IHS, are you all-in, or not?

Yes, but marcos said it BETTER!

MrsW, there was a method in my madness. I didn't mean to insult you!

I read the thread to find my unanswered post, and I did see yours, posted two days before marcos's! However, marcos's was much more recent. I thought ihs might respond to something that he read more recently.

Okay, that explanation makes no sense, but it made sense when I was choosing the post!

I am all in, I poorly word my statements. I love my wife and I do know it.

I give my wife 1% on actually being able to forgive me. I am still trying still trying to push, I am committed and I will do anything I can to make her happy. I made my counseling appointments, I have ordered and paid for the books. I have read most of this web site and spent most of my time thinking and contiplating about what I have done, asked and listened to advise and I know I can always do more do better.

I am committed, I know I still love her because everytime I think of losing her in my life (as my wife) I cry. I love her, I wouldn't care if I didn't love her. And I am functioning, just barely, I am not that strong in a lot of ways, but that's why I am here. That's why I am reading this site, that's why I enrolled on counseling, thys why I ordered the books, that's why I am answering all my wifes questions, being sure that I tell her I care, that I tell her I am trying, that I am going to go on depression medicine, that I told my children. I am trying and I am moving forward for her, for us, for me, for my children.

My apologies, trying to express remorse (I will stop). I am having a hard time and I am not taking any of this lightly, I am not dismissing her pain, and I will do what she wants. And that even if my marriage fails, that I am intent on trying to be a better person for her, for me. I still love her, I always will. I need to learn boundaries, need to control my emotions, my need for self and immediate gradifications and stupid need for attention from people other than my wife.

I still think a real 2x4 might be the ticket. Thank you for your response, and no your nit easy to read, but it's deserved and other than my committment you are correct. Thank you.

my wife has asked me not to contact her in any way. I had an 11 second conversation with the OW we agrees it was over. My wife contacted the husband and he wants to move on and doesn't want to talk about or hear my apology. My wife instructed me not to call. I want to aplogize and he said he didn't want to talk to me so I am obeying my wifes wishes. She has no interest in me. The OW called me once, I told my wife and showed her the log in my phone showing the phone call. My wife has access to all my stuff and I deleted my account that I talked to OW on. My cell is company phone, can not change it. And hopefully we will be moving 1000 miles away from where I work and to change our life.

Hi IHS,
you seem to have 2 unanswered posts



Enquiring minds want to know

WHY would BR want that??..... ......you destroyed her with your affairs....THIS is no longer an option for you, nor is it your RIGHT to ask this of her.....
....... I tell ya IHS, if my H had said this to me even ONCE, we would no longer be married. It's time for you to pull your big boy pants on and to START functioning. You are NOT the victim here, your WIFE is. Don't give us the "woe-is-me-I'm-a-bad-man" bullchit.

If things are bad enough you can't function, get your butt to your Dr. and tell him what you have been doing, what your marriage is dealing with, and get some help. At this point, you don't have TIME.........your time is up.......you've been given enough free passes......

Not2fun

Mrs. W

1000% I agree with you. The fact that i could let myself stay or listen to cheap stupid flattery shows my lack of intelligence (hense my brain). I totally agree with boundaries, but my love for my wife, my family, my word to mean something should be enough as well not to do stray, to even bother with another woman. My fear of not being with my kids, stuipid!!! How could I, how dare I, I am an idiot.

Thank you again, I printed your posts, they are on my desk. I will watch the video tonight.

Your focus is off point..........

ihs,

I find it hard to believe that you cannot keep up with your posts. You are being extremely slow in answering them. It is beginning to look as if you do not want to answer them.

Do you use a keyboard in your job? If so, why are not able to use one more effectively here, and answer the questions speedily? Why are you allowing this backlog to build up?

I hate to point it out, but you probably communicated effectively and efficiently when chatting with OW. Why can't you do that here?

Since foggy waywards often need to have things (even things that are obvious to most people) spelled out for them at the most elementary level:

IHS, I think part of what not2fun means is that you need to be disciplining yourself to focus not on how YOU feel, or how afraid YOU are of not being with your kids, or even acknowledging how stupid YOU feel when you reflect on how you messed up this badly, this cruelly (even though you may feel deservedly stupid, and even though it's true that sin hurts the sinner). Yeah, some introspection is necessary, and you'll have plenty of time for that when you're lying awake at night or sitting in traffic.

