessing the affair STRAIGHT AWAY. There is not meant to be an ill-prepared first attempt before a well-prepared second one.

I don't know why you are suggesting that tully's children are suffering badly from having been taken to Ireland in the manner that they were. tully does not say this at all. I don't know how you think "preparing" them for the move would have been less traumatic for them. What do you think H would have said when she told him she was going to Ireland in a few days? "Not with my children, you're not" is my guess, followed by his immediate trip to a lawyer. There would then have been his manipulative conversations with the girls about how Mummy wanted to take them away and he would not let that happen. If somehow tully had succeeded in getting legal agreement to her leaving, H would have been at the house and the airport in tears, encouraging the girls to see tully as the wicked witch taking the girls from their father for no reason - the affair was not continuing according to him, remember. He would have been just as angry then as he is now for her "bring the girls into our problems" and he would have let the world know about it. How traumatic would all this have been for the children?

I don't understand why you have begun this confidence-shattering attack on tully's decision at a time when the children are settling in and getting used to their new circumstances.

tully raised the problem of other people's criticisms of her. As far as I can see, these are well-meaning friends and her MIL who have not seen the children in their environment and are listening to her H's cries of shock. Why are you supporting their well-meant misunderstandings?

Of course as Christmas approaches the children will express additional sadness at not being permanently with their father. However, this is a consequence of Plan B and separation, not of their being in Ireland per se. Do you really think they would be happier if he were allowed to see them for individuals days over the holiday period, but was not allowed to move back home and had to hand them back to the mediator after each visit? Do you think a two-hour breakfast with them on Christmas day, at his flat, after which he had to hand them back (without seeing tully), would not have invoked many tears and pleas from them for Mummy to let Daddy spend the day with them at home?

As it is, the phone call from France on Christmas morning will probably leave everyone in tears, but the above scenario in France would be just as traumatic.

It is rather unfair for you to have "tracked the thread intermittently from the start" and to have said nothing during the Plan B preparations, and to now suggest that tully has caused unnecessary hurt to her children by taking them to Ireland. It is also unfair of you to criticise her "main contributors" for supporting her all this time, always with reference to the Harley programme, when you (and others not present here) did not speak (much) when you could have done.

What do you hope to achieve by telling tully that her plan was ill-conceived NOW?

tully, please check your post.

Tully - major kudos for handling your MIL - she needed to be set back on her enabling heels!

The tough thing can be second guessing yourself at this point. But this is what I see.

You set up a Plan B that provided the greatest possible protection for you - you considered the legal ramifications and the emotional support ramifications of both locations and you recognized from the get-go that your husband is stubborn and determined in his sense of entitlement and may go the D route rather than choose the NC route of marital recovery.

I think of Mimi on this board - when she went to Plan B and really found her inner-woman of strength - and put the house up for sale. It's like she was this courageous Captain who sailed to a distant island and said "there's no going back to a mediocre marriage where my husband feels entitled to cheat on me - I'd rather have NO MARRIAGE" and she burned the boats in the harbor of that new island. No going back!

For you, you are preparing to enter that frame of mind. You've given your husband time, but Plan B is not for the wayward. It's entirely for the betrayed, to provide time and peace to recover the emotional and mental balance to choose WHAT SHE WANTS for her life. Not what's imposed on her - the dregs left over from an intruder drinking from your marital cup with your WH!

So you are doing great. Don't look back and question yourself - it's too late to do that and still do what you need to do to recover yourself.

Plan A is when you did all in your power to show yourself and your husband that you are a wonderful wife. Once you knew that for yourself, Plan B was turning control and responsibility for marital recovery over to your WH, right where it should be. But it was also taking control over your life - the part you could choose. In other words, the ball is in his court. Plan B prevents him from passing it back to you. Distance in your case makes that less likely anyway.

So don't worry about how or if he's stewing in his juices or not getting what he holds in his hands. LilSis's husband didn't get it; and other WH haven't gotten it either. But the Betrayed Spouse who successfully accomplishes a solid Plan B ALWAYS ends up happy! Keep that in mind, rather than questioning and doubting yourself!

Could you point me to that advice?

