It isn't uncommon for parents to protect their children so don't expect MIL to be on your side.

Please don't be offended but I couldn't help notice your time married and the age of your oldest. Was the marriage a "necessity"? You two are very young and have a lot of responsibiliy. That's tough.

No. It was not a necessity. We were engaged for a long time. Before the pregnancy. Don't worry. A lot of people ask. No offense.

I know we are young. And I know that the fact that MOST of my H's friends (and now his identical twin brother) are single definitely does not help..

So I've got a lot of competition out there..

I think I am done.

I think I just got the last bit of news that I can take.

My H was supposed to be going to the movies with his brother tonight.

Just found out he is at the bar. The same bar he got caught meeting one of the OW from the Internet.

I just don't think I can do this anymore.

Well I guess I am just talking to myself here.

Kdew,
You'll get more response during the week. It's lighter activity on the weekends. You said you're H got laid off and you lost the house that was being built. How long ago did all this happen - is your H still unemployed and what are your living arrangements now? Some men, when they have things going on in their life that is difficult to handle, they will act out in another area - like your H is doing. They'll do something really stupid. I guess what I'm trying to say is make sure you understand the whole picture - don't narrow it to one thing that is going on. There may be more going on with your H that is driving him to behave this way. He may be having a really difficult time expressing what is going on with him with recent events in your lives. His denial is a mask to how he is really feeling about himself.

GG

Thanks. I was beginning to give up hope.

Yeah. I know that things are tough. And I know that we are both stressed. We are still in our apartment that we've lived in for two years for now. Problem is, we didn't renew our lease, and they may have already set up a new tenant for when our lease is up.

He is not still unemployed. He is actually working fewer hours and making more money than he was previously. Plus, the A started BEFORE any of this. The A actually started while we were I thought better than we ever had been. We were doing well financially (at the time), there were no in-law issues (like there are now), and we were doing everything a happy couple should -- date nights, talking openly daily, being honest (or so I thought).

That's what I don't understand about all of this.

When he started drifting away, I thought we were better than we ever had been before. Now, everything is miserable. Because of a completely separate issue, me and his entire family are fighting. Money is tight. Because of the weather here, both of the kids and I have been sick fairly regularly lately. The thing with the house. The thing with the employment. General status of this country..

I would understand more if he were wandering now.

The thing is, he won't talk about it. Period. He will (usually) listen to me if I want to talk about something. But never will put his two cents into it. And if I don't bring it up, he just bottles it up and treats me and the kids like s@#! without explanation.

I thought we were doing 'better' after last weekend. We had an entire day child-less, and were able to discuss a lot of things. He seemed to agree with most everything at the time, and we discussed boundaries for each other and everything.

But then yesterday happened. It was the first weekend since discovery week. His brother called and texted him all day, harassing him about my "rules" for him. Made sure to mock him for "letting his wife tell him what he can and can't do". (Keep in mind, this is the same brother who is currently in divorce proceedings.)

Well, his pride got the best of him.

He lied to me about where he went. Instead, he went to the bar. Wouldn't answer calls or texts for almost 6 hours before I finally got a response. Needless to say, I was furious. I tried my best to speak calmly and rationally. That was until he let his friend have the phone. His friend called me all sorts of names, told me to "leave them the @!#$ alone" and hung up on me. Never heard from H again.

When my H got home hours later, I was still devastated. He told me to suck it up and quit crying. "I thought we were past this? Didn't we work it all out last weekend?"

I asked him if he had anything to say about the day/night. He told me no. It was my fault. I shouldn't have "harassed" him and given him rules. That I should "know better than to believe him when he makes promises".

Same ol', same ol'.

This is so hard to keep doing.

KDew:

This is the line right here:



HE WOULD NOT get back into the house.

That level of disrespect? That goes to the BONE. He's NOT going to change.

Let him go back to mommy. Let him PAY SERIOUS child support.

Your in for a very long and painful road with this guy.

MEL would have shot her WH for that.
Flamingo would have filleted me like a piece of tuna, slowly and painfully, for something like that.

