Note the difference.

He may not, and that would be a shame.
If anyone can get through to him, Steve can.
You're in the best possible care.

During your marriage, have you ever had an emotionally intimate relationship with a woman other than your wife?

During your marriage, have you ever had a relationship with a woman that you think your wife would be better off not knowing about?
(This one is interesting, because he would be very trapped by his own justification.)

Bea,

I have been thinking and thinking about you since reading your posts. I am not certain if you recall my posts about H's polygraph last summer (wiped out in the server crash). The polygraph, while managing to get out many details of the A, did not change my H's commitment to O&H. He continued to lie after the polygraph and as recently as 6 weeks ago has lied to me. Since then, his approach has been so different though. Of course, it is not a measurable event like many of the other MB tenets. So, maybe, I am in for more revelations. My perception is that he is open with his feelings - more so than any other time in our 28 year M. If I had to pinpoint the change, I would say it was after H had a conversation with our MB coach.

Have you and H attended an MB weekend? Would you consider attending? Something else that has been said on this board many times is that there cannot be ANY shortcuts to the MB approach. It only works if BOTH people in the M are practicing the tenets.

AM

bea I am new here also...
I am sorry you ended up here as I did...
But I had to say to you
I think I now how you feel..

Mine only had one affair..

And when things are good here they are good...
I just wanted you to know that someone understands how you feel...

I am in the same boat so to speak..
on the fence..
not knowing what to do either...
I ask myself
what is the good things he does verses the bad...
someone here asked me that
to make a list...

being I am kind of new to this site
I don't know if I should be saying this or not...
if not please let me know...

Bea,

I don't know if this is helpful, but I will share what our MC #2 said to me about WH's lying. In WH's case, I knew his family lied to suit there needs but had always convinced myself he was different than that. During WH's LTA, I remember looking at him like he had 2 heads as I couldn't believe that he so easily lied. What gets to me now is that I so easily believed it. Our MC said why would you think that if is family history is that they lie, he lied at least during the A, that he wouldn't continue to do the same thing? I of course confronted with the illogic of the situation said "I don't know". The real question is, what level of dishonest are you comfortable living with?

So, perhaps you might ask yourself that same question. You stated that you realize WH ultimately lies to himself. I think that the BS does as well, for their own reasons...we want to believe it bc it is too painful not to, humiliated, don't want to be alone, clinging to the past or what we thought the past was...children involved, finances, personal insecurity...any or all of these reasons. You may want to look at yourself and ask, why do I believe him now? Is it real, or do you want it to be so?

All the best,

BA

AM,

I do remember your polygraph experience. If I'm recalling correctly, he continued to divulge things right up until the polygraph itself. It must be so discouraging to have him lie to you still. Based on your experience since then, do you still feel that the polygraph was a good thing to do? Do you think it would have been better to go to the MB weekend and then do the polygraph?

I would love to go to the next one in May. I've got my first session with Steve on Monday and then H will have his. After we see what that's like I'll revisit the issue. It would be a sacrifice in terms of cost and very difficult to manage given our schedules that time of year.

I had a major revelation this morning that has given me an important perspective into H's feelings and reactions. I'll post more about it below.

Thanks for thinking of me and telling me your experience. It helps!

Bea

Schoolbus,

Those are great suggestions. Thanks!

Bea

Sunshine,

I'm sorry you're part of this club that no one wants to join. Of course I want to hear your thoughts. That's how we support each other, learn and change. We're lucky to have the vets around to keep us on track.

I've been here since the day after my second d-day in September 2008. That was when I learned that the A had been a PA. The things I read on this site that day saved our M. I used to post more, but most of them were wiped out in the big server crash last summer.

If you're asking me to list what's good between H and I, that's a great question. In our attitudes toward life, our goals, our likes, our dislikes, we are freakishly compatible. When we were getting married, the priest who married us had us separately fill out a questionnaire to test our compatibility. We didn't consult each other before sending them back. Out of the 30 or so questions, we answered all but 1 the same way. The priest had never seen anything like it. That compatibility has remained to this day. He is my best friend and my first choice for a companion.

