He would be insane to leave me and I know it

I told his sister everything only a few days after I found out the affair was ongoing. H told me he had already told her everything but his "version" of the truth was slightly different to mine - I guess that's to be expected! She was horrified and has been very supportive in a practical way (none of his family deal with emotions very well).

He is going to move back home as of next week. He is in his hometown this weekend and I can't change my plans to go with him (I obviously would if I could) so I guess the "no more trips" rule will have to start Monday.

This business thing is going to take alot of time over the next few weeks - I hope that isn't why he's trying to keep me sweet?

I just want to dive in and start trusting him again but I know you lot will keep me on track!

Thanks for your help so far...

That's the style!



Are you nuts, woman? Trust has to earned now, he will have to work harder than he has ever worked in his life before to get it back.
It is more than likely that he will be with her this weekend - 'one-last-fling-before-I-go-back-to-my-responsbilities kind-of-thing'. Therefore expect that all progress you have made to date will be erased. (All contact sets the clock back to zero.) Never mind, you can do this.

If you can't go with him then I suggest that you read this thread and spend the weekend setting up spying measures wherever appropriate. Don't tell anyone you are doing this. And do not scrimp on this.

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2385238&page=1

It might be harder to do this after he moves back in.

Thanks Tully - will read the thread and do what I can.

One slight problem - my H and OW talk in a different language to me!! Even if I did record his conversations I would have absolutely no idea what he was saying! When I first found the texts I didn't know what they said apart from that they were from her and had kisses at the end.

It's never simple is it...

sm,

I'm really pleased to hear that he wants you back.

However, just because I have been badly burned so many times by my own false recoveries, and have seen so many on here, is there any way you could pay a PI to watch him this weekend? You could probably arrange the whole thing online, using a digital photo of your H.

It seemed utterly inconceivable to me that my H would beg me not to give up on our marriage, have reunion bonding sex as if it were our last week on earth, and yet still see and have sex with OW, but he did. Many here have done the same thing. It is completely impossible to tell whether a cake-eating WS is lying. He looks passionately in love with you, seems pathetically grateful to have another chance, and cannot stop touching you, yet he goes to work and every day pours words of love down the phone to his ho. If there is a chance of meeting her - even under the lie of "saying goodbye" (ten times over the next year!) - he will take it.

I think your H will be meeting OW this weekend and you should protect your emotions from finding that out the nasty way, later. I'm sorry to pour rain on what looks like progress.

you can pay someone to transcribe the recordings. I wouldn't be surprised if you could turn a digital recording into an MP3 file and have it transcribed online.

There is a solution to every problem!

Tully and I think in parallel. Hers was the first proper thread I ever posted to, because the instant I read her story I knew her H was doing what mine had done, and was still seeing OW. We are great friends now, and sadly, we are false recovery experts!

Trust us!

Record them anyway.

My WH speaks a different language too. (I live in his country.) And he and OW speak the same language. I do speak this language (French) but I still had to get some official translations done for legal purposes.

As an aside, you might like to enroll for an evening class in this language. (September is always a good time to start this kind of thing.) It is a respectful way of showing him that you care for him and are willing to make efforts for your future together. Also it is good for your children to know that you support this side of their origins.

Hugs.

Friends, absolutely! Not so sure about the expert bit for me.

H is due back today. I have spoken to him several times over the weekend.

A couple of things:

I have looked at the snooping thread. My H only ever uses his mobile phone and he has a laptop. He is not on Facebook. I have access to his phone records and there is nothing untoward there. Obviously OW could be contacting him or he could have another phone. It is his business phone so changing number and/or removing the text facility is not possible particularly given everything going on with the business at the moment.

So I�m not sure what sort of safeguards I can put in place. I think I might ask him to delete her number from his phone � he doesn�t even know my number off by heart after 6 years � what do you think?

Also, even if he is not seeing OW anymore I can still sense a distance between us. He hasn�t called me at all today so I don�t even know if he�s back in town yet. I�ll have to call him soon to check as he is picking the girls up from nursery and I need to know they are being collected. He still says he doesn�t think he is �in love� with me. Is this withdrawal or something more serious? He says the �ILYBINILWY� came before the affair but I�m not so sure. Am I dealing with both an affair and falling out of love or do they just go hand in hand? Do I need to act differently or do you deal with both things in the same way?