But it's not enough. All that stuff above is about YOU & how YOU feel. You don't have much time to spare to brood on that, not with your track record. The most salient point about adultery is how it hurts someone other than YOU.

A few pages back, I think, you had a brief flash of lucidity where you mentioned the word "selfish." Hang onto that thought. Selfishness is why you let your boundaries disappear in the first place.

So take the focus off yourself. Your focus needs to be on your WIFE. How will you protect HER feelings and assuage HER fears? How will you be open & honest with HER? How will you try to meet HER needs? What does SHE need from you this evening? What does SHE need from you tomorrow? What extraordinary (not just ordinary) precautions do you need to implement that you have yet to put in place for HER sake?

EXACTLY!!!!!!!!

IHS,

GO had my point completely right.

Your focus needs to be on Black Raven, not YOU. Your false recovery negates focusing on you, at this point........

I don't post to wayward too often.....it's too maddening for me.....yet I did you for one reason and one reason only......Black Raven

Re-direct your thinking onto her and what she needs.....and FYI it's not your self-induced pity party........

You want your self-respect back?......then focus on her needs.....

IHS,

I have posted this here before and have probably done it a bunch of times that others can remember where I did so, but I want to repeat it here.

A lot of talk is had around here on the word repentance. A BS wants to see true repentance. We talk about remorse, sorrow for the pain that has been inflicted on the BS by the actions of the WS and all sorts of things related to what it means to repent.

The word repent actually has two parts to it. The first part, the prefix "re-" means the same thing it always does. Thus repeat is to do something again. Reheat means to heat something up another time. return implies showing up again where you once were and so on. That's the simple part that is easy to get.

The second part of the word actually comes from the word for head and means "to think." So to the word "repent" means "to think again," or "to have another thought." What this implies is that true repentance requires that not just what we do changes, but also that the way we think about something changes as well. It is because we now think about something differently that our actions change as the result of that change in thinking, the way we think about things.

Marriage Builders is based entirely on one premise and one premise only. That premise is that whatever we do, it affects our spouse either positively or negatively. That means that anything we do is not done by us alone in a vacuum. Even things we do when alone can cause our spouse to be either happy or unhappy as the result of what we choose to do.

So nothing you do can be said to not affect your wife. This should change the things you do because if you are truly attempting to protect your wife you should have this mindset at the forefront of your thinking even when she isn't around. Failing to consider her feelings is what got you into this mess to start with. This is the faulty thinking that allowed you to violate your boundaries and have an affair and it was maintaining this thinking that allowed you to repeat the process. It was believing that you could do something at all that did not affect her that allowed you to justify doing things that you thought were yours alone and did not involve her in any way.

This justification is what then allowed you to consider doing something that you knew would hurt her believing that what you did would not harm her as long as it was something she was not knowledgeable of. You now had a secret set of things you thought you could do that were up to you alone and that could be kept from hurting her as long as they remained hidden from her. But even the hidden things hurt her in ways you never dreamed of in your worst nightmares.

So now you have to overcome the consequences of those choices that resulted from your belief that you could do things that did not affect her. Part of the task you face now is to demonstrate to her that that kind of thinking is no longer present and that you realize that it is possible to hurt her even when she doesn't know what it is you are doing.

The way to show her that you care about her and her feelings is to actively seek to do only things that affect her positively in an emotional sense and avoid ever doing anything again that might affect her negatively. Your mantra needs to become "Whatever it takes for as long as it takes." You need to be 100% committed to your marriage and your wife's happiness. She carried the load before. You need to carry it now. Worry about sharing the job much later. You need to lead this time if you hope to ever really recover your marriage.

Consider breakfast on a plate. There are two eggs and some bacon. Both the chicken and the hog have supplied part of the breakfast. The chicken might be involved in the breakfast, but the hog is committed.

What can you do to show B_R that you are committed to her and your marriage? Telling her you are committed is worthless. Stating that you will never do anything like this ever again is just a bunch of words and I would bet dollars to donuts you said those same words before yet somehow you managed to do what you said would never be done again.

