Nope, clear as crystal!

Deja, this is why people say you are in an affairage.
You don't believe contact with WW2 had anything to do with your deciding to divorce WW1, but it did.

It affected you WAYYYY more than you think.

One question, did your first wife want a divorce?

Now, on to my advice to help save your current marriage.

MOVE IN TOGETHER!

Yep to Gack's post. Deja, I think we've made it clear that your M is an affairage, and believe it or not, that really does change the nature of your union. I just wanted to put that out there.

So here you are now. Opposite coasts, each of you doing your independent thing. I'm not surprised that she looked to someone local to get her needs fulfilled. I AM surprised you both haven't.

Your life is mirroring your priorities. Her birth family is her No. 1 priority and she's attending to that. Your children are your No. 1 priority, and you're planning to move to be closer to one of them. The lack of making your M your No. 1 priority has caused it to wither.

Simple Step No. 1: Do whatever it takes to move in together. If that means you don't move closer to your child, well, that's what you've gotta do. Because your M HAS to be No. 1.

Everyone,

Sorry for making this thread so confusing. Not my intent. I take the hit for being a newbie.

As to my marriages, I will try this one more time (and the last time then I intend to drop this aspect of the discussion). As a time-line, My FWW and I separated. Then I met (not romantically) my SWW. While not the popular opinion on this site, as this was before my D was finalized. In my mind (and my FWW) the date of separation was the date the M ended. In addition, in my state, the date of separation is in fact used as the date the marriage ended. This date is used as the basis for computing child support, alimony and division of assets. As stated before, my FWW and I had decided our M was over.

My meeting of my SWW was after separation date. And we only met, NOT we became romantically involved. We did not start a romantic relationship until many months later. By that time, we had also completed and filed the D papers. There was no way my FWW and I were getting back together as we were embroiled in a messy mediation of assets. So I apologize if I am not in the same opinion as others that my second marriage is in shambles because I was not fully D'd from my FWW when we started a relationship. To me, my FWW AND my SWW there was no overlap of relationships. In fact, my FWW knows and is friendly with my SWW. They attend family functions together and while not good friends are friendly towards each other. My SWW is in no way viewed as a OW by my FWW and vice-versa.

I accept responsibility for the poor telling of my story. It's complex and my first post would have been a longer novel than it already is. For those who have made it this far and still understand the situation, I applaud you.

For those who want to believe this is an affairage, I accept and respect your opinion. My opinion is different (as explained above).

I also apologize for reacting defensively initially. As one poster said, many people here are sensitive to WSs. Being the victim of two of them, me too! Then to be thrown into that category made me overly defensive and not thinking nor communicating clearly. (Plus still reeling from the recent D-day.)

Now, I do agree with all the people who have said a big issue is that my SWW and I do not live together. Prior to d-day, I believed our M was good. Obviously I was wrong. I was believing that my M was my #1 priority (and I thought my SWW believed this too by our discussions). Like many people do, we thought we were just making sacrifices for the sake of other things in our lives. Yes, I realize it contributed to the A happening now. Hind-sight is always 20/20.

I said in my earlier post, that a few months before D-day, I was coming to the conclusion that we need to be living together. Maybe it was because I began to sense something was amiss.

And yes, I now believe if we are to R that we need to live together. You can all stop trying to convince me of that now ;0)

The hard part is deciding whether I want to do that. It is said that a big part of this process is that the BS needs to decide if they want to fight for the M and go the the R process. I guess I've come to realize that I'm still trying to figure that out. To make that decision. That's why I am reading on this site and asking opinions about books that may help me/us understand the situation better. I've only been reading a few weeks and I already see how hard it will be. I need to decide if I'm up to the task. I think I am only at 80 percent sure at this time that I want to R.

To get to 100 percent, I need to figure some more things out for myself. Especially since it didn't work with my FWW. But then there is a lot more material available and I hope I'm a little smarter this time. I also need to see and believe if my SWW if wiling to do the tough work too. And then figure out who moves where.

I'm also unsure about what I think about the comment that since the M is #1 priority, we should disregard the needs of other members of the family before our M. I'm trying hard to reconcile that belief. Does a parent who sacrifices them self in order to save a child say they are putting the child's priority above the M? Does a soldier who goes in harms way, possibly not to come back to their family and M saying their M is not the #1 priority? Is the person who goes home to tend to an ailing parent, who brought them into this world, also saying their M is not the #1 priority? Coming from an Asian family, where there are also strong concepts of 'family', 'honor' and 'duty' you can hopefully see why it is hard concept to swallow.

