That's pretty much what I did. Just sent text saying 'I can't hve drinks with you'. Haven't heard back from him. Wondering if I do, if I should tell him about last email from her, or should I just wait until another day.

I don't know about this ~ I definitely would have gone out with him.

It would have been a good chance for you to meet some ENs and leave him with good memories when you move to Plan B (if you decide to do so) in a couple of weeks...

Just need to point out that Plan A is NOT about boundary enforcement. It is about meeting ENs and identifying our own Love Busters to get them eliminated so that the meeting ENs will have the desired effect.

Boundaries have to do with us and never with others. A boundary establishes what I will do and not just what I will do in response to what someone else does or does not do. The enforcement of that boundary, or rather the protection of it, may require me to respond a certain way to someone else based on how they act, but the intent of the boundary is NOT to hold them accountable or to cause them to suffer consequences for their actions.

While in Plan A, a real Plan A where an affair is still going on, the BS must find a way to meet the ENs of the WS in spite of the fact that contact is taking place. Once the affair is over, NC has gone on long enough that withdrawal is complete and a commitment to fixing the marriage is gained from the WS, a plan to meet each others ENs and avoid Love Busters can be formulated and work can be done that requires participation by both, but THAT isn't Plan A, that is Recovery. Plan A is unilateral by the BS and is an effort to win the WS back from the AP.

If meeting ENs is dependent on anything from the WS then it isn't Plan A at all. Boundaries have NOTHING at all to do with Plan A beyond being stated clearly that you desire a relationship that does not include a third person and will not settle for such a relationship. That is a boundary that can only be enforced after Plan A is run its course, since the point of Plan A is to stop the affair. Until Plan A is over, you have no way to determine if it will work or not so drawing a line in the sand is a good thing but you can't demand that the line be recognized until the end of Plan A.

And if Plan A fails to end the affair, then Plan B is the enforcement of the boundary that says that you will not share him with anyone else.

The boundary is merely establishing that the marriage is just the two of you and nothing more that needs to be done during Plan A. Enforcement of that boundary really is Plan A until things escalate in the next level of Plan B.

It is too easy to fall into the trap of saying that something needs to be a boundary and making that into a demand, specifically a selfish demand which is always a Love Busters and so must be avoided. And it too often occurs that boundaries are confused with boundary enforcement which is NOT the same thing as punishment for the violation of a boundary.

Clay, I have a little Plan A stuff in the Musings link in my sig line. Jump to page 1 for the start of that.

To see how Plan A, B and Recovery relate, see the Trouble Shooting link in my sig line

The musings link also has some stuff related to boundaries someplace in there, but there are some good threads related to the topic elsewhere. There is no better source on boundaries than the originators, John Townsend and Henry Cloud. Both are a part of New Life Ministries at New Life.

Recovery is dependent on commitment to NC. Plan A is not since the point of Plan A is to win NC.

Plan A is about saving the marriage. Recovery is about fixing it. Until Plan A has succeeded or failed, there is nothing to fix. And even after NC is established it takes time for the WS to get past withdrawal and move into real recovery. Overlapping the two will result in neither one taking place.

CG, call her BH and get his email so you can forward her crap back to him. He needs to know she is NOT letting it go AND is blameshifting it all onto you.

claygal, the others are right. You should be meeting his needs whenever you can. Go out with him for drinks, be as pleasant as you can. Avoid lovebusters.

My suggestion would be to do a great Plan A for a couple more weeks and then go into a DARK Plan B right before the holidays. That has yanked many a WS off the fence to spend his holidays alone.

And call the BH today and tell him about the continued contact with the OW and your H. Ask for his email and start forwarding him every email as it comes, ccing her when you do. Just say, "Joe, here is Skanky's latest email. Thought you should see it."

Tell her BH that they are still talking. The problem is that she is taking his calls.

Mark, I thought they were already dissolving the affair? If so, is that not when it's her turn to say what she requires?

I don't know. I don't she was in any position to be Plan Aing last night. Today, sure. I think that, last night, she would have become a basket case, probably AOed the heck out of him, and dug herself down a little. She seemed might distraught yesterday.

Cat, OW hs told me she will no longer take his phone calls or answer emails. But as of yet I do not know if she will. WH says he is done contacting her, but I have heard that before....So I guess I should just continue Plan A until I know for sure????

Definitely continue Plan A. But if he says he will no longer contact her, then it is time for your boundaries, yes?

OK thanks. I am having dinner with him tonight

She seemed OK to me, she was the one who asked him to go out for FUN conversation and was redirecting him when he kept going to R talk, which was the right approach(good job Claygal!)... Then you and another poster were talking to her about setting boundaries first.

Claygal, if you feel you can't control your LoveBusters (angry outbursts, etc) then definitely go to the ladies room, etc and compose yourself. Good job on the dinner tonight!

Clay,

As long as contact is ongoing, the affair is ongoing. The problem with simply saying that they are done with it and accepting that as true is that when additional contact is discovered it comes as a blow to what has been termed "recovery." Real recovery can only begin after NC has been established and gone on long enough for the withdrawal to happen and the fog to begin to clear.