We are very opposite when it comes to our nature. He suffers from adhd and depression. His moods are up and down, he has trouble controlling his impulses, etc. He functions well with structure, guidance and care. I'm an intensely logical, analytical person who also has, apparently, an almost pathological need to be a caregiver. Through lots of patience, research and insight I have been able to see all the good in H and to learn to accept his limitations. It's helped to see it all played out in our daughter, who is just like him.

Do you have a thread here? I'd like to catch up on your situation.

Bea

BA,

I am the type of person who is prone to like and trust people. Back when I was working, I quickly realized that I was the worst person to conduct an a job interview because I always want to like the people I meet. I picked a couple of not-so-great assistants that way.

After the first two d-days, I didn't believe that that was all. I could tell he wasy concealing things. Also, I used to be pretty good at knowing when H was lying (something I'll talk more about in my next post). What fooled me after the third d-day was that he was so visibly relieved. He finally could talk freely about the A and was the only one who ever brought it up. He started IC which helped him deal with some issues in his life.

Do I believe him now when he tells me he has nothing more to reveal? I'm not making a decision about that now. I want him to talk to Steve and see what Steve thinks. Then there's the polygraph to back that up.

It's possible that there's nothing more to reveal. I am the anchor in his life. All the bad stuff happened when we were separated due to travel. There aren't that many other times in our M when we were apart.

I also dealt with infidelity in my first M, so I knew what to look for. My downfall with the EA/PA was that the OW was 4000 miles away. He called her from work and on the way home, and his schedule remained the same. He was e-mailing all the time from home to his classmates (of which OW was one), so that didn't raise many suspicions. It wasn't until the very end of the A that I started to get suspicious. He got a new phone with a different carrier. He started getting up in the middle of the night, and based on the timezone, I figured he was communicating with someone in his hometown. Had his brother not alerted me to what was going on, I would have started snooping and would have figured it out pretty quickly.

Thanks for sharing your experience. What has happened between you and your H? Is he still wayward? Is he still lying to you?

Oh, and I'm not willing to live with any shred of dishonesty between us. The few times he lied to me between d-day #2 and #4, it triggered me immensely. He has been trying to change and doing a decent job. The change just didn't extend to past infidelity, unfortunately because we wouldn't be in the mess we're in now.

Bea

OK, here's my latest revelation. If there's anyone out there who is adhd or has a spouse or child who is, I'd love to get your take on this.

Last night was horrible for us. I've have been struggling both emotionally and physically. Last week I was in the ER because I thought I was having a heart attack. Yesterday morning I broke down while talking to H, which is something I rarely do.

H has been very concerned and asked me last night how I was. Earlier in the day we had been having what I thought were productive conversations about dealing with the friend problem. In the course of that conversation, I talked about how his lying/deception had led me to conclusions about this friend�s role that weren�t entirely fair.

As soon as I told H that I was still really struggling and might need more help, he immediately started LBing in a huge way. I was shocked because normally he is able to avoid LBing when I�m distressed. In retrospect, the fact that he�d been out to dinner with a client and drinking probably broke down his normal restraint in this regard. I think his reaction to causing me pain and his reaction to my accurate statements about his lying and deception were what set off the LBing. Even though I was carefully avoiding any LBs, his guilt kicked in big time.

This morning I woke up and had a revelation. God talks to me through Google (I know it sounds silly, but a number of answers to my prayers have come through Google, including finding this site.)

H has major guilt issues about everything he�s ever done wrong in his life. Guilt hangs over him like a black cloud. It weighs down his soul and I think was the cause of his psychological crisis. I finally made the connection between his guilt and his adhd. People with adhd do so many more stupid things than most of the rest of us do. For those adhd people who are good at heart, they know what they�re doing is wrong, and they starting loading up with regret and guilt. They also are much more prone to lie because that�s what their impulses tell them to do when they�re on the spot. They also lie, I think, because having their failings revealed and hurting other people by those revelations adds to their guilt load. Their lies add more guilt.

To test my theory, I Googled �adhd guilt� and the very first hit was an article that could have been written by my H if he had that level of insight. (When I found MB through Google, I had tried several times over the past week to find help online but had never found MB. The day after the PA was revealed, when I was at my lowest and also most receptive to understanding the concepts, there it was, the first hit. Thanks, God!)

Anyway, here�s the link for anyone interested in reading it. http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Hurley7.html

This article helped me to see that H lies to himself about stupid things like whether the incident on the beach was sex and adultery or not in an effort to avoid piling on more guilt. H lies to me, in part, to avoid hurting me so he doesn�t need to feel guilty about that too.

