So what? Who cares if you have a problem with it? Must people change their morals because it bothers you?

And why must you defend yourself when people's morals differ from yours? Why can't you let it go? Your defensiveness is hindering your progress.

I keep saying this, and yet you keep defending yourself.


There are other people listening, who can benefit from continued commentary on the subject.

I'm in Austin and trust me, the judge I have is not inclined to put much weight on adultry. All things equel it's a factor, but otherwise it does not matter.

Someone mentioned I was dating my wife again....it was one date....first time in 8 months. You are all right, I never should have gotten involved with OW. I have not been in the same room with my wife for months. We have temporary orders in place and the divorce is 2 weeks away. What can I say, I was lonely and she (OW) is a good person. She never would have gotten involved if she thought I would go back.

This happened with my wife on Saturday and I set it strait today. I do have a conscious and realized it was wrong. I never thought I would be back with my wife and whatever you all say, you can't make me feel worse than I do. I have put up with so much crap for so long, It felt good to have someone who cared. Now I have hurt her too. I tried plan A and B. My wife is entrenched and I gave up. Not so much gave up, but in mid April she sat me down and said "I want to be with him, I love him and I want a divorce ASAP. Till then I had done everything including councelling with Hadley to no avail. I have had NO intimacy with her since October of 09. No contact with anyone. I have been utterly misrible for a long time and just wanted to move on.

Why not? You steal everything else I post...

BTW, it's really just a smiley/image posted as the name of the link...

BTW, I liked my fog-horn better...

And I included a picture.

" I tried plan A and B. My wife is entrenched and I gave up. "

This is where you went wrong you gave up plan B. B was to take you through plan D and life forever after.

When are you going to put your Big Boy pants on and stop justifying your affair?

See when we say don't date til the divorce is final - even wait a few years, it's not a punishment. It is because you are no where NEAR ready to be boyfriend material. You simply aren't.

The reason what you did is wrong is because it is adultery. You are married til you are married. Deciding to date because you don't 'feel' married is arbitrary and part of the wayward mindset. You drew the line at 8 months and 2 weeks away from the divorce decree. However, you drew this line because you met this OW and were so starved for an emotional connection that you convinced yourself bad was good, right was wrong, so you could sleep at night. So you could look yourself in the mirror. You could tell yourself you weren't committing adultery because the marriage was 'over'.

Your wife drew the line at not getting her needs met and meeting OM.

Your line was just as arbitrary and self serving as hers was.

You have caused no less pain than she has.

If we're all allowed to draw arbitrary lines so we can stand on the side we declare 'not adultery', where does it end?

Do you just have to feel in your heart it is over? Do you have to go x amount of time without your needs being met? Do you have to tell your spouse you feel this way?

If each person were allowed to determine this for themselves, don't you see the chaos that would result?

You made a vow for better and for worse. This is the worse. Your word and integrity should hold you to that vow. Your respect for marriage should hold you to that vow, until the vow is lifted from you, at LEAST.

Why can't I vote if I'm 17 and 364 days old? Because I'm not 18.

Why shouldn't I date the night before the divorce decree? Because I'm still married. Feelings have nothing to do with it. My word is my bond and my word holds me until the union is dissolved, regardless of what my heart feels - that is integrity.

A limit HAS to be set, because without it everyone makes their own limits so they can feel good - and the end result is pain.

There is no justification for what you've done.

The other woman is just that: AN OTHER WOMAN. She knew better and drew her own arbitrary line to justify sleeping with a married man. She made her bed - now she needs to sleep with it. She is just as skanky as any other woman who climed into bed with another woman's husband. How many BS's have we seen here, whose husbands lied to the OW telling them the marriage was 'over' that they were separated? So it was true in your case, so you are separated - your OW is just as skanky as those women.

You could have been lying to her - your wife could have been home waiting and she still would have climbed into bed with you.

Until you see that you are deep in a fog.

You have been enmeshed with a toxic, abusive woman. But part of you wants her back. She is the mother of your children. You want your family back. You should NOT date anyone for a long time.

