So, since WH and I are apart but I'm still in plan A...is it normal for them to withdraw a little more? I have been texting him and called him wed night. that is when he was being defensive about vampira when I brought up how hurtful it is to our family. Then he didn't text me back at all yesterday and never called. But at 7am this morning he calls. ???? Is this normal wayward behavior at this point?

If I have to go into plan B after he comes back to see the baby will he be able to do anything legally regaring our children? I am planning on getting a state of residency in Iowa if I do go to plan B. (i pray i won't have to, but i am not a fool and i know these things take time...) I just pray and pray that him coming home to the family and the baby will show him what he will miss out on if he continues this affair.

Hate to tell you the lack of SF is a HUGE red flag. It is likely he has told the OW..."It's not a real M, we don't even have SF anymore..." He is likely lying to HER more than he is to you.

And please stay away from R talk...a statement every other phone call is about all you should get in...and do NOT chase him down if he is not calling or texting...he is probably with her. He is calling at odd times because that is when she is not around... A call a day...if he doesn't answer, wait for him to call...

You got it! Dragging them kicking and screaming just builds resentment. But of course busting up the affair is all fair game and recommended.

Larry

yeah i don't talk about our R. i don't call him everyday. i text him everyday, just things about the boys and stuff about the baby. i'll let him know that we miss him and love him. that's about it.

My own thoughts are that he is conflicted because his affair is likely already physical. Personally, I think it was long before you left, and that his accusations toward you were his gaslighting attempts to draw your attention away from his own behavior.

When he was drunk, his talk of past lies and deceit had more to do with his OWN lies, not yours. He talked of his not being a worthy man for you - probably true - because he knows what he had already done, long before you left.

His conflict has nothing to do with your behavior. It is his own that he is conflicted about.


His affair is ongoing, and you have the phone logs to show you, his behavior toward you to show you, and his rejection of you sexually to show you. His telling you that YOU are the problem is his only way to justify his behavior in his mind. He believes that if YOU were bad "first", then his marriage can be "undone", so he is now free to do what he wants. And it's highly likely he did.

His anger at you isn't much of a surprise, because you are calling him on his behavior - and we all get angry when someone does this.......ESPECIALLY IF THEY ARE RIGHT.

The question at this point, is, "How does Tinkerbell handle her WH?"

If it were me, I would begin to let him know that my patience has an expiration date. I would let him be very aware of the fact that my tolerance for the OW is NOT endless, and that my plans for my future with him do not include this OW in our lives. His choice between OW and his wife will be forced, and soon, because his wife's heart cannot endure his affair forever.

When he says things like, "I miss you" my reponse would be, "I miss who you used to be. The time clock on your choice between our marriage and your other woman isn't endless. This situation is slowly killing the love I have for you, and I may need to make some decisions to protect that love - I want to protect my love for you, because I feel it dying and I never want my love for you to die. Honey, I need to hang up now, because I can't talk anymore. This situation with your having another woman is too hard for me. I love you, bye."

I would begin to lay that groundwork, of him understanding that talking to him is painful, that his failure to understand your pain regarding his other woman is killing your love for him, and that you are going to have to make hard decisions to protect that love. This can help you when you write that Plan B letter.

Plan B is about protecting your love for your husband, and also about protecting yourself from the constant heartache and worry over what he and OW are doing all the time. Because you separate yourself from constant contact with WH, you get a break from all of that drama. And in the meantime, your WH has to rely on his "fantasy" partner for all of his emotional needs to be met - because you are not there to do anything for him. He can no longer call you or email you or anything in order to get that family fix, or that calming, or that grounding that he will need. Let's face it, his OW is NOT the kind of woman that gives him that kind of support. He calls you for that. With that part of his life absent, he will sink.

Finally, the part about fear is normal. We are all afraid. There's a natural protective feature in us called fear - to keep us from doing stupid stuff.

Fear makes us think things through, develop a plan, and work out kinks in the plans before we act. You're doing just that, and when you act you'll be fine. In your husband's case, he has done stupid stuff, because he paid no attention to the part where he was supposed to STOP and rethink. Instead, he forged on, and instead of making NEW plans, he made up LIES INSTEAD. Lies are not very good replacements for excellent plans.


