It may well need to hurt him more before he starts to get it. That all comes with time, which is why a longer Plan B can be so beneficial. Very few A's make it to 2 years.

How are you doing today Tully? Did you work things out with WH regarding visitation at Christmas? Have you made a decision on whether to meet him for coffee or not? Do you know if he has attempted to contact SH?

Stay strong! Keep posting!

Mindshare

Hi mindshare, today is a good day. Yesterday was a bad one. It was the 20 year anniversary of our first meeting yesterday. We met at a handball match. I went along to support my flatmate who was playing in the women's final. She pointed out H while the men's final was going on and said 'watch him, that's how handball should be played' and that, as they say, was that. It's wasn't quite love at first sight, it took about 4 hours of talking after the match!

Anyway I might have mentioned that I was planning to start a small business with a friend. Well we've been doing our homework and working on a plan and now we got our first customer. We are going to provide homemade scones, muffins, brown bread and cakes on order. I enjoy doing this and it allows both of us the flexibility we need with the children. And we need the money. Until all this happened we were coping fine on WH's salary although it took a bit of management and we didn't have much left over at the end of the month. Now that WH is flying over here every weekend and booking hotels and cars, our finances are under severe pressure. We're already overdrawn and payday isn't for another week or so. And it's Christmas.

As for visitation, I agreed to his request to have them from after school on Tuesday until Christmas morning. I have no idea if he contacted SH. I forwarded the 3 emails to Steve for his info. As for meeting WH for a coffee, my sister thinks I should see him even if he hasn't spoken to Steve. Just to cover myself in the case of D. (I think she has lost all hope of R) She thinks it might not look good for me if he can say 'she took the kids and refused to talk to me'. If I do meet him I will try to make it short and to only say 'In order to reconstruct I need NC for the rest of our lives' and nothing else. What do you think?

PS I meant to say that today was the first time I spoke to WH since I left on the 6th of Nov. I was on the phone to a friend who said she would call me back as the line was bad. I hung up and then 10 seconds later the phone rang. I said, 'well? is that better for you?' and it was him. He said, 'Tully, is that you?' I said, 'yes it is, I'll pass you on to the girls' and that was it. It was strange after all this time.

Tully,

I'm so glad that today is a better day for you! Getting through anniversaries can be quite difficult!! I know those are some of the hardest times for me personally.

It's great that you are getting your business going! I'm sure that will help you to feel strong about yourself and independent (not to mention some $'s)!!! Way to go!! My daughter works for a business that specializes in selling scones also. Their business has exploded over the past year. They can barely make enough to keep up!! The local coffee shops can't get enough!

I can only offer my opinion on meeting with WH. Keep in mind that I'm no expert. I hope Neak, Sugar and others will weigh in also. I think it might be a good idea to let him see you. Notice that I said 'let him see you'. It's a privelage that you would be granting to him. Of course, you would want to be extremely well dressed and manicured (not that you wouldn't be anyway). You want him to get a visual look at what he is giving up. I think that if you let him see you then you are reinforcing the idea that you are willing to discuss recovery of the M if he is willing to meet your requirements. I think it would be good for you to deliver the message that you mentioned. You may want to take it a step further and mention that should he decide on NC for the rest of your lives that you would require a plan from him on how to accomplish this.

Before you meet with him though just make sure you have a quick and easy escape route and that you are in a very public place. If he starts to blame you for the situation and spew fog babble it will be critical for you to leave the situation as quickly as possible. Guard whatever is left in your LB!! Don't allow the fog babble. If he starts just reiterate your message 'In order to reconstruct I need NC for the rest of our lives and a plan from you on how to accomplish this' and get up and leave.

You can do this Tully. You are strong!!

Mindshare

I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. SH on occasion advises judicious breaking of PB, for very very short periods, and with a specific goal in mind. Often it is something as simple as mailing a note that spells out that you're still open to reconciliation when he agrees to the boundaries.

Personally, I would lean toward having coffee with him only if he talked to SH first, since that was all you asked for. But if you did decide to meet with him regardless, kept it short and simply reiterated your conditions to R, it would probably still be fine, since I know you'll go right back into a hard PB if he doesn't come through.