It could have been a month or two AFTER the divorce when WW came to you - and your heart would have fluttered in hope. What about whatever woman you've hooked up with to fill the void then? You are dangerous right now. Your head is a mess. Your emotions are a mess. Not dating isn't punishment, it is protection.

When you think of your STBXW you shouldn't feel anything. There should be no pain, no resentment, no anger. The opposite of love is not hate, but apathy. When you feel that you are ready for someone else. Before then you are worthless as a boyfriend.

Moving on =/= finding someone ELSE to move on with. Moving on is recovering and rebuilding your family. Moving on is finding peace with yourself. Moving on is finding happiness. Moving on does not involve finding another person to meet your needs.

I'll say again:

Plan B is your road to personal recovery. Don't give it up! Two years later, either you are recovered and the affair has imploded, and you are sane enough to make a good decision whether you want to recover the marriage or not, or else two years later you are recovered and the affair is still going on and you know for a fact it's not likely to ever end. Two years. Personal recovery. Either way, you are recovered at the end.

Very astute.
Vary wise.
Not to mention, TRUE!

P45:

Just get the D done.

The fall out will be the fall out.

Get the D done.

LG

Ah, but Pat, you did NOT do a Plan B. You were one of those "I-can't-get-her-out-of-the-house-how-do-you-Plan B-in-the-house" guys. So, don't be trying to pull wool......

You really need to re-read all you wrote. Every line, every reason, every excuse you have given us about how you weren't in an affair is the SAME lines we here from WS all the time. They are same lines your own WW gave you.........did they work on you?......so how do you think they are going to work on US???......

Kudos for getting rid of OW, however, you need to rethink your actions here.

Not2fun

Ps....I'm not Not4fun silly......I'm all about the fun.....the right kind of fun anyway......

Just divorce. Then when you come back and you met someone you really like you'll have a completely different reception.

Vibrissa, I've been thinking of this post a lot today. Much of it applies to me so I'm t/j'ing like a bandit. Hoping Tex don't mind.

Okay, for me, it feels like punishment. Punishment for allowing my M to fail by not being totally honest with myself or my STBXW and by not trying harder to make the marriage enjoyable. Am I foggy?

Not trying to be a smartaxe but it also said "to love and to cherish, to have and to hold, etc." I'll "forsake all others" but as for the above, I'm leaving that part out for the next 106 days until D is final. Where am I going wrong?


I'm not unsympathetic (don't have it in me to be that way toward anyone), but I'm feeling pretty apathetic. Is that possible after such a relatively short time (e.g. 1 year since d-day, 3 months of separation, no Plan B)? Am I a monster, or was I just never in love with my STBXW? Or am I precocious, ?


Thanks for any guidance from any and all; and thanks again Pat for 'letting' me jump in.

~optimism

Opt I have been thinking about your post all night. The best way I can answer it is to tell you how it worked for me and my family.


I understand this feeling. Oh how I understand this feeling. I know I may come off as judgmental and harsh, but don't think I don't understand the pain of adultery and divorce.

When I came home from camp one year I was told I wasn't going to be going home. D-day had happened while I was gone and my brother, father and I had been kicked out of our home (my brother and I were from my father's first marriage).

I remember sleeping on my grandmothers couch until my father found us an apartment. I remember living in an empty apartment with my bed and the clothes that could fit into my dresser. My father slept on a pallet in the room he and my brother shared. We had no other furniture and maybe 2 plates.

I remember walking in to see my father, my rock, my hero, crying one night. I remember telling him how I'd figured out what my step mother was doing. No one goes to aerobics classes for 6 hours at night with makeup plastered like pancake batter over their face. I watched him cry in his pain and loneliness.

I remember the pain of being separated from my younger brothers, who had always been my best friends and companions, notwithstanding their being almost 10 years younger than me. I had always preferred a night of building forts and games with them to time with school friends, and now they were gone - we got weekends and Wednesdays... when their mother wasn't late. I remember crying when they had to go back 'home'.

I remember having to be interviewed by a therapist and court people as my step mother decided it would be a good idea to allege that my brother and I had sexually molested our younger brothers.

