Wow, Papasita, it is great to see you going after this so enthusiastically!

Keep in mind that a loving relationship between their parents will be worth more to your children than a physical home. And if that relationship is not built, and solid, there's a good chance you will each independently be having to provide them a home.

Financially, you'll be more on the same page and come to better agreements with a better relationship, anyway.

This quote is about the cost of marriage coaching or counseling, but I'd say it applies to the cost of Marriage Builders weekend, as well:


http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi7100_counselor.html#sec2


Marriage Builders is an investment in your marriage which will pay dividends in your marriage AND your finances AND your health AND your children AND ...

Excellent Papa! Do start that savings account. It will really pay off. From what I understand not only do you get the weekend, but afterwards you get one on one help from a coach for a couple years (can someone confirm that?) So the help will last longer than just the weekend.

It's great to see you and Mama really getting into this. If you run into any road bumps, we're here to try to help.

filling out questionaires

Buyers, Renters and Freeloaders came in the mail. Pretty exciting. We will be reading it together tonight, mama is already at it.. but I need to run to the store.

Good good! Very exciting!

hello there. well, i finished the book "buyers, renters, and freeloaders" and it is pretty good. one thing that came out of it is married people can be freeloaders and renters too. and unmarried people can be buyers. it is a state of mind and a type of agreement. i would recommend reading it for everyone. it talks about how making sacrifices out of love for someone encourages them to be abusive over time. a good solid marriage should not expect sacrifices. Partners should agree to agree. meaning, they should always work together to find mutually desirable solutions. and this requires radical honesty on both the partners parts.

now , i am having a slight problem in that when papasita reads this policy of joint agreement he applies it to him not having to tell me about the affairs. he considers affair-talk to NOT be a mutually agreed upon subject so he refuses to talk about it. he feels we should read his needs/her needs before surviving the affair because that is what he thinks we need to focus on. i am having trouble with this because it is hard for me just to go on before he actually goes thru and shares information from the affairs. i feel like he is still stalling and it has been three years. the trickle truth is killing me.

one thing that did come out is the affairs were done because he wanted to "feel In love". he saud he loved me but did not feel in love with me. he says he often still feels that way and i need to learn to meet his needs before he will feel enough safe to tell me about his affirs. but i feel that is totally unfair-it is my life too- and it is hard for me to concentrate building a loving relationship when he is still holding out on me. he actually has said he refuses to have that conversation until he feels safe. also, he read that all negotititions have to be carried out in a cheerful way. if iam not cheerful- how can i be- when he tells me anything he uses that as grounds to end the conversation. it seems like we are not allowed to talk about anything unless it is about him or shallow or artificial and i am not sad. being sad is a lovebuster for him. i don't get angry or yell. sometimes i cry or i want to end the conversation so i can get a hold of my emotions. i cannot live with this not knowing and wondering what happened. i wish there was a questionnaire about the affairs. i am still filling out the mountain of questionnaires papsita ran off for me. i am bad with paperwork.
sorry to vent, this seems like the best place to do it so i don't wake him up and vent on him. it was a rough night. i don't know how many times i lay in bed trying to put together the few pieces of the jigsaw puzzle i've got. it is the worst feeling i've ever had. to you ws, please tell everything to your bs. the not knowing hurts worse than the knowing.

also , i am pretty sure PA #1 was a married woman. the affair took place on a weekend where he was supposed to be on business trip in florida and instead went to LA first to see her for the weekend. the thing that makes me pretty sure she was married is

he stayed in ahotel room and there were about abilllion text messages on the phone. he also said he rented the room and she came and stayed the night with him. this past year, i found the phone bills he was hiding in abox from 2005 when he had that affair. i don't know why he didn't throw them out. i could find very few california calls but after analyzing the bills for days and without help from him, i found her number was actually a phone with a number from where we live from the same phone company we use. their calls were t-mobile to t-mobile. AFTER i found the number, he admitted to me that she did have a "bat phone" -their word for it.

