Well, it has been over a month since I posted last. The rollercoaster ride that all of the vets predicted I would be on has not been any fun at all.

Since my last post he contacted her (11-13) and broke off with her again (11-22). I haven’t really felt good about either of the times that he broke off with her. Both times it felt like he was doing it for the wrong reasons.

I guess that is why I was not surprised when he contacted her again. I found out on 12-11 that he had been contacting her through e-mail again. He had used a phone card to call her, thinking that it would not show up on his bill. It did of course.

When I went home that night, I used a different approach than I had before. I told him that I knew, very calmly. I told him that he needed to decide whether he wanted to work on saving our marriage or not.

I told him that I just wanted to be left alone so that I could decide what I was going to do. I really expected him to want to leave me alone. He has avoided so much since this whole thing began that I thought he would be relieved that I did not want to talk about it.

Boy was I wrong. He followed me out of the room. He said that he did not want me to go off by myself. He said that he did want to save our marriage and that he thought that we had been making real progress. He claimed that he knew now that I was the woman that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with but that he was having trouble ending things with her. (This was a big shift, before he was always the one that said that we had no chance)

I told him that I did not know how much longer I could wait for him to get his act together.

He said that he had really enjoyed the amount time that we were spending together and that he did not want to lose that.

I told him that there was no way that we could move any further ahead with her still in the picture.

He said that she was just a friend (fog) and that there was no lovey dovey stuff between them now. (So what)

I told him that did not make any difference.

He asked me to be patient and said that he did not think it would go on much longer.

The reason that I am still here is that he has changed in some very big ways. We have resumed SF and that has been going really well. We also have been spending all of our free time together and having a lot of fun.

He flew home to see his mother and sister on 12-19. I think this was a good idea in that both of them support the marriage and do not approve of what he is doing at all. His mother is very vocal about it.

He has called me numerous times every day and left me a very nice letter saying how sorry he was that everything happened and that he was working on getting things resolved so that we can move forward. All nice ideas, but no resolution.

He comes home this weekend. She is in Italy with her husband until 1-4. (No contact during this time)

I feel like I am not ready to go yet but, I am starting to prepare to.

How do I know what is or is not progress?

And so you have. There is much good to see in your post, but first let us deal with the bad and dangerous. I see that Mimi and others have bestowed upon you, great wisdom. Revisit that wisdom so that you can use it now. Many of the things they outlined to you apply more today than they did yesterday.

Your husband appears to be on the verge of establishing a “cake eating” arrangement. To really make it work for him he needs you to underwrite it. He has you to fulfill his desires on one side and she on the other. What’s worse is that neither you nor the OW has any real idea what he is actually promising and assuring to the other. He will certainly not tell you the full story, at least not at this early stage of your travels. No matter how honest you believe him to be in his explanations he will ALWAYS shape those explanations to fulfill his own interests. He has not yet learned with a real marriage is, but he will.


As you might guess, it is a lot easier to prepare than to carry out. You already know that his continued contact with her has set your recovery clock back to zero. All your efforts and planning should go into insuring his final declaration of NC that will forever STICK. To my experience that are few ways to end this type of cake eating arrangement, save one. It is the Plan B ultimatum; the basic proclamation that cuts you off from him. Based on your description of your husband, it appears that he is far too dependent on you to ever give you up. If he were forced to live outside your company I have the feeling that the pains of withdraw from you would be significant. I betcha Mimi could really help advise you in this area.


I envision the following response from you:

“Honey, I would love to trust you again, but right now I’m afraid that you are going to make decisions that will hurt me. Take comfort in knowing that everything I am doing is for the sole purpose of saving our marriage. So I think if you want to continue with this other woman then you are going to have to do it without my permission or blessing. But know that I will continue to look, or spy as you refer to it, because I need to know where this marriage is heading as my trust to depend on you to inform me is a little bit insane. Don’t you agree?”

He can always move out if he wants the spying to stop.

One last thing,

Your said:

Why don’t you drop the cigarettes and experience firsthand the withdraw your husband is experiencing. Plus you get the side benefit of living an extra 15 years. I’m off my soapbox, carry on.

