SC,

You know, the time frame between now and when you plan on leaving gives you an opportunity to better understand yourself, your H, and your marriage. It is a real opportunity for personal understanding and growth. As I've said before, you will be a great partner for this H or the next based on the work you do.


Maybe not entitled as demanding something is probably not the best way to get what you want and need but you not settling, not sacrificing, may be a better way to look at it. And that is wonderful.

You better understand what you want. Keep thinking through this and become better(not critical of the other person, more focussed on you and why it is important to you and how you can best achieve this) at communicating this.

You better understand the problems. Again, keep thinking through this and better understand why things happen, understand the pattern, the bottleneck(don't judge, don't blame, thats for a time when you make the decision to leave, seek to understand). Be sure to ask questions to insure you aren't jumping to conclusions.

The extraordinary care goes both ways. He has a need for admiration and he gets this need met elsewhere and it is hard for you to admire him after all that has happened.

Try to take it step by step instead of focusing on everything he does poorly. Find something that is important enough to you that you would admire him more than you do today if he changed. If it is the flirting, then work on it with him. Recognize that he has a big part in this as do you. Recognize it is a habit and it takes constant practice. You could practice admiration for his efforts and successes and he could practice changing his habit. Practice it every week. When he fails, and he will, you can be more understanding instead of critical and he can be more thoughtful and caring.

Then, document your activities and the results. Place it on a calendar or some other means. It gives you a way to go back and actually see if progress has been made or if it is staying the same or getting worse. This is the data. It is concrete and not at the day to day whims of your emotions. It gives you strength when you have to make a tough decision.

But, maybe you don't even have the agreement at the big picture level yet. The agreement to care. The agreement to put these types of goals in place and to put this type of effort in. If you can't agree to these goals, verbally, that is a big sign for you on what you will get in return, no matter what the excuse. It is much easier to verbally sign up to these goals than it is to actually take action on them and practice them as this takes recognition that in order to meet these goals I will need to take action and change.

Last, you have more power than you recognize.

I think my problem is that i "do not know how" to communicate it as a "big picture".

My H does not think ANY of his behaviors are "wrong" or "hurtful" or "whatever".

He always tells me that he thinks he is a good husband and that he treats me well. During the A he told me that the OW said to tell me that "i have a great husband".

So i do not know how to get him to see that "extrordinary care" is needed for a good marriage when he thinks that he already does provide "extraordinary care" and that i take things out of context.

I am sure that you all think that it is probably not as bad as i make it out to be here in words but i promise you that it is.

I just do not think i can stay in this marriage after his betrayal. Not that any of us deserve to be betrayed but i have always basically kissed my H's [censored] our whole marriage and gave in to all of his whims and always tried to do what he wanted and be the best wife possible.

Even the fact of us "growing apart" (which was part of the reason the A happened) was his doing not mine. He knew that i would not be around him and the ENIL and yet he chose to continue to let him live with us for three years.

I really am not trying to dismiss your advice because it did work for you and through your own words your relationship was similar to ours. So i am sure it could work for ours as well, I just do not know how to communicate it.

SC,

I don't think I have ever said I have any magic advice for you. I have ideas. Ideas that maybe could be used to develop a plan...an approach.

You sounded hopeless with both your options, whether you stayed or whether you left, so I wanted to offer you ideas. I felt and heard that you were reaching out.

You have more power than you recognize to get what you want out of life.

I know you did not say that you had any "magic advice" for me but so far you are the only one who has even tried to truly listen to me and give me advice and it seems that i always have a reason why it will not work for me. I almost sound like a WS instead of a BS.

I do feel hopeless in both of my options. I just really wish that i could figure it all out and makes us both happier and have a better marriage.

You have said in most of your posts that i have more power than i realize. I wish that i felt that way. I do not have much confidence in myself that i can do much of anything.

I really do appreciate you listening to me and TRYING to give me advice. It means a lot just for someone to listen to me.

Why is that?


Don't doubt yourself. Trust yourself. You will surprise yourself.

I think it is because i have already given up trying to get my H to show "extraordinary care" to me because he has proven over time that he does not think of "extraordinary care" in the same terms that i do.