SAA (page 76 in my version) has Dr. Harley saying 'Jon agreed to a six month time limit [for Plan A], which is about average for most of the couples I counsel in this position.' It's been my understanding from other reading that he sometimes advises a slightly shorter Plan A for women, because of greater emotional distress, but that the six month period is the optimal time to make sure the 'improved' spouse has time to get the message through. Plan A is incredibly painful BECAUSE the BS is having to endure contact between WS and OP; that comes with the territory.

I know that my own H, and most other WSs I've encountered, were foggy to the point of delirium for months/years after d-day. It just doesn't clear that quickly. Tully's D-Day was, as far as I can calculate, around the end of August, beginning of September. Her husband's ravings were fairly standard for that distance out from D-day, and she was sensibly advised to establish some boundaries and muster the grit to feel entitled to enforce them. Developing those resources would itself take time. There was nothing that I can see in her situation to justify a lightning Plan A followed by a sudden Plan B. Giving Plan A time to work until about February 09 would have been, I believe, Harley's advice. This might have included a scheduled and controlled trip to Ireland to give the WH a taste of what it's like in Plan B - but with the girls knowing that they would be returning home before long. From my own experience, the timescale of this has been unnecessarily rushed.

I believe that Plan B is an absolute and utter last resort, because the separation breeds indifference and it's very hard to maintain hope over the time period involved. In six years here, I can't think of many Plan Bs that have actually worked, in terms of a genuinely recovered marriage with full and determined NC. The most dazzling success was Mimi's, but note that her Plan B was loooooong - her H moved in with the young OW for quite a while, and Mimi was forced to sell her dream home and move. Not many would have had the patience and endurance that Mimi showed in the face of apparently hopeless odds, and she fully deserves the happy marriage she has today. But then she counselled directly with the Harleys, and had their wisdom and support all the way. I hope that Tully does manage to get that appointment soon, because I do think she needs the Harley's advice right now.

If anyone can point me to other cases where Plan B has been successfully implemented - without false recoveries - I will gratefully incorporate them into my mental portfolio.

However, Tully is where she is, and that's what she's got to deal with. It's an unusual situation - Plan Bs round here usually have the wayward spouse move out and the children remain in situ with the betrayed spouse. So the issues we're discussing here haven't often arisen. Regardless of the timescale issues, the brutal fact is that the girls ARE in limbo, not knowing where they belong (especially the 10 year-old, who is old enough to understand the potential consequences of this situation), and people WILL feel less than sympathetic to Tully for a variety of reasons, and she simply has to live with that.

Taking a friend's side and vilifying their enemies is an easy thing to do. It's much harder to take a rational approach and try to see things from the point of view of people on the other side, but in the long run it's healthier for the friend. The MIL DOES seem to have crossed a line, but for all we know she actually saw the problem as being Tully's not wanting to be in France, and thought she was proposing a helpful solution. None of us were there, none of us have a transcript, but I'm sure all of us can imagine being grandmothers, and watching helplessly as our child's marriage disintegrates, and our precious grandchildren are 'kidnapped' (I wouldn't be surprised if she sees it that way), and we are an in a state of panic that we will never see them again. Cut the woman a break. SHE didn't cheat on Tully, and not one of us can be sure that our own child won't turn out to betray a marriage, despite our personal parental wonderfulness.

Tully, the fact that your girls have been able to see their father so frequently will have given them some reassurance that they're not 'losing' him, because I'm sure that they love and miss him very much. You've made it clear that you're not obstructing their access to each other, which is great. In leaving France, I believe your intention was to signal to him that you were prepared to sever the marriage permanently, and that you had support in doing that. However, I don't think he or his family understand that yet. They're still seeing this as gesture politics, because it was such a sudden and dramatic event. From how they're behaving, they think you'll 'come round' with enough wheedling and emotional pressure, and your H certainly thinks that it's a question of sucking up enough punishment to satisfy you. His letter essentially said 'OK, you've hurt me. I'm scared and I'm really, really hurting. Is this enough punishment?'. That's probably how relationships have always worked in his world.

