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Cindy,

I have taken the liberty of moving your original post from SS01's thread over here for you.

I'm at work right now and don't have much time but hopefully other's will chime in for now.

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You have offered some great advice to this person. I would like to hear your advice on my situation. I will try to make it short.

My husband has been having an affair for 2 1/4 years now. This affair started when he started working overseas in Vietnam, she is Vietnamese. If fact he is there this very moment as I am writing this to you.

He met her after a large meeting in Hanoi at a karaoke bar. All the other men that my husband worked with were there too, unfortunately for the same disgusting reason. She was with a large group of girls all wearing name tags who were all working on their trade of prostitution. All the guys sat out in the audience as some announcer named each girl and all the guys would have to do was raise their hand for the girl of their choice to come and sit next to them. My husband chose a girl named Xuan.

I want to say something about my husband before I go on. My husband loves looking at 10 women and I am sure he would probably like to have one, but he chose this woman Xuan who is far from a 10. I have seen what she looks like and without makeup she is not very attractive at all. My husband says she is average looking for a Vietnamese person, but if you compare the average looking Vietnamese person to the average American person, she would be below average in America.

Why would my husband choose a person who looks this way when looks are very important to him? Also, just to note, my husband struggles with pornography.

Now to get back to what I was saying. Since having this affair a baby has been born because of it. He says it is his, but he or myself and children are not 100% certain and I will tell you why. When my husband was 3 months into his affair I got her phone number from his cell phone bill and I called her up at 11:30 pm her time and I talked to her and the man she was with and they both told me that they married each other. This proves she is not faithful. So, this child could be someone else's. I sent him with a DNA test, but he told me that there is a lot of tension between the two of them and that asking for this right now would not be good. The reason why there has been tension between the 2 of them is because when he was home last time for a 7 week period he talked to her only 1 time. By the way, I was on another phone listening in sitting there with my husband.

When he went back this time he tried go to her apartment and she would not answer her door, so my husband went to her sisters house. My husband's words were that he sister had to beg and plead for almost 2 hours for her to come over. She finally did, and when they talked Xuan told my husband to take care of his family and that she and the baby(unborn at that moment)would be ok. She said some other things and then said that she did not want to talk much, and left.

Now my husband is over there trying to keep the peace and I believe he is trying to get her to warm up to him again so he still can continue in this affair just as a friend, but I believe more so so he can continue to have sex with her.

My husband is the type of person who does whatever it takes to get his way. Whether he yells or is extra nice to someone. He is so self centered and doesn't deeply comprehend this. He is trying to get out of life what he was missing as a child. This a whole complete different problem that I can talk about later.

To get to the end here, my husband does not want to break it off with her, he has told me so because he says that he still cares for her. I have asked him many times if he loves her and he says that he has some type of love for her, but he can't articulate to me what kind he is talking about. I don't think he is trying to hide this information from me, he just doesn't know because he is confused by his own admission.

Here is what confuses me. He told me that about after one year of the affair the fizzle wore off and things became like a normal relationship. He told me that at this very moment that his love is not growing for her. But, when I asked him where he was on the scale of emotional attachment he said moderate to intense because he feels that he can not break it off with her. What is he to do now that there is a child involved?

I have a few of Dr. Harley's books, but I guess I have not read the Plan A-D sections. What book talks about these plans? Isn't there extensive things here at Marriage Builders to get this information?

So what do you think about what I have just told you and what would be your advice?

Cindy,
(eyeonthesparrow)

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Cindy, I hope I didn't offend you on the other thread. After re-reading it I feel I came across a little rude. I hope you didn't take it that way.

Now on to your post. I know that there are people here far more qualified to give you advice so I'll stay away from that but I will give you my initial impression of the situation.

Your first question was why he would go for someone less attractive. Something BS's learn is that the OW (or OM) is usually less attractive than the BS. Thats because WS are in a selfish frame of mind and that want someone "beneath them" that will worship them. I'm sure other people here can explain this better than I can.

Now as far as the actual situation itself, I feel your H is cake-eating. Thats why he won't get the DNA test, as long as there's the possibility he's the father he has to stay in contact with her and you have to accept it. JMO...

I will leave it to the people here with more experience to further analyze your situation and give you advice.

Oh, and I haven't read it but I believe Plans A and B are discussed in Surviving An Affair.

Good Luck!