Time to change your behaviors.

STOP Being NEEDY. Start being strong. Start stating your truths.

MIL? who cares. Keep your children away from HER.

And you? Grow up. Get Strong. Get Better. And do BETTER for yourself.

One day, your wayward depicable husband will look at you and say: "Look at what I LOST" And you will not even CARE.

LG

Kdew,
I can understand about the BIL getting involved. He's miserable about his D - misery wants company so he recruits your H and out of love your H stands by his brother. You calling gave them a reason to bash the women further. Have you started Plan A (sorry if I missed this in earlier posts)?

GG

I was trying so hard to be strong. I thought I was, at least.

Last night hurt more than anything. I mean, my H cheated on me, and I haven't let anyone get away with talking mess about him. He is still my H, after all. And, for reasons that are hard to justify lately, I love him.

I know that Plan A says I'm supposed to be basically bribing him to come back home.

And everyone has specified that I am not to be a :doormat:.

But the fine line between the two of those is becoming almost impossible to see.

I know I am young. And that my H is young. And that we have kids young. And that it's hard. And blah blah. Everyone has preached to me about that.

But it's like some people are almost "justifying" my H's cheating..

The one thing keeping me here, in this M and here on MB, is that H didn't used to be this way. Obviously. I would not have married him if he was.

Am I naive to think that the old H I fell in love with and married is a thing of the past?

I mean, is this the "new H"? Or is this just the "foggy H" and I'm not supposed to take any of what he says or does right now to heart?

Kdew,
Here is Pepper's link on Plan A - The carrot and the stick. Please read it. You are stressing yourself over something you can't control right now - some outside forces turning your H into an alien H you don't recognize. Plan A will help you bring the focus back on you and your M. You will get overwhelmed with the outside forces intruding on your M. You need a plan. Plan A should be implemented I believe for six months. If no improvement is made then you consider going to next step Plan B.

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2224241&page=1

I've read that. At least 50 times in the last two weeks. I've written it down myself. I could probably spout it off like a speech.

That doesn't help my emotions. No matter how much I want to stick to the Plan, when things like last night happen, I lose all hope.

How do you "ignore" the names? The I don't love you's? The disrespect?

How do I just tell myself "Well, my H didn't mean that. Because that isn't really him talking.. It is the aliens."

How do I convince myself of this?

And how do I compete with the BIL? I mean, they are identical twins. Some days I feel like if my BIL asked my H to commit murder, he would do it, just to be a pacifist. I didn't used to think this. This is the Alien H that would do this.

So how do I compete with him, my BIL, without saying "I don't want you talking to your twin anymore"?

I don't want to make my H "choose" between our family and his family.. But they are ALL such ENABLERS, I truly don't see a way to move forward unless there is at least TEMPORARY distancing..

Kdew:

Do you see this in your post:



And then you compare it to his treatment of you at the hands of his friend?

And then this:



No, he never existed. That man did what he had to do, and then as responsibility of his choices started to pile up, his true nature came out. And he IS NOT UP TO IT.

Let me change my original advice. I said to soak him for Child Support. I would recommend that you get the maximum amount of time WITH YOU, and minimize as much as possible ANY TIME with him and his toxic enabling family. Lower his $$$ committment to you and then he isn't fighting for more time. I believe that it is in the long-term best interests of your children that they do not be exposed to this toxic crew.

PLAN A was never about being a doormat. PLAN A was about working on yourself and SHOWING the wayward spouse how your fixing those things in yourself that the wayward may have found fault with.

What are his EN's? Do you KNOW? Then you can't Plan A until you do. You might think that a neat house is what makes him feel better. It might make you feel better, but it has nothing to do with his top EN's.

An quit trying to convice his Mother of anything. State your truths. And boundaries. And DO NOT rise to thier OH SO Often bait.

LG

LG,

I haven't convinced my H to sit down and actually fill out the EN Questionnaire, but I followed the site's advice and filled it out as if I were him, as best I could..

So yes. I know what his EN's are. And I was doing all of the things in the "carrot" part of Plan A.