I think tonight will be where we agree that he is moving back in. I�m still in Plan A though aren�t I? When do you move from Plan A to Recovery? Is it when you are confident there is no more contact with OW?

I was going to issue the ultimatum that if he insists on taking unaccompanied trips to his hometown where OW lives then he can�t move back in. Is that the right thing to do? It�s not that I�m saying he can�t go at all � he just has to take me with him!! This weekend has been unbearable and I�m not sure that after the pain of the past 6 months I can cope with him going there all the time � I think it would have to be Plan B instead�

Any thoughts?

Also � I heed your warnings about False Recovery. You might have to keep reminding me though as it�s in my nature to see the best in everyone and, despite the facts, I�m still sort of in denial that my H could do such a thing and then carry it on and then possibly carry it on again�my head just says �surely he wouldn�t do it to me again��

One last thing � I have tried to learn H�s language before. It�s quite obscure and there are no classes near me but have tried tapes and online. I think you�re right that it would bring us closer (especially as in his hometown they all speak it as their first language as does his immediate family). He would be especially pleased if the girls spoke it � I�m going to get cracking learning it again!

sm,

Would you know if there were "anything untoward" in the phone records? Do you know OW's mobile number? There must be some regular calls that your H has to make. Do you know for certain that none of them is to her?

Yes; he could be using another phone to contact her. We can come back to this point.

Yes; you are dealing with a affair and falling out of love. You cannot listen to him on the ILYBNILWY issue. You can never know the truth of when he started to feel differently towards you. You should just take our word that this feeling usually comes once an EA ha started, and yes, you treat it as part and parcel of ending the affair and rebuilding your marriage.

You will move to Recovery once the affair has ended with NC. Until you have continued spying for a while and are confident that NC is intact, you will be somewhere between Plan A and Recovery.

I think that you need to give your H several conditions that he must agree to before he moves in.

You haven't been in Plan B, so you haven't had to write a Plan B letter laying down conditions for his return. However, if you do not impose conditions, you risk letting H move back in because it is convenient for him to do so, but without requiring anything of him. If you let him move back under anything but strict conditions now, you will never be able to impose those conditions later when you want to - and you will want to.

I'm going to find a Harley link on ending Plan B, and also see if I can find conditions that some other posters have imposed. Let's hope that other posters chime in to tell you what they did impose, or what they wish they had imposed.

For one thing, the inherited house is going to be a problem. It is not enough for you to go there with him. He needs to be NC with OW for life. Can you guarantee that he can avoid seeing her accidentally in that town?

This is the same town that his mother lives in, isn't it? Hmmm.

When I check his phone records I am looking for numbers that appear more than once over a few days that don�t relate to his business (I know the key numbers he has to call on a regular basis and when it comes to clients he usually wouldn�t talk to them daily or over the weekend.

For example, on Saturday he called a number in the evening that I didn�t recognise so I called it and it was a man and I�m pretty sure it�s his friend in his hometown who knew of the affair before I did. I can take this one of two ways � i) he called for a chat or ii) he�s acting as a go between as he lives in same village as OW. Apart from that nothing else stood out.

I do know OW�s mobile number � that�s how the affair came out as I checked his records and this one number appeared hundreds of times and when I called it it was her voicemail and she said her name and I knew it was his ex-G.

The conditions I have come up with so far to put to him tonight are:

1) No unaccompanied trips to hometown in the immediate future
2) No contact with OW � if she tries to contact him he must tell me, if he feels the urge to contact her he must tell me
3) Marriage counselling
4) Getting a salary (he has actually proactively started working towards this anyway)
5) Full access to his phone and phone records

I cannot guarantee he won�t bump into OW in that town. His Mum and Dad live there � we will always have to go and visit. I can�t expect him never to go out with his childhood friends without me again can I? It�s a toughie�

Oh yes you can, sm, and you must. You must not get caught in the trap of thinking you must be "reasonable" about your demands. Ending an affair and ensuring NC requires ruthlessness and unreasonableness.

Would you be reasonable and ever let someone who had abused your children be near them again? I don't think you would, so why is protecting yourself any different?