SB

SB,

Thank you for your reply. I appreciate the encouragement and advice. I have been holding onto hope that it hadn't gone physical. I am thinking of how he used to be and how honest he always was. The fact that he can lie to my face is so hard. Even though I've made many mistakes (i'm sure you read my first post and some after that....) I've never been able to keep up a charade of lies regarding things I did DURING our relationship and marriage. Of course, in his mind he thinks that me not telling him the whole truth about what happened in college BEFORE i dated him is the same as him covering his tracks with lies to my face about his affair. I in no way can see any similarity between these two situations. But, he is not himself right now...obviously. He is a monster that I have never seen in my life with him until now. I thought that the guilt from having sex with her would have broken him down and caused him to confess to me the truth. The mistake I made early in our marriage (and i'm sorry, but is nothing at all like this affair...it was bad yes but it was not the same as this) broke me down and he knew everything within a few days. And I didn't even have a relationship with that man and I didn't "finish" the "deed", if you will. Plus with alcohol involved it makes things easier to fall into, atleast that's what I have always thought. I had a drinking problem but all of that got solved very quickly. That is why it is so hurtful for him to be doing this. I have NEVER gotten close emotionally with another man and I have never had an ongoing physical relationship with another man. I just don't understand why he wouldn't feel enough guilt to just be truthful. I was truthful with him about what I did. And it doesn't even come close to what he's doing.

Another question for everyone- Is there any way to help the truth to come out of WH own mouth? I know that it is hard to get confessions, but I was hoping there were some things I could do to encourage it along....

Ummmmm, I will tell you my own sitch. My WH lied about him doing the nasty with POSOW right up until I put a keylogger on our computer and he detected it. He didn't say, "Yes I did it." I actually said, "Did you have sex with her? Remember you found the keylogger, just think about what you wrote." Then he simply said, "Yes." and got up and walked out of the room.

Your WH wants to keep his fantasy world INTACT. That means that fantasy and reality CAN NOT COLLIDE and vice-versa.

LG-

What made you turn around your life? Did you love that other woman or not? My husband says he "loves" vampira as a "friend". That is bad is it not? I know it's bad. He thinks he loves her. And it is, duh, more than a friend. He thinks I'm real stupid.

So, I do have a plan. People have been helping me. I'm in plan A right now. I am still on the fence about sending a letter to his workplace. (they both work there as personal trainers) My baby is due in 4 weeks. He is coming back for the birth. My plan is to go into plan B if he does not commit when he comes home. I was hoping that him being around my family and his boys and new baby would help him to see what a freaking mess he has made. I am hoping for a miracle. But I need to be ready for plan B in case this miracle doesn't happen. And I know that I might be naive about that, thinking he could turn it around in a month. But I still have some hope.

I want to ask you, in your opinion, do you think he has already had sex with her...maybe when I was in Iowa for the 4 months that he was at his new job and getting money saved up for us? Or do you think that since he just recently rejected me sexually that this means it just turned physical? I had a horrible time sleeping on Tuesday night and I had a gut feeling that he had spent the night with her. I trust my gut because it was my gut that told me something was going on when I found all the texts, and they weren't even sexual in nature. But I just knew something was up. Plus the next night, Wed, he was all defensive when I told him how hurtful it is that he talks to that vampira (of course i didn't use that term lol) and spends time with her. Then he didn't call me at all on thursday and didn't text either. Then today at 7am he calls me. I didn't mention vampira. He still tells me he loves me.

Also, what do you think about the drunken texts he sent me the first night I was gone? That post is a few pages back....

Okay, I do not understand why waywards do this. The guilt would kill me. I mean, I've written letters to my mom to tell her things I did in hs that I lied about because the guilt was eating me up. I just don't understand why they won't fess up. Is it because they want to keep both worlds for as long as they can? Or is it because they are afraid they will lose everything? The only way to get real forgiveness is to confess your sins and ask for it. Many BS would forgive and go to counseling with their FWS to work on their marriage. I know they would. Nobody wants to lose their spouse. I am so WILLING to work things out and to forgive. I am here with open arms. I will be hurt of course, I already am! It just baffles me. He has always said he would "leave" before he would cheat. But then he would always tell me he would never leave me and would never cheat b/c it's a choice and he would make the right choice. WEll, I guess that's out the window now that this monster has taken over...

My husband did not tell me about his affair. He said he had planned for me never to find out, because he felt that what I did not know would never hurt me.

His plan was stupid from the start, because his behavior was killing our relationship - he was distant, mean, and angry with me during his affair. He was withdrawn, and seemed to fly off the handle at me for things that were very strange! At one point, I asked him if the air conditioner was on, and he came unglued. I looked at him and asked him if my tone of voice was mean, or if I had done anything, or if there was something he needed to talk about, because I thought that the AC question seemed like a fairly routine thing...he said, "You are always trying to control everything, including the weather!" Sooooo, that was out of nowhere, and pretty atypical for him.

