Come to find out, he did not.

She was CCd in an email sent to him.

And were they followed to your liking? Have there been times when you felt resentment over any of them not being followed?

I know that you mentioned the drinking has increased. If he is not supposed to go to bars, where does he drink?

I really hope that Schoolbus comes on here to de-code what your FWH was saying. In his response, he mentions the opposite weekend thing. What is that? I am thinking that it is where you go out one weekend, and he goes out the other weekend. My WH and I had that agreement too. It was a BAD idea. Are the two of you spending ANY UA time together? I know it is hard to accomplish time alone when you have a family to raise and jobs to work. It is definitely a must.

I don't know if you should respond to his response, yet. I think you want to get it right.

As far as this friend he has, I don't know how you are going to negotiate that one.

I feel bad that you didn't enjoy the day that celebrates your job as a mom and your beautiful children.....
Feel proud of yourself and your abilitiy to be a great mom, the work is hard but worth more than you will know.
We all want to be appreciated and I'm sorry your husband doesn't get that......
Be the best mom you can be and your children will surprise you many times through out the years.....
Tell your husband that it hurts you that he doesn't seem to appreciate your job as a mom......

I know you are looking for advice on how to respond to your H's letter, but I am stuck on the above.

If your H can't acknowledge that he had an EA...then I can see why he would have trouble honoring NC & EPs...and that needs to be addressed.

Have you considered calling Steve Harley? He has really gotten my H on board. He made us go back to step one, as he explained it, because he finds most couples do not do well "connecting" (meeting ENs & avoiding LB) if they don't have a good "protection" plan in place (NC, EPs, O&H/transparency).

Your EPs need to be more concrete and in writing...for example, some things that should be on there:
~ If an email comes to him with any mention of OW, he tells you
~ no erasing emails and texts
~ no conferences where OW will be
~ spend 15 hrs UA together weekly

And Steve will be a good accountability partner since it sounds like your H doesn't follow through with things.

I have to say the think about the texting with his friend...you are making a DJ buy assuming what he texted abouta possible is what he really thought. You are assuming that what he told you is false, but what he texted was true. It could be the other way around...he didn't want to say NO right away with his friend...he was just throwing around ideas but really didn't want to do it.

That's a great point. Mr W once posted about getting into a bit of an argument with Mrs. W because a friend (male) stopped by his office and suggested going out for a quick drink. Mr. W called home to tell his wife and that violated their prior agreement of POJA about such things. But yet, Mr W like most men, did not want to be put into a position of "losing face" by saying he had to check in with the wife to make sure it was ok before going.

I can't remember exactly how they resolved it, but I think it was that Mr. W would excuse himself to make the call home and if Mrs. W didn't want him to go for whatever reason, that he would tell his friend that a pressing issue came up at home and take a raincheck.

Maybe he'll be by to elaborate more. The bottom line is that WPM made a very valid point. Your H could have been trying to preserve his 'man card' and he could have easily been lying to his friend.

POJAing situations like this beforehand, so you are both in agreement about the script, is helpful.

Thank you for your questions.

1) No, they have not been followed to my liking. I hate to blame this on my H, but he rarely holds up his end of an agreement. I cannot even think of one right now that has been followed through. Yes, it causes much resentment. I get paid a lot of lip service. A lot.

2)He drinks at home, or when he goes to see his friends. A few times he will go to a bar with this friend I do not like, but it is a total wasteland area he lives in - remote and not much other than scroungy old dudes. LOL

3)Not EVERY weekend, but if I get to do something outside of the house, then he gets his turn when he wants it. Our agreement with the MC was that we could arrange these ahead of time. Since I go see my friends out of town once, possibly twice a year, he was seeing his friend that is 45 minutes away every 6 weeks for an overnight.

4)We are nowhere near 15 hours of UA time. He is a school principal and his job is over the top demanding. We also have 4 kids. I do believe it is a must. I have to say, we have both tried to get more time (he gave up trying, but was doing well there for a while by asking our sitters), but all 4 of our sitters are in high school and really busy with homework, part-time jobs, sports, boyfriends, etc... I can think of 5 times recently where we asked each of them to sit and all 4 were busy. His parents live an hour away and are not speaking to us, my mom just got back to work after being laid off for a year, and my dad is not much involved with people. We live 15 minutes apart and will go 9 months before he even lays an eyeball on the kids - and that is because it is Christmas or something.

I agree about the reply. I would like to craft something that is less heavy, and something that he would read and feel compelled to bring more to the table to help us. He tells me all of the time he will do whatever it takes, but when I tell him what I need, nothing happens.

Last night I left the older 2 kids in charge and the moment H walked in the door from work, I announced we were going on a date. We went to dinner. I was hoping to talk a bit, but he seemed too spent, so we just talked about his work, and that was about it. Not much affection or attention from him. He is just too busy.

BTW, Gdar, one of the huge sticking issues in my craw about my husband's EA is that he also balked at admitting it was an affair. He threw out all the right platitudes; he was wrong, he felt awful, he hurt me, yadda yadda. But everytime I would use the "A" word, he would say "it wasn't an affair, it was just words on a computer".

And with that attitude, I will never rest completely easy that proper EPs are in place to prevent some kind of recurrence..with the old girlfriend or someone else.

I think SH could have helped us with this situation but money and my anger intervened. We had a 3rd counseling session set w/ Steve and I cancelled it in a fit of anger. And since then because my husband's UI ran out, money has been too tight to reconsider.

Yes, that is very possible and what he told me. It is our history that tells me otherwise.

