Chewie, I hope you're still reading here.

Three years ago I bumped into the OM at the grocery store. That was two years after the A had ended. My thoughts at the time "well, it's all in the past now - I'm over him - what harm can there be in just talking."

Well, "just talking" led to making more contact and then led to a secret meeting for a drink. This was all over the space of a couple of weeks. After the drink, I came to my senses and confessed all to MB but NOT to my H who is the only one I should have been confessing to.

You think you're getting angry responses? Hmmmm, I got more than angry responses and I "boo hooed" and said how "nasty" everyone was. I was hurt that people who liked me were "being mean to me". OMG, what an [censored] I was.

Can you believe it? (sarcasm there) Everyone told me I had restarted the A and that the A was still continuing until I told my H what had happened. "Oh boo hoo" said I. "I'm not seeing the OM, nothing happened, how dare you all say it was the A starting up again." Oh, I had some choice words for everyone - defending, justifying, back pedalling, you name it, I did it. But the one thing I didn't do was LISTEN!!!!!

Then our dear friend Mel took things into her own hands (thank you again Mel) and called my H. She had my real name from private emails I'd sent to her and it wasn't hard to track us down. Needless to say, my H really couldn't see why he should stay married to me but, thankfully, he decided he could.

I didn't even UNDERSTAND for a minute that my boundaries, my empathy, my caring for my H, my recovery had all just flown out the door as soon as I saw the OM again and we were back at square one in our recovery. All I cared about was justifying myself. When you say "you didn't know what you were thinking", I actually think you DO know what you were thinking. I certainly did when it happened to me.

Recognise any of the above?

Chewie, Read KiwiJ's post a couple of times.

Then read it again.

Think about what she said.

Then read it again and think some more.

Your affair with OW, even if it was "merely" an EA, was like a dagger to the heart of your wife.

And ANY contact you have with OW for ANY reason EVER again will be another strike at her heart and twisting the knife for good(?) measure.

What so many WS's miss is that ANYTHING that hurts your spouse is wrong, no matter what it is, why you did it or what your own reasons for doing it. It isn't KNOWING you had contact with OW that hurts Chrys, but the contact itself. Finding out about the contact wasn't what hurt her; it was the act itself.

And yet there is nothing Chrys can do to make certain you remain faithful in the future. Only you can assure that. It will be what YOU do that will make you not have another affair rather than what she does.

When I was here about six months I posted this to somebody:

What you need to learn Chewie, is that you must protect your wife and your marriage from anything that can damage it in any way. Your wife cannot protect you from temptation, you must do that just as she must be the one to protect her own marital boundaries in order to prevent having an affair with another man. What you do to make certain that you will never again fail to protect her from your selfish actions is what will allow her to move past this. Trying harder is not the solution since you no doubt thought you were strong enough to resist the first time and I just know you thought you were stronger now than before and yet you allowed yourself to contact OW for no apparent reason.

You can't simply lock the door to an affair because only you have the key and so are able to open it at any time. You can't build a wall around your life because you have to be able to live in the real world and you can't just lock yourself in the house and pray that nothing comes in to find you.

So you must have a plan of action that you will do when temptation comes your way. You must know what to do to short-circuit your own selfishness, not only when your wife is doing everything just right so that you feel connected but also on those days when it feels like you must look out for your own self interests.

And here is going to be what matters most to Chrys. You must show her those things,not merely on paper or by your words but also by your actions. Right now until she knows what you are going to do to make sure nothing even close to this can ever happen again, you have lost her. You will have to win her back and work hard to make her begin to believe in you again.

If you want to salvage your marriage your mantra from now on must be "Whatever it takes for as long as it takes."

Mark

Flick:
Thanks for sending me your list. Chrys and I will review it together and use it for putting together my own.

KiwiJ:

Of course I recognize the similarities. And I thank you for sharing your story. In my line of work, people sometimes ask me for my opinion about issues in their lives. And I have found that expressing my thoughts in a sarcastic and accusatory manner is not particularly effective and is often a quick way to get someone to tune me out completely.
There is absolutely no justification for what I did, and I have no interest in trying to defend the indefensible.

Mark:
I have heard the same story set in the Middle East with a scorpion wanting to cross a river and some kind of animal who was able to carry him across, with of course the same ultimate outcome.
And I understand perfectly the concept that there are places you just don't go (physically, emotionally, or whatever), because there is nothing to be found there but trouble. But I went to one of those places nonetheless, and of course found trouble for both myself and, more importantly, my wife. So it seems to me the key is to put together a plan that keeps me from going to those places. Because there is just no good reason to go there.

