Todays thoughts...

This whole thing is hard but 2 of the hardest things for me today are

1. The two of us not having lenghty conversations. I try to initiate them about her day, my day, the kids, our upcoming move, things we see, people we know, etc. Topics that I feel are non threatening and neutral. I do ask how she is feeling or how she slept because I am concerned for her, I would love to have her go in lenght about that but don't expect it. Most of the answers are just a few words. Sometimes it seems that she will want to talk more and then she realizes what she is doing and closes herself off. I miss talking with her.

2. The way we seem to avoid each other when we pass each other while in the same room. I give her space because I don't want to have her feel she is being smothered or I am crowding her. I would like to give her a hand on the back or shoulder to let her know I am coming by. For me one of my many feel good moments since I have been back was one day we were in the kitchen together, I was in front of the stove and she needed something in a cabinet near me. She put her hand on my lower back. Every nerve in my body became electrified.

Both of these things are on each of our EN lists (affection, converstaion). I have seen her list but she not seen mine. I asked for hers since I have so many things to concentrate on I wanted to know where to start my focus for her. She knows I have done my list but has not asked to see it. I would feel as if I am forcing something on her if I gave it to her. She is very mad and I do not what to give her any thing that she may feel is pressure.

On another note, in my own opinion I am coming along in changing my attitude and views and they are becoming natural. The other day she asked me how much Ranch dressing we had in the frig; I answered..."it's half full" (optimistic). After saying that I realized that I didn't say half empty (pesimistic) as I most likely would have not long ago. I made a comment about it to her in a joking manner. It is something small I was proud of myself.

As I am out in the yard getting some things done I am thinking about my wife, our life, MB and all of you.

I would like to say thank you for your advise and guidance.

More importantly I can not express my gratitude for the support you all give Broken. She has told me many times she hates not knowing what to do, not knowing the answers and all the other emotions she is having.

I am truly greatfully for you all that are helping her to deal with this.

My humble thanks
Deerhunter71

DH, have you planned anything FUN for the two of you to do ALONE?

Did either of you do the RC questionaire?

If not, print it out and do yours. If she is willing.... You can sit down and ask her the questions and fill hers out for her as you talk about each of the activities.

When you add up the scores, you'll have some RC activities that "you" can start planning. Time outside of the home, doing fun things together, is one of the big ways you stimulate conversation.

She has withdrawn from you. You are going to need to find activities that allow you to do things together that are 10's instead of 3's & 4's on the list. You must begin making great memories, new ones!

You can do simple outings...... Go out for an ice cream sunday together. Order one dessert and two spoons. Share things together. Find a penny candy store or ole time candy store that's at least 15 minutes away, load everyone up and drive there.... give the kids each a dollar or two and make sure to get something your wife loves and head back home or to a park on the way back for a walk. Make these regular outings or suprise outings depending on what your wife prefers. Talk about the old time candies you loved as a kid and let the kids try some of them. Laughter is necessary! Tell on yourself about the silly things you did growing up. Your kids want to know these stories and I promise... your wife is watching you!

Talk to the kids, while you are out as a family, about what it was like when you dated your wife and how you felt about her, include some silly things that you did while dating or early in your marriage that were good memories. Your wife will be listening and it will help with the silence and tension that your kids may be noticing too.

Write in a notepad of the different things you can talk about while you are out together and as a family. Preplan topics! Pick your topics carefully and make sure they are positive topics and/or memories for your wife.

Avoid movies unless you are 100% sure there are no references to infidelity. These are huge triggers... even the subtle ones can ruin an evening out.

Here is the situation I have now and then I will answer the questions from Scotland and tst.

My training here is almost done, I will be heading back north on Saturday, 12 days from then I will be back to help with the movers and cleaning out the house. By the end of the weekend the whole family will be heading back north together. So once again I am in a pickel but for a shortened time.

With our limited time I have asked her if she would like to go out for a short time together tonight with me. It will be short (hour or so) but she hasn't given me an answer. Tomorrow night will be a family night out eating and maybe mini golf or something.

I asked her is within the first 2 weeks of her moving if she would consider seeing if someone in her family would watch the kids and her go someplace for the weekend. I gave some suggestions of what I had in mind.

In the longer range and not an alone thing; I will be going to the left coast for training in July. I also asked if she would consider coming out there for a few days with the kids and gave suggestions of a few things we could do then. I would love if they came for the entire time but I don't want them sitting around while I am in training. If that is what she wants to do I will search for activites for them.

For the time between the move and July I will have to play it by ear. If things are going well of course I will come up with something. I don't want to be too pushy.

tst, I have not done the RC worksheet, I need to do the LB worksheet but am still reading the book (as suggested). Early this AM (about 4:00), we got the SAA book out again and jumped around in that. I may read that again. I may be rushing through the steps too fast and skipping some important details.

