You just do it. It is a conscious decision you have to make. You can never have the same relationship that you had before, because you didn't have the infidelity before. So just know that, if your M survives, it will have to be all new. You can recover from the A, but it will never completely go away.

Not only will it have to be a conscious decision, but you will have to make changes before her. After what happened, she does not have it in her to drag you along. You have to be a man and do the heavy lifting, to lead her to a new type of M. You have to find the strength and man up. In other words, just do it.

Good luck.

Because you attacked your wife and marriage. She is lying bleeding on the ground right now. You lost the right to bring up your scrapes and bruises, for now.


It will not always be this way. But you have to recover your marriage, first.

Please help your partner recover from her wounds. If you do, some day down the road, she will be in a position to help you get what you need.

Yes I am seeing that now. I am trying to make this about me again and it's not right. I have asked her to fill out the EN's questionnaire so I can have a path to follow, not just shoot from the hip. I know that I have to give the 110% plus more and deal with nothing in return.

I have to appologize to her on here for the last post I put up. Thus far every other post I have talked with her about the content prior to posting it, that last one I just dropped on here with out talking to her first about how I feel and that was wrong, I am sorry pumpkin and it will not happen again.

Thanks everyone for helping us through this. It means a lot that there are people out there that care, even if they don't have a clue who you are. Thanks again so very much.

Nave, refresh my memory ... have you considered calling the Marriage Builders coaching center? Steve Harley could give you some excellent techniques for discovering your wife's emotional needs even when she will not fill out an Emotional Needs Questionnaire.

If you want your marriage to recover, it is still your responsibility to try to meet your wife's emotional needs. Even if she doesn't find it safe to fill out a questionnaire to help you do it, right now.

Steve Harley told me personally that the questionnaires are really just a shortcut to help you quickly see results. There is a non-shortcut approach, and I believe you should be using it.

Nave, when I am up in the middle of the night with my head spinning about our relationship, I take a Benedryl. It makes me sleepy and helps me to go to sleep. If I don't do this, inevitably I wind up waking up my wife and saying something to her, or sending her an email, or something I will regret.

You will feel better when you accept the fact that you CAN'T instantly make it all better.

As others have said - this is going to take months, if not years. You have got to slow down and accept that fact.

If you are going to keep saying that you want results NOW or you're going to quit - well, you've already quit and it's no wonder your BW is freaking out.

If you want to prove to your wife that you do care, as you say you do, then accept the fact that none of this can be fixed NOW -and learn to be okay with that.

That is the greatest thing you could do for her - stop expecting quick results so YOU can feel better. Accept that you are both going to feel like [censored] for a while but THAT IS OKAY because the long-term results are worth it.

Get what I mean? Stop expecting to feel better *right now*. If you had a busted leg, you could accept that it will take many weeks and months of healing and therapy to make it useable again. You wouldn't expect to just take a pill and have it feel all better again and be able to go out and run marathons on it.

This is far worse.

You both have tons and tons of healing to do. The work of healing is going to take a long time. Once you can commit - COMMIT - to that, THEN you will be giving your wife what she truly wants and needs right now.

If you aren't even sure whether you're up to the hard work of R, why is your BW going to waste one more minute waiting around?

If you want to R, you need to be solid for her, and show her with your consistent actions over time that it's safe for her to begin investing in you, and in your M, again.

She is not going to feel safe when she doesn't know from one hour to the next if you're going to say phooey and walk away. It's all on you, Naveguy, to fix that.

Quasi T/J here...
At 1am, I'd take two. Don't buy off the shelf. The pharmacist at our grocery store sells a generic bottle of 100 behind the counter for $2.79.

I understand what I need to do and we have had our conversation about it.

I have to be an open transparent book, regardless of what she may think I have ot give her the chance to make her own decisions and stop trying to control the outcome. I have completely took us back to day 1 that she found out because I have been holding back instead of letting go. I have completely ruin anything that we had started and she has both feet out the door now just waiting for me to close it by screwing up yet again.

I know that whatever she thinks it is her choice to make. I need to stop worrying about that and just be open, Hell after everything I have done and she is still here should tell me that she IS moving forward.

I'm taking trazadone to help me sleep at night and for the most part it does a good job, just that night she was out of town and I was really missing her.

Well thanks again for everything all, I have a ton of work to do and a ton of damage to overcome after saying what I did on here without talking to her.

Some good people have recommended to your BW that she stop reading on your thread. I wholeheartedly agree.

She needs to stop reading yours, you need to stop reading hers, and you need to stop leaving her messages on this thread.

Either tell her what you're trying to say, or if need be start another thread for both of you. Whatever you have to do, stay off each other's personal threads.

No holding back.

Not to get overly psychological here, but the fact is that you did say something on the board. That was a conscious decision you made. You knew that she would read it, and you knew you would get in trouble for it. Yet you did it anyway. Do you know why you did it?? I can think of three possibilities why you would do this (in no particular order):

1. You feel ashamed about all the things you did and you wanted to deflect her anger towards something else so you don't have to talk about the specific acts you participated in.

2. You crave attention, both positive and negative.

3. Recovering your M is too difficult for you, but you are afraid to end it. So you stoke her anger in hopes that she makes the decision (Plan D) for you.