His guilt response is likely due to his upbringing. The churches he attended put a lot of emphasis on sin and he77. I think his parents did too. He grew to think that God hated him for all his failings. His mental image of God, and this is sad, was of an angry clown.

I see my gorgeous, talented, brilliant daughter do the same things. Fortunately I�m a very involved SAHM, so she has far fewer opportunities to go off track. H�s parents and the environment he grew up in provided way too much freedom, often with disastrous results.

Has anyone else had this experience?

Bea

Bea,

A huge amount of garbage came out the night before the polygraph. However, much of it came from comparing notes with OWH; some came out on the way to the polygraph. I had a huge need to know all kinds of things. I think this was related to him withholding the information for so long and then trickle truthing it out. And while this was happening, I was one angry person. It became a terrible cycle of anger and dishonesty and there was no way to even start recovering the M. Even after the polygraph, he lied about his last day at work and saying goodbye to OW. Then, of course, months later, he got very sneaky, setting up a new email acccount and calling from his mother's house and lied about all of that for another 3 months. Soooooo, in the end I don't think the polygraph made one bit of difference. H still had the same attitude.

I think two things may be making a difference now. One is that we attended an MB weekend in Jan and H is taking the lead in doing the homework assignments. The second thing is that I told H that "trying" for O&H was not enough for me. If he cannot be O&H, I cannot be with him. I am watching and H knows it will be a long, long time before I relax.

AM


Oh and more thing. Just as my H's PTSD, TBI from Iraq and depression cannot be excuses to do the wrong thing, your H's ADD cannot be an excuse to do the wrong thing. Yes, these are circumstances that need to be mitigated and addressed. But can never be an excuse.

I have posted
Need some snooping help here please..

Guess that is my thread here...

I am not married But I have been with my BF for going on 11 years now...

You will read why I am not married in my thread..
widow that would lose all if I got married...
BF new this out of the gate and was ok with it...
It is like we are married I have looked at it as such and he says he does to...

He has said to me we don't need a peace of paper for this to be a committed relationship...
So I have hoped to get some help here on what I should do... ANd how I should do things

AM,

I'm sorry to hear that the lies continued even after the polygraph. I know how painful that is. For me, other than cheating again, the very worst thing H can do to me is lie. The few times I've caught him lying since d-day #1 sent me into a huge tailspin.

Because of your experience and my own, I know I need time to assess H's commitment to O&H before going through the polygraph. I'm hoping that through counseling us, Steve can give me an objective assessment.

About the adhd/guilt thing, it cannot excuse H's actions, but it does explain them. That understanding does two things for me. First, I know H to be a good person at his core despite the things he's done. These recent revelations made me question that, and that doubt is what got me to the point of thinking that I couldn't move forward in life with him no matter how much I love him. Second, the work we need to do on our M must take into account the adhd. We will have different boundaries because of it.

Reading that article and our subsequent conversation was a massive "aha" moment for H. Remorse is flowing out of him. Things are looking up. He's even thinking about posting here.

Bea

Sunshine,

I'm off to look for your thread to get caught up on your situation.

Bea

Bea:

I haven't been as involved in your thread as I was before. It looked like a couple of folks were involved who were giving you good advice and my input wasn't needed. You hit a hot button with me, so here I am. . . . ready or not

I have a suggestion. My buddy the shrink posts to www.addforum.com He thinks highly of that resource. He mostly posts to the children's area. Over the years, he has taught me what I know about ADHD and sent me here and there to find out stuff. Once I learned, I have had almost no problems dealing with ADHD kids. My buddy is a serious expert on ADHD but only in the kid's arena.

Why don't you post an abridged version of your question to the appropriate part of that forum and see what they have to say. Won't hurt, could help. And they some really smart people there. I have read parts of it and while they have the usual number of, uh, the less informed, the pros know what they are talking about for the most part.

Meantime, I will see if I can pry something out of my buddy. He may or may not respond depending on how he views his professional thing. I doubt he would hesitate to comment on the article.

Larry

Larry,

We've had lots more developments in this area over the last two days.

I have spent a lot of time on addforums over the years. I found it shortly after my daughter was diagnosed. It's been a great resourse for me.