This is so daunting and overwhelming. I can't see my H sticking around if I make those sort of ultimatums but maybe that would just tell me what I need to know - he'll never put me first

Dr Harley, from What Are Plan A and Plan B?

Plan B is for the betrayed spouse to avoid all contact with the wayward spouse until the affair has completely ended and the wayward spouse has agreed to my plan for recovery. In many cases, once an affair has ended, a betrayed spouse makes the mistake of taking the wayward spouse back before an agreement is made regarding marital recovery. This leads to a return to all the conditions that made the affair possible -- love is not restored, resentment is not overcome, and there is a very great risk for another affair. Without agreement and subsequent implementation of a plan for recovery, the betrayed spouse is better off continuing with plan B.

sm,

I know you are in Plan A and have never been in Plan B, and that Plan A and Plan B are very different.

In Plan A, you know that the affair continues yet you maintain a relationship with your spouse. You put your own needs aside and work to meet those ENs that your spouse will allow you to meet.

In Plan B, you do the opposite. You have no relationship with your spouse and do nothing to meet his ENs. you put your own need for peace and security first.

But here you are, separated from your H, in Plan A and with his wanting to come home. If you allow him to come home under Plan A conditions, that means you accept that the affair is still ongoing, even while you work to end it (with exposure, for example, if this was not complete). You give him the clear message that you are not demanding anything of him yet, even though you make it clear that you want him to end the affair. In a sense, the positive move of allowing him to move back home during an ongoing affair is feeding him cake.

You then face having to make him move out again if and when he enjoys the cake and does not give up the affair.

My thoughts are that you should impose Plan B conditions to his coming home. They might fail - I will not let you forget about false recoveries! He might seem to agree to everything you say now, and keep the affair going regardless. That is why you must keep spying, to go back to your point earlier about a separate phone. You will need to conceal DVRs in his study or other rooms in the house and in his car, and you should get a keylogger on his laptop, without telling him, when he agrees to give you free access to his electronica.

If (when?) you find out that they are still in contact, you have an agreement which will make it much easier to kick him out. Imagine trying to do that when you have effectively endorsed his affair by making no demands of him.

He was with her this weekend. For sure.

Sugar, feel absolutely free to correct me here but what I was thinking was that since sm is not in Plan B yet then the only conditions she requires are a committment to NC with OW and a committment to the M. Then she needs to Plan A while spying and getting proof if he breaks NC.
sm, do you ever get access to his laptop? A keylogger takes an hour to install but then you need to be able to access it afterwards. Personally, I put the keylogger on my laptop then I 'accidentally' smashed his laptop (told him the cord got caught in the vacuum-cleaner and I pulled it off the desk) He was then obliged to use my laptop when at home. I got his email password that way to a secret email account and found 300 emails exchanged between them.

Sugar, what are the chances of this A being over before he moves back in? And no matter how stringent the conditions sm imposes, they mean nothing if his heart isn't in it, don't you think? Sometimes I think severe conditions just give waywards more room to haggle over semantics and if they're not wayward any more they don't need to have every eventuality covered. What do you think?

He uses his laptop for work so it is out of the house during the day but he brings it home in the evening and at weekends. I would have access if he went out one evening - I'll suss out keyloggers so I am prepared...

I also bought some software to retrieve deleted text messages. Haven't tried it out yet but will practice on mine and then I might be able to get his phone whilst he is sleeping.

I am sort of with Tully on the Plan A and establishing No Contact before setting too many conditions. However, as I said, the trips to his hometown have to stop. He never did it before (we just went as a family every 3 months or so) and the only reason he has started going on his own this year was to work on his Mum's house. Therefore I don't think it's unreasonable to at least ask him to go back to our "normal" pattern of visits and I would be very concerned if he refused.

I also believe that he thinks it is "over" but we have been here before haven't we?! Back in April he "ended" it and gave me access to his phone only for him to withdraw access a few days later - why was I such a mug?!? What I'm saying is that it may be "over" right this minute but who knows when it will start up again. By having him under my roof I can at least take action to try and prevent that from happening. If it is over (at this moment in time) and I kick him out it's more likely to start up again as he will continue to spend time in his hometown.

