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Ok, then I won't be back, seeya


Finally seem to be heading in the right direction
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Originally Posted by TheRoad
This OM is not going to back away.

WW is ripe to be tempted back because she has not gone through withdrawal. The OM knows this and will continue to try to contact WW.

Why?

Because OM has seen you will do nothing, will not make him face any consequences, because you will not expose OM to wife or work.

WW has dropped OM to fast, too easy. Some thing does not smell right. Either your WW is up too something. Or your giving us a large order of baloney.

As I said before troll.


Dang - and I fed him some of my best troll food, too~


D-Day 2-10-2009
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Thank you Marriage Builders!

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See the problem with people like this is that they think they can "outsmart the system."
There are reasons that there are EP for NC and letters, and all the other stuff, and NOT hanging out having beers with the OM.
But I guess this guy won't get it.
Enjoy recovery. Not.


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Well, SHL,
I don't happen to think you are a troll. And I am guessing you will see this post because things will not be going along as well as you might think/hope.

Here's my take about a couple of possibilities:
1. The affair is going further underground. Even though you have done a good job with the computer email and passwords, cellphones, etc., WW and OM can find a way to communicate/meet. Be very cautious.

2. Even if your wife really wants NC, it is very difficult for an addict (I fully believe that these types of affairs - not all affairs - are addictions), to refrain from having contact, especially if the affair partner is trying to initiate it. As an example (yep, I was a bitter,resentful BS person for a long time - not now though, even though that's what you want to label me as), my H's affair was with a co-worker in the military. It took him about 3 and 1/2 months, to submit retirement and leave his job. During that time, the OW would initiate contact about every 7-10 days. My H refused to write an NC letter, saying it was not necessary. On his last day of work, my H and I rehearsed several times how he would respond if OW asked to talk to him and "say good-bye". He was mentally ready; BUT when she asked to talk to him, he followed her right out the door to talk to her. In this whole mess, this day was the closest I ever came to divorcing H. He ended up writing the NC letter and has not had any contact since that day. He was in withdrawal for about 6 months.

In any case, the bottom line is to be careful about what you accept/believe. Look for facts and hard evidence and give little credence to what WW or OM are telling you. As I said earlier, look for actions and not the words.

Best wishes.

AM


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Originally Posted by armymama
Well, SHL,
I don't happen to think you are a troll. And I am guessing you will see this post because things will not be going along as well as you might think/hope.

Here's my take about a couple of possibilities:
1. The affair is going further underground. Even though you have done a good job with the computer email and passwords, cellphones, etc., WW and OM can find a way to communicate/meet. Be very cautious.

2. Even if your wife really wants NC, it is very difficult for an addict (I fully believe that these types of affairs - not all affairs - are addictions), to refrain from having contact, especially if the affair partner is trying to initiate it. As an example (yep, I was a bitter,resentful BS person for a long time - not now though, even though that's what you want to label me as), my H's affair was with a co-worker in the military. It took him about 3 and 1/2 months, to submit retirement and leave his job. During that time, the OW would initiate contact about every 7-10 days. My H refused to write an NC letter, saying it was not necessary. On his last day of work, my H and I rehearsed several times how he would respond if OW asked to talk to him and "say good-bye". He was mentally ready; BUT when she asked to talk to him, he followed her right out the door to talk to her. In this whole mess, this day was the closest I ever came to divorcing H. He ended up writing the NC letter and has not had any contact since that day. He was in withdrawal for about 6 months.

In any case, the bottom line is to be careful about what you accept/believe. Look for facts and hard evidence and give little credence to what WW or OM are telling you. As I said earlier, look for actions and not the words.

Best wishes.

AM


FWIW, AM, I don't think he's a troll, either. I DO think he's like a lot of people who initially come to boards looking for help, and don't expect what they get. To some we probably come off like a bunch of flame-eating, spittle-flecked extremists "Expose! Put up billboards! Close bank accounts!" It's a little daunting. smile I think if SHL comes back from time to time to get help processing the continuation of the A he'll pick up a few ideas. He didn't sound stupid, just overwhelmed.

Let's see if he heads back for tools once he gets used to the idea that his old reality is dead.


D-Day 2-10-2009
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Thank you Marriage Builders!

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I don't think he's a troll either. I think he had a great "talk" with his WW who freaked out over exposure and that's what led to his post...but I bet he comes back when he realizes they aren't in recovery.


