Mrs. V,

It was bugging me that I could not remember the quote or spell correctly. I went an looked it up. Here is the verse

It is from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

You and your H need to understand this and then perhaps you can decide to make a good life together.

God Bless,

JL

Agreed, nothing can be undone. And it is useless to sit and stew and wish and hope and waste energies wanting things to be great w/o my infidelity. JL, as you mentioned, there are ups and downs, and during the downs it's a lot of dwelling on the past.

I think it's easy to get stuck doing that when I have put my BH in such a position. He is not happy w/ the way things are now, and as much as I want to hope and be stubborn and think that enough time and trying will be enough to eventually produce a great M, the problem is that it is NOT happening that way - and it's taking a huge toll on my BH.

That's why I can't keep the same tactic of "try and dig in my heels and hope and trust in time." Something has to change. I want the M, I want the kids to have their parents together, but the events of late have forced me to admit that it's most likely not in my BH's best interest - at least, not the way things are.

Not really going anywhere w/ this, I guess. I want the M, my BH can't be happy with me = we're at an impasse.

JL - thanks for the reference, btw. The poem sounds familiar. Maybe I'll fire up the ol' memory banks and figure out why!

This makes me sad. Because it's true.

Mark, why did you decide to stay?

Mrs. V.,

You must understand that ultimately it is your H that must decide to make this marriage something he enjoys and derives pleasure from. It is not your decision to make...it never was. What has to change is your H's perspective. I will say this you are both very very young. You both have a lot of life ahead of you.

Rather than be down, learn, grow, and enjoy what there is...your children, your friends, your neighbors. Look around and enjoy. You never can tell it might rub off on your H.

You must understand the issues he is struggling with are internal to him. He has to heal, he has to deal with them, and he has to learn to see you in a new light with a future before he can recover from this. It may well happen, it might not.

Hang in there.

God Bless,

JL

You are right, JL. Thank you.

We have a few meetings coming up re: life/career options, so we'll get those taken care of and then sit down to brainstorm what we'll do with our life/lives.

In the meantime, no more expectations, no more reliance on hope, just more pragmatism and willingness to consider any non-M options BH needs. It is his decision, and I can let him know where I stand....but I can also be more supportive of what he needs after my infidelity.

Trying to force feed my desire for happily ever after is going to get us nowhere.

Mrs V,

You asked me why I stayed...

I was the one who fought for the marriage. It was me who learned about MB and tried to apply the methods unilaterally. I saw the possibility of a better furture and not just the crap that had passed for marriage for over 30 years.

I did it and put in the work because of two primary reasons.

1) I hadn't been perfect either.

2) God had forgiven me for stuff I had no right to be forgiven and so I decided to try to forgive, understanding that I might be betrayed again. (If it happens again, there won't be another recovery)

The biggest factor in my decision was one of forgiveness but I also had no notions of love and marriage being something with a mystical or magical component. The media and literature worlds portray love and marriage as something that is on some plane well above this one we live on. So for those who buy into that, betrayal happens on that plane as well. In such cases it isn't just physical and emotional but some sort of spiritual or other world betrayal and so has a deeper meaning than the here and now.

For me, that whole notion is a lot of hogwash and I never believed that love and emotional things reside in some more ethereal or higher plane of existence. The science of Marriage Builders was what struck me first.

For me, it came down to an if - then - else situation: If X then Y, else D. If we applied meeting ENs and avoiding Love Busters to our marriage, it would improve and become a better marriage than before and if it did not, we could divorce, knowing it would not get better.

We lived 30+ years together without knowing what we needed to do to keep love alive. A year or two of trying to learn how to do that wasn't going to steal anything from either of us, so why not learn how to use the tools of MB to build a better marriage.

It took a little longer than a year for my wife to get on board and over two years before she showed much enthusiasm for learning everything.

To be honest, the single biggest factor in staying married boiled down to me getting sick and her taking care of me instead of running off to be elsewhere. Had she started going out at night or run off to be with OM during that time, I wouldn't be here now to relate the story.

But the first part is still what allowed me to let her remain a part of my life. If love is something magical that happens to us and so can also un-happen to us, then once it has un-happened then there is nothing we can do to bring it back. This is actually how most view love and is why affairs often happen. If it happens, it seems it was meant to be and when it is gone, that was meant to be as well. (some find a middle ground where what once was was not the real thing but only what they thought was real and so now this new one is what must be real)

I can also tell you that the more closely your husband believes he lived up to the ideal husband, that is, the closer he thinks he was to what he feels he needed to be, the less he is willing to forgive an affair by his wife. If it wasn't his fault, it must be yours. He probably asks "why?" a lot. There is no adequate answer to that question. Nothing is a good enough answer as to why a person would betray the one person they promised they would never betray or leave. It will never make sense because it is really senseless.

