Bh, this is you running and hiding.......when things get tough, the common thing to do is either fight or fly....you are CHOOSING to flee....


This is total crap BH.....you may be insecure, but you are using that as an excuse to hide your faults......(which EVERYONE has....)


You shouldn't feel positive about yourself at the moment. There is nothing positive about adultery......we are not always here to coddle you. If you want to save your marriage, and be successful at it, it takes GROWTH...from both partners....and you know what? If you keep waiting until you "feel" something in order to change, then it won't happen..



You can do anything you put your mind to....you just don't WANT to.....very different



this is you reverting back into a "victim" status. Nobody said the whole marriage is your fault. Nobody said WH having an A was okay, or that you two were now even, or that he was entitled because of your past actions. That chit don't fly around here. No matter what you had done, it does not EXCUSE his behavior one bit.......




We have seen that, and we have also congradulated you when you have done well HOWEVER....it does not mean we are going to cheer you on when you have chosen or thinking on choosing poorly......would you not tell your son to get away from the hot stove when he puts his hand near the burner???......we tell you the hard things BECAUSE we care. We want you to succeed, we want your marriage to succeed......


This is nothing more than RATIONALIZATION of your affair. Plain and simple. It is the same crap we all heard from our spouse's when they were wayward.......

Nothing your H did DESERVES the betrayal. Just as nothing you did DESERVED his betrayal.......





You cannot defend the undefendable......that is why you are drained......OWN up to what you did, and how horrible it was and then learn and GROW from it.......We are seeing a repeated pattern in YOUR behavior. That behavior will destroy you, your family, and your children.

Look, I have no doubt you are a beautiful woman. I have no doubt you are a great friend. I have no doubt you are a good mum.

BUT if you do not look at where you can CHANGE, where you are vunerable, where you need help, then how do you expect that change to happen??....because unfortunately, there is no magic pill for that....

I wish you well my friend.......I am very sadden to hear you won't be around to get the support and help you needed...

not2fun

bh,

I hope you're still lurking, even if you are having a break from posting. I'm sorry that you believe you have received more negative responses than positive in recent days.

Sometimes the posts which we first see as negative and/or unfair are the best at getting to the real issues. We often find that the posts which immediately get our backs up and cause us indignation are the ones that we need to read again because there is some grain of truth in them that may be of great help to us.

We all come here initially for marital recovery. In the end though, we only have real control over our own personal recoveries. It's hard to accept that we cannot control what our spouses think and do when many of us have lived with the illusion that our marriages were entirely in our control.

A valuable lesson I have learned here is that the way to influence my M is to be the best me I can be. I avoid LB'ers because I do not particularly like myself when I am angry, or sulking, or disrespectful. I meet the EN's of my FWH because I like making him happy and seeing him happy. I enjoy being a good wife and mother.

I'm so much happier in myself when I am the best me I can be and the great thing is that when I'm doing these things, it grows the love that my FWH feels for me and he then wants to meet my EN's and avoid LB'ing me. We then want to spend more time together (UA) and we want to POJA all our decisions because we're each enthusiastic about making each other happy. That's marriage building; it starts with one spouse making an effort be the best person they can be.

When I posted, I wanted to encourage you to look at YOU because your story tells us that you have issues that you can work on.

Believe me, I had issues too. If sulking were an Olympic sport, I could have been a gold medal contender. It was a huge LB'er for my FWH, and I knew it but wasn't motivated to change because I too had my fair share of resentments about his LB'ers.

After D-Day, I knew I had to address this as part of becoming the best me.

I can tell you that I have not had a single sulking incident since, and I am much much happier. My sulking wasn't making me happy and I cannot understand now why I let it get so out of hand.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I hope you read this and understand that all those posts you saw as being negative were ony trying to get you to look in the mirror and were only asking you to look at you to see what it is you can change.

They weren't attacks, and I hope you can come back and see that.

BH:

I've been posting here for about a year and have received a lot of advice, all of it well-intentioned and much of it sound.

However...

Your head can start to spin after a bit because it's nearly impossible for those of us giving you advice to separate our own issues from coloring the advice we give you. That's not a bad thing in and of itself but there comes a point when you need to step back and realize that putting stock in the advice you get on the forum can really lead you astray if you're not careful.

I've spoken with Steve only twice. Both times, his message to me was very clear and consistent. And much of it is in direct contradiction with the advice I continually get thrown at me on this forum.

Dear BH

I like what ourhouse had to say, we all are colored by what we are going through. vulnerable, hurt, angry, our world has been turned upside down. Everything we thought was true and real is now being questioned. Everything we held as precious and protected now becomes tainted and harmed. Harmed by an unseen aggressor, our most trusted love, now is seen as a traitor.