Yet, he claimed that the affair didn't affect anything. Right. That was one of many examples - and when he and OW talked about things, his "complaint" was supposedly my "controlling" nature. His example to me was my asking about whether or not the AC was on. Later, when we talked about it, he admitted how stupid that whole thing was, and that inwardly he was just angry over the situation he had placed HIMSELF in, and that he was feeling guilty with every interaction with me - and saw no way out. Every time he went to dinner with me and my parents made him sick, because of his own guilt. When we just sat on the patio and played fetch with the dogs, he would get mad because he was such a turd.

And this would have gone on for the rest of our lives, under his GRAND PLAN never to tell me.

What then, would I have been thinking? Because at this point, I thought I needed to work on being "controlling". I was parsing my words to stop being controlling, working on every single thing I said, and making darn sure that when I asked ANYTHING that I worded it so that there could be NO DOUBT that it was an absolute question, and nothing could be made that I was controlling anything. Yet, I was frustrated in this process, even when I asked something as simple as, "Is the AC on?"


So, do you see how your husband's behavior in trying to blame YOU can really be exaggerated?

His own guilt can bleed into every interaction with you. He shifts his guilt into blaming you - because to do otherwise would mean that his house of cards would FALL. He has built this justification for his behavior on BLAMING YOU. Now, if he cannot blame you, where does that put his justifications???

In the toilet, that's where.

If the "blame" for his affair behavior does NOT rest with you...and he cannot blame YOU...then he would have to look

within himself.


He is not prepared to do that. Not yet, anyway.

Only when he was drunk, he did. There was acknowledgement that night.

His guilt shined through.

So you know it is there.

You can use that to your advantage. When he calls you, bring it up. Tell him that he said something you want to ask about. And ask him what he meant when he said he was not good enough for you. Don't let him weasel out of it, either. Ask him why he would say that. Ask him if he has given his heart to the OW, and tell him that there is still a way home to where he belongs if he says that he has.

Don't go into details. Do NOT panic if he says he is in love with her. KNOW THAT THIS IS TEMPORARY.

Tell him that you still want to talk about it, but not "now", tell him you love him, and hang up. DO NOT FREAK OUT.

Leave him to stew in his own juices. He will regret it.

SB

Like SB said.

When SchoolBus takes you for a ride to her school, listen.

One of these days SB will get tired of me saying that

Larry

Thanks SB. I knew there was something up with those texts because before I left he wasn't saying anything close to what he said in the texts he sent me. I know that a drunk man tells no tales. I will use this to my advantage just like you said. I know I shouldn't freak out if he says he's given his heart to her and loves her. And I won't do that while on the phone with him or thru texting or however we connect. But I will be incredibly upset. What if he thinks this love is real just like he was with me when we first started dating? Can't that just keep them hanging on to the point of deserting their entire family for this "love"? I know that is a possibility and it makes me sick. How would a relationship started in adultery even work? Oh wait, he would say it NEVER started in adultery because our marriage was INVALID to begin with b/c of ME and my lie from BEFORE we dated. That is how he will justify it. That is what is incredibly scary to me. If I had a baseball bat right now things would be broken.

He absolutely believes those feelings are REAL. He is having real feelings they are based on a fantasy and not on reality. The feelings that he has/had for you are reality. An A is based in Fantasyland. He definitely would say that it didn't start in an A, that it why exposure is so important. Why don't you want to expose at their workplace? If he was to come back to Iowa, would he be working for a new company, or would he have to find a different job? I am just curious as to your reasons.

Also, Tink, my WH also stopped SF(although I know I could have pressed). He felt like he was "cheating" on POSOW.

It will hurt like HECK. You can get through it.

My reason for not exposing at the workplace yet is that I am scared that he will file for divorce and run off with her b/c he will have NOTHING if he gets fired. If he doesn't get fired he will be mad as hell and will do something to spite me. He is so stubborn I could see him divorcing me over it. It's just fear. I wanted to wait until he got home for the baby to see where we're at then and if he is still in this place I planned to send the letter of exposure then and start plan B. maybe that is a bad idea.

When will I be able to talk to my WH about all of the stuff I know to be true about this affair? Obviously I can't right now b/c he is in the fog. But when does that part come? Is it before plan B or is it written out in the plan B love letter?