Many if not most affairs that end when discovered actually linger for a lot longer than you might think. The fantasy continues for a while unless the affair partners throw each other under the bus. Even then they often have this notion that contact can continue and they can be "friends" and keep talking while stopping the adultery.

What they discover is that it is the feelings they have for each other, or more precisely the way they make each other feel that is the cause of difficulty in reconnecting with the BS. Some sadly never do arrive at that point and in most of those instances the marriage usually ends or at least languishes for many years.

Any contact keeps the fantasy alive and until it has been a while, sometimes as long as the affair itself, but typically 3 to 6 weeks or so, at times as long as three months, the WS is in no condition to be actively working on fixing the relationship. Even the real end of the adultery and contact with the affair partner is not the beginning of recovery for most.

Once he begins to reengage, it might be possible to begin asking for things in return, but you simply can't demand anything and expect it to lead to him loving you. Demands will always take from his Love Bank as will Independent Behavior, AOs, DJs, and habits that he finds aggravating. No amount of meeting ENs will ever lead to a recovered marriage unless withdrawals from the Love Bank are eliminated.

Picture a bucket. You try to fill the bucket and at first all you use is an eyedropper. You might eventually fill it up, but evaporation alone will make that a tedious process. So you identify his top ENs and by meeting them you begin to fill the bucket with a cup.

What Love Busters do, especially those that are serious or the top Love Busters for your spouse, is they punch holes in that bucket. An eyedropper no longer keeps up and he falls out of Intimacy, into Conflict and eventually into a state of Withdrawal. Meeting ENs never fills the bucket far enough to get back into Intimacy and so he never reaches the point where he starts wanting to actually meet your ENs in return.

Even using the cup, it takes a long time to fill a bucket and as long as Love Busters keep punching more holes in the bucket, you�d have to use a fire hose to keep it full.

The solution is to stop all Love Busters, even the ones that he might not consider important so that even small holes don�t appear. Now as you begin keeping the filling process going with the cup and include even the eyedropper at times, he begins to reach a point where he ends up allowing his Giver to appear and at that point he begins to fill YOUR bucket as well. This is when the opportunity to FIX his Love Busters arrives. It is when the hard part of solving long standing problems in the marriage gets to begin.

But until he has no contact for a while, gets the fantasy of the affair out of his conscious mind and begins to find clarity in his thinking and processing his interactions with you from a place of logic and thought instead of feelings and reaction to those feelings, he is not going to be a lot of use as a husband, I�m afraid.

But keep in mind that this is a process that occurs over time and not simply a switch that is thrown in most instances. Things improve in tiny little bits until a threshold is reached at which point it becomes like a snowball rolling down hill. It gathers momentum and gets bigger as it goes. After a couple of years (yes, years) it seems unstoppable, but at first it can be quite frustrating and your biggest problem at first will be unmet expectations.

That any help?

Mark

I did see him last night, he came by the house. No relationship talk, I was a good girl. I will keep it light tonight. Just fun

Smell wonderful and look even better.

Another question...I am under the belief that withdrawal will take some time with him because of who she is. Is there anything I can do or say to him to convince him that he will get over her in time? My thinking is that he is still telling himself he can't or won't. Although he did seem to have a breakthrough about the pain he has caused everyone, and said he realizes that he is more content outside of home because he doesn't have to face guilt. Or maybe he is just babbling to make me feel better

DO NOT TALK ABOUT HER.

Light and airy...air and light.

Love bank deposits ONLY tonight.

You only talk on the OP when the waynerd defrogs.

If you talk of the OP before that, it will sound preachy and NO ONE (especially the waynerd) likes preachy.

Thanks I will, i have made the mistake of talking about her in the past. I will quit doing that. Only light and airy

Re-read Mark's post to you just a few posts before you posted this. He discusses withdrawal clearly and accurately. It has nothing to do with who she is. It has to do with the fact that withdrawal takes time, period. It also has to do with who WH is. Whether or not he ever becomes ready to make changes in his behavior and his understanding of marriage and relationships. It has very little to do with OW.

No. You cannot control another person, you can only control yourself. You are wasting precious time and energy by worrying about what he thinks, what he's doing, etc.

For one thing, you *can't* know what he's thinking and to assume you can is a DJ, a disrespectful judgment, a big fat love buster. You're in Plan A, remember? No love busters!

For another thing, you can't control him. Quit worrying about him and influencing him. You should be spending this time focusing on YOU. How are you meeting his top ENs? Are you avoiding LBs? Has your exposure been complete? Should you expose more? Are you avoiding relationship talk? Do you have a list of boundaries/requirements that must be met before he can come home?

Another love buster. STOP TRYING TO FIGURE HIM OUT. Focus on your Plan A. You are spinning your wheels. You are focused on the wrong stuff. You are hurting your chances of recovery because you're putting your energies into the wrong place.


QUIT TRYING TO FIGURE HIM OUT. Do you detect a theme here? Forget what he says. Watch what he does.

thanks..I'm a little hard headed. I have been trying to meet emotional needs and feel I have done a pretty good job doing so,in fact, did really well for a year, not knowing they were still in contact. I just sometimes fall back in to the trap, especially when I see him hurt the girls, even if unintentionally. Plus, with exposure day and fall-out day, things have been pretty crazy this week. So I guess it is time to start all over