this tells me she is hiding from someone. should i try to find out. i don't even think i have her real name. she did have a web-site up for modeling and acting- started days before my man went to see her. but she took that down when i tried to contact her. now i can find no information about her. how do i find her husband. it's been almost five years since(i think) they split it off. should i just let it go. i would want to know.

any one who knew and didn't tell me, i am still angry with them. this includes his mother. his mother knew and did not tell me and it went on for years. also, several of his friends. i also found out one of our close friends knew because i actually found his number repeatedly on the california trip. he was bragging about it to him. i wish i could ask him questions. it's hard. i don't want to lose another friend. we have already had to lose so many friends in the aftermath of this.

he also claims to not have had anything to do with the sell-phone with the local number. is it possible to get a phone with an area code different than your billing address? he claims he didn't have anything to do with her buying the phone. is this a wild accusation? i think he knows more than he is telling me.

Mama,


Affairs are a violation of any relationship and are NEVER part of a POJA per Dr Harley. It sounds as though Papa is using these concepts to his own advantage. His A's are the greatest LB and he needs to clear all of that up and answer any and all of your questions about them. At that point, the decision is yours as to whether you wish to continue the relationship, hopefully legitimize it with M and then you can begin to meet each others needs. Your entire relationship is in a state of limbo until he realizes that he must do whatever it takes for as long as it takes to earn your love and trust back.

Your sadness caused by his adultery is NOT a LB. If you cannot openly and honestly discuss his A's face to face then he needs to sit down and write out a timeline leaving nothing out. Your part is to control your reaction to his information and not use it against him. Thank him for his honesty.

I am disappointed as I really thought that Papa was willing to do the hard work to R the damage that he has done with his betrayal and work toward a true O&H relationship leading to M but now it seems that he is only trying to legitimize his moral failure by casting the blame on you.

God's Blessings,

Say

he thinks we can just move on without taking about it and maybe someday when we are love we can just talk about it. that is a conversation i do not want to save for a special occasion. i do not want that looming over me somewhere in the future. i do not want little pieces of the truth coming out all of the time. i am scared to move because i might bump into something i don't know about. i wish he would just get on with it already.

I have to say I feel completely misrepresented here. I just woke up and dont want to post to much yet, its going to have to wait until later. But, I have to say right away that she is misrepresenting what I say.

First of all, I talk about the affairs with her. But, if we start to fight. I stop.

Secondly, I have been trying to talk about it for years, but when we start talking she gets VERY upset and its nearly impossible to continue.

Yesterday, I did pull out of a conversation that had gone south, twice. We were both yelling and on differnt sides of the house. I defused the argument by saying that we both have to be able to respect one another and approach this issue without anger, disrespect etc.

Oftentimes when I do start to open up, she jumps right on me and starts saying I wont talk about it. Yesterday was a great example of this. I started to explain that I have trouble feeling in love, and that perhaps some of the motivation behind the affairs was seeking that in love feeling. This turned into an opportunity for her to come at me with everything. (including coming here and misrepresenting me)

I dont think we can move on without talking about it. However, I dont think we can talk about it when she takes the offensive based on the first or second piece of info that comes out when I am talking.

I guess I choose to just write instead of waking up. So be it.

As far as a timeline, there are HUGE issues here. The biggest of which was I was completely addicted to Adderol. I had a legitimate prescription, but I admit fully that it was based not on a need, but a want. I had been talking a LOT of it for several years, during both of the physical affairs, before them for some time as well. The net result of the constant legal drug use at the time, leaves me without a solid timeline.

I had hoped that after some time, its been 3 years now, that I would start to remember things a little more clearly. But, its still a lot jumbled. Working all the time, taking adderol to stay awake later, and sleep away the days. It was several years of bad choices.

