Honestly...

1. I think you've got the wrong idea about Plan B. It's generally not a very good manipulative tool where your wife is just going to drop OM and coming running back home because she misses talking to you. It takes MONTHS to YEARS to work and allows you to hold onto a little lovebank in the meantime for the day the affair runs it's course and reconciliation looks desirable to the WW.

Your wife is a romance fall in love junkie. She moves from one short intense releationship to another. If OM leaves her...and you are in Plan B...she'll likely find another OM.

2. Your wife has already played custody games with your son. Regardless...it's still tough to win a favorable custody award over a 2.5 year old toddler. Courts just nearly always give custody of infants and toddlers to mommy. You've got a favorable temporary arrangement and seem to be working well together. My suggestion is to keep Plan A'ing and maintain the status quo for a long period of time with the temp custody agreement. I wouldn't risk my time with my son over a serial cheating WW. Serial cheats do sometimes come back and CAN be reformed. Truth is...you may be the first man that's stuck by her in her life and she COULD come to realize what real love is versus this infactuation addiction she has.

Anything is possible...but I just don't see Plan B getting you anywhere with regards to winning her back nor helping your custody case. (i.e. - her attorney can and will make your Plan B out to be a destructive manipulative technique designed only to punish your wayward wife vindictively and without regard to the best interests of your son.


Mr. Wondering

p.s. - maintain a swagger in your Plan A. Nobody every won back a girlfriend in high school (I say High School as that's your wife's mentality right now) but being sheepish and unconfident. YOU are her husband. Act like it. Flirt with her. Be mysterious. Ridicule OM with confidence. Pity her...not yourself.

Wow, everything you just said seems right on to me. After my previous post, I remembered how plan B could look bad for a future custody dispute, so I guess I just need to keep my focus and Plan A really well while working on my own personal progress. I think I've been beating a dead horse and feel even more resolved to do what I think I should do.

Also, everything in your "PS" is stuff my wife has said to me in the past...about being confident and flirty, not feeling sorry for myself, etc.

Mr. W is dead on here and a very similar thing happened to me as well. For the most part attorneys and, if relevant, Guardian ad Litems (someone assigned to look out for the kid's best interests) could care less about any plans for reconciliation. A WW with revenge on her mind will unfortunatley use plan B against you in a heart beat.

Yes, I agree. Since my wife and I have been on such good speaking terms since the temp visitation plan was signed and WW has expressed that she is in no hurry to finalize the D, I temporarily "forgot" how important it is to keep my nose clean in respect to a possible custody/visitation battle.

I have to permanently rule out a plan B at this point, given the situation that I am in. Things between WW and OM could become more serious than they already are and she could swing the other way to a full-fledged witch again, I suppose.

Thanks for talking some sense into me and reminding me of my legal situation..

After having gone through three weeks of hell from my wife not letting me see my son, I was ready to accept that my marriage was officially over and move on.

Very soon after we signed the temp visitation agreement I told my wife that I was hurrying the paperwork so that we could get our divorce finalized. When I told this to WW, she was taken aback and asked why I wanted to "rush" things. I explained to her that after what she did to me and our son and given the fact that she was moved out and in a relationship with another man, etc, etc, I was ready to throw in the towel and move on.

On a second occasion she asked why I was in such a hurry to finalize the divorce and told me that she was happy that we now had a temp visitation agreement and that she was not going to push for finalization of the D.

Since that time, we have gotten along very well and have talked together more than when we were married. She's been very kind and friendly and seems to be warming up to me again although I confirmed today that she is still seeing OM.

I am doing Plan A but haven't told WW that I've changed my mind about rushing to finalize the D. I didn't tell her because I keep saying things and doing another thing. I figured I'd just let my actions speak for me. But I read this from Dr. Harley:


Given this advice from Dr. Harley, I feel that I should tell my wife that I am once again willing to work on our marriage and am willing to work even harder to meet her ENs if she agrees to NC and comes back, etc, etc....

Should I have this talk with her or just let my actions speak for me?

If you read this whole thing, you are awesome... Sorry for long posts..

Your WW is just stringing you along. It does not matter her reasons. Just be rest assured that they are not in your best interests.

D her. She has moved out, Still seeing the OM. You can't keep taking stands then back down. You have painted yourself into a corner.

At this point if you gave her a plan B letter. WW will know in her mind that you will be weak a not maintain it. From what you have written here I agree with her.

I think that plan B at this point if perfectly executed will take a year before WW starts to realize you were not kidding. In that time of eventually moving in with the OM she most likely will not come back.

At this point D her and plan B her. With the stipulatin that you can not have contact with WW as long as she is in relationship with the OM. The combination will push her off the fence to you or him. At least the drama will be over.

She wants to put off paying her legal fees. That's all it is. Push the divorce through and don't waste anymore time on this woman.

Dump this woman and push ahead with the D. She is toxic and will screw you over without a thought. She is stalling for a reason and none of it is good. Stay strong erichh.

How are you doing on your sobriety efforts?
Have you been open to your wife about this?

While I did not have an affair on my husband ( the thoughts were there), had he said to me

"Look, you can't have access to me and the OM. I will not communicate with you while you are in contact with the OM. Just so you know, during Plan B I'm continuing to maintain my sobriety of x months and continue going to SAA meetings. You can meet my sponser and verify my honesty about my sobriety/recovery"

I probably would have thought long and hard about my decisions, realized that you were serious about facing your own demons. THAT would carry alot of weight with me.

Trust me, after what my husband put me through, the thought of having an affair (or several..considering my husband has seen 10's of thousands of naked women, and fantasized about god knows how many on the street) to inflict the same amount of pain on him as he did on me was VERY appealing.