Where my H is concerned i always doubt myself and probably always will. I would like to change that but i do not know how.

So i have decided that i really do not want to remain with my husband. I am making plans to be in my own place on June 1, 2009. I just do not want this anymore.

Again thank you for all of your help. I know that this sounds shelfish but I will be signing off now as i do not think i want to try to make things better anymore. They always just seem to get better for him and not for me.

SC

Sounds reasonable to me. I'm glad you have a plan. You'll gain your strength back.

Be prepared for him to come a calling.

I do not plan on letting this happen. Once i am gone, i am gone.

It is interesting you say this.

I have been reading the Plan A or kick'em to the curb thread and you read about how many could never do Plan A.

For me, Plan A is intuitive as I see it as something for me, not the wayward. Put my best foot forward, explain who I am and what I am about as a H, father, and person and what I view as right and wrong and also my own failings and that I will improve myself. And I won't mess around on any of this. I am serious as all hell about all of it. It is really for me to be at peace with things. I've done what I could and done it in a reasonable way.

If the WS takes advantage of me when I am putting my best foot forward after his or her A, I goto Plan D and Plan D means I'm done. I could never do a Plan B and then reconcile after putting my best foot forward and then being taken advantage of as I would mentally move on. I could never see someone pulling me back after this.

It will not be a Plan B or a Plan D, it is just i am DONE. He will have to do the Plan D if that is what he wants. I am just DONE, i have no intention of filing for a divorce i also have no intention of us ever being together again.

Well Monday will be the 2 year anniversay of D-Day and i feel worse now than i did then.

I really do think that some BSs just can not get over the A.

SC,


Please consider you are near a break through in your life. You are very close.


This is a wayward state of mind, also. Has no self-care, honor or awareness in it. It's reactive. It's you reacting to your pain instead of your goal.

Just like your FWH did.

This is what it is like, the beginning of the fog and I believe you sense that...where resentment is fueled into entitlement and lack of respect.

And SC, that's not who you really are. No way.

I believe you want your pain to be done. You want you to enforce an important boundary you have refused to do before.

You want to take extraordinary care of yourself.


When you truly surrender to your really bad goal of getting someone else to do/think/act in the way you want, you will break through. To knowing your own power and limits.

I support you in leaving your FWH. I think this may be the only way you get your own attention, focus on what is within your control and what is not, and heal all the way through.

Where you finally learn down deep that you cannot continue to perpetrate this crime against yourself any longer:
His actions cannot make you doubt yourself. Only yours can. So the pain, the conflict inside, continues, erodes, worsens, deepens and the powerlessness grows. Until you stop, it won't. That's how much you are trying to get your own attention.

If you want to really free yourself, then please do this...change your language. I'm choosing to leave my marriage in June. I have formulated my plan to the details. I have informed my FWH and will have the documents completed to file for divorce the week before I move out. I choose to not do marital recovery. My plan is to limit contact with FWH to family emergencies only. I've written down my preferred visitation schedule, financial breakout, prospective place to live, transporation, preferred family holidays schedule.

Then do not see or speak or communicate with FWH. Get an intermediary. Otherwise, your pattern will continue. Your focus will be on what he doing/not doing. Instead of you.

For you to really heal.

You'll know when the healing begins because instead of saying "but so far you are the only one who has even tried to truly listen to me and give me advice", you'll say this: I feel heard and understood by you, TJD. I listen to the advice you give me."

And this: will become "I choose not to continue in my marriage after his betrayal. I choose to believe I did not deserve his betrayal--I earned greater respect and treatment by debasing myself, creating and maintaining resentment, to get him to not betray me, and he did, anyway. This was my picture of being the best wife possible. To have no boundaries, no boundary enforcements save one...do anything to me but that. Not that."

You took a big step here:
You choose to dismiss and then experience it as if the other person were the only one who listens to you. That's where you shove away your power, your confidence that you truly are responsible for what is yours. There's the power-shift (can be heard like blame-shifting).

And I believe you'll heal enough to not believe this anymore:
If you do this any other way...like you now plan...or stay...or leave and come back and leave again...you won't heal and on the third anniversary of DDay, you'll hurt worse than right now.