Married 5 yrs
WH-28, Me-28, DDa-5, DDb-5
Numerous short-term EA's over past 2 yrs.
1st Dday-10/06, Last Dday-10/08
Seperated 4 months.
2/09- Recommitted to M and being the best W I can be.
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Mark,

Thanks so much for doing this for me. And thanks for the great advice you have given to others. When you have the time please let me know what you think of my situation.

Thanks again,
Cindy

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geminibutterfly,

I'm ok, I understand what you were trying to say. Sorry about missspelling your name.

Thanks for your comments. It hit home in a good way when you said that he found someone below himself that basically he could tell what to do. This is one of the reasons precisley he liked the affair in the beginning because she would be his mat. The Vietnamese culture for women is to please the men, but going to Vietnam 3 times myself, I can give you a guarantee that these woman do not like being treated this way.

Xuan, my husband's, whatever you want to call her, over time let my husband know how she felt about certain things. My husband told me that he dropped cigarette ashes on her floor and she said something in Vietnamese about how inconsiderate he was. He didn't understand everything she said, but enough to know that she was giving to him.

Thanks again for your input,
Cindy



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I feel your situation doesn't have much hope as long as he keeps working in Vietnam. If he breaks up with this ho, all he has to do is go to the bar, raise his hand and get another one.

How long have you been married?

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I will add that my wife's OM was NOT an upgrade from me by any stretch of the imagination. His own friends said this repeatedly to me, and in the looks dept. this was certainly the case as well.

He DID have a giant crush on my wife for a long time and she knew it. She wanted to be worshipped. Affairs are about ME ME ME.


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How many people know about your husband's affair, and who told them?

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believer,

Your point was short and sweet with power behind it which made me laugh out loud. I said out loud, "that's right".

We will be married for 18 years on June 10.

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So does he have to work in Vietnam? This is a recipe for disaster - a nice wife at home taking care of the fort, and a little side pork while he is working.

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ZenWolf,

It makes me happy to know that it is not just women that have their husband's settle for less, you guys have your wives settle for less too.

You know what a best friend said to me awhile back and her husband feels the same way? She believes that when people are having affairs that they attract the kind of person in looks and personality that that is equal to the deep dark ugliness that is in the WS's heart.

Have you met my husband by the way? It sure sounds like it when you say affairs are about ME ME Me!!! To tell you the honest truth, most things in life are about HIM HIM HIM!! I'm not doggin him at this moment even though it sounds like it. If you were to spend any time with him you would see this for yourself. In fact, our children have been very hurt by him making all kinds of demands on them. If you were to ask our children they would tell you this.

By the way, is your wife still having an affair or are those days over? I would hope so.

Cindy


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Cindy,

I don't know that I am as well equipped to help you as some others already posting to you, but let me ask some questions to go with the one that Turtle has asked...

How long have you been married? How old are you and your husband? You mention children, how many and how old are they?

While these questions might not seem pertinent to you right now, they really can influence the type of advice that you might get form a lot of people.

About the only part of this that really seems that unique is the international theme it seems to have.

Why is he working in Vietnam? How long does he go there for at a time?

Be sure you have read the Basic Concepts and I would also recommend that you read the articles and Q&A columns related to infidelity. The basis for most of the advice you get will the book Surviving An Affair (SAA) and you might want to get that book if you don;t have it. If you can't afford it, check your local lending library as that is where I got the copy I read early on when I first came here.

There is also much useful information contained in the top few posts on the Just Found Out forum as well. The posts by Longhorn and WAT that are pinned near the top of the forum contain some good stuff though some of the links might still be broken as the result of the software upgrade of not too long ago.

I have a few posts related to Plan A and Plan B in my Musings thread linked in my signature line. There are also a few links you might want to check out a few pages into the thread. Some are internal to MB and few are for other sites. I also have a short (for me) summary of the MB methods posted under the Trouble Shooting and Repair thread also linked to my sig-line.

If you read the General Welcome on the JFO forum you can also scroll down to the bottom of the page and find a link for notable posts. This links many good threads and sources of information to read through while waiting for answers to your questions and might answer a lot of questions for you. Again, some links don;t work properly due to the site upgrade, but many of them are still good.

You can also often learn a great deal simply by reading the answers people give to other posters. And if you have specific questions for someone, point them here rather than breaking the flow of another poster's thread, though short thread jacks are not usually a problem, just don;t expect in depth answers that deviate from the flow of what is already going on with those folks threads.