A timeline is the way I think this needs to go. I started several attempts at this, and haven't found a good format. Also its like a lot of the addiction issues, were present years before I even met Mama. Do I include my childhood, which was not the best anyhow? I grew up in a divorced home, my mom was also an alcholic while I was a kid, and then sobered up in AA when I was about 14. I left home right after this, because I couldnt get along with a sober mom. It seems like a lot of my issues have been with me all along, the anger and closed book ones specifically.

Really a lot of these issues, are my issues. The inability to open up is a LONG TERM issue. I have known for many years that I was a closed book, with many stories inside that I wasnt sharing. Now I am asked to open that up completely to someone who often times when I start to read the story, takes it very badly. Mama picks apart these things, brings them back up later as leverage etc.

I am willing to talk about it, I dont want to be taken apart though. I want to change, I HAVE changed. Which brings me to my next point. Which is one that she wasnt even going to bring up. I asked her to focus on positive things for a while. To acknowledge that I have changed, and that I am opening up. She ignores me on this, she doesnt say that here at all.

I used to spend 0 time with my family, sleep all day and really I didnt show a care in the world for her and the kids, except for material support. Especially if you take the segment in time, that the affairs were in, it was multiplied by the adderol, I just didnt care at all... I remember that apathetic feeling, and really hate thinking that I was in that state of mind for years.

I would not be able to have the affairs now. My state of mind is so vastly differnt than what it was then. In fact the affairs took years of mental preperations, fights and so on. For the last several years I have been working to get closer to mama. What I mean is that the affairs were the cummulation of years of mistakes. I am not in the habit of making those mistakes now, I have changed my habits almost entirely.

The first affairs, two of them were online in video games. Flirting for the most part. These I feel were preparation to move on from mama. I was still very much in the freeloading state of mind, even though we were beginning to make a family. Both of these were done without the aid of adderol. We had just had our first son, and I guess I was afraid of the commitment, and wanted out some way... its a while back, and perhaps I was just being selfish and not really thinking it through... it may have not been as pre-meditated as all that.

Then the years started piling on. We started fighting and yet we stayed together. We tried all sorts of differnt life changes to try to make or lives together work. In spite of this, we did not find a common ground. Eventually I found a fulltime job, that was with some "old friends". It was working in the porn industry, as a web developer. Making porn websites for a living. This job caused innumerable problems.

Really porn had always been a factor up until when we started working on my issues. I quit that with the adderol, both were hard to quit, and the process involved lying and relapses. Those are back a couple years, but still fresh enough to cause issues constantly.

This job I had, I could drink alchol and work. Take adderol to extreme and work. They just didnt care. They were enabling a lot of bad behavior. Sometime during this, I started the first affair. I talked on the phone a lot with her, I also spent a lot of time playing video games with her.

I was able to carry on with that affair for some time. How long, I dont really know. I really should figure out exact dates on this. After I went out to LA to meet her, I came back and knew what a horrible mistake I had made. In fact I figured it out, in spite of all the drugs I was on, before I even came back. I think honestly I was trying to make mistakes, I was trying to tear apart all of my responsibility. I really was not living up to my families expectations at that time.

I came back and continued talking with the girl from LA, until at some point... I just stopped returning her calls, IM;s and so on. I dont know why, or when... its sort of frustrating. I think she was pushing to make it more real, and I had never intended to keep it real.

Fast forward a while, and then we moved in where we are at now. Back in the city, as we had moved out to a suburb, for a while in the middle there.

When we got back here, I started an affair with an old friend. I guess I had always had a crush on her. Again the freeloading behavior came out. I was still taking adderol and not at all trying to change yet. This affair started with me going over for conversations about her boyfriend who had left her for another girl. BAH! I should have known, perhaps I did and thats why I was there. This affair lasted a couple weeks, and in the end Mamasita found out about it via me leaving IM's up talking about it. I think I wanted to be caught.

There is more details. But now I believe you have the gist of the timeline, without dates and fine details.