You, on the other hand, know that this is a serious boundary issue, not some flouncy emotional blackmail. I think you need to keep hammering that into him - via the mediator, of course - until he begins to understand that commitment to the marriage means total exclusion of enemies of the marriage. Whether he fails to understand that, or gets it at some level and doesn't want to consciously acknowledge it, doesn't really matter. What he needs to get is that is the only issue which you are prepared to discuss with him, and somehow or other your mediator needs to drill that into him.

TA

MelodyLane has posted this several times about Dr. Harley's advice for how long a spouse should stay in Plan A before going into Plan B:


The good doctor says a woman is more prone to mental breakdown and advices for a shorter plan A. Not sure if this is cited from an excerpt on the website, radio transcript, or personal convo.

tst and sexymamabear come to mind of being plan B survivors and are recoving quite well from the sounds of it.


I'm confused by this. Obviously WH and MIL don't understand any of tully's actions and think she will come around with emotional pressure...that's why she is in Plan B. This seems like a circular agrument.

As for the mediator, it's not her job to pound WH. Being in Plan B is to protect tully not a way to pound WH from afar and then duck for cover. I personally do not object to some surgically executed 2x4s but that's not what Plan B is for. Again I'm lost in your comments that tully should be making WH understand what she is doing. She can't control the man's brain. If she could, she wouldn't be in Ireland.

One of my beefs with HNHN, SAA and the free materials on this website is that they have be supplemented with advice from the radio broadcasts, MB weekends and in emails to individuals with whom the Harleys have counselled. This supplementary material is not written down in one place and thus can be missed by readers, or might seem to contradict the publicly available guidance, which has not changed.

I understand that Dr Harley has revised his advice given in SAA, having seen much greater difficulties that Plan A causes for BWs. I have seen forums posts that say he has modified this advice, but I cannot just now find a post that explains why.

However, MelodyLane, who takes detailed notes from the radio broadcasts and who has been to a MB weekend, frequently restates what she wrote on 5 December on shaken’s thread “does Plan A really make a BH look like a wimp?”

That is an excellent post, Galoot! And that is exactly how Plan A is intended to be used. Of course, with female betrayed spouses, Dr Harley only recommends 3-4 weeks.

TA, are your misgivings actually about tully's move to Ireland, the unannounced way in which she moved or the implementation of any sort of Plan B at the time when that was done? You shift your arguments in response to mine.

TA -- I've got to chime in here with Black Raven (great post by the way)

I may be taking something out on you that has been bothering me lately, BUT:

The purpose of your post seems to be to raise doubts, shake confidence and generally make Tully feel bad about the choices she's made. Why? What purpose does that serve?

And secondly, why do posters jump onto a story they haven't been following to offer advice that is usually redundant or completely off base? (not meaning you in this case TA, other than the fact that you weren't caught up with her story...)

I agree completely with Lexxxy. I just don't see the point of what you are trying to do TA? Nothing good can come from the seeds of doubt that you are trying to plant?!? Tully is where she is. Decisions have been made. The posters that have been with her for a while now have supported her through this and raised pros and cons along the way. Ultimately, Tully made her decision and we have supported her through it. Then, you come along and start trying to raise doubt about her decisions? Personally, I think it's cruel. If you had something to say you should have said it at the appropriate time....before a decision was made. Not after the fact.

And, for the record, just because some of us haven't done Plan B or don't have recovered marriages it doesn't mean that we cannot grasp the MB principles and understand them. That's just plain silly. That's like saying that because I never played professional baseball that I cannot possibly understand the game or critique the players. Complete nonsense.

I can't stop you from posting to Tully but please consider what you are doing/saying. She has gotten tremendous support from people like Sugar and BR and they've been with her for quite a while now. Everybody understands that Plan B is a last resort. Plan B is to protect Tully's remaining love for WH. Her LB was draining VERY quickly. I know how that goes personally. She jumped to Plan B before it was too late. If it had been a poorly executed Plan B then I think she would already be in Plan D. We'll never know for sure but I for one believe that Tully has done a fantastic job and has shown incredible strength. She has made rational decisions based on sound logic. She is clearly a very smart woman as she considers what is posted to her and then makes her own educated decisions.