The brief overview may be good so I can have an idea but I think am going to slow down and concentrate at the task at hand. That does not mean I am going to be working part time, I need to dig deeper and make my focus smaller.

Things are going to continue feeling disconnected until you are able to meet a minimum of 15+ hours of UA time together.

Do the RC info anyway! See if your wife will do her own or go through it over the phone for her... But you need to know what RC activities rank HIGH!

I left today to come back to my job and it was so very hard!

How have others deal with the guilt of what they have done to there spouses? I am so mad at what I have done to Broken that I can't stand myself.

Especially today since it is our first day apart from each other for the next 2 weeks. I want to be with her, talk to her, see her. All I can think about is how badly I have screwed things up. She is so wonderful and I have destroyed her.

In my head all I can hear is the disapointment, hurt and hate she has expressed to me and every bit of it is true.

No one needs to answer...I just need to vent. Sorry

How do you deal with the guilt? DH71, that was the subject of the 1st thread I posted here after I found the MB website. 'Cuz it was eating me up. I was so PO'd at myself, it was all I could do not to punch holes in the walls. (I was too chicken of hitting a wall stud & shattering my wrist, that's literally the only thing that held me back.) Even today, I get PO'd at the dumbest, mundane things [like today, I've been PO'd because my Windows crashed and I had to do a system recovery on my home PC that wiped out all sorts of info and has wasted my whole day restoring]. So you can imagine how mad I got, the less foggy I got, over how stupid I was when I almost ruined my wife's life, my life, our kids' lives through my affair.

(BTW, that thread of mine was lost in the Oct.2009 MB server-crash, so I'm sorry I can't direct you to it. You might see a guy who walked over some of the same ground you're on.)

Couple of thoughts for ya, and none of them are instant medicine, but anyway:

-- After my affair, one of the guys I turned to for some accountability & to help me get my head back on straight was a guy who came down with muscular dystrophy when he was in his mid-20s. He was bench-pressing 250 lbs and running 5 miles per day, and then in the span of a few weeks, he went from being able to do that stuff, to knowing he'd never be able to do it again. I asked him about how to deal with the guilt. He told me, "[Glove], some things you don't get over; but you can learn to live with them, and so you do."

--Later on, MelodyLane (whom you've surely run across if you've spent much time on these boards) reminded me that guilt isn't necessarily a bad thing. "It shows you have a conscience. It means you're less likely to [repeat the infidelity.]" Now, you can't wallow in the guilt & self-pity about how you've screwed up, but rather, you hafta use it as a motivator, to treat Broken better. That's where guilt morphs into the kind of remorse that drives you to action, to better conduct.

It's not easy to discipline your thinking. Sometimes it's tempting for me to get lost in getting PO'd at myself for what I did, and if I let myself dwell on it, I find that I can still conjure up that white-hot anger. But what can I do with that anger now besides wear down the inner walls of my arteries? It's not very productive. It was important for me, in the initial months after my affair, to "fly back over the wreckage", mentally-speaking, as I was learning how & why I did what I did. But once you've come to the core piece of salvageable info -- which to my mind is the knowledge & acceptance of just how selfish guys like you & I got -- then there's nothing more to be gained by revisiting that dark place. If you find yourself drifting there, you need to channel the thoughts in a positive direction, which for guys like us, means, "What can I do that's positive toward my betrayed spouse?"

And if you practice this discipline, it gets easier over time. (See one of Mark1952's threads re: "managing memories" for some ideas on how this can be practiced.)

Like that friend of mine indicated, I don't think that guit that we feel is ever going to be gone. I'm almost a year & a half into recovering my marriage, and I'm here to tell ya, the guilt is gonna be there, as far as I can tell, for a LONNNG time. You & I will always have to carry around what we did. More importantly, so will our wives. We can't change that. It's too late. But we can learn to live with it, and learn to live with it properly. What we can do is treat them like they deserve to be treated. Be cognizant of & conscious of their emotional needs. Keep an iron grip on the EPs. Find ways to make the UA time happen. Build a new track record. And be patient because it takes more than months, more than years.

It takes a whole bunch of days in a row of doing the big things and the little things. Sometimes if you find yourself too PO'd and mired in guilt, just send Broken an e-card. There are lots of free sites and lots of kinds of cards. Especially when you're apart & she needs to know she's #1 on your mind, even ahead of your self-pity & anger at yourself. (Like, maybe as soon as you're done reading this thread.)

But it can get better, I'm also able to tell ya that. Remember, she could've sicked a lawyer on you already, and hasn't. Just be sure you define how well you're doing by how well she's doing, and I think that for you, things will get better.

Thanks GO. I have been trying to refocus my guilt to do good while I was home. Now I will be away from Broken for 11 more days before we make the move. Now while I am alone I keep hearing all the things she has said to me and it's eating at me.