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Quote
Ok, then I won't be back, seeya

My experience is that the people here are so kind and giving that even if you do come back if/when your recovery hits the rocks, they will still help you in every way they can. I sincerely hope that you are the rare exception that proves the rule and that you don't need the help of MB any more.

Good luck.


Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can't practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.
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SHL,

Assuming that you will continue to read for a while at least before bailing because you don't want to believe that your wife would possibly lie to you about her affair or anything like that...

First of all, the incidence of affairs within the church according to Barna Research is at least the same as it is for the society in general. In fact with the number of 60% in the society over all and among those who profess to being evangelical Christians is actually higher at 63%. Two things might be at work here with one being that Christians might be more prone to tell the truth and secondly that the actual numbers are in fact higher within the church, usually between those working together in ministry where both share the same passion about what they are doing while the spouses are either not into the same things or have no interest in the church at all.

Now as for your wife continuing to work with the OM and you actually recovering your marriage...

Probability of that is about as close to zero as you can measure without actually being impossible.

Re: The sex part being over...

For your wife it didn't start out to be about sex. For (almost) all women it is never about the sex. For women it is about the relationship in many other aspects long before sex enters into it. In fact they will often let things continue for months or even years based entirely on the belief that as long as they aren't having sex it isn't really an affair. Sex becomes the next logical step only after they admit to being in love and usually as the result of pressure form OM to prove their love for each other.

Many marriages have fallen into divorce over relationships in our modern society between people who have never even met in person. Online romances have become so common that people aren't shocked to learn of them any more. Some times these romances end up in the affair partners meeting each other in real life and other times they never do meet, often because one or the other of them is hiding something and when the suggestion to take it to the next level comes up they back out and end the relationship pretty quickly.

A couple years back there was a story on 48 Hours about a man who killed his wife. They couldn't find the murder weapon and were at a loss as to motive. But investigation showed that she had been having an online affair with what she believed was a man about ten years her junior for several months and had decided that she would divorce her husband and run off to be with her soul mate.

It was days before she ended up murdered that she found out that this man from half way across the country was in fact another woman, in the same 40 - 50 year old demographic that was playing at the whole thing out of boredom. After a few days of discussion and much anguish shared with her husband, who up to now had been wondering just what the heck was happening to his marriage, she and the OM now known to be OW decided to get together to see where things led in spite of neither of them having ever been attracted to another woman before.

Soon after the woman ended up dead, having never kept her rendezvous with her online lover. The rest of the story had to do with tying her husband to the murder weapon, but the point is that this wife and mother of three kids was willing to end her marriage over a relationship that had never even involved actually seeing each other in person let alone having sex.

Sex is not what causes the harm to the marriage. Falling in love with someone else is what causes the harm to the primary relationship.

At the same time, the affair is really only a fantasy since there doesn't need to be any real kind of relationship to maintain. There are no kids that wake up sick at 3 in the morning or laundry to do or dishes stacked up waiting to be washed or garbage waiting to be taken out. The attraction is in part to the escape from the drudgery of mundane day to day life. For the woman at least, it has almost nothing to do with the sex.

As for contact: Would you be able to work side by side with your wife and remain friends if she were to divorce you and marry this OM? Would you ever be able to not think of her as your wife, lover and mother of your children? Would you want to hang out with her and remain in close contact with her if you were going to no longer be married to her?

What I'm getting at here is that once two people become more than friends, they can't really go back to being friends. They always say that they will be "just friends" going forward but how many friends do you have that you say are "just" friends? Real friends don't require the qualifier "just" before the word friend.

Once two people become lovers, they are either lovers or ex-lovers for the rest of their lives. There is no going back and undoing what has been done.

In addition, as has been pointed out to you already, your sanity cannot be maintained under her daily spending as much time awake with him as she does with you. You will never be certain that they are only working no matter how much proof she might be able to conjure up or how many times she reassures you.

Your pastor might be a wonderful counselor. Mine had experience in this stuff, knew Dr Harley from when he lived in Minnesota, had read some of Dr Harley's stuff, had counseled a lot of couples over the years and I can tell you that if I hadn't found this place we'd be divorced now. I love him like a brother but his ability to counsel me through an affair by my wife was worse than dealing with it on my own. Traditional marriage counselor only have a success rate of about 16%. That means that 14% of all couples who attend traditional marriage counseling get divorced. The advice I got here and the things I read here saved my marriage. My pastor had no idea what to tell me to do. His idea was to try to get me to figure out what I did to cause my wife's infidelity.