You deserve to do extraordinary care to your battered self, change your choices, your experience, and heal all the way through. I remember how difficult it was to do...and if you hold yourself to doing, it progressively gets easier...and when you stop, becomes harder again to take up. Like most habits.

If MB helps you, feeds you, nourishes you in some way, why deprive yourself? If it harms you, stop. These are boundary enforcement, choices you make around yourself. Not anyone else.

You are not alone. You can do this.

LA

LA thank you for the lovely post.

I am done trying anything in my marriage. I still have no desire to divorce my H and i have no desire to be with him.

I am leaving my home on June 1, 2009 and getting me a place to live by myself and that is the whole story.

My children will all be of legal age by then so there will be no need for me to talk to him at all. No need to make plans for visitation, etc. The kids can work it out amongst themselves.

Once i leave i am GONE for good. I have no desire to have another relationship therefore i will not go through the legalities of a divorce, my h can do all of that.

I understood what you planned, SC. You're really clear in your writing.

Your children are going to be devastated, no matter the age. Will any of them come to live with you or not? When will you see them? Will they live with their father? What will they say when asked, "Are your parents getting a divorce?"

Their truth will be, "No, they're just acting like it."

How was what your WH did any different, really?

Resentment has a shape, a temperature, volume and size...you can taste, smell, touch and hear it...you just can't see it. Your continued massive self-betrayal will continue because you will then be bent on making him do the right thing...

when you're not even close. I'm not sure right now, even, in your pain and fear, you even know what the right thing is...what's frightening is that you don't want to...

Your pain is what you're choosing your life from...so everyone in it will experience great pain, as well...that's how it works...and yours will continue.

I'm so sorry...when you don't hold yourself to honesty, consideration, respect or acceptance...then you aren't holding yourself to extraordinary self-care...just bent, as you were pre-A, on making him do it, instead.

If you hurt your family and marriage as much as your WH, will you then be even? Is that what you require to heal yourself?

In June, will you look yourself in the eye and know for certain that you did everything possible to heal the marriage, your part, and personally recover for the last year and a half? Will you be able to bear it when your beautiful grown children do this to their mates and spouses? "I just can't get them to stop hurting me" and have their affairs...and be betrayed. Will you help them focus on the other person? Manuever better, demand harder, give unselfishly for years, help them create and build resentment of their own to love, hold onto knowing it won't leave them like people can and do?

Resentment won't let you down...it's instant and tasty...feels righteous and force-filled and powerful. It is the deceiver which whispers your life into ruin.

I know. I was in a wayward state of mind, cheating with resentment, most of my life. It's a tough addiction to kick.

And will you be able to look yourself in the eye and state without hesitation, "I did everything possible to heal myself and I choose not to now." Because it's okay if you choose to not heal...you are that powerful...and it is a choice.

And it has nothing to do with your FWH.

LA

My children are well aware of the whole situation. My ODD no longer lives at home, my YDD will be leaving home soon, my son will be the only one left at home and he will have to make that decision when the time comes. All of their grandparents are gone (my parents and my husbands parents) so there will not be a lot of decision making that has to go on regarding the kids.

And maybe the devastation to my children is not different but letting my H know up front of my intentions i think is a WHOLE LOT DIFFERENT than sneaking behind his back which is what he done to me.

And i have stated more than once in this thread that i am the one who is now being selfish. And i am going to continue to do so. My H has shown me time and time again that EVERYONE comes before me. I am going to put ME first for a change, i have never done that in my life.

And i am not worried about looking myself in the eye and asking if i did everything possible to save my marriage becasue i did not have to do anything, it was my H's choice to destry our marriage. Yes i took him back and i have regretted it from the first day.

That was something i had always told him would be an ender for me and it is.

And i know that i will still have the pain, but at least i will not have to walk around on eggshells every day and worry that my H is out screwing around on me again.

This is my choice and my decision and i have made it right or wrong.

I'm glad to hear you are being O&H with your FWH about your plans, your decisions. That's really healthy, and you're right, it isn't deceptive.

My experience was different in my A because I did tell BH about it and did not do it behind his back. That's a horror all it's own, I think, though I wouldn't comprehend it myself had I not done it to another human being.