Hi tully,

I'm rather less keen to encourage you to meet WH in person if you still feel as you did a few days ago when WH suggested coffee. WH's behaviour during the last year, when he was gaslighting you about the affair and then mocking you for your NC demand and blaming you for the marriage breakdown, seems to have badly destroyed your self-confidence. You seem to have only just risen above this after a few weeks away from him. I think that when you say that you fear he will reduce your LB even further, you are actually understating your terrible fear that he will get to you again, say horrible things about how you became less loveable before the affair, and shatter the fragile self-confidence that you have started building in Ireland.

I don't think that if you feel this way you should meet him. Even if you do walk away when the criticism starts, you will still hear enough to know that his feelings are the same. The way he felt and spoke to you in the recent email, was cruel and it hurt you. Other people can tell you endlessly that you are wonderful and strong, but you seem to me to have been hurt not just by the fact of the affair, nor by his continuing it and speaking of love for the OW, but by what he says about you. He had the affair, he treated you badly after D Day, and now he still says that he feels that he has less to offer than before but he'll give you a chance to put your case for his consideration.

If I am wrong in my interpretation of your feelings, then what I have said above is irrelevant and should be discarded. Do meet him if you feel strong enough. I agree with Neak, though, that it should be after he speaks to SH. His speaking to Steve would be a sign that he is willing to listen and think.

I have some more thoughts about your conditions for reconciliation. I'd welcome feedback from all contributors. I feel should keep pointing out that I have no expertise in applying MB plans, and I am new at giving advice, so you should be wary of what I say. Mindshare is too generous about my help!

Having read and tried to interpret your fear about going back to France, I'm beginning to wonder whether this is blocking your willingness to attempt marital restoration.

Perhaps you need some sort of post-nuptual agreement that gives you some kind of security should WH return to his affair, or should recovery prove impossible as a result of the affair. Quite simply, you have too much to lose if the marriage breaks down later with you back in France.

All BSs have a lot to lose, financially and emotionally, when we attempt reconciliation after an affair. However, most of us do not face a choice between remaining in a country that, without the marriage, is not home, or leaving our children behind to return home. In France you face economic dependency and estrangement from supportive family, perhaps for ever. When would your youngest child be old enough for you to leave her? It doesn't bear thinking about.

If you go back, you have a lot to lose, while your WH has very little. If he later chooses OW, or decides that this marriage isn't really what he wants, he will be able to start a new life while keeping his daughters close. You'll find it hard to do the same.

You have not yet accomplished Dr Harley's first step towards restoration, that of safe negotiation, which will allow you move to the second stage, of presenting each other with your perspectives on the conflict. Solutions can only be discussed in the third stage, where you brainstorm each other's proposals. You are a long way from this third step, but would WH's willingness to move away from France provide you with a big enough sign of commitment, tully, when you get to that stage? Would you risk going back to the marriage with this agreement? Would you risk going back to the marriage without it?

From Coping with Infidelity: Part 3: Restoring the Marital Relationship

Getting beyond this first step -- setting a safe stage for negotiating -- may take some careful thought and planning, but one thing is for sure, negotiations that are not safe or pleasant will not give you a solution to your problem.

The second step for successful negotiation is to present the conflict to each other with each spouse trying to understand and respect the other's perspective. C.W. has a need for recreational companionship. That need may have been partially responsible for his affair, and he would like his wife to meet that need so he will not be tempted in the future. But his wife feels that their time should be spent together as a family, and if he wants to be with her, he must also include their daughters. They must both understand and respect each other's feelings about this issue if they expect to resolve it.

The third step is to brainstorm without criticizing each other's tentative solutions to the problem. They should write them all down and give themselves a chance to think about them without dismissing any of them right away.

The fourth step is to choose the solution that they both feel enthusiastic about following. In most conflicts, one of the solutions will jump out as the right one, especially if both spouses have given themselves some time to think about the entire list and about their conflicting perspectives on the problem. If no solution meets the criterion for "enthusiastic agreement, keep brainstorming.

Sugar, I know that my self-confidence was affected over the past year or so. WH kept telling me that I was 'paranoid' and he kept finding fault with me. I thought I was truely cracking up and i was ashamed of that. I tried to keep up a good front but inside I felt awful. But the hardest thing to cope with was his coldness and distance from me. I couldn't understand. I've said before that when I found out about the A, of course I felt awful but I also felt relieved. It was as if I had been badly beaten up but that at the same time I discovered that the cancer I suspected wasn't there. My biggest fear of meeting up with WH is to do with my LB, as mindshare reminds me, rather than my self-confidence.