So, while our mind and heart tries to wrap itself around these facts, we struggle. We struggle to see ourselves and our lives for what they really are. So it is only reasonable to suggest that we would struggle to see someone elses pain. to see the reality of the situation and to respond in a totally objective manner.

I hope when the dust settles a bit on your thread, you will see that even though we all differe in our approach, most of us trully want the same thing. a safe place to bare our hearts adn souls, a safe place to vent our fears and frustrations. a place of healing, understanding to a path of recovery.

Dear BH........don't give up on us. We will not give up on you.

BH,

I'm curious who suggested to you that you call me out?

Sexymamabear I dont know the MB username for the person that suggested you as a useful sorce of advice as this was done by email. She advised that you would be able to help and that i should put a call out for you and i did do hope
you can help when u get the chance.

BB I will be back on here when things settle as right now the issues keep mounting up, WS got letter from the new job saying no vacancy at the moment for people in his area. I am gutted. R situation dealt with appropriately and no further problems. WS has had a week at home on holiday from work and everything that can go wrong has gone wrong so feeling low. I will be back soon just cant talk about anything on here as i know i will get slammed and rightly so, but need the time to compose myself and prepare for the backlash

BH, I can guess who the email was from. But I won't even indulge the troll/stalker by naming him here.

I've read bits and pieces of your thread. I'm not sure I can add anything further. You've gotten great advice. I highly respect Sugarcane, Sere, Not2Fun, PM, KA, and Melody; and would have nothing better to offer than what they've already given. Your insistance to attend this party tells me you are more concerned about seeing OW pay than you are about saving your marriage. That's too bad. In the end, you'll do yourself more harm than OW.

Hey SMB Im sorry i must be missing something, i dont know if the person was a man or woman but they were nothing but complementary of you, I didnt realise there was a problem sorry.

Here is the copy of the email for your reference

"Hey,

I have read your thread on MB and I am so sorry for what you're going through. You have got some nice advice as well as some bad one. I think one poster can really help you out. Her screen name is sexymamabear. Make a new post ask her to read your and your H's threads and see what insight she might have for you. I promise that she will be tremendous help to you. Furthermore, she has 5 kids and was a betrayed spouse who's now "fully recovered," if there is such a thing. This could be one of the best step you can take to recover your marriage. Yes, she is that good."

Hope that helps and again sorry for getting you involved had no idea it was aproblem.

As far as the xmas party that issue has been discussed with steve during coaching and has been put to rest.

BH, you really need to learn to accept what people say to you without first worrying if you are being criticized. First, no one has really criticized you yet. They have made observations that you COULD have used to look more honestly at yourself to find solutions. But no one has said you are a bad person, that you are not worthy of happiness.

That is YOU talking.

Second, if you can't get past your own self-hate to stop and really think about what the people are saying, how are you ever going to achieve happiness? There's a really good book I read recently that might help you. It's called Healing the Shame That Binds You, by Bradford. I think it's really going to hit home with you. PLEASE go to your library or book store and get it asap.

Third, if you back off every time you hear stuff you don't like, here, what are you going to do in your real life? What are you teaching your kids? Believe me, this REALLY manifests itself in your kids, watching you do it. My D19 is amazing, but because of how she saw her parents deal with conflict, she has a meltdown at least once a month, on things that shouldn't even matter. This is now PART of her. It won't go away. And I caused it, by not being stronger myself while I raised her. Your kids NEED you to stay here and do the hard work. Will you cry? Yes. Will you feel worthless? Probably. But if you stick with us, and do some honest soul searching, and the hard work to fix your problems, your kids will benefit.

btw, what was said about staying off here and listening to the Harleys was because they ARE professionals, they HAVE heard your real story, not just what you write, and if their advice differs from us, you're better off listening to them. That in no way has any negative connotation on you, does it? It's things like this instance that we're asking you to look at, to stop being so defensive. It's doing you no good.

In a quiet place, you might want to spend some time reading "The Four Agreements" and also "The Art of War" thread.

It's tough to not feel pummeled in your situation.

Since you've been through "labor" a few times, perhaps this word-picture will help you understand what has to happen.

My first and only full term pregnancy wrapped up with two days of constant contractions. The second day, they sent me home, because I was "no where close to delivering". They gave me a strong sleeping pill, which got me all of two hours of sleep before contractions amped up to 2 minutes apart and strong. I went back to the hospital where they were about to send me home again when my water broke, right there on the table. Guess that ended that idea.

How hard was it to get my head back into my Lamaze training after 60 hours with two hours of sleep? Pretty doggone tough. And I'm guessing you feel like that right now - but babies don't wait for us to recover our strength. And neither do trials like the one you're going through now.