Thanks for the response.

Chewie,

What I was getting at, maybe not in a direct enough manner, is that you are the one who made the decision that led to an affair and more importantly the decision to email your DD's pictures to OW.

Once you realize you have been bitten it is too late to do anything. The time to avoid being bitten is when you recognize the snake. What happens with most people who have an affair is that they don't see the snake for what it is soon enough to avoid being bitten.

In order for your wife to not spend her entire life defined by your affair and your choices, you have to be the one who takes charge not only of your own decisions but making her feel safe once more.

And just like David really made the decision that led to his affair with Bathsheba not when he was on the roof but when he allowed himself to assign his responsibility to someone else; he "sinned" when he sent Joab to do his job. Everything that followed just compounded that wrong decision.

A few months back there was a post here about what is called the ten second rule. You have about ten seconds to prevent an affair and those ten seconds happen much earlier than anyone would ever imagine. When the waitress smiles while you're on your business trip you have ten seconds to decide to be faithful. If you flirt back as she calls you "Honey" you have already betrayed your vows even if it she doesn't end up in your motel room.

Or when that cute new coworker bats her eye lashes and coyly crosses her legs, you have ten seconds to disengage or you are already headed for doom. Once we allow ourselves to act based on our selfishness and let ourselves feel that we are justified in doing so we have made the first step down the road to the ruin of our marriage. The time to act from integrity is before you have to decide between acting or not acting on feelings that are always selfish in nature.

The road to faithfulness is one of total openness and honesty. Dr Harley calls it Radical Honesty. He calls it his Policy of Radical Honesty because so many believe that there is no harm and in fact good that can come from hiding things from our spouse. But once we begin hiding things from them that we have decided we should keep secret it is but a short jump to further dishonesty. Soon we have a completely separate secret life about which our spouse knows nothing.

The boy was bitten by the snake because he thought he could control what could harm him. He negotiated with death to justify his actions. It was the boy and not the snake that was at fault. If the boy had acted on his first instinct he would have never considered what the snake said to him. He allowed himself to be talked into doing what he knew to be wrong and it cost him his life. The snake didn't talk him into it; he talked himself into it.

But there is a snake of sorts that tells us that we have control over our own fate when we flirt with temptation. We think we won't get bit but we always do. We think we have a promise to stop before it's too late. We make this promise to ourselves. It isn't until we find out that we are liars that we know that we have lied to ourselves. we talk ourselves into acting in our own self interests rather than in the interest of our marriage. Once we see it for what it is we are too late to stop it because by then we acting from our feelings instead of our intellect. We are simply justifying what we have decided to do and not weighing the consequences of our actions.

I for one have thought this week that you probably acted from a momentary lapse in judgment. The problem is that it takes only a momentary lapse in judgment to fall into an affair. I have considered that you might just not have realized how serious of a problem it is to contact OW again at this juncture. I thought maybe you were just so proud of your daughter that you couldn't help yourself and forgot how important it is that you have no contact with OW at all for the rest of your life.

I was really inclined to give you the benefit of the doubt...

But you simply can't have any more lapses. If you do you will find yourself alone. Assuming you know enough about MB to know what the Love Bank is all about, your wife's Love Bank has been drained this week. In an instant whatever good you had done in the past 18 months was undone and she was right back to the day she found out about the affair. It happened in an instant. It happened not when you sent the email but but when you thought that sending it was right. It took place even before that when your coworker suggested OW should be sent those pix. That was when you failed to protect your wife. The email just proved what had already happened.

What makes this really bad is the prospect of what would have taken place had she not found the email. It makes her wonder if there were any more or what else you have kept hidden. It has destroyed her ability to trust you and if you want to remain married it is going to have to be YOU that fixes that. Right now she shouldn't trust you.

Mark

Mark:
I am quite familiar with the Love Bank concept. And I know full well that I have drained it dry and in addition made loans against any future deposits I might make, that will have to be paid back with interest. And the reasons extraordinary precautions have to be in place is because it not only helps her feel a bit safer, but it also defines behavior that helps to keep me out of the path of temptation. I know all too well that there is just no valid reason, beyond selfishness, to take even one step toward something that seems "interesting" but harmless. I knew that years ago, but didn't follow what I knew. If I had, I would have saved my wife years of heartache.

Chewie,

I know you're a smart guy, probably a lot smarter than I am so I'll end the lecture.

It really boils down to: "You broke it. You fix it!"

If you need assistance that I can provide I'll be around.

Mark

Are you willing to post your list here for some help in fine tuning?