As for recovery conditions, I have been mulling over in my mind how to do this but as time passes I'm wondering if we'll ever get past step 1 which is NC. In WH's workplace they have a system of saving holidays over the years and WH has about 5 months of holidays in his bank. He has to take the time in one go but it could be another possibility. There was never a better time. Also he could arrange a year's sabbatical somewhere outside of France which might give us time to sort things out. I'm sure I'd know at the end of a year how our M is. But maybe we'll never get there although Neak always stays quietly confident of him coming back.

Tully, how are you??!!
I have been thinking about you and your girls and wondering how you are getting ready for Christmas?!
We have a little bit of shopping to do; lots of cookies to make and a lovely little roast for Christmas lunch. I plan to make Colcannon -- I think its Irish; I hope so, because we have made it a tradition every year. Is it really Irish?
Take care!!
BF439
:MerryChristmas:

And so I shall continue to be.

Hello BF, good to hear from you. I just had a quick look on your thread (I'll contribute later) and you seem to be doing well. You certainly have your head on your shoulders and I like your outlook. You'll be fine in the end, I'm sure. Colcannon is Irish, potatoes and cabbage so as Irish as you can find. I hope you have a lovely Christmas meal and lots of love to go with it.

I am not feeling very optimistic at the moment. WH has not responded to the email about contacting Steve. In his email response he did say that he required me to read all of his accusing, negative emails (which I blocked and so did not receive) before he would talk to Steve. He had not been in touch with Steve and didn't even ask to meet me today so i think that he does not want to reconcile. Instead he is twisting every move on my part to justify the continuation of his A. He is dropping back the girls to me on Christmas Day morning but is not flying out until the next day (he told D11 and in any case there are no flights on Christmas Day). As he is not staying on in the apartment where he is staying with the girls I can only assume tha the will be spending the day with OW in Dublin.

This feels like it might be the final straw for me. Should I give up? Neak, are you still confident? Sugar, why do you think my M is worth saving?

i remember Black Raven saying once that if her WH has continued his A after D-day it would have been instantly Plan D for her. (hope I didn't misrepresent you here, BR) If a WS only comes back to the BS because the A has died and because the BS is the next best option then is this not humiliating for the BS? It is the one thing I have always had a problem with in the MB principles: that the WS seems to eventually understand that their OWN best interests are served by coming back to the M rather than because they have understood the meaning of committment, the 'for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health' etc bit.

Does this not mean that if the WS's OWN best interests are served by leaving the M later then they would do that? I am 42 and in good health but what if I got cancer or some other illness or became depressed or whatever? Could WH then decide that his EN's could be best provided for by someone else? Or does full realisation of what committment is usually come with recovery? Maybe I have missed out on some aspect of this but I'd like to hear any views from people more knowledgable than me.

Sorry for being so down in this festive season but WH came to pick up the children today and for the first time I won't see their faces on Christmas morning and I feel so betrayed by the person I trusted so completely.

tully, I am so sorry you won't have your girls on Christmas morning. I'm sure it feels like another knife in the heart that he would take them on those days.
I think it is important to trust what the veterans say here about where our kids come out in the long-run when we do the right things -- they know and will know even better down the road that what their dad did was selfish and wrong. I'm sure they will add this Christmas as one of their resentments towards him as the year that they did not have mom on Christmas morning.

I don't know how to answer your other questions, but it is something I have thought about, too. At what point does the BS continue to be the "sucker" by sticking around? What I try to use to guide my actions is that my WH was the best of men and although I do not understand what has happened to him (short of the explanations offered here), until I am ready to give up I won't. That may be next week or next year. It may be when he wants me back or not, but it has to be on my timetable.

I signed up for "sickness and health" and this sure seems to fit the "sickness" clause, so I'm hanging in there -- for now. I'd like to say forever, but I don't know where I'll be in a week, let alone 6 months.

Please know that so many people here are pulling for you, your marriage, your kids, again, for YOU! Whatever you decide is the best choice for you, I think you'll find plenty of support here.

I'll think of you as I eat my Colcannon on Christmas (I make it with kale, btw) and say some extra prayers for you.

BTW, does your DD11 know about the site? I have shown my DD12 a few posts related to her and that seemed to help -- Let me know if it would help DD11 to hear from another kid and DD12 could post her something. DD12 gets a lot of support from her best friend who has been through the same thing. Sometimes its nice for kids to hear something positive from other kids.

Take care of yourself!
BF439

tully, I once read somewhere that the only true way to live a life you will love is to live it completely honestly. Meaning, be true to yourself and everyone else in your life. If there's contention, compromise, but never give up your self-respect. Live according to the Golden Rule, all that. Only then can you be at peace.