Mental toughness doesn't come during easy times. It comes during times of extremity like you're going through now. So, just like Lamaze, find your focal point - what is your desired outcome? and then breathe through everything else, for as long as it takes. Setting a deadline for the "end of the pain" will kill you and your marriage.

This is how I bought myself some time with my marriage.

I knew and faced the fact that my husband had weaknesses - some of them intolerable weaknesses. And there was a history, some of it really bad. But I forced myself to remember the good times and acknowledge that my husband had value. I didn't want to at my most angry times. I actually filled out the paperwork for a divorce. I didn't have the money to file. But I served him with the notice to divorcing parents our state required for parents before they could complete the divorce process.

I then started looking at the men around me. My father-in-law - a good man, but flawed. My brother-in-law - good but flawed. My oldest brother - good but flawed. My 2nd brother - flawed flawed flawed. My younger brother - good but flawed.

And then I thought through the process - if every man I know has weaknesses and the only reason I would see those weaknesses is because I've lived around them long enough to take off the rosey glasses and see EVERYTHING there - not just the frosting, then it would stand to reason that ANY man I met and married could have flaws.

I determined that since alternative men had unknown flaws and some of those flaws were way beyond tolerance, then I had just as good of odds sticking it out with the man I already knew his weaknesses.

Better the devil you know?

Perhaps.

Because Kasey was willing to work on himself, I gave him some time. Not unlimited time, and I never gave him a deadline. That way, I didn't have to prolong my own agony if I ran out of patience and I still had a month to go on my promise.

Starfish used to post here a lot - I loved a quote she had in her signature line for a while:

I can get divorced anytime. But I only have now to be married.

The quote said mountains to me - that I didn't want to exit a marriage prematurely.

You might be tired, worn out and sick of feeling hurt, ashamed, embarrassed and abandoned. But you don't want to add to that "Regret" for bailing on a guy trying to become Mr. Wonderful before the miracle... because if he truly succeeds, you will definitely regret divorcing him someday.

one more thought...

How much self-care are you doing? Are you exercising? Eating right? Drinking plenty of water? eliminating sugar and caffeine out of your diet? Reading good stuff - not relationship stuff, but stuff the gives you hope and builds your faith? Listening to good music - the kind that makes you think about being a better person?

When someone is depressed, the hardest thing for them to do is get off the couch and get moving. They tend to do things that feed the depression because that's all they have energy to do.

No matter what the outcome of your marriage is, right now you are married. You are a mother. You are a human being. And you need to find your mojo - your place of strength.

Let that be your focus for a while. I promise - absolutely can guarantee that if you will do this, life will improve much faster than the way things have been going.

Not to t/j, but KaylaAndy, your write some really great things...really great!


BH, I know you are going through a storm of emotions and fears and tentativeness, and anger. It's part of the horrible affair package. Even with negative posts, I see hope for the two of you. I believe you both have it in your to make a new marriage. It can happen. DH and I did it.

lurioosi im gald someone can see hope for us but we are officially over as of today,things are that bad that even MIL is supporting me because she has said that she has seen that i have tryed everything to make M work and she has so much respect for me and is ashamed of her son and blames herself for not bringing him up better. He has decided to quit on Harley and MB because he confirms that in 6 weeks on here he has made no progress, what am i supposed to say to that? yeah oh lets try something else?? no i havent got the energy or willpower anymore. He used this site to further his point and now is my fault for not being more receptive like other MB women rahter than his faul for just not caring enough. I am sad and disappointed and cant look at my kids for the overwhealming guilt of "could i have done better" he is playful and content no guilt at all.

HI BH28,

I'm sorry about today. I quite understand that uyou haven't got the energy or willpower anymore - although I detect that you are not quite so certain whether you have or not.

Do you think he really means it? Has he packed his bags? Is he discussing maintenance?

I remember being in a postition where neither of us was sure we wanted to carry on and we were both egging the other one on to end the relationship, because netiher of us really wanted to do it.

Is this the break you really need, to reain that cnfidence you had when you found that new job?

And of course the children - you 2 seem to be able to communicate fairly sensibly at the mo, maybe this could be opportunity to go your seperate ways civilly...

OR

Could it be that your H is actually foggy - to be expected as he is constantly triggered at work. MAybe what you need to do now is the full MB and a tiptop plan A followed by a well planned plan B.