I'm looking out for your goal, your self...and I'm so sorry to hear you believe what you're doing now is selfish, not what you've done before now.

I thoroughly support you putting yourself as your priority...in marriage, when we put it first, we are part of the top tier, both halves equally come within the marriage. Doesn't seem to be what you did, though, before...looking out for your half of the marriage, yourself in that tier. Seems you put yourself underneath a lot of others.

I don't believe any BS can recover from an A FOR their spouse. It's a solo gig you do for yourself. Just like consideration and honesty...you hold those around yourself, hold to doing them.

Which means you don't say done with and not do "done." You will still be married in June. You will be married and not acting like it for as long as someone else doesn't do what you require of them. That makes you a slave to someone else, yet again. Seems like the same thing to me. So I predict, same pain.

You say this will be the first time in your life tending to yourself before others...which confirms what I understood that this is a breakthrough for you...to know your power, your limits...where you end and others begin.

I pray you'll come to understand you were already worthy, whole and complete...that no matter the distance in your marriage, it could not cause FWH to have an A...and to examine that distance sometime in the future, when you consider the two in one union...and how you wiped out your half because you did not honor yourself as part of honoring the marriage.

You made yourself last place, last considered...and then felt last place. All the while, you were and are irreplaceable.

My hope is you will see this, because when you do, all the way through to your core, you'll understand that your FWH is irreplaceable, too.

LA

LA i think i see marriage differently than most on this board and most i talk to IRL.

I feel that sacrifice is a part of marriage, i feel that when you marry someone you should put their happiness before you own. And when you become a mother the same thing, i go with out things (actually i shop at thrift stores and clearance racks for myself) so that my children and my H can have things (not that material things really matter anyway).

I live by the golden rule ALWAYS. So i have always thought of my H and my kids first and it really did not bother me to sacrifice in my marriage (i know i had some resentment but not a lot until the ENIL who by the way got more for Christmas from my H than i did) because i have always felt that is what you should do and i still feel that way that is why i feel i am being selfish becasue i am not taking my kids or my H into account with this decision, it is strictly because i am tired of being second best.

I feel by being O&H with my H i have given him the opportunity to make amends (to actually consider me once in a while). He however has not done that and quite frankly has probably gotten worse since the affair because i just should get over it already.

He did not tell me his feelings prior to the affair to give me a chance to make amends or whatever he felt was "wrong" with the mrriage, he just snuck around and lied to my face more times that i can count.

And i do not believe that i will have the same pain as i do living under the same roof because i will not be worrying what he is doing (or should i say who), i may still care what he is doing but i will not be around to wonder about it if he is late coming home or decides at the last minute to change his plans.

All of these things i would have thought NOTHING about prior to the affair, now i wonder about his every move, if he is talking to someone at work again (and he slips now and again and tells me conversations he has had with his female co-workers).

I do not talk to my male co-workers except maybe how their kids are doing or tell them what my kids or hubby is doing, never have never will. My hubby on the other hand is just IMHO a big flirt who loves the attention of "attractive women".

Heck right before Christmas i had a break down and was crying horribly and he asked me what was wrong and i told him that i did not want to go on our vacation because we were going to be around scantily dressed women and i would feel inadequate.

We he asked me why i told him because of the way i view his opinion on my "beauty" and his opinion on the FOWs "beauty". Perfect oppprtunity to for him to say something that would make me feel better (like "you are way more beautiful than the FOW), but all he said is "well you should not feel that way" and then the conversation was changed to a different topic by him.

The list could go on and on and on about the things that he has said and done to me to show me that i am "second best" to him.

And i already do feel that my h is irreplacible that is why i said i am not interested in having another relationship in my life EVER. I just WILL NO LONGER live with my marriage the way it is and my h seems to think i am the one with the problem not him.

Thanks for your time!!!!

It is clear that you are both the problem.

I just hope that for your emotional sanity that June 1st comes fast.

I do not recall anywhere on this thread saying that i was not the problem. As far as my H, i do not know if he has any problems with our marriage or not as he has not told me if he does.

The reason i even started this thread is because i truly believe that some BS can not get over the betrayal of an affair.