So in the end, while I am willing to move if I decide to move forward with the R, I'm still trying to reconcile the opinion by others that I should just disregard the needs of my kids or that SWW should abandon her elderly mother. (Who by the way was admitted yesterday to the hospital again for a pneumonia and UTI.) Plus I made it clear before the M to my SWW that I did not want to move away from my kids. She was, at that time, willing to move away from her mother. Never happened. Although I believe now, that if that did happen she would be woefully unhappy today because of it. I now that if she was here today and her mom was going into the hospital she would be distraught, feeling guilty to no end and crying up a storm.

Should we have decided that our M was doomed from the beginning? Maybe... but who thinks clearly when your madly in love?

Thanks Mr. Wondering,

I thought about exposing as it is covered much on this site. I will also say that there is a thread that talks about exposing to affairs that were in the past. People who regretted not exposing posted their thoughts.

The comment I liked best was the person who said that exposure should be done only to the extent that it will help the M. If the NC is solid and the OM is out of the way, then exposure to the wife of the OM does not accomplish anything, except maybe a sense of falsely placed satisfaction on my part as it would be for reasons of revenge and anger and not to help the M. In fact it may also invite retribution, anger and retaliation by the OM, especially since the WW says he has a temper.

Now exposure to some close friends and relatives who can help to keep the WW in check is a good thing. I have done some of that.

YEG,

Thank you for you words. I agree. I need to understand that WW is willing to work on M. I have to believe, 100 percent, that I am too.

I am working on filling her ENs. She says she is appreciative of that. Not perfect yet.

I do get upset when she infers that my lack of ENs caused her to have the affair. I need to get better at telling her that I will take responsibility for my share of not filling each other's ENs as well as for any other issues that made our M not strong. But I will NOT take the blame that these are the reasons for her deciding to have an affair. (As you said, get her out of the foggy state.)

I am appalled that you have this info about this poor OMW and you're withholding it from her! You think the condition of her M is none of her business?? Or you're just afraid of OM?

X2 what maritalbliss said.

You don't expose for spite, that's true. I did an extreme minimalist exposure. But you HAVE to expose to the AP's spouse! You have to expose to the parties that are directly impacted by the A. They need to know what happened for their own safety. They have, in military intelligence terms, A Need To Know.

Not doing so is wrong-headed. The OMW is missing information about her marriage that is vital to her own life. I wish someone had outed my then-WW. It would have saved everyone a lot of grief.

Dejavu, you are making a huge mistake by not exposing to the OM's wife. The OMW needs to know about the affair so she can protect herself from your wife and her sleazy H. The risk of resumption is very high if you keep this affair a secret. What you are doing is ENABLING the affair and helping no one. [except the affair]

Affairs thrive on secrecy and you won't do anyone any good by aiding and abetting that secrecy.

Would you warn your neighbor if you knew his bookkeeper was embezzling money from him? Or would you make the excuse that "exposure will not accomplish anything except maybe a sense of falsely placed satisfaction on my part as it would be for reasons of revenge and anger?" Does that make any sense at all?

I am not worried about the OM's "temper." I am more worried about yours and would ask that if you meet with him that you leave your pistol in the car. It is your temper that is the issue here, not his. After all, he assaulted you.

And most importantly, there is very little we can tell you that would compensate for the fact that your marriage is a very low priority in your lives. Your marriage comes way down the list AFTER family, career, etc. And we can see the result. Until that changes, there is not much hope here, because:

this program does not work unless you are spending 15+ hours together every week meeting the 4 intimate needs. [15 hrs to just maintain] In your case, you would want to spend 20-25+ hours together to just CREATE romantic love. You can't very well do that if you don't even live together.

So, those are the 2 greatest opportunies I see here: expose the affair to the OMW and move in together.

This is your ticket to ride, deja. This is how you'll save your M, if, indeed, you choose to save it. You've interpreted our priorities incorrectly in your other post. We're not saying to abandon your other priorities - we are saying to re-order them to make your M your top priority.

Example: I love my DS. But I'm not going to move to be closer to his college town. He has left the nest. I'm a phone call away for moral support and advice. I'm in my car and driving if he truly needs me to be there. But I'm not moving there. It's time for him to make it on his own.