((((BH28)))

Thanks ST,

bags packed communication civil. Havent discussed finances yet as im still upset to think about the details. His parent will not have him stay with them as they are angry at his lack of effort family wise and they have seen all the effort i have made in the past year they keep saying how much they admire and support me although i have made it clear i will not be upset if they support their son too as i am a mother and can understand where they are coming from however they are adamant that he has deceived them too and he has been lying to them while they know where they stand with me as they feel i have always been honest through good and bad (they are aware of MK DD and my past).
They have stated repeatedly that they think i have done all i can and that they think its time i started looking after me and letting WS fend for himself as he is in lala land when he thinks of what life will be like on his own. I dont have the energy to tell him the trooth of what he will face on his own as I will not be there to support him (as wife or friend) any longer and he will have to get used to being part time parent. He has always had 2 parents and does not realise what the separation will do to the kids even in the best case scenario. All he had to do was to fully commit to working on M and family he chooses not to. What can i do??

As he is a member of MB plan B will not work as he knows all about it. Plan A done to death and cannot do it anymore. Coaching was going ok but then he says he understand things when steve tells him yet within a day he forgets all about it and is confused again. Next coaching is on monday suggested he coaches alone with Steve, dont hold out much hope though.

I don't think him knowing about plan B necessarily means it will not work.

What do you want at this point? Are you relieved it is over? or are you at the bottom of your heart hopeful that you can still do it? Do you want to do it?

What does your H want out of the coaching session? Surely if he is going to have it then he must think that there is a possibility that the M can be salvaged. Why is he telling you it's over and then having Marriage Counselling? IS he just trying to keep you of kilter?


Would it be of more benefit for you to have it? If he takes this one, will you book another one for yourself?

Hey ST,
Really I thought plan be was not possible if he knows about it and also i dont know if i have the stamina for plan B.

What I want is simply to work on M in a fair manner that does not involve anymore asking me to take over things so he can work on M only to find out he wasnt and was using his time to do other things while me in good faith trusted him to be doing what he said he was doing. I want my family and i want my M but i dont know where to go from here. He sat down telling me that 6 weeks into MB has made no difference to him and he has made no progress, does anyone understand the amount of sacrifices i have made during these 6 weeks to give him the chance to concentrate on MB? he deflects the situation onto my previous past and since then i doubt anyone has given him any help on the current situation rather concentrated on my past, this is fair but not a good time for it when right now priority is to sort out the mess that he is still causing. I can offer him every ounce of me the minute he actually commits to this wholeheartedly i just need to see this isnt just another stunt he is pulling to buy himself kids free time and leave me with all the housework.
WS wants the coaching because he realises that his supposed naivity will not help him in life with or without me. His pride has been hurt by falling for COW and therefore he wants to make sure that he has built up enough strenght to be less naive.

I dont really know what to say to Steve at this point. He is a Coach not a councellor and right now i need to stabilise my suicidal tendencies as im feeling dangerously low but wont talk to WS about it as dont want him to stay in M out of pity, I need to look out professional help as the ending it thoughts are becoming overwhelming at this time and i recognise the downward pattern. I wish i could be the one to pack her bags and go somewhere safe for a while to get myself together as when men leave your not only left with the devastain of the abandonment but have to still keep house and kids running and right now i am overwhelmed by that.

I really dont know what to do. WS is not fighting for M, he is running and I cant bear to stop him again only to find myself here a few months from now. I originally set a target of January but after the disasters of this week it had to come forward.

Suicidal thoughts are nothing to play with. Is there anyone you can talk to? Some people play them off (obviously they havenever really experienced them) bu they are one of your brain's warning sides. Please take care of yourself.

Are you feeling that now that your past actions are out, your H is feeling more jusitified in his own affair? Because that is bunk. Nothing - not even another possible affair - justifies cheating. And 6 weeks on MB isn't very long. This is a life change, not a short term program just to get over something. Your H should be thinking long term.

I am so sorry you are going through all of this.

thanks luri

I know what u are saying about the thoughts and im trying to assess best way to get help, i feel like i should walk into a hospital and get them to help, i feel that desperate but until you actually harm yourself no one takes you seriousely. I dont want to harm myself i dont want to have these thought and i dont want to be at risk but dont know who to turn to before i would talk to WS who would know what to do now i feel that i cant because he is leaving and if i say anything he will stay out of fear, thats no way to live for him or me. I dont want to go to any friends as they will tell WS. My therapist has been on personal leave since octovber and is not due back until january who can i go to that will take me seriousely. The thought of dealing with breakup aftermath is literally overwhealming my brain and its going to easy exit mode.

Yes i feel that WS used my past actions as a get out of jail card when things were getting real for him on MB. I cant justify my actions because they are unjustifiable but I did not feel ready to talk about them due to the delicate state of WS R. He effectively cut me off MB when he told my past and having no where to turn i just switched off again. WS is not thinking long term he really does not understand the concept of ongoing recovery he has always wanted A just to go away.