Keep your chin up,

Mr. G

It is great progress for him and his affair. But not for your marriage. He has two women meeting his needs and absolutely no reason in the world to stop.

This is called CAKE EATING.

Yep...he's trying to get you to buy into CAKE-EATING...

Been there done that..the result was..my H losing RESPECT for ME and falling more and more in love with her AT THAT TIME...

For me, the best course was ALL or NOTHING...I wanted ALL of him or NONE of him...

Made that clear in my PLAN B LETTER...

Time for PLAN B...

Boy, If someone could turn this experience into a real rollercoaster, everyone would throw up.

I thought long and hard about all of the advice on the previous posts. I also thought about what would be best for me and not so much him. I'm under contract at my job so walking away was not going to be easy.

Well in the middle of all of this, my husband came home.

We spent a lot of quality time together. We had fun but he seemed defensive at times.

On 1-4 she came home from Italy. I had found out that she had not contacted him since the day before Christmas.

It was kind of nice to see him be the nervous one for a change.

1-4 came and went and she didn't contact him. He went on the internet looking for any sign on her. He said that he was worried that something had happened to her. I was not very sympathetic to this.

Well, he found her. She had posted a whole bunch of stuff on social websites that he didn’t know she belonged to. It was all stuff about her wonderful husband and the romantic trip they had planned.

My husband was furious. This really burst the fantasy bubble.
He said that he was never going to contact her again.

My reaction was basically “yea right”.

When she finally sent him an email, it was a Dear John letter. She told him, everything that they had been doing was wrong and that she wanted to work on her marriage blah blah blah.

So here I am, halfway decided to move out and my husband wants me to stay.

My conflict is this, he says that we should work on our problems on our own. No counselors, books, or programs.

I told him that was not going to work for me. I wanted us to work on the marriage builders stuff together. He has never been a book reader but I feel that the lessons are too important to pass up.

I also feel that I should be the one to set terms. I want to use negotiation instead of an ultimatum.

How can I do this with someone that doesn’t read? Should I start with just a chapter at a time? Is it too much if I read the chapter aloud and then we discuss it?

On the other hand, have I just screwed this whole thing up so bad that I should still leave?

You are in the driver's seat. He needs to withdraw and defog, first.
YOU then need to let him know that you will be counseled as a couple and individually. My H & I got in with a Christian couple, she spoke to me, an he, to my H. We then had joint sessions. I would print out small articles and advice from MB and ask him to read the article and see if it applied to us. He would read it and pore thru it and we would have very good, non judgemental discussions about it. Our home work book was different chapters of "Torn Asunder" It worked for us. Again, let him defog, and come to a reasonable being before you give him your suggestions, Plan A, if you will, Best luck GF

Thanks GF. This was how I thought I should go. I mean after 21 years whats the hurry?

I think he's kind of overwhelmed with self disgust at the moment. Do you think that I should even discuss my fears with him?

I'm afraid that if we wait to long he will think that everything is just getting swept under the rug.

Even my theripist wants me to move him along more quickly but I've waited this long I don't want to mess up.

We were at 28 yrs at the time of our debacle. Just let him know how good home is. Give him all the comfort, but do not roll over for him the first time. He has to come to terms with her major rejection, and at the same time, he will suffer confusion at the marital rewrite he just spit out. It won't take long for him to become sheepish and then feel disgust for what she "did" to him, and for what he did to you. When his fog clears, he will feel disdain for his "soulmate". Don't let him try to sweep it under the rug. There is no, "can't we just forget it?" If this affair is not processed, there will be another. He need to learn boundaries and he needs to learn to take extraordinary measures to assure this does not happen again.
Church is good, if you don't already go. GF

AGREED!!

Takes 3 to 6 months of NO CONTACT with her..

FOCUS ON YOURSELF..gaining your OWN STRENGTH for the RECOVERY JOURNEY to follow...

It is so hard to be patient. He's already talking about what my family will think of him. He's such a smart man that as time goes on I know this will really bother him. I feel that the lessons will give him comfort but not until he's ready to deal with them.

TIME and PATIENCE, Pumpkin...TIME AND PATIENCE...