Doctor Harley says that in a case of infidelity the WS should not just be forgiven. Forgiving someone implies that their debt is no longer listed against their account. The problem is that simply forgiving infidelity really doesn't make much sense. It means that we'll just forget that it ever happened and move on as if all has been made even. The problem is that this is like filing bankruptcy. While the debt is considered noncollectable, it really still is owed to the creditors. They might not hound you for payment, they just won't lend you any money again.

What Dr Harley suggests instead of forgiveness it that the WS make restitution. What on Earth could pay such a debt? How can you repay the fact that you selfishly acted in your own misguided interests and failed to provide for your wife's feelings? A start is to begin to give her the marriage she should have had all along, the one she deserved before but didn't get from you, one of integrity, real care and consideration for her feelings...

One in which you show her that you now know and truly understand that no matter what you choose to do, even when she isn't aware at the time you choose to do it, you are aware that your actions affect her either for her happiness or her unhappiness.

A Marriage Builders marriage has four pillars if you will. These are things we need to give to our spouse that show that we really love them. These things are Care (supplying everything that she might need emotionally), Protection, (avoiding doing things that hurt her or demonstrate a lack of concern for her feelings) Honesty (in all things, in all ways, under all circumstances and through all conditions- nothing held back, nothing in reserve, nothing hidden and nothing that you consider not important) and Time (without spending time providing Care, Protection and Honesty, you are not really providing them for her at all.)

End of lecture...

Yes, I always write posts like this.

Mark

work blocks all communcations, I am doing this on my phone, I can't get to MB from work, so no keyboard And small screen. I will be home in an hour or so and can answer the questions, I don't get breaks or lunches. I am trying to read and respond in meetings.

You are right I did do better with OM. It was IM and is was mostly 1 liners and from one person ab never even a paragraph.

I am
trying and I know I owe a lengthy respnse as soon as I get back. That is impossible on my phone. I work 12 to 14 hours a day, and unfortunately I work when I get home.

Understood, ihs. Please try and deal with those posts as soon as you can.

I am waiting on my wife, she is looking at dates and time. (I know, I am supposed to just do it), but I am respecting her and what she is asking of me.

As stated in several posts I have bought & paid for the book, I also invested in others. I did book my first session with Steve, first available, next week 7AM.

We are have not decided on a seminar so there is no hotel room or child care.

She has everything, and all my other acounts are deleted. I have only 1 email now.

Affair #1, about 12 years ago, it was 3 or 4 emails, nothing involved, old friend of my sister, she said how she liked me when she was younger and how I thought she was cute, etc etc, never any contact, I printed the emails and kept them, havent spoken to her since. My wife said she doesnt count this one, but this is the same thing to me.

Affair #2, about 11 years ago, met her at work, and she wrote me letters (yes like junior high school), we flirted at work. Kissing, touching, no sex. She got a BF and that was it.

Affair #3, 10 years ago, work associate, I flirted with her only one way, she was unintersted & then 3 years ago, we started email each other and it lead to her sending me pictures of her breasts, her and text messages, lasted a couple weeks, she got bored moved on, nothing physical, she lived about 2500 miles away, never saw her.

Affair #4, 2-3 years ago, immediately after #3, this was my old GF from high school. Nothing happend in High School with us, and that was kind of a catalyst to heavy flirting and into a Physical affir. I made severl trips to see her this lasted about 9 months. I bought her gifts and cards. This ended when my wife saw my phone. We did meet on classmates.com on this. I dont believe in Facebook, or other sites like that for the most part, this is the first blog I have ever done. (Someone else said this want a blog, but if this isnt a blog I dont know what it is). This is the longest I have ever spent on one website in my life

Affair #5, stared in Jan ended last week, co-worker, and this was IM (virtully everyday), and many phone conversations. graphic sexual, person conversations. Nothing physical, we were never alone. I travel 3 weeks out of the month and I was never alone with any woman, always travel with men or alone. This I vented, sent very hurtful IM's about W to OW as well. My wife has everyone of them.

Wife didnt decide on seminar, we may go to next one in MN, and I am respecting her wishes and waiting for her,

I ordered and paid for the book.

Yes, she has access to everything.

Mark,

thank you for your feedbak, I appreciate it