If one of your kids was doing something that was immoral or illegal, would you attempt to placate them so they didn't get angry with you and throw a temper tantrum? Or would you take decisive action to prevent them from ruining their life, maybe yours and perhaps the lives of your other children as well?

Your wife is destroying your family. She is tearing it apart from the inside with the help of someone from the outside. Your job as her husband is in part to prevent her from hurting herself and your children.

As they might say in Texas...

Cowboy up!

Bull riders only have to last 8 seconds. I'm afraid your ride has to go a lot longer and until you strap up, mount up and the gate opens up, you haven't even started the counting...

No ride, no score.

No bull...

Mark

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Well said, Mark.


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Excellent Mark!
Would you mind re-posting that to thread:"Struggling to save marriage as i am the WH"
This person is still working with OW and claims there is nothing emotional at all when seeing this person day to day, and isn't happy with the fact that he can't just walk in the door and hug the W and ask how her day was, he walks in and is asked about OW and if they were in contact, what transpired, etc. please also read his version of NC letter, if your on that thread please forgive me, I just didn't recall seeing you there, but he could certainly use you!


Me-49 and staying there, course AARP sent me my card ugh
H-49
DD and SIL
GS the light of my life! 1 and a half, full of you know what
DS med school
always working on me
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Well...

I am "StillHurtingLots". Lost my login details, so created a new login.

It has been a little over a year since I was last here, and I just want to say a few things about what has been going on since then.

I can happily say that my wife and I are very much in recovery.

My wife and I spent a lot of time with her pastor, speaking about the A, and she has made a lot of changes.

I am not going to go into much detail here, other than to say that I did pretty much everything that I was "supposed" to do.

I still have a key logger installed on both our computers, her cell number has been changed 2 times, and I check the records of calls to make sure there are no calls to or from him. I have access to satellite tracking on her car.

She no longer works for him or communicates with him in any way at all.

Things seem to be going pretty well.

I doubt I will ever entirely get over what she did, but I am slowly beginning for forget.

I have found something out about myself over the last year or so that surprises me...

I have the urge to help other people who have gone through what I did.

I'm no expert, but I do still think that communication is the key. That and a total, complete and non-negotiable disconnection with the OP.

There were a lot of people who gave me a pretty hard time here, telling me to man up, and grow a set of balls.

Then there were those of you who gave good advice, in a nice supportive way.

Thank you to all those who helped.

1 Year and counting. With a lot of hard work, honesty and communication, there will be another 40 years.


StillHurtingLots/CheatOnMe - Born 1971
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"I have the urge to help other people who have gone through what I did.

I'm no expert, but I do still think that communication is the key. That and a total, complete and non-negotiable disconnection with the OP"

Sound like a expert to me. You have Graduated from the School of Hard Knocks.

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Originally Posted by CheatOnMe
I'm no expert, but I do still think that communication is the key. That and a total, complete and non-negotiable disconnection with the OP.

Bravo for you, Cheat! The key to recovery from an affair is complete no contact, as you said...AND creating and maintaining a romantic relationship. It really does work if you use it in its entirety:

Originally Posted by Dr Willard Harley in Requirements for Recovery
The plan I recommend for recovery after an affair is very specific. That's because I've found that even small deviations from that plan are usually disastrous. But when it's followed, it always works. The plan has two parts that must be implemented sequentially. The first part of the plan is for the unfaithful spouse to completely separate from the lover and eliminate the conditions that made the affair possible. The second part is for the couple to create a romantic relationship, using my Basic Concepts as a guide. here

I'll describe these two parts to you in a little more detail.

The first step, complete separation from the lover and eliminating the conditions that made the affair possible, requires a complete understanding of the affair. All information regarding the affair must be revealed to the betrayed spouse, including the name of the lover, the conditions that made the affair possible (travel, internet, etc.), the details of what took place during the affair, all correspondence, and anything else that would shed light on the tragedy.

This information is important for two reasons: (1) it creates accountability and transparency, making it essentially impossible for the unfaithful spouse to continue the affair or begin a new one unnoticed, and (2) it creates trust for the betrayed spouse, providing evidence that the affair is over and a new one is unlikely to take its place. The nightmares you experience are likely to continue until you have the facts that
will lead to your assurance that your husband can be trusted.

An analysis of the wayward spouse's childhood or emotional state of mind in an effort to discover why he or she would have an affair is distracting and unnecessary. It takes precious time away from finding the real solutions. I know why people have affairs: We are all wired for it. Given certain conditions, we would all do it. Given other conditions, however, none of us would do it. So the goal of the first step is to discover the conditions that made the affair possible and eliminate them.