I kind of equate that to something I say a lot: "If you aren't sure if you should do something, just picture yourself doing/saying it to your mom. What would she say?"

There's your answer. Your mom always wants/wanted true happiness for you; doesn't care about the rest of the people in your life - only you. Do what would make your mom proud.

It is entirely up to you whether you stay in the M or not. If you have reached your limit, only you can say. You have said he is a stubborn man...

I remember when my H and I were having problems, I was talking to a counselor friend who said she had seen time and again, a man will eventually regret his decision to leave a relationship...now when this occurs, I see this as how fast a learner a person is (or what life has given them). What MB likes to do is quicken this process up, by giving the WS a good Plan A, and then the reality of a good Plan B...to let them know...no, we WON'T be friends after this, if it is over, it is over...

Because your H is stubborn, it may take him a while to deal with his pride...and he also has the OW whispering in his ear... But she will pale in comparison to the life he had, and he will realize what he lost.

Interesting what you brought up...what if the M goes through a period where it is one-sided? Where, because of sickness or circumstances, the EN's are not met by one partner. I have read MANY an instance of that on the boards...where a partner has moved and they are trying to do a long-distance thing because of selling a house, or kids in school, or one partner has a period of depression after a loss, and the other, after a period of neglect, has an A.

THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR HAVING AN A.

There may have been fertile grounds for an A to happen, but never is there an excuse for it to have happened.

What I have found, if a partner is unhappy in a relationship, it is up to that partner to ask for what they want, and for both partners to work towards that...

Which means, being proactive. When a partner dwindles in depression, is it the depression that hurts the M or that a partner is saying to the other, "I don't want to do anything about it." Therefore giving the unsaid message, "I don't care about you."

When adversity is met in a M, the M can be stronger afterwards, and during, if the couple have a common goal of making the relationship the priority.

During bankruptcy, if a couple focuses on making decisions together, not taking frustrations out on each other, and understanding...

During sickness, if the couple is committed to working together. The well partner can get their needs met, perhaps by shifting their needs for awhile, making the other ENs a little higher priority for awhile, getting Affection instead of SF, getting recreational companionship in ways that might be less outdoorsy...playing scrabble, etc.

When the going get tough, the chicken-hearted have an A. Sorry to bash WS out there, but I can't think of a more selfish thing to do, than throw a R away because you are not happy and have an A.

ASK FOR WHAT YOU WANT, and work towards getting it...

The holidays are here. Enjoy your family and have fun.

After the New Year, begin building a longer-term life for yourself in Ireland. I liked the idea of you having your own place, even if it's just little to start.

It will be much easier for you to endure PB, and to thrive in it, if you have your own space and aren't just visiting family.

Depending on what the laws are over there, you may end up needing to file some sort of legal separation just to protect you if he allows your finances to crash. That would also ensure that he financially supports the girls the way he should.

Divorce? No rush. Just keep working on your own life. Even if you were sure you didn't want him back, you shouldn't be back in the dating pool for several years. It's not healthy. So just relax, go on with your life, and one of two things will happen. Either he will join you or he won't. If he does, great. If he doesn't, you'll just sail on smoothly with the life you've been building anyway.

Of course I still think he will come back, but since he is proving slow on the learning curve lol, you just worry about you and the girls.

As far as feeling second best? You may struggle with that for a while. I know I did. But eventually I realized that I am such a wonderful and superior specimen of wifehood, he would have been the most complete and drooling idiot if he didn't eventually see that for himself.

A WS might be selfishly motivated right at first, but once they begin de-fogging, they will recognize with horror what they stand to lose.

:MerryChristmas:

Boy, all that money your dad and I spent on you for Humility School sure paid off, didn't it?

tl

true true

Tully, I have no great words of advice. I read your thread often and hope you get the outcome you desire. Maintain your self-respect. I wish you the merriest of Christmases.

Thank you all for your comments and kind words. I hope you are having a nice Christmas Eve. I suppose my question was that if the WS comes back to the BS for selfish reasons, how can you be sure that they won't leave for selfish reasons later?

As for me, I think the best thing I can do is to focus on me and the girls and leave any decision for the future. Over time things will sort themselves out.

Happy Christmas all! :happyholidays:

And a very happy Christmas to you, Tully. You're in my prayers.


:MerryChristmas:

TA