Major problems I had
1) Addiction
2) Friends who enabled me
3) Unwillingness to change

Things that are differnt now.
1) No more porn or adderol or anything like that.
2) Got rid of the enabling job and friends
3) Total willingness to change


Things that still need to change
1) Remember the affairs in all details
2) Deal with my anger issues (I still lose my temper)
3) Learn how to open up emotionally in hostile environments

So... how do we deal with these affairs?

This is an honest question. I dont know where to go with this, part of my inactivity is not knowing.

Thanks in advance, for any advice on this.

papasita:


Actually, no she isn't misrepresenting. Mamasita is responding based on what she thinks you are saying. That is completely different. It is the filters she has in her mind, filters that all of us have in one form or the other.

Right now, her belief system is under "Attack." She is slowly shifting to the side, changing, in an effort to deal with what she is reluctantly learning.

So what is she learning? Like most of us do at some point in our lives, she is beginning to learn that her belief system is partly responsible for not achieving certain goals she has. And this means she is becoming an adult for real, a grown up. Most people never make it even that far in life. So she is ahead of many.

I am extremely impressed with your introspection. There is so much there, I don't even know where to begin. Since I am not welcome on this thread, I won't get started except for a brief explanation (above) that I thought might help you understand that you are not dealing with someone who hears you correctly, then misrepresents, but instead, someone who is hearing what their mental filters allow them to hear.

Just like most of us.

Larry

i think papasita should start his own thread
also , i KNOW his version of the affairs is not strictly true cue to proof i have gleaned thru myspace, e-mail, bank accounts , stuff like that

for instance, his affair with girl #2 lasted way longer than 2 weeks. more than 5 months from when they exchanged their phone numbers via myspace. and more than 6 weels after the dirty deed

Papa & Mama, here are few comments and suggestions about your sitch. Please take my opinions with a grain of salt since my M has a long way to go. However, I�ll try to relay some of the recommendations and plan layout that I have received from Steve Harley.

First of all, what�s your plan to move from renters to buyers? If after reading the book you didn�t come up with a solid plan, I believe that the rest of the program is a moot point. I suggest you both post specific steps to move into a relationship of buyers. That way you can get it reviewed here. This doesn�t mean that you�d go out and get married tomorrow but you need a plan to solve your renter situation.

After you agree to a plan to resolve your buyer�s mentality, your next step should be to read SAA. Mama�s hurting so you both need to work on healing her wound. That should be addressed before you go into fixing your M problems.

Put the A conversation on hold until you have a plan on how to discuss it. The first step is to understand the WHY. Papa, it seems from your post that you need to better understand why the A happened. I can see some indirect justifications in your reasons for the A. HINT: the reason for the A doesn�t have anything to do with your upbringing, situation during the A or Mama�s behavior. There�s a lot of info here and in SAA on WHY we are all vulnerable to have an A.

The conversation about the details of WHAT happened during the A should be a controlled one. I can post the specifics of the plan by Steve Harley on how to have this conversation and I�m sure the vets in the forum can help you have this conversation in an organized manner. But I think you should get the WHY part out of the way before you consider going into the WHAT.

BTW, I think you�d consider writing in separate threads. You don�t want your posts to be a source of LBs to each other and the perspective of your problems is different so the message can get mixed up. Perhaps Papa can start his own thread.

--ElCamino72

I will start my own thread. Its just been most comfortable doing it here, starting a new one is fine though. One thing I want to note, is for the most part these posts are on topic, which was.. how do we get me talking(honestly). Which I am doing...

As far as Surviving An Affair: That was ordered last week and will be here sometime early this week, as well as His Needs Her Needs.

I am still working my way through the buyers book. Still very busy, reading a couple chapters a day, should be through it in the next couple days.

Papa

Suggest you start with that really long post above.

Larry

Papa,

You both want to be in the same page but more importantly you want to be in the right page. You have to be very careful in how you tackle your issues. The path is very narrow. That's the reason why MB is a program based on specific concepts with specific instructions and rules.

I commend you for your motivation to work on your M. Keep in mind that what you may believe to be "talking honestly" could easily turn into LBs and drive each other further away. Your priority should be a plan to heal the wounds caused by your A, put precautions in place to avoid a future A, fall in love with each other and commit to an everlasting M. This plan is what MB offers you.