4. You wanted to let her know, but in an indirect (cowardly) way rather than just coming right out and saying, "I'm having a hard time being open and honest with you right now. I find myself holding things back out of bad habit, and I don't want to do that any more. Can we talk?"

naveguy ~

We are 3 YEARS into recovery and I still struggle...May is a particularly bad month for me because it's when I found out the brunt of everything, spread out over the month.

My H can tell this is bothering me because he feels me pulling away...I do not do this consciously and in fact I thought I was doing a great job of dealing with it on my own. He can still tell so last night we talked about it...he is not angry, he is not frustrated, he is not impatient with me.

He just hugs me closer and tells me he hopes I feel better soon and asks if there is anything else he can do...I honestly tell him that there isn't because he is doing everything right already.

He let go of the hope that this would all blow over quickly a loooooong time ago and that was extremely important. Letting go of that hope has allowed him to calm down and do the hard work that has needed to be done.

We went through phases where he pressured me for different things...to meet his needs, to tell him what mine were, to be affectionate, to have more conversation, to be "happier"...etc. This never worked well, nave...it only made me angrier and forced me to pull away even further. It backfired on him. We went on the MBW so he was able to post to Dr. H directly and was told to knock it off.

nave...the best thing my H did when I was struggling as your W is was to be the best husband he could be with no expectations from me. As far as I was concerned just BEING HERE and BEING WILLING to reconcile was as much as I could possibly muster to put into recovery.

He did this for a long, long time nave...he was patient and willing to prove to me that he would do whatever it takes, for however long it takes.

He focused on becoming the best husband and father he could be and that is the best thing he could have done.

I would have to say it was a combination of all 4 reasons. I am an attention whore but just positive not the negative.

Married, I have tried that stuff, holding her, hugging her and so on and all it does is either piss her off more when I try it or she just shuts down more.

I am trying, just not hard enough.

...or perhaps you're trying hard, but not doing quite what's needed at the time.

Think of rebuilding your M like rebuilding your home.

If you try to do it too fast, you're likely going to have a lot of accidents and end up with shoddy work that will likely have to be done over.

If you try to use the wrong tool for a particular job (like trying to pound in nails with a wrench), you're going to end up with poor results, which will likely have to be done over as well.

Part of the recovery process, at least for me, was learning what to do, when to do it, and not to expect that my M was going to be rebuilt overnight.

So are you just going to stop? You know when my DH would try this early in R I would also be angered and would pull away. If he stopped trying I would feel like he just didn't want to feel that pain himself. This just angered me more.

Show her CONSISTENT behavior. Show her that you will KEEP trying even when she doesn't want to. Show her that YOU will do the heavy lifting when she can't. She needs to trust that you are in this and you will be there. I hope you are starting to see the commitment that is involved in R. It ain't for sissies.

I repeat: What are her top EN's? I am sure Honesty & Openness are high on her list right now. By hugging and holding her, you are trying to satisfy your own EN's, not hers. So what are hers? And what are you going to do to meet those needs?

(LousyGolfer - perhaps giving her car a good wash/wax and detailing is in order here?? )

Have the two of you filled out the EN questionnaire? I saw in an earlier post that your BW refused. Any progress? It does sound to me that you are not meeting her ENs right now.

No we have not filled out the EN questionnaire yet. I forgot to do it last night because we had a busy night. I can see everyone points and I have been taking it onboard and applying it to my R plan as I go along.

I also have to correct my last post, it was a combination of 1, 2 and 4, not all 4 of them. I do not want to end this. Otherwise I wouldn't be on here getting beat up everyday.

Yes I am trying hard just not trying in the right areas at the right times. I completely understand the analogy about the M R to rebuilding my house. I am just so use to doing things by trial and error that it is instilled in how I approach things now. I know that will not work in this R and it will cause it to fall apart way before I can piece it back together. Now I have to retrain myself to plan out my actions accordingly and hope that we can get some baby steps going again.

As far as her reading my thread I am completely ok with it, like I said I am being as transparent as I can be to her and that would include this thread and others I may start or comment on.

I am not ready to give up, it has only been a few months since this has all come out and I want to continue R with her for a longer time frame than just 3 months where I was not getting the correct help like I am getting from here. I am so grateful for everyone�s input good, bad or indifferent. I think the more I get advice the more I will become in tune with her and how to help her R. Thank you all again so very much.

I am getting on here late, and must confess I have not read the rest of your post but thought I'd add my experience...

You remind me of my H, WH, FWH, whatever he is today...

We have been at the Recovery/acting out cycle for awhile and every time we go through it I learn more and can call BullHockey more readily...so if I may challenge you (and know that I may be reading too much in to your situation from my own...)

When you wrote


I had to say BullHockey to myself. I have been snowed for years, and what I have discovered is...if you truly wanted to do it, you would have... There is something holding you back and I would be willing to guess that what it is...

You both have gotten into a pattern, into a dance, where she gets angry, you get remorseful, you both change, and then slowly go back to the way things were. You may not do it consciously, but you know you can wait her out, then you can go back to life as you knew it.

This cycle you both have gotten trapped into is an addictive/abusive cycle. Have you thought about reading or joining a group? "Out of the Shadows" by Carnes is particularly enlightening.

Although I believe you both want to change and get out of this cycle, it will be very difficult to unless you realize you are in it, and understand enough to know what to change...otherwise, you fall back into it...