She has all the right in the world to say them and act on them if she wants.

Today is just not a good day for me but I have said it before, I have to make it good myself, no one else will.


Something else I am having to deal with is I think I am getting too pushy in wanting to know what the next step she wants to take. I have to get that under control.

I will read your post again and probably have more thoughts. Thanks again.

I just reread the managing memories post by Mark1952. Broken had printed it off and I read it then. Some of it is hard for me to understand but I understood the part about redirecting. That isn't a problem because no matter what I think about I always think of how it will affect Broken. I also have done whatever I can to eliminate any triggers I can for me secondly. The first reason is for Broken and so that I can try to spare her bad thoughts. An example that just happened before I left is I gave about $300 worth of new clothing I bought while deployed to Goodwill. All but 1 shirt I had never even worn. OW was not involved it me getting it but I would never have worn any of it knowing that Broken was triggered by it.

I didn't understand where it said to associate feeling with the affair and not the BS. Can anyone explain it in layman's terms? I get depressed because I see what I have done to Broken by having the affair. That causes me to get angry at myself for being weak and having it, then I hate myself for being selfish.

tst I clicked the button, how do I know if it is working?

Good work, eliminating a potential trigger.
That's putting some rivets in the love-bank vault door.
Did ya do anything today to put anything in the vault? I know it's more of a challenge while you're physically apart from her, but you're up for the challenge, yes?

Absolutely I am up for it. Today was small things, a text first thing this morning to say good morning. To be sure to tell her I love her in every email and the end of every call.

I sent a good morning, I love you email that she will see as soon as she checks her email in the morning.

I have to go to work now so I have more thinking time, I have a couple of more deposit ideas.

Here is the latest update for Broken and I if anyone is interested.

The movers are at the house today packing up. She is handling it very well but is pretty stressed and overwhelmed. I will be heading there in the morning after I get off work (not looking forward to a 10 hour drive after an 8 hour shift).

We will spend Friday and at least part of Saturday cleaning out the house and either Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning will be heading back here. Another 10 hour drive in 2 vehicles, with 2 kids and 1 dog.

Needless to say the stress levels are sure to be high.

The last few days we have not talked about us much. We have been talking move, what we will do once they are here...mostly everyday living things.

I have been keeping her EN in mind as well as empathy for what she is having to deal with on top of what I have done.

It may be several days until anyone hears from us but please know we are thinking about you all. Keep up the good work.

hey good luck with the move and try to keep things light and keep her needs in mind......
very positive move and now you will have lots of time to spend some quality time together and move to a better relationship....

Well we have made the move and are trying to settle in. It's tough to go from living in you own house to an apartment. Toughest on the kids because they can't just jump on their bikes and ride around.

Broken and I have been doing our best to focus on them. To keep them busy and get them adjusted. So far it has not been too bad.

I must admit that she and I and not been having the UA time that we should. I work nights so that complicates things more. The little time we have had has been good I think, we have had fewer talks about what I did and more on the now. I would like to talk more about our future but I am not going to press the issue.

I am hoping that the next couple days will have some positive affects. Broken has gone to spend a couple days with her family. They are a close family and I know they will give her whatever support she may need.

Not much else to report now.

deerhunter71,
if you can be together at night because you are at work, do little things for her that she will notice, a chore that she would have to do at night, if you could take care of a few little things she will know you are thinking about her, my hubby did this, after the affair, and we had decided to end the marriage so he could get on with his new life........he started fixing everything in the house before he would leave, he said it was the least he could do since he had caused so much stress and pain to our relationship........I didn't know it at the time, to mad I guess that he had already put his own Plan A in effect so to speak......
I noticed and so will she.....
maybe even a little note, nothing mushy, just thinking of you.....leave a photo around for her to look at, a happy memory goes a long way.
Patience is the key here....

I haven't posted in a while and just wanted those of you who have helped in the past to know that I an still working on repairing my M.

Broken and I are doing OK but we have a long way to go. I felt like things were moving along very well but recent conversations may have knocked it back a couple steps.

She is still trying to deal with her own feelings and I am doing everything she will allow me to help her. She spent the last week with her family and I think this is the first time she has talked to any of them in detail.

I am on my last training trip and only got to spend a couple days with her family before I left. I will be gone for 2 more weeks and then my traveling days without her and the family should be through.

She is going to see a councilor Monday for herself. I hope that we will eventually be going together. We will talk about it but she will decide if and when that will take place.

I have mentioned that I would like to call Steve together (that was what he wanted us to do next) but she didn't sound excited about it. I didn't press the issue but will mention it again later.

Anyway, I am still around, I am still reading and working at this.

Long time, no see, DH.

What's your wife telling you these days? Now that the move is done, how's she feeling?