If he has a hard time understanding that it happened because you were selfish and that you now know how to not ever be that selfish again, then he gets stuck in this place where he has internalized a lot of your complaints from that time and thinks that it is up to him to keep you faithful and that is too damned much work for any man.

See, especially early into recovery, a WS will say things like, "If my ENs had been met, I wouldn't have had an affair." Maybe a tinge of truth to that, but while that might be a viable reason why the cheater decided to cheat it is not a valid reason to have an affair. It also does not mean that unmet needs was the cause of the affair and THAT is where a person who knows nothing of the MB process gets stuck. Almost any mention of his meeting your ENs will result in a link to the excuse of unmet ENs being the cause of affairs and the loop repeats endlessly.

Sometimes, some of the things we did during the early days of recovery have to be undone in order to move past the place we are now. It's like building a temporary wall to hold up the roof while we install a header and posts to allow for a new window or door to bring in the light from outside. We can't destroy the existing wall until the temporary is put up but once the new stuff is ready for the window, we can't get the house into the condition we intended until the temporary stuff is torn down and removed.

So look at some of the things you said or did, back right after D-day, when you were still struggling, to see if there is any temporary fix put into place that needs to be taken down and hauled away in order to get that amazing new view that will come from the installation of the new window...

If you told him anything just to get him off your back at the time, this stuff now needs to be addressed. If he discovered the affair by confession at a time when things were improving between you then some of that stuff pre-confession needs to be examined to see if it was really part of the recovery process or something that was a duct tape and baling wire - throw it together temporary fix that was only a temporary solution that now needs to be replaced with real recovery stuff so that the marriage can become what it needs to be for the future.

Any of that make sense?

Mark

This is excellent!


I would say, TOO MUCH for any betrayed spouse, man or woman.

In the same way that I cannot be responsible for my H's sobriety.
I also cannot be responsible for his faithfulness.

I try to keep my side of the equation clear.
That is what is within my locus of control.

This includes my thoughts as well as my behavior, yanno.

Stinkin' thinkin' GOODBYE!

Mrs. V,

Are you starting to get the idea of what all of us are telling you? Are you starting to see you have control over you and only YOU? Are you starting to see that if this marriage is to survive you BOTH must take care of business and not each others business?

JL

I think I do understand what you're saying, Mark. Thank you for your post. I know I was (keyword: was) one of those who believed love was this magical thing. It took the destruction of the A to change that. That, and many honest, humbled talks w/ my BH.

But even understanding that now, well, it's too late. We have a relatively young M, my infidelity was sooo egregious (exactly in line w/ your statement about BH being the ideal H), and the ability to jump/trust and move on with the relationship is asking too much of him.

I'm not sure if we are stuck w/ any stopgap measures at this point, though I do think you're right in that he still feels responsible for keeping me faithful. I will ask him about both of these ideas. Thank you.

= The Stinkin' Thinkin' Be Gone Bandits.

Some days are more down than others. I'm sure the forum loves it when I share on those days!

All kidding aside, this is true. And I DO know this. I just felt for so long that if I wanted it badly enough, if I believed enough, if I hoped enough, that it would be...well, that it would be enough. That if I gave it enough time, that if I kept pulling my BH along, being chipper, being bright about the future, being so confident we could do it and that any discussion of anything else was tantamount to failure... I thought that I could force it. And I can't.

It IS his decision, and I cannot control him. I made my decisions, I can do my best to keep my side of the street clean (and inviting!), and I cannot control him or what he does with his life.

I know that.

I just didn't want to admit it. Because admitting it was making the vague, unmentioned possibility of him leaving the M an all-too-real reality.*





*Yes, this smacks of selfishness, entitlement, and spoiled-little-bratness. I realize that. Just another reason why I have to move past it and let that kind of thinking go.

Understood, JL. I've finally come to terms with that in my actions, not just acknowledging it in my head. Thank you.

Mrs. V,

Sorry if I missed this somewhere in your posts but has your BH read SAA? Have you discussed MB and the concepts? Does he realize anyone is capable of having an A including himself? I think this is a huge realization that can help alot of BS's.

Do you think he would be willing to participate here? Your BH may be stuck in his own stinkin' thinkin' and could really benefit from the support of other BH's that have been through it. When you are stuck in that quagmire sometimes you need a lifeline and not one that comes from the WS. The folks here could be a lifeline for your BH.