OH, we have 4 kids, my H has had to agree to many furlough days because of budget cuts and we just do not have the $ to call the Harley's.

We have POJAd these situations. They don't stick.

Can I get some pointers on how to respond to his last email?

After reading through a bunch of these posts, I feel like I am not sure where my post belongs. The EA was 2 years ago and nothing has taken place since then in regards to an A.

bump

I just did the Shirley Glass relationship vulnerability map quiz and scored a 29 - one point shy of Rough Waters. Ouch.

Gdar, if he will not stop the silly slumber parties with his friends, I'd go plan B. He's a grown man with a family, not some 20-year-old college kid. If YOU can't go with him to party all night because of the kids, then guess what? HE can't go out and party all night BECAUSE HE HAS KIDS.

Why, oh why would you agree to never get between him and his friends? He told you right from the start that you'd never come first. The kids will never come first, either. His sacred party time with his friends comes first. He said it...THEY'RE his FAMILY.

The "I'll resent you if you don't let me hang out with my friends" is a THREAT. A juvenile one at that. That's right out of the eighth grade handbook of WAAAAA.

What I would say...now I can't even remember what you're responding to...I'll go read his last email.

CWMI, can we clarify that he is not partying. He goes to his friend's house (his wife and child are there) an they hang out and sit in chairs in the garage and drink beer, then go to bed, he gets up in the morning and comes home. Not exactly a party. LOL

When we got married, it would have never occurred to me to come between him and anyone. Before I found this site, I found that very controlling and unfair.

LMAO @ out of the handbook of Waaaaa. I needed that laugh, thank you.

Please go read and HELP ME. I am sitting here, letting my kids watch too much TV because I am so on edge and need to get this done!

I believe he would get more of what he wants (time with friends) if he put the time in with ME. His reply says he is too busy to reach the balance between work and home. He is CHOOSING work. The moment work is over for his 3 week break, he is CHOOSING to put in the time to his friends before me and using the "we have no sitter" as an excuse to say since he cannot get that free time with me, he is going to see his friends instead.

Now, if we were in the right place and my Love Bank was filled (hell, I would take half filled), I would not have a problem with him going overnight to see his stupid friend. I prefer he do it at their house with the wife and child there, than them go off camping someplace (he is not the most resourceful guy around) to get drunk and eaten by bears. LOL He has asked me to go with him, and I did once. I do not like the way they live (2 giant, stinky dogs and 2 flea-ridden cats) in a dingy little house with a mud driveway. That one overnight, when we climbed into bed, it was FULL of sand (from whomever must have slept there before us, as they live near the beach). Gross. I do not even like sitting on their furniture, which is all hand me downs from 1950. I saw how he lived BEFORE he met his wife, and I refused to even sit down. It was just disgusting. So no, I do NOT want to go there and I do NOT want my children there. Their socks are black after time spent there. Blech.

lol, drinking beer in someone's garage is a party to me...I feel so lame...

Okay, I read the last two emails, is that what you want to respond to? I'd say that he is very correct, that situations change and you need to adapt, and you're finding yourself increasingly resentful of being left behind to care for his children while he goes out drinking beer in garages. That you had children together, but it leaves you feeling like a single mother. You feel like you're the only one who adapted to the changing situation of having babies in the house again. (yours are teens, right? 'ours' are quite young?)

Ugh, I'm just so frustrated for you, I really just want you to load up all his clothes, kiss him goodbye, and hand him your lawyer's business card on his way out to buddy's garage. This is not a man who has extraordinary precautions in place, he's living like he's single.

Grown, responsible, RESPECTABLE husbands and fathers do not leave their wives and kids at home to have sleepovers with their drinking buddies. Especially FWH, or FWW.

I agree. But I do now want to leave him. I love him. I want a happy marriage and I want CARE in my marriage. I know I have to clean up my side of the street, but it is hard because when we do the HNHR stuff, he says I am meeting all of his needs.

He does not go often. Well, he used to, but his work schedule has left him with hardly any free time, so he has not seen his friend in about a month, maybe more. The last time his friend came to town, it was to let my H use his truck and help him move a fridge from our rental to our garage here at our house. He did not talk to me beforehand, but asked his friend to come back later and stay over. His friend could not, because he had his dad with him. Thank freaking God. I would have went through the roof had he come back and my H would have made ME feel bad if I was upset. Again, we made an agreement to have these planned out and many times he asks without discussing it with me first. How we came to the agreement in the first place was because he was making plans with him, THEN asking me, and if I said I was not interested, he would get mad at me and blame ME that he could not see his friend - that I was keeping him from him. After we had our first child, no, I did not think it was at all fair he got to go every 3 weeks to stay overnight. Then, when he had the EA during my pregnancy with my son, I did not want him going ANYWHERE overnight AT ALL, period. But our MC still insisted that I needed to allow it, but that we just needed to come up with an agreement about how often. Then my H told me that he only agreed to the MC, but that he had no intention of seeing his friend the way we agreed and I was just going to have to accept it.

He is jonesing to go because it was been a while. I get that. I have not gone to see my friends 2 hours away in 8 months. My friend is about to have a baby and I have yet to see her pregnant and her baby is going to be born with a physical disability. I AM attending her baby shower, however, and I have already talked to my H about it. This is a DJ, but I am fairly certain he will remind me that I "got my time" with my friend and that it is his turn.

Oh, and yes. I would like some help so I can respond! Even though he pretty much told me in the email that he is too busy at work to "deal" with my emails.

Thing is, we cannot seem to talk about it at home. He is too tired.