Chewie,

I hate to say it but I don't see a lot of real effort going in this. Your BW required you to post here for a reason and it wasn't just to write a few sentences down so you could say that you did that. It was to actually learn something about you and to learn about what is necessary to properly R your M.

I see a lot of people trying hard to help you, but I'm just not seeing much effort from you to use this forum for what your BW intended.

Maybe I'm not seeing something. Just my ,02

Michele,

In defense of Chewie, his job doesn't allow him time to post or even read, so any responses from him have to wait till he gets home. At any rate, this isn't going to be instant pudding...

Mark

Chewie, it's interesting. I've used my intelligence and charm to get out of many a tricky situation during my life. I thought it was going to work again when I confessed to everyone on MB. I thought because I was the FWW poster child and knew MB backwards that I'd be given some leeway.

Funny thing is - no one here puts up with bull pucky. They see it a mile away.

It's all very well knowing what is right and wrong, knowing the Plans backwards, knowing you screwed up, but if you don't put all that knowledge into actions, all the intelligence and smarts in the world aren't going to help.

I think you understand you've hurt Chrys - well of course you understand that - but I don't think you can feel it. You know what you should be feeling and you know what you should be saying about feeling it - but you're not really feeling it at a gut level.

ETA: that "censored" made the innocuous word I used look worse than it was!!!!

Mark

I can understand that. And I'm not trying to be ugly. I have found that when a WS is really looking for help his/her posts are far more numerous and self reflecting than what I've seen here so far. It just seems that he is appeasing Chrys with his few comments. Hope I'm reading it wrong.

Michele:

I've re-read and reflected on the last few posts for quite a while. It's obvious that I'm missing something, but I am not quite sure what it is. I guess that's the point, isn't it?
Am I supposed to be writing long essays? Have I not used just the right phrase to communicate that I understand how badly I screwed up and how much devastation I have caused? Am I supposed to be "emoting" more?
I don't intend this to sound in any way defensive. If you or someone else could fill me in on what I am doing, or not doing, that makes it seem like I am just wasting everyone's time, I would appreciate it.

KiwiJ:

Please see my response to MicheleG. If you can, fill me in on what I'm missing. Thanks.

Chewie,

You have plenty of people telling you what to do/not do, so sorry to add to that. That said, I'm delurking to see if this helps:

The way it seems, you aren't "giving" MBers enough of you, the real you. You say the right things, you may know those things and even feel them to an extent, but truly learning from the MB discussion forum is more than that. No automaton, no walls (of pride, self-protection, wayward fog, whatever they may be) around the real you - just give MB and Chrysalis you.

Maybe you could re-think your approach to posting. Take some of the pressure off and just write whatever comes to your head - what kind of day you're having, why you're feeling the way you do, how you're thinking about the future. Those may be things that are insightful and reflective and highly informative, and from there you can move on to thinking about MB plans, EPs, boundaries, etc.

Maybe this is totally off-base and not helpful at all. If so, I'm sorry. And vets, if I'm messing anything up, please let me know. Just wanted to give my take on it.

Chewie,

I know you know this stuff. I know you know about boundaries and protecting your marriage. You understand all of this stuff intellectually...

Why the hell would you send an email to OW for ANY reason?

Since you know all this stuff...

What explanation can you give for devastating your wife AGAIN?

What folks are seeing here is that you say the right things, in the right order and with the right emoticons to make us believe that you "get it." But if that is true then you hurt your wife again and visited this newest mess upon your family and friends even though you understand.

That doesn't make you clueless. It makes you heartless.

Maybe you can tell us what WE are missing...

You were doing so much right. Was it an act? Was it to set up future betrayal?

I don't get it...

I don't see a lack of understanding but a lack of empathy.

I don't know if you've seen this video or not. If so you can skip it. If not, please watch it.

Dr Harley video

Mark

Hi Chewie

Can I ask? Why Chewie? Mind you before I changed my name to Flick I was "Fatty" and I'm sure you can see the irony in that

Anyway, down to business.

There seem to a lot of people here saying that you do not post enough. I never posted much and (touch wood) things are going good for Lil and I. It is not the number of posts that is important, more the content of the posts (my opinion FWIW). Give us some insight into what's going on in that brain of yours.

Don't worry about the angry posts, they will calm down when you start to show that you are making some genuine progress and they are not generally "angry" they are just testing your mettle, and I think it needs a bit of testing too.

How are the EPs coming along?

Have you thought about some more sessions with the Harleys?

Quantity is no substitute for Quality.

It's not how much he posts - it's WHAT he posts.