I did have some pretty bad LB's. But it took my husband manning up and fixing HIS issues for me to be motiviated to fix mine. Then we could fix our marriage.

Ever since we got married, I have not discussed my addiction with her. I don't know if it is a good idea at this point to open that can of worms. My marriage counselor suggested that I need to tell her eventually. But he wanted me to share it with her once I had overcome it, which I haven't.

I had a meltdown this weekend. I was depressed because it was V-day and I knew that WW was with OM the whole time. It killed me inside. I know it's no excuse. As a result, I took the wireless network card out of my laptop and leave the card at work and just have my laptop at home to use for journaling, etc.

As for Plan B, can't do that because the divorce is not finalized and there are custody issues that are important here and plan B'ing could look bad for me in a court.

This is very possible. I asked how she was paying her attorney and she said that she put it on a credit card that she has.

There is a part of me that wants to leave this woman because of what she is doing and given her past actions but then I think about how my own actions played a role in this situation.

I am sometimes haunted by the thought that I cheated on my wife before she ever cheated on me and MANY more times than she did because of my looking at porn so much. I feel like I'd be a big hipocrite if I ended it with her because of her infidelity when I am guilty of the same thing in my heart.

If it wasn't for my role in this, I think I might have an easier time coming to grips with ending the marriage.

But what if my wife really WAS a changed woman at the time when she married me but my addiction to porn slowly killed this woman's fragile soul? I just don't know. I know I can't take responsibility for what she did and the fact that there are women here whose husbands had the same addiction that I have and stayed married and true shows that my wife could have done it too.

It's confusing to me. But even if WW really IS waiting to have enough money to finalize the D, what's my rush? I still have so much work to do on myself that I am not ready to start a new relationship anyway...

I completely understand your last paragraph erichh. You arent ready anyways so what does it matter.

I highly doubt it, considering her "man" timeline.

Charlotte

erichh,

I think your posts and attitude have taken a very negative approach to yourself that are uncalled for. From what I recall, you said that you looked at porn about once a week. That's not an addiction by professional standards.

You're into a mode of self punishment right now which is just uncalled for. How often did you look at the stuff? Did your self gratification take the place of doing things with her?

Did she confront you about this and ask you to stop?

Porn has obvious downfalls and can be damaging, but I've also heard about situation where couples use it to enhance their own sex lives and learn new things.

Now stop with this self punishing behavior which justifies her affair. Nothing justifies it. You didn't push her into an affair or cause her to stray. She's on husband number 3. You could have been the Pope himself and she would have likely cheated on you.

If I am being negative, I certainly don't intend to be. I am trying to take responsibility for my role in this situation and change the negative behaviors that contributed to our unhealthy relationship. If I focused too much on the negative, then you are right, I mean to focus on the fact that I know what I did wrong and acknowledge that and then move on to improve those areas of my life.


Like one of the other posters observed, it isn't the frequency that determines if you are addicted. Whenever I was faced with serious stress, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, or depression, I would turn to porn as a release. The fact that it only happened once per week on average is not as relevant as the fact that I used porn as a way to self-medicate.

Yes, viewing porn replaced the need to talk to my wife and work out our problems. I essentially swept the problems under the rug and delt with it unhealthily instead of trying to face them and work it out with my wife.


No, she never confronted me about it. But I know that she knew about it based on subtle things she would say and do. We were living in separate rooms for the latter half of our marriage and it was an easy escape for me to view porn on my laptop.

She once asked me if I still look at that crap and I lied to her about it.


To each his own. My wife was completely devestated when I told her about my addiction before we got married. She is very against it and I think it hurt our marriage.


Maybe she would have cheated anyway. I don't know.

I hope I don't come across as punishing myself. I know that nothing justifies her affair. I just want to work on becoming a better person. And acknowledging my weaknesses that contributed to a bad marriage relationship is the first step in recovering myself and making myself a better future spouse.

erichh,

You're punishing yourself about something which you did when you had no sex life.

Well, what were you supposed to do if you weren't having any sex?

A once a week look is NOT considered an addiction.

Daily or in the place of sex with a real person, yes. Once a week as a release from not having a sex life? Others can weigh in on this.

It's an excuse she will use to justify one of the reasons she supposedly doesn't like you.

How are things going?

Sorry, I just figured out how to turn on email notifications so hopefully I will get an email the next time someone replies to my thread...

I was very upbeat until this past weekend. My wife and I were getting along great and spending more and more time together during our son exchanges. But this weekend, when I had my son, I drove by her apartment twice and OM was there with her both times.

It just hurts more when I get my emotional attachments built up for her. I've been pretty bummed since this weekend. I've begun to distance myself from her again. I'm getting sick of the rollercoaster ride of emotions.

Now I'm back to feeling disgust for her again. I can't believe how much my mind is tossed to and fro from wanting to get my wife back to wanting to get as far away from her as possible...

As far as my personal progress, I'm doing well. I've been sober from porn for almost three weeks now. Regardless of what anyone says about that habit, I think it is unhealthy and degrading. I feel A LOT better about myself when I don't turn to that filth...

Anyway, I want to wait until my emotions are more stable before I decide whether to pull the plug on my marriage. I realize how much my emotional swings are causing me to be all over the place with regard to my decisions about whether to finalize my divorce so I want to wait until I can make a logical decision without emotions getting in the way, then I will feel better about my decision..

Thanks for your concern!!

What about doing a re-exposure?

Do you mean to just re-expose to all of the same people again to show that the affair is still going on?

I'll have to think about this. I've thought about confronting OM face to face to "shake him up." I would do anything to him physically but I've wondered if it would mess with his head to know that I am still serious about them ending their affair and fighting for my marriage.

This week, I just don't have it in me. I'll have to dig deep to be the cheerful person that I have been around her when I see her tomorrow again...