Hopefully a bunch of people will be able to work with you. I'm not going to be around much this weekend, and my job is such that I can't usually post much these days. You're in good hands. Believer is already here as is Turtlehead. That's a couple of the best we have around here.

I'll check in when I can and will chime in when I have something I think applies to your situation.

Mark

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turtlehead,

Thank you too for writing back.

At least 20-30 people that I have told which includes some of my family, friends, people from church, and at least one person that I buy some natural products from. There are way more than this because my daughter has told her friends and they went and told other people at school because my son was confronted with people that he doesn't even know that asked him about it.

I know this has bothered him for me to tell people. This may sound bad, but sometimes I wish more of the entire world knew about it even if I don't know them so it would bring a true change in him. My husband is the type of person that does care about what people think.

Cindy

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believer,

Ultimately I say the answer is no, he does not have to work in Vietnam. He has an excellent work history including management of a company, the financials of a business, he is excellent, I mean excellent at turning a bad situation around, he also is just as excellent at dealing with people. You would have to see him in action he is wonderful. I honestly can say he is one of the best hard working men in the world, and I do not have to meet the entire world to know this. He is an over achiever and work alcoholic for sure.

He feels that he can not find anything here, especially with the way the US is going.

I don't know if you know or not, but Vietnam was just opened up a little over 2 years ago for trades to come in and it is one of the hottest places in the world to do business in. Because of the Vietnam War no one was able to do business with them on this scale until now. Investors are extremely interested in Vietnam.

My husband started this business venture almost 3 years ago with a man who is Vietnamese/Chinese who has done extreme amounts of business already in Vietnam. One large project came through, but most of them have not. Now my husband is working some other projects in which the investors at this point are going to move forward.

I know I have made my answer long, but I wanted to give you a background of what he is doing. He has said that he will leave Vietnam if nothing else he does produces anything.

Maybe Vietnam will BLOW UP!!!! Just kidding!

Cindy


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Interesting. I was surprised that he is doing business there. Like you said, for many years, Americans couldn't even go to Vietnam.

But he really needs to come home.

Things are not good here economically, but being here would be better than a divorce.

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Mark1952,

Thanks for all the leads to the information that I can use, I appreciate it.

To answer your questions, we will be married 18 years on June 10th, I am going to be 47 this year and he will be 43, and our children a girl 17, a son almost 16.

I do want to say that I do appreciate the time that you spend responding to me and all the other people that you do, thanks.

Has your wife come around or is she still in the fog?

Cindy

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believer,

I say Amen! to him needing to be home. Our son has especially voiced his pain in his father being gone and how he feels that he has not grown up like he should because his dad is gone. Our son has said that he is going to be grown and out of the house then it will be too late. Our son has always been very active outside and always wanted his dad to do dad things with him, but my husband has not ever since our son was very small.

This company that he is working for is failing and my husband thinks that the doors will close very soon. The things that he is working on now are side deals that he and a fellow worker were able to get while being in Vietnam. So, this may keep him busy for awhile longer or more.

I honestly believe that GOD can shut this down anytime he wants to. Why HE has not, I do not know HIS plan. Maybe it has to do with my husband getting way too comfortable and thinking that he is the MAN!!!, that he thinks that he can do anything and that he is in control of his own life, which he is not. My husband made a comment not too long ago about how good things were going on his side adventures that he said that God wasn't even able to get this much, something close to these words.

Believe me, God has waken me up to the kind of person that I have been and it has been extremely painful to go through the pain of who I have really been. This healing process started back a couple of weeks to a month right before his affair started. All of a sudden I was crying and in deep emotional pain and I did not know why at the time, of course now I do.

The only time either one of us have talked about divorce is when we are arguing. Just to let you know that we have not argued for 7 weeks now because I have matured greatly in this area. I do agree with you about getting a divorce, one day this will happen because like I told him, I am not willing to live like this for the rest of my life. I have taken steps that are headed towards this direction. The main thing is is that I have not heard from God as His direction to divorce. I have heard Him so far along this journey that I am taking and He has not failed me yet, so I believe I will know when it is time to, I was going to say throw in the towel, but forget the towel, it is more like throw my husband away.

I don't want to sound mean when I say this, but he has thrown so much away with our family already, he has used us like a used up towel. If I were to throw my husband away like a used up towel it would be because the towel(my husband does not want to be clean). How can anyone get anything out of anything in life that is dirty? God has even said we are like filthy rags that He can make white as snow, that's if we will come to Him.

I will tell you this, I will do what is right!!


Cindy


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