But remember, Steve Harley also knew what I knew at the time and he did not advise to check and snoop for an affair.

I may not have been on the board, I went to the source, and was working with him. He did not advise that I check for an affair, or to shore up my position when it comes to protecting parental rights.

It's as if he bought the WW script as I did. He believed her, because I believed her when she said I was controlling, that she had to find herself, etc.

So it's not always the BH who finds it difficult to believe. Even the folks who run the website are sometimes wrong about what's going on.

I would say a husband, period, even if he doesn't know he's a BH should never let his wife move to a new place and take the children there. Especially if it's her idea.

Not just BH's and WW's. Since you cannot know those things for sure, just err on the safe side and don't allow it ever unless it's part of a plan to move like one party moves first with the kids and the other follows once he's closed out the old home.

Guys, if your wife says she wants to move out and take the kids, tell her you would rather she stay, but if she wants to go, she's free to go, but the kids are not leaving their home, period, and you'll go to court to make sure that happens if she tries to move out of the marital home with the kids.

Take it from me, you need to assert your parental rights the nanosecond you get the news she wants to move out.

He doesn't run the website, Dr Harley does. That is too bad that Steve didn't detect it, but neither did you. You didn't detect it either apparently and he could only go by what you told him. He is not psychic. It is not Steve's fault that you didn't detect it and it is not Steve's fault that your wife had an affair.

Agree with this. I would tell her she can't take the kids from their home without a court order and several armed sheriffs.

Re: "controlling"

The other WW code speak for this is, "verbally abusive".
When a WW posts on the forums and says her BH is controlling and/or verbally abusive, I can practically hear the doors slamming of their chance for marriage recovery. In the WW mindset, these are a "get out of jail free pass" for adultery entitlement.

It's almost always complete bullcrap.

Re: "find herself"

Well recognized WW code speak for find herself in bed with OM.

Opinion:

Many forum members who have been around the block a few times are not fooled by this.
This actually comes up a lot on BW's threads as well.
The BW will be told by her WH that the reason the adultery cannot be exposed is that OW's husband is an abusive thug who just might murder everyone.

I personally always take "controlling" and "verbally abusive" with a large grain of salt and a chaser of extra strength skepticism.

I seem to remember that you were told by the board that your wife was probably having an affair, and you said you didn't think that was true.

Then, when you went to Steve Harley, he asked you whether she could be having an affair and you told him that you didn't think so.

He believed her because you believed her. He bought the WW script - that you sold him.

I'm going to add another level of difference to the WH vs WW recovery chances.

If the WH's involvement with his "affair" is dominated by pursuit/availability of an easy bedmate, his affair's existance lasts only so long as he's getting that service. He wanted sexual action, and was content/eager to continue his affair while it was available. Cut off the access to the strange piece, and his "affair" ends. And "exposure", if it doesn't eliminate his desire to continue, more often than not terminates that of his AP, for reasons mentioned earlier.

The typical WW however gets into the maze by virtue of seeking more varied emotional validation than just sweating up some sheets. So even if the physical proximity of her AP is removed, her belief system in her affair's rightness and soulfulness can continue unabated. As well, where a man can berate himself, but really come away with "Well it was just a piece of a$$ anyway," the WW cannot so easily write off her emotional involvement as an awful mistake. It MUST be true, and tragically fated not to be, or she's forced to admit how abysmally STUPID she really was.

In the event, it seems that the WH's "lower head" is more quickly reshaped than the WW's "upper head"!

Bwhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

I believe I've heard Dr Harley say that, although WWs are usually more entrenched in their affairs, if and when they do go back to the marriage, they enter recovery with more conviction that a WH does. A recovery with a FWW is more successful than one with a FWH - that's what I understood him to mean.

I never note the date of radio shows, so I cannot give a citation.

Perhaps. Yet at the time, I had ZERO experience with affairs. Sure, I had a few soldiers who had affairs and I took action against those. But I didn't really KNOW affairs. Certainly not like I'd expect Dr H, Steve or Jennifer.

I shouldn't have been able to sell Steve on the affair. I simply think at that time he should have said, I know you don't believe it, but cover your bases and check to be sure.

I'm not faulting him for her actions. But I do believe it was too easy for me to convince him that she couldn't be having an affair.

After all, I told him she was moving out, she had her own cell phone...

Everyone here knows that. Yet he let me talk him into believing she wasn't having an affair.

Or...

He didn't buy it, but didn't want to burst my bubble, so he let me continue with my personal delusion.

I simply cannot believe that he was really swayed given his experience. I think, but could be wrong, that he just wanted me to believe so I would still have whatever shred of hope I had at the time.

THEORETICAL MUSINGS - SKIP IF YOU SEEK "RIGOR"

.......although WWs are usually more entrenched in their affairs, if and when they do go back to the marriage, they enter recovery with more conviction that a WH does.

Fascinating, and really "blind" to us here as the posters and their WS's tend to disappear from our web-lives after whatever recovery they achieve.

So creating a continuity, we find:

• WW's get more emotionally attached to their AP's than WH's.
• WW's seemingly have more difficult times detaching from their AP's and reforming attachments to their BS's than do FWH's
• FWW's form greater associations with the FBS than do FWH's

Extrapolating that, I think a fairly conservative hypothesis would be that FWW's, returning to the marital union more strongly than FWH's, would be significantly less likely to participate in future extramarital indiscretions.