Take advantage of the excellent resources here.

--ElCamino72

hello everyone and happy easter. we all just ate a really great dinner at home -just us and the kids. now, everyone is chilling and papasita is napping a little so i figured i would take this oppurtunity to add something to the conversation.

we very much appreciate all the help and support you've all given in listening to our messed up story. this has been helpful healing for us and it really had come to a place where we felt it was somewhat of a last resort. these last few years have been really tough although things get increasingly better with actions and hopefully words in the future. i hope you will all give papasita good advice and at realize how big of a deal it is to have him open up like this. i am proud he is trying, even though we still have a lot to go from here. i am beginning to compile a list of questions i need answered about all of this. he has said he will finally respond. i hope he sticks to it. it means so much to me. i want to begin to build our relationship but it needs to be on a solid foundation. i want to trust him. it just needs a lot of hard work. but iam committed to making this work and not just saving us from divorce but building a really great relationship with the love we felt for eachother at the core.

i aplologize for my lack of computer saavy my partner displays. i know my posts are messy and somewhat disorganized. i am a busy mommy with 2 young boys and a teen-age daughter. i want to spend time with them now but i know this important so i take the time.My partner gets a lot of practice in his job and has always had more aptitude and interest in the computer anyway. i would rather deal with people face to face but, in the case, this does not seem possible . many of the people i trust seem very uncomfortable with the whole subject. they know i intend to stay until every last chance is exhausted.

that is just how it is for me. i am committed to working this out. maybe at first i was a freeloader. i had been burned before. but , i guess ever since we had kids together, and even more so as they have become older and more aware of the moral implications of me and their papa's choices, i have been commited to making things work with papasita. i feel i would have to deal with him regardless if we were together or not and it is imperative that he be healthy to me if he is going to have even 50% custody of my children. they are the most precious thing in my life at this point. i feel it is in their best interest- and therefore mine- for him to be healthy and for us to be able to communicate healthily. sure, i would love for us to stay together. more than anything, but i want it to be healthy- no lovebusters-openness and honest- and everything on a strict policy of joimnt agreement if we are going to share our home and parenting time.

THAT is what a buyer's policy is. that is what i have learned from my new book that i finished yesterday. sacrifice is for renters. if you want to be a buyer- you have to face problems head on with the policy of joint agreement in mind to make the changes necessary. in a renter situation, if something is broken, you just put up with it and move if you can't stand it anymore or find something better- or cheaper in the case of his mistresses-er. sorry. in a buyer situation you make the changes. and i am committed to trying if he is. if he is non-co-operation, i don't know what choices i have then. i don't want to have to consider that right now. although i have.

up until this time, papasita has been much of a freeloader. i don't mean this to be disrespectful, just truthful. he has admitted to it in his new thread. we just avoided the truth by avoiding eachother. he slept days, i pretended he was on the night shift and carried on with my own life with the children. it was lonely, but i have a high threshhold for being alone and i have great kids. i put up with it. but no more. we deserve better and we have got it to a large degree with the help of marriage builders.

for a long time now, i have been discontent to be a renter, i want to be a buyer. i can't stand it when i can't paint the walls or change the bathroom. when we lived in the "suburbs" remting an old shack dating back to the 1850's in an expensive minneapolis suburb, i had fun trying to pretend it was my home. our landlord was lenient and let me make changes. it was tthen that wh went very wayward. our landlord was actually part of the social group that included OW#2. we have lost many friends thru this. but then they probably weren't really friends anyway. now we are back in a strictly renting situation and i don't like it. i wished i owned my own home. i want to buy. i want to be a buyer, i hope my papsita will join me in this. i think we can do it together. i need to know one way or another what his true intentions are. i know what i want.

his new thread is entitled surviving my affairs. going to play tag with the kids now and wake up papasita from his nap so we can hide the eggs.