Problem is, I felt like we were only ignoring the issues, rather than fixing them. What re-started everything was on Wednesday.

I couldn't get ahold of my H for a few hours. Rent was due by 5pm. I wasn't going to be off in time to pay it. I needed to know whether or not he was going to be able to make it on time. When it was going on the fourth or fifth hour that I couldn't get ahold of him, I couldn't help but wonder why.

I didn't accuse him of anything. I simply asked why he didn't respond or answer for so long. And he got EXTREMELY defensive. Like guilty conscience kicking in.. So I felt like we were right back at square one.

I explained to him that there are going to be good days and bad days. That eventually (and ideally) the bad days will dwindle down to almost never.. But that everything is still so fresh that it doesn't take much to "wonder" about things..

Well, that's when he decided that it just "wasn't working". Exactly ONE WEEK into our attempted R.

I know I'm supposed to keep at it for six months until I make a move to either Plan B or Plan D.

But how do I let him just "give up" every other day for six months before I go on to the next plan?

This reminds me a bit of my daughter trying to find out how hard she can poke the cat before it decides to bite.

You don't have to be ay Plan A for 6 months and, with your WH's behavior, you wouldn't survive 6 weeks.

You both got married with some concept of what you were getting in to. Your WH has decided he wants to move the boundary line and is pushing hard to create more space for him and less for you. You, in turn, are pretty much following his plan. So you need to change the game too. Your Plan A is doing exactly what he wants. Plan B might be the better option.

You may never get H back because he might never have existed. I'm guessing neither one of you dated much and your peer group is the wrong peer group. WH needs to decide if he wants a marriage or be single. He can't have both.

My wife is a twin. If she had to choose between me and SIL, I have no doubt I would lose.

The thing is, Plan A worked. For a week. Until it was BIL's off-week with his daughter. So he was able to go out. PARTY.

I don't want to give up on Plan A just yet. I want to give it a 100% effort before doing so.

Along with following the things on here, I am doing the book The Love Dare, from the movie Fireproof, if anyone saw it.

It is basically the same as Plan A. In the movie, it is used to show the WW what it could be like at home again..

I'm actually going to restart the book tomorrow. I feel like this weekend, there were so many LBs and DJs and everything else thrown all about (I'm admitting, I'm not completely innocent here either).

So tomorrow is Restart Day. For everything. Plan A. Love Dare.

Hopefully I will be back to the positive side of things soon..

Oh. And about the peer group..

Problem is that we moved back to where my H grew up.. And he has a lot of not-so-good old friends that have recently returned from the military. About 90% are single, childless, and still act like they are 12 at times. Hence the phone call last night.

And then my BIL moving back in with mommy and daddy last month with his newly single self..

It's like me vs. the world.

Until recently, most of "our" friends were married. Most had kids. We had play dates. We had group date nights.

But now that he has rediscovered the Bachelor life..

I don't know.

Ugh.

I am just SO torn here on what to do about this past weekend's events.

I mean, everything hurt SOOO badly. The silent treatment. Followed by the name calling. Followed by the silent treatment. Followed by the lies. Followed by the painful truth. And ending with the phone conversation..

But I can't help but look at the first half of the week.

It was AMAZING. After our "talk" about everything, I felt like we were more connected than we ever have been. Period. I really felt like it was all working. The Carrot and The Stick.

But then the fight started. We were both guilty parties in that.

He wasn't filling any of my EN's for a few days, so I LB'd him and kinda gave him a piece of my mind..

And now I feel like we are back at Square One.

So -- back to why I was REALLY posting. .

With everything that happened this weekend -- the fighting and everything that transpired..

Do I take it to heart? Or am I supposed to "brush it off" because this is that "foggy H" that everyone says I am supposed to ignore??

Plan A is what it is. It's not fair to the BS but never claimed to be. How long you can keep it up is the question. The longer you stay in the plan, the less you will want to stay in the M. Eventually you reach the point of no return. So before you get to that point, go to Plan B.

But should I really be in Plan B already? It's only been 12 days..

I feel like that is just giving up, pretty much..