TA, if you want to help Tully moving forward from where she is at right now then great...please keep posting. If you want to be a Monday morning quaterback and second guess everything she has done up to this point then please consider not posting at all.

Mindshare

Mindshare,

tully is lucky to have you also on her thread. I know she found your explanation of how your love bank quickly drained very helpful. You have been tremendously supportive.

I initially tried to help tully by giving her my first-hand, awful experience of a drawn-out affair. I posted about what I knew, and acknowledged my errors and ignorance of some aspects of the MB programme.

You also posted from the position of experience, as I did to warn tully of what might happen to her emotional state if she did not take decisive action.

If TA had views about Plans A and B, I don't know why she did not express them at the appropriate times.

That's right, TA. I read widely through old posts to these forums, and I cannot remember having seen an international case like tully's. We do not have many, if any, precedents on which to base Plan B advice. The main contributors here tried their best to interpret Harley advice in an unusual situation.


So supporters like me are giving "easy" advice while you are giving "rational" advice? We are merely taking sides and being irrational? Is that what you meant to say, TA?


What the blazes does our own children's potential behaviour in the future have to do with anything?

TA, you first implied that tully has not shown enough concern for her children. When challenged with evidence that she showed great concern, you insulted the "main contributors" to this thread.

Please stop this. Instead of making things worse in further justificatory posts, man up and apologise. It's the right thing to do.

Well there have been lots and lots of posts here since I last posted so I'll certainly not be able to reply to everyone's points. I've been away on a road trip all day with my dad who asked me to go along for company and as he is accommodating us and has never once complained about handing over the TV remote control to the girls I couldn't exactly say no.

Just to make a general point about my situation. I really appreciate, more than you could know, all the opinions I have received here. I know that they are given from a position of knowledge, experience and kindness. However, all decisions remain mine and I am not abdicating responsibility for them to this forum. If I do make the wrong decision even if it's influenced by 'wrong' advice given on this forum then it is still 100% my decision. Your advice helps me to trust my own instincts and believe in myself. At the beginning I resisted exposure and the idea of going to Plan B because of my fear that this would destroy my M but posters here told me almost unanimously that I should do this. I followed their advice not because I couldn't make my own decision but because deep down in my gut I knew that what everyone was saying was true.

It's very hard sometimes to know if I'm getting the balance right between being firm or rigid, open-minded or a pushover, listening or doggedly doing my own thing. Sometimes when people question my choice, especially people who are in touch with WH and whom I love and care about, then I do have enormous self-doubt but mostly that doubt is in my heart but my head is solidly sure that I'm doing the right thing.

I honestly believe that a Plan B in France would not have worked and would have been harder on the children. The biggest worry my children have right now is the loss of their friends but IMO if we were in France they would be worried about the loss of their father, their family unit and their confidence in the future. On the whole, I think missing their friends is the lesser of two evils. If we do end up staying here then they will adjust - not without difficulty I admit but they will. And as for the timing, mindshare was totally right when he called up the question of my LB. I was so much in survival mode that I had forgotten about that but he was absolutely right. And even still there's no guarantee that it's not too late. But as everyone so wisely said, it's time enought to worry about that when the time comes.

Finally, I just wanted to say to TA that I do appreciate your opinion and I most certainly wouldn't want to give the impression that only views that concur with my own are welcome. It's just that I will consider them seriously and then make my mind up as best I can and right now I think that leaving when I did to come to Ireland was the right thing to do and I'm even surer of that then when I left.

Thank you all for your concern and kindness. I am hanging in here and hoping for the best but becoming more and more sure that even the worst can be managed and won't be too bad.

Hang in there, Tully! I know its incredibly hard to make sense in a senseless situation and you have to trust yourself that your are making the best possible decision you can make at any given time. Should I repeat that? You are making the best possible decision that you can make at any given time!!!! How do I know that? Because you are trying to do what's best for you and your kids and are checking in with your thoughts and feelings and that is good thing!
I am pulling for you! Take care!

BF439

You're such a sweetie, tully.

BF, thanks! I'm pulling for you too. I posted on your thread just now.

Sugar, it's you who is great. You are the one giving!