I remember that my dad, brother and I could sometimes do nothing but hold each other and cry.

Eventually we recovered. Eventually we got a house and a car so we didn't have to cram into my dad's work truck. We got furniture and dishes. We remade our home together.

I know about punishment. I know about unfairness. I know, because I witnessed first hand, my father's loneliness and pain. He'd had his second marriage fail. His second Temple Marriage fail, which if you know anything of the LDS religion, bears it's own kind of pain and anguish. He'd lost, not his wife, but his eternal partner for the second time in his life.

I also know that the answer to our problems at that time was NOT another woman. I'm sure it would have made us all feel better. I'm sure it would have made my dad feel better. But it was not the answer. What a rediculous and unfair expectation to have put on this other woman - to somehow 'save' this sad broken little family we'd become. I'm sure a woman would have leaped at the chance.

Another person could not be our Savior. We got through that time by relying and holding to each other, by relying and holding to the Lord. We did eventually recover, our hearts were healed. Now that I look back on the time, interesting enough things turned around at about the time I started high school - about the two year mark! (imagine that)

Another woman was not the answer to our problems. She would have taken my father's time and energy away from us, and our healing, and focused it onto their relationship. What if he'd introduced her to us, what if it hadn't worked out - we'd have been ripped apart again. The pain multiplied and intensified.

My father wisely focused on his kids and rebuilding his life, not on selfishly getting his needs met. THATS what our family needed. We needed to recover, not another person.

And we did recover.

It does feel like punishment, and it is unfair, and it is ALWAYS the innocent who hurt the most in adultery and divorce. That is the price we pay for living in a fallen, sinful world.

The answer isn't another person. The answer is personal recovery. The answer is allowing time and the Lord to heal our wounds, so that when another person comes along they get a whole, healed partner, not a wasted mess they would have to fix.


Only you can say if you did enough. Only you can say if you did your best.

You try to love and cherish, you try to have and hold as long as you can - but after a point in the process the other person wont let you anymore, or to continue doing so would damage you. You can only love and cherish without reciprocity for so long before you become damaged from the abuse. No one faults you for protecting yourself from that kind of abuse.

It isn't abusive to abstain from hopping in the sack with someone else to make yourself feel better.

There is a difference.

After a point you have to protect and care for yourself because the other person won't keep up their end of the bargain. Thats why you have to end it.


Quite possibly

My father once told me on observing my demeanor that I can be very cold. He didn't mean it in a mean way, just by way of observation. In a way it's true. In high school I'd break up with someone, mourn for a week or so, then decide I'd had enough and move on. That simple I just didn't care anymore.

It could be that you have moved on already. For some it happens faster than others. You may be able to date the day the divorce is final and bear no ill consequences. For most others that isn't the case, and in particular I don't believe it is for Pat.

Only you can decide if you're recovered Opt. But my advice still is - don't date or enter a new relationship until the divorce is final and you are recovered.

Thanks for sharing your story. Your right, I have not mooved on, but I'm trying. When I first posted on here I was a total mess. Now, only partial..:)...My situation has had so many variables that I would need all day to describe. I wish I could shut my feelings off, but I can't.

She came over last night to see the kids. We have split time in the house and she stays in Dallas when she's out (we live in Austin), but she wanted to see the kids so I said fine. Of course she became beligerent and angry. We get together and all is ok for a while, then she begins. Example: Last night she was going on about all the wrong I've done etc..etc. I responded that yes, I've done wrong, you've done wrong but for the sake of all, let's just get through the next few weeks and move on. You will not be my friend, but I will never bad mouth you or do anything to make you look bad. I am very tired and would like nothing more than for this to be done. Her response: "What does that mean, you don't want to work on it"? Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh!

It's all crazyness to me. I know she still loves me, but is very very angry and very very involved with OM. I just told her it is not your choice anymore, it's mine. You may have doubts, I may have doubts, but this will pass and in the end we will both be happier.

Sorry to hear that WW is stringing you along like this. She does need you to fulfill 1/2 her needs, but then you will only ever get 1/2 of her. I think this is the result of a good plan B, and you can pull the plug on the divorce at any moment. There is the possibility that she is just gaslighting you to make sure you are there when she needs you on her time. This makes things very difficult for you to judge what she really wants. More likely than not she is lying.