Just a thought.

Hi! Mrs_Vanilla,

Sorry to hear that you guys aren't doing OK right now.

Have you done and discussed the weakness protection plan with your husband? He needs to understand that it isn't his responsibility to guard you from having another affair, that is your own responsibility. I still discuss it with my BH, at least every other week (as per SHarley request), just to remind him that I'm guarding myself from future affairs, and that I'm in control.

Keep doing your part, and give it a 100%, it's the only way to make it. I was killing myself thinking what if I spend years trying to save my marriage, and in the end it doesn't work. I had already started to look for jobs, etc... But at the end I realized, that all that energy should be spend on positive thoughts and actions, and I was definitely not doing enough (even though I thought I was!!!). Now, I pay close attention at my BH needs, and worries and try to work on them ahead of time. So far (at least for the last week, I've been successful).

Good luck, and if you haven't done the weakness protection plan, let me know and I'll explain in more details.

Good luck, and be strong!

Hi mindshare,

Thank you for your advice. My BH was actually the one who got us on this site. He ordered SAA, we both read and discussed it. He knows and reads my posts, and has read other threads in the past (back closer to D-day). We have, in fact, counseled w/ Steve 5 or 6 times. (It was BH's B-day present to me last year. )

For a long time, I fixated on him being "on board" w/ MB in its entirety, and I was sure that if he just started posting then he would "drink the Kool-Aid" and we would both be committed to the same dream of happily ever after, the end! (Is anybody sensing a theme here? ) I did share some of the same thoughts you had with him - that perhaps it would help to hear from others. I think, though, it still boils down to making that leap or not.

I will show him your post, and will continue to try to partner and do what's best for him instead of just bulldoze over him in my quest for what I think is what's best for all of us.

Hi Rizos,

Glad to hear you're getting a handle on things. The MB plan really does make a lot of sense, doesn't it? I think the benefit of reviewing your Weakness Protection Plan is twofold, too, in that it not only reminds your BS of your EPs, but it also keeps you on top of them. Good job!

We have actually counseled w/ Steve, and I have come up with my own Weakness Protection Plan, EPs, etc. I think the problem here is more that I put 100% of my efforts into stubbornly forging ahead w/ solely my goal in focus.

I was so convinced that staying together was right, that it would work and we would be so happy and thankful for the relationship that I didn't acknowledge the very real suffering my BH is still enduring. Meaning, he would bring up alternatives (I return to medical school, e.g.) and I would refuse to consider that as a sign that he was not happy with where we were, that, no, it was not just a matter of enough time and hope and trying...that I may very well have to admit that my betrayal was too great.

That's been the hardest part, and that's where I've finally arrived. I have to let him go if that's what he needs. So right now I'm trying to incorporate that, instead of just sticking my head in the sand and trying harder, hoping more.

Mrs. V,

You should be working 100% for both of YOU, and YOUR MARRIAGE! Staying together it's what's RIGHT! If he is feeling weak right now, then you should be the strong one, by supporting your marriage, which is what is good for him. You both have to understand that if you work on the MB you will be successful. You both are talking like the marriage is not going to work. Are you guys spending 15+ hours together (IC, Affection, SF and RC)? Because if you are not, then your marriage will failed.

You said it yourself, he is the one who found MB, he probably just need a push. Why haven't you guys make an appointment with SHarley alreday? You can't spend time an energy thinking if your marriage is going to work or not, that's going to be too frustrating!!! If you guys follow the rules, it will work!!! Do not give up!, and please call Steve Harley, ASAP...

Rizos -

Just to clarify, we have counseled w/ Steve 5-6 times already. We have been on MB for almost 2 years, and regularly discuss and implement MB principles.

Perhaps I am making this into a "we're speeee-shul" situation when it really isn't. However, I think it is an accurate assessment (and BS's, please, correct me if I'm wrong) that my BH may just be one of those who cannot recover from infidelity, no matter how much we work the program.

It is also important to understand - especially for us (F)WS's - that a BS re-engaging in the M is a monumentally huge leap of faith. HUGE. They just got burned worse than anything, and now they are potentially coming back for more. I think we need to appreciate that not everyone can/will sign on for that.

Rizos, do not think I have given up on the M. I am just finally admitting that what's best for my BH - the one whose life I blew to bits, the one who is not culpable at all, in any way - may be letting him go.

Am I wrong to think this, people?

Or maybe he and I are just both depressed. Permanently. Does this club come with lifetime anti-deps?