Am I making any sense?!?

sm,

I know you feel frightened of doing this, but I suspect you have no idea that actually, you have a tremendous amount of power at your disposal. You have ALL the power in the marriage.

The BS rarely realises this, I suspect. We think we are in the weaker position, pulling out all the stops to "win him back" and not "push him away". We think that the WS has the power of deciding how he wants the marriage to be in the future, and that we have to win his favour.

That view is entirely wrong. The only power the WS has right now is to decide whether he will live with you in a faithful marriage of mutual care and respect in which he CHERISHES you, and compensates you for what he has done, or whether he leaves. He can leave for his ho or he can live alone, but he cannot live with you under conditions that he wants to impose.

That's it. End of story. He doesn't get to go to his hometown and stroll around with his old mates ever again. He gave up that right the moment he began an affair on that doorstep. If he had had his affair at work, he would have had to give up his job, as my H had to. (He took an internal demotion to a job with no travel.) If he had had an affair with a neighbour you would have had to move house.

He had an affair with his mother's and friends' neighbour, and the consequences of that is that he sees his mother and friends under strictly curtailed conditions, until and unless OW moves away.

When we go to my H's home town, we visit the large number of his siblings in their homes, we go for trips to beautiful places in the car and we go to restaurants with the whole family. H does not stroll down to the local to see old school friends (not because the affair was there; just because he is there with me to see family. I don't wish to be abandoned while he goes drinking.)

In future, your H doesn't go to any stag nights or reunions when you both go home. If friends want to meet him, they can meet you both at one of your homes, or in an out-of-town place.

You must "set the bar high" otherwise you will regret it dearly. This reconciliation must be on your terms or you might as well openly endorse his affair.

Thanks for the kick up the backside SugarCane!

I didn't realise you and your H were still together - I'm so glad you made it!

Probably because my story of his repeated false recoveries is so horrifying, and because the effect of those on our recovery has been lasting. I wouldn't say that we are an MB success story because, as Dr Harley writes, with repeated betrayals, the resentment is increased and there is more to overcome. Resentment after repeated betrayals is the mind's way of telling us that we need to be wary of this person, he says.

I stayed with my H because he gave up his job of his own accord; he just went to work after the last PA D Day and informed them that he would never travel again because his marriage was in trouble. They were very understanding, although he left them in a hole. For months, until his job could be advertised and a replacement recruited, he stayed in post and asked other people to travel for him. People were very helpful, and I was amazed at that. He was on temporary promotion on that job and so when he steeped aside, his pay went down.

I think we were lucky. I would gladly have had him resign on the spot if it were a choice between no income or his going back to Brussels even for a day trip.

The problems with recovery have been all on the side of my trauma, and not on the side of his effort. For someone who dragged me through the mud for his degrading sex in hotels with his ho for 3.5 years, he has worked hard to try and win me back, and he has never complained about his lot.

As he bloody well shouldn't.

sm,

There are many BSs here whose recovery conditions were high and whose recoveries have gone well. I am giving you sexymamabear's conditions. She drew them up with the help of people here, while she was posting in Plan B. You will of course need to adapt them for yourself, but not so much that the spirit is lost. You need to take control of the reconciliation.

tully and sm,

I fully understand what you are saying about being in Plan A, and I don't know the answer to that in respect of "demands". I am hoping that more experienced posters will offer advice. In the meantime, sexymambear's Plan B conditions will be useful to read.

tully, to answer your question about his heart being in it; a legal post-nup is the solution to that. The problem is, I don't think that they are legal in England (in the same way the pre-nups are not legally binding). However, a judge can "take into account the intent" when a pre-nup exists, and there is some thought that he is likely to honour the spirit of a pre-nup, whilst not leaving the children without an income or a home.

It might be that a post-nup, signed in the presence of a solicitor, would be taken into account by a judge. I would seek legal advice on that, or on other ways of giving sm the greater share of the assets should they divorce because of her H's continued adultery. Might it be possible to put H's share of the assets in trust for the children, for example? I have no idea.

But (either now, or after Plan B; wait for others to advise) you must make demands that have consequences for H. If he has no intention of invoking those consequences then he will agree to the demands. If he wants to hedge his bets and eat cake, he won't agree to the demands.