By nature and by training I am one who deals with problems by doing lots of research and lots of thinking. During my career (prior to my SAHM career), I was an analyst for a government agency that I could identify, but then I'd have to kill you. I then became a lawyer.

I can't begin to tell you how much time I've spent learning about adhd. I also live in a petrie dish of adhd (H, DD and DS), so I learn a lot through observing and finding patterns.

After my discussion with H about the article and the correlation between the guilt that has weighed him down all his life and his adhd, he�s been doing some research and thinking. By way of background, DD�s diagnosis 5 years ago led to his own diagnosis. He has been medicated since then, but as you probably know, the medication thing is tricky and what works at first doesn�t always work. The first medication he took made a big difference for a while, but then gradually stopped helping. (DD had the same experience.) He later switched meds, but I�ve always felt he�s at too low a dose and he�s not great about taking it regularly. To compound the problem, in the evenings when we�re together, the meds have worn off and on the weekends he frequently doesn�t take it.

I always assumed that he knew all the manifestations of adhd and had some awareness of how it affected his life. It turns out that he was only truly aware of how the adhd affected his attention. He had no idea that the deficit in executive function leads to all kinds of problems, including anger and difficulty dealing with the normal stuff of adult life.

Since we talked, he�s been doing some reading and is truly stunned to look back over the course of his life and see how it has affected him. I�m hoping that this is just the start of his discovery and that his discoveries will help guide him forward.

Here�s a question for you. Adhd is genetic absent a traumatic brain injury. Both adhd and autism spectrum disorders are rampant in H�s father�s side of the family. Given that you have three kids who are affected, have either you or your wife been diagnosed? (I tried to get the background on your situation, but only got far enough to know that you are the BS.)

Here�s another question. I see clusters of issues in my family and the other adhd people I know. They often suffer from depression and have issues regulating their blood sugar. Have you noticed any of this in your kids?

I would love to hear what your friend has to say about the article and the concept in general. I think an adhd person�s experience will vary depending upon how they were raised. As I said, some of my H�s extreme feelings of guilt may come from his parents or his religious upbringing

Bea

Bea, just wanted to say that I�m cautiously optimistic for you and your H. He is unbelievably lucky to have you for a life partner. I hope he earns that privilege.

Heck Bea, sounds like my life.

For whatever it is worth, I too was an analyst for something that was called ASA in its day. I don't have a clue if it is still around or not. I could tell stories, but then someone would kill me, so there you go. After college, or at last 127 hours of same without a degree plan, I decided I wanted to be a Lawyer (night school). About that time, I was transferred to another city and there went that dream.

I have just written and posted a long diatribe on guilt.

Modifying it some for you, here is the deal. A person who has ADHD, will use the ADHD as an excuse to reject guilt. "It was my ADHD," they say. I say "Cow flop." My tactic with ADHD is to insist on MORE accountability, not less.

"You know what the blinking heck is wrong with you and you know how to mitigate it, so own your own cow flop, take your meds and grab ahold of your fundament before you jump off and do something stupid." Once they learn that guilt is stupid, see diatribe, they can stop hiding behind not taking the meds, etc.

I give my boys choices: "Clean your room, take all the time you want, or lose your privileges, your choice." Choice: Make good grades or learn to do without the cell phone, your choice. I ALWAYS say "Your choice, you choose or something along those lines."

My buddy did not help me either write the diatribe or this reply to you. He simply pointed me to a couple of his posts and said the article was more about baggage than guilt, he thought. Didn't have much of a chance to quiz him because he was involved in doing something with his 87 year old dad like taxes.

Well, he did say that ADHD types use it as an excuse, yes. But he also said most of us use whatever is available to avoid guilt.

Hope this helps. It is the wee hours here so I could be muddled. I am available to talk about this more. I have watched the Barclay seminars (agony) and deal with ADHD daily just like you.

Larry

Thanks Turtlehead! Watching my DD struggle through this gives me far greater compassion and understanding for my H.

Larry,

I'm chewing on what your wrote and I'm sure I'll have more to say later. (As my H can tell you, I always have more to say!)

The words we're using might be confusing the issue a bit here. I'll process more and see if I can make myself a tad clearer.

You mention this diatribe, where did you post it?

Bea