After the first step is completed, the second step is to create a romantic relationship between you and your husband using my 10 Basic Concepts here
as your guide. While your relationship may be improving, it won't lead to a romantic relationship because you are not being transparent toward each other. Unspoken issues in a marital relationship lead to a superficiality that ruins romance.


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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Learning to communicate is secondary to falling in love. Learning to communicate will not save a marriage; falling in love WILL.

Originally Posted by Dr Willard Harley in "We Have a Problem"
The difference between my approach to saving marriages, and the approach of most other therapists, is that I focus on building romantic love (being "in love") between spouses, rather than simply focusing on conflict resolution. As it turns out, I also address conflict resolution, but I do it in a way that builds love between spouses.

Since most marital therapists fail to address the romantic love issue when they try to help couples, their approach to conflict resolution usually fails to build love, and as a result, the couples divorce, even after "resolving" some of their conflicts.
here


"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt

Exposure 101


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Hi there "Cheatonme" this is wonderful news. Marriage is work, never be completely satisfied.

I rejoice in your happiness. God bless!


But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams -Yeats
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Our 6th Anniversary is coming up in about 11 days!

We are pretty much happier and way more in love, now, than we have ever been. This and the fact that we are still together and working towards our marriage together all the time, will make it all that much more enjoyable.

If I can just say a little something about my observations...

Before my wife had her A, both of us had gotten into the routine of being married. By this I mean that we just went about life together as if there was little more to our lives than the kids, money problems, work and making sure that our basic needs were met.

By "basic needs" I mean things like eating, cleaning ourselves, sleeping, having sex and looking after the kids.

We were doing all these things and pretty much ignoring the real needs of our relationship. Not just my wife, but me too!

I'm not making excuses for her having the A. She had no right to do it in the first place. Period!
She knows this and is horribly ashamed and humiliated about what she did, and is totally committed to making our marriage stronger than ever.

All the snooping and spying on her that I did was fully justified and I am glad to say she agrees with me on that. She is even happy that I loved her enough to do it all and fight for our marriage as hard as I did.

In the course of our communicating since the A, I have found out a lot about her needs and desires on the things that she feels she needs from me as her husband. She on the other hand has also gotten the same from me, and we both now try to provide the emotional and physical needs that the other needs and wants.

All of the things that made us fall in love in the first place are still there and we have discovered lots of new ones as well. We just stopped using them to keep our relationship a happy one.

I do have to wonder what would have happened to us if she didn�t have the A. Where would we be today? Happy? Unhappy?

Right now, our relationship is in a place that it has never been in the almost 10 years that we have been together. We love each other more than ever, and our love seems to be growing every day. We are happy and in a really twisted kind of way, I am happy that we got the wake up call that we did! It would have been nice if it wasn�t in the form of an Affair, but that�s how it worked out for us, and we both have to live with it.

Some things that we have learned...

Never take your spouse for granted.
Never assume that you don�t need to let your spouse know that you love him/her.
Try to never go to bed mad at each other.
Always be honest.
Do something as often as you can to show your spouse that you love him/her.
If you don�t already communicate well, learn how to and do it.

Just my 2c worth.


StillHurtingLots/CheatOnMe - Born 1971
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Marriage is always an uneven experience. Bottom line, the closer you both know God means the stronger your marital ties.

How is your finances since she quit the job?


But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams -Yeats
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Originally Posted by imagine
Marriage is always an uneven experience. Bottom line, the closer you both know God means the stronger your marital ties.

How is your finances since she quit the job?


Finances are not bad. We weren't relying on her income yet as she only really worked for him for a few weeks. Basically the duration of the A I think.


StillHurtingLots/CheatOnMe - Born 1971
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Hi there CheatOnMe,
I'm so glad that things have worked out in your marriage, you are doing all the right things and if you two continue to work at keeping each other happy and having faith in yourselves, you can't lose.
Affairs are an eye opener, I sometimes think to myself where would we be in our marriages if that eye opener hadn't happened.......
Not that it's ever right.....
Remember that blind trust is a mistake that BS spouses make, check once in a while, watch, listen to the clues. This way you will be able to fix things quickly.......
Enjoy your new life and the next 40 years...............


BW 56
WH 57
Married 25 years, live together for 2, dated 2 years before that.....
DS 23, DS 25
D-Day Nov 23/09
NC Mar 1/10
Working on Recovery
Grateful for finding Marriage Builders
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