I have loved my H with all of my heart since the day i met him. I have done everything possible to be a good wife to him, not because i felt i NEEDED to for MY validation but because i WANTED to because i love him so much.

I do not NEED for him to make me feel like i am the most important thing in his life, i WANT him to. I do not NEED him to validate my beauty (i KNOW i am a beautiful person), i WANT him to.

I still love my husband with all of my heart but when i look back at our 25 years together all i can see is how WONDERFUL i thought it all was, what a good marriage i thought we had and how much we enjoyed each other's company, and raising our children and all the things we have done with them.

And i also feel that my H is truly sorry for what happened and that he did not mean for it to happen and that he loves me and i forgave my husband.

However, I do not think i can forgive the betrayal to our marriage.

I sometimes think i use MB more to get things off of my chest than anything else.

Although i do like to hear others perspective on things to give me a different "set of eyes" so to speak so maybe they can make me see something that i am not seeing.

So this is just going to be a rant about my H crossing that "friendly vs flirty" boundary that we have so many issues with yet again but i have to give some background first so this is going to be a bit long.

We will be moving out of our house sometime in the near future our original move date (we thought) would be around June but that is not going to be the case now and we really do not have a date that we have to be out of our house. All we know for sure is that we will have 6 months after we hear from our mortgage company. Since we have not heard from them we know we have at least 6 months still.

So even though i have my date of June 1 to leave on my own (and he is aware of this date), my h has asked me to at least look at places to live together because what he wants is for us to stay together so i told him i would be willing to do this.

We both discussed and agreed that all we were going to do was look at places to get and idea of where we may want to live and what price ranges are out there and what places looked like. Right now we have been looking at apartments.

So weekend before last he wanted to go look at a couple of places, i was sick (and still am for that matter, this is day number 15 with a low grade fever) so i told him that i only wanted to look at one because i was just really weak and did not have the strength to walk around alot. So we went to look and both places were close together both of them were also close to where he used to work with the FOW and just the location itself was a trigger to me but i looked at the first one anyway because i told him that i would.

So not only am i triggering like he!! i feel like crap and i do not want to go look at the second place but he insisted since they were so close together. So i told him to go in and get the information on it (which is all we did at the first place, we just asked the GUY for a floor plan and the prices and if they had a waiting list etc we did not look at the apartment because i did not feel well) and we could check it out at home.

So i am waiting in the car for what seemed like forever when he finally came out of the office. He comes up to the car and asks me if i wnat to go look at one of the apartments, i tell him no becasue i do not feel good and i would really just like to go back home. He then tells me that he was asked if he wanted to look at one and he said yes and the LADY is coming out now and we have to follow her to go look.

So i am kind of aggravated that that he did this to begin with because we had already discussed the fact that i did not feel good and to just get some info but he says well she is already coming outside i will hurry. So i say okay just please hurry up because i want to go home.

Well the woman walks out and gets in her car (and of course she is an attractive women with long blonde hair his favorite) and we follow her to the apartment. My h goes in and looks at it and then comes out, follows her to her car and is talking for a minute and comes back to our vehicle. He says "well it is kind of small i did not really like it that well" and i just said "oh okay well we can look some more later, we have plenty of time and we really do not know where we want to move anyway. I am really tired can we just go home now."

Then he tells me that they have his drivers license and he has to go back to the office and get them. So we do this and he is in there forever again. He finally comes out, we go home, we both decide that neither place is really what we want and all is forgotten until yesterday.

He comes home form work yesterday and informs me that "Carrie called" and wanted to know if we still want to look at the other apartment on Wednesday, i ask "who is Carrie and what appointment are you talking about and what apartment are you talking about". Then he says "you know that place that we went to last weekend over by my old job".

I am like well i did not know we had an appointment and i thought we were only looking and how did she get your phone number. He said well i filled out some stuff while i was in there i thought i told you.

OMG i was LIVID. As a matter of fact i still am very mad about the whole thing. What in the he!! is he doing, we are no where near ready to move anywhere so it is WAY TOO EARLY to be giving out our information to anyone and why did he give her his cell phone number instead of the house number for her to call at home. I am soooo mad right now.