As far as your OW goes, I feel bad for her because she is being drug through this mud. I thought I saw you comment that it is over between you and her.

You are in a tough crossroads, but don't let you OW be a deciding factor. Your decision should be one way or the other and don't become a fence sitter like your wife.

Your response to WW:

Then keep your mouth shut.

If she starts to bring up your so-called cheating, you need to hold your hand up and tell her the bridge is burning between you and her the longer she has OM in her life - and you are moving on with yours. Once the bridge is burned, she has no say and no right. She lit the bridge on fire, after all.

Then stay away from women until you know who you are without any attachments to provide external forms of "security". A man who is secure alone attracts an entirely different kind of woman - a much more healthy woman.

Get to know you. For at least a few months after the ink is dry on the final divorce decree.

@Vibrissa, I've dragged your above post to my thread on the D board and responded there.

@Pat,
Good to hear you're evolving through this process. Nobody signs up to get cheated on, but I guess life happens and how we respond makes us who we are.

It seems like the continued relationship with stbx, in it's current state, is not in your best interest. It sounds like she has a tendency to warm up to you with the ulterior intent to eventually lay into you about something. If that's the case, that's devious. Nobody deserves to be lead down the garden path and then ambushed.

~opt

I have a buddy who has been going through this nasty A situation with his WW. I've pleaded with him to get involved here and I even gave him a copy of SAA (which she stole...). He has taken none of my advice and has therefore become a case study in how these things go when you don't have a plan.

Anyway, his WW, over the course of the last year has, on multiple occasions "tried to reconcile." She comes begging him to take her back, and "I've changed" and "I want to work on the marriage" and "let's give it another chance," and EVERY TIME after a few days, he comes home and she's gone. Back with the OM for the w/e or all night, or wherever. She's now living with OM and it's still the same song-and-dance (his $LB is now so low, he's finally growing some intestinal fortitude to tell her to go jump in a lake). Their poor daughter is the big loser in all of it.

Here's the thing: He finally started saying "I can't do this anymore, all you do is hurt me" and she has the audacity to return with "okay, so YOU are giving up on the marriage"


I see some similarities Pat. Your wayward is going to make this your fault no matter what you do. Just remember... she's crazy. If you let her, she'll convince you that global warming is also all because of you.

opt

Well, all weekend she has been calling and texting how misrable she is and how she wants to try and work things out. I have not responded to these inquires, only to specific questions about the kids and what we are doing.

Mr. Wonderful and her have been fighting and she wants to meet with me tonight. She has taken all her stuff from his home and she has asked that I not move out as planned until we speak. Not sure what's happened or if it will last, but I guess it's a good starting point. I know the things I would need to insist on....NC letter, access to accounts etc. My guess is tonight she will not be as sure about what she wants as she was yesterday. I get the feeling I'm setting myself up with "hope" again and I don't want to do that. Any advise on how I should handle this evening?

Pat to WW:

Are the kids OK?

Pat.

Ignore the rest.

And let her lift something heavy to show that something has changed.

Or just Run

You are probably right. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean you lower the bar for reconciliation. All too often the BS will let the WS negotiate the conditions on reconcilliating when the WS starts waffling because they want the Recovery to happen so bad. When the BS does this, it often sets up a false recovery......something you DEFINATELY don't want.


I would write out all the conditions YOU need for a recovery to begin. write them down so you don't forget or miss any. These conditions need to include going NC including her writing a NC letter of which YOU approve of and you mailing. Access to all phone records, email accounts and money accounts. And MOST importantly (in my opinion anyway....), counseling with Steve Harley......IMMEDIATELY. He will help steer you on the right course and help keep you there. I would hand her the information to set up the appointment herself, because IF she is serious about this, she will do it. IF she isn't serious, the. She won't set it up and then you will know where she stands on a real recovery. If she doesn't call with-in 48 hrs., I would end all contact with her immediately and proceed with the divorce..........

Not