My DH's parents are elderly and are going through...well, the stuff aging parents go through. My DH would be at their house (1/2 hr away) every day if he could, just to sort of hover over them. (But that's another story.) We have discussed the appropriate number of days he can visit without allowing his birth family to usurp our M's No. 1 place. (As happened during his A.)

Sometimes DH has meetings for his job that causes him to be late getting home. If that occurred frequently and threatened our UA time, I would request that he leave that job, so it doesn't become a priority over our M. And he agrees that he certainly would.

See, we haven't abandoned other priorities - we've properly placed them.

I'd like to expand on the aging parent issue your WW has, deja. I understand her dilemma. My H had the same problem. Siblings who were out of state. A worthless older brother who lived locally but was happy to sit back and make minimal effort. Combine that with a 'take charge' kind of guy like my H, with his devotion to his parents, and you've got a recipe for marital disaster.

It started out innocently enough. Aging/ill parents. Someone 'had' to take care of them. Not only did I give my H carte blanche to take all the time he needed, I encouraged him to do so because I knew it was important to him. I told him I would hold the fort at our house. That was a mistake on my part. I gave him permission to reorder our M and put it in spot No. 2.

Days drifted into weeks and months. We ended up cancelling our family vacation because H felt he couldn't leave them alone. Like he was the only person on the planet who was capable of caring for them. Never mind the three local relatives who could be on hand at a moment's notice(including an Aunt who lived two blocks away.) I began to resent the situation. We began to get a little cranky with each other around that time (no coincidence, since crankiness and resentment are pretty good partners.)

Long story briefer: H stumbled over a co-worker who never crabbed at him, and thought he was a true American hero for being so devoted to his parents. They tumbled into bed not too long after that.

Fast-forward to today: Still the same sitch. Parents still in declining health. What is different? We told the siblings and local relatives that H's job as sole caregiver and decision-maker is over. Duties have been split. Professional caregivers have been hired. Hospice professionals have been retained. Stress has been removed from our M and it is firmly in place No. 1. Where it's supposed to be.

I agree. I took care of my terminally ill father for the last 6 months of his life from 500 miles away. I had no help from my sisters and brother! He refused to go into a nursing home or go to the hospital so I had to hire nurses to take care of him 24/7. I spent one week out there getting everything set up, a nurses schedule, hospice professionals, cleaning lady, etc. After that, I only flew out every 6 weeks to check on things, with my hubby in tow.

I gave his "girlfriend" a Walmart credit card and she would check on dad once a week and bring him groceries. My uncle would check in 1-2 x a week and bring his medicine and his friend "RED" smuggled him marijuana. [I put a stop to that!]

So I know it can be done from afar and done well. My father had excellent care, with daily medical supervision, meals cooked, house cleaned, bathed, etc.

The point is that the marriage has to come first. Sure, we have to take care of our parents, but it can be done in a way that does not wreck the marriage. If I can pull it off with my father, then anyone can.

So we've addressed your WW's sitch with her Mom. On to your kids: I understand you have one ready to graduate from high school, right? I can see where you'd want to be on hand for his final days of childhood, and I would suggest that your WW join you where you are closest to him. Do not follow him where he goes, though. Unless your spouse agrees with that you do no one any favors by doing that. Let him grow, deja.

:::WARNING! HISTORY LESSON COMING!NO. 2 PENCILS UP!!:::
Many of us have ancestors who sailed across the ocean ALONE at the tender ages of 13, 14, 15...patriotic relatives who faked their age and joined the military at 16...there's a girl sailing around the world ALONE right now who is 16! And I say "Good for her, good for her parents to let her follow her dreams and not hamstring her!"

We hide our children inside our homes because we are afraid. We let them grow fat eating junk food while they play video games. When is the last time you said "Go outside and get some fresh air" to your children. We are a generation of helicopter parents, hovering around our children to make sure every boo-boo is immediately band-aided (by US) all hurdles are torn down (because we don't want them to be stressed, God no!) every painful/learning event is mitigated before they even knew there WAS one.

So now you want to move to be closer to your college kid. And to hell with your M if it has to be a victim of that, correct? I just don't think it's the best thing to do for your M.

Although I've got to be O&H, here: I don't think your M is your No 1 priority, and I don't think you intend to make it No. 1.

Stepping off the soapbox.

OMG - I think I killed the thread!