I would love to know if this is true, but very much suspect it is. Recalling the prototypical initiating reasons for the affairs for each gender:

Potential WW is looking for the "soul mate" that her BH has "proven" not to be for her.
Potential WH is just looking to dock his "love boat".

For a possibly-serial WH, it would be easy to see the next pair of open knees as acceptable as the last.
A FWW would not easily be convinced that serially auditioning OM's as soulmates makes much sense. The ONE version of WW which would be prone to recidivism, I think, would be the WW who has an excessive need to validate her own worth in terms of the attention, flattery and post-coital gratitude of her AP.

END OF MUSINGS

NG,

Ironically, I was musing this weekend and wondering to myself if there were Harley statistics on WWs, namely:

1. % of WWs for whom the A is a 'one-and-done' mistake and return to the M

2. % of WWs who themselves then seek and file for D, thus ending the M

3. % of WWs who are really just serial cheaters


I was thinking this b/c my W is showing so much remorse, deep depression (as you predicted), and such a zest for recovery that it is almost scary at times and has me thinking is this real??? to the point where I worry it's all fake...

thanks!

I just finished the above, went to YOUR thread, was dismayed to discover your gloomy interpretation on actions and emotions that dozens of BH's would donate a kidney to receive from their WW's, and left you an appropriate response.

I got it -- loud and clear!

(and I am doing my best to focus on the flowers, I mean it. Sometimes I realize all of the pain, the schmootz is all gone yet...)

Thank you :-)

Dr Harley has said before that the emotional attachment between a WH and his OW is much stronger and harder to break than the reverse. The reason? A WH can love 2 people at 1 time, whereas a woman loves 1 person at a time. That means that as long as the WW falls back in love with the BH, she is much less likely to stay in love with the OM. On the other hand, a MAN can retain his love for the OW for LIFE.

He touches on this somewhat in the book in HNHN:

How to Survive an Affair chapter in HIS NEEDS, HER NEEDS
p. 177

...I have seen husbands build new and wonderful relationships with their wives but then go back to their lovers after five or six years of what appeared to be marital bliss. When I ask them why, they inevitably tell me they miss the woman terribly and still love her. At the same time they stoutly affirm they love their wives dearly and would not think of leaving them.

I believe a man like this has told the truth. He is hopelessly entangled and needs all the help possible to be kept away from his lover and stay faithful to his wife. I often recommend that a man once involved in an affair come in to see me every three to six months on an indefinite basis, just to talk about how things are going and to let me know how successfully he has stayed away from his lover. He must resign himself to a lifetime without her. HE MUST CERTAINLY NOT WORK WITH HIS FORMER LOVER AND SHOULD PROBABLY LIVE IN SOME OTHER CITY OR STATE. Even with those restrictions the desire for her company persists...



The reasons for their affairs are about the same. RARELY is the reason SF. The WH is just as emotionally entrenched as the WW, if not more. Just as many WH's refer to "soul mate" nonsense as WW's. His hook is not sex, but conversation and admiration. That LEADS TO SF.

Thanks for that, Mel!

Dr. Harley's insight might explain my thoughts/feelings I expressed in my thread about my W's reaction/behaviors, especially since exposure on 3/9/11...

A WH can love 2 people at 1 time...

Ahh, the undervalued ability to multiplex......

Although I'm going to suggest that the word love in the above citation more accurately be presented as "love". Love when discussed to the affection between spouses, is normally defined as something special, and exclusionary. "Love" can be distributable among various people, I would propose.

This, then, does go a long way to clarifying the disparate difficulties in bringing WW's and WH's back to the marriage. If a female can have love for only one man, and that man is NOT the BH, then bringing her back really means starting over. A WH, however, apparently has a love-path back to his BW, which would only require strengthening and protecting against further fractionalizing.

Doesn't that also underscore the difficulty of the BH's task. The WH can love his BW and the OW, which means the BW can make deposits in his love bank.

While the WW has closed her love bank to the BH, so regardless what he does, it will almost always have the impact of being a love buster.

Why? She's only in love with one person, so the actions of the BH are not only unwanted, but even good actions will merely make withdrawals from the love bank.

Therefore, I don't think this notion supports your argument. In fact it supports the notion that it's far harder for the BH to win the WW back than it is for the BW. The WW has closed off the BH, while the WH allows both to make deposits.


But not ONLY with the OW like the WW is typically ONLY emotionally entrenched with her OM.

What you are suggesting simply reinforces the idea that it's far more difficult for the BH to break up an affair than for the BW.

I don't doubt that a WW working to become a FWW is more likely to do the work, for the same reasons. She chooses to love only one, and if she chooses her BH, then she'll work to love him.

This too is consistent with the idea that the WH can return to the OW after years since he is able to have emotional bonds with more than one person.

So I do agree with the idea that if there is a WW, the post affair marriage CAN be better. I simply disagree with the idea that it's a typical outcome for the reasons stated above. Most WW's have totally closed out their BH's and no efforts by those BH, even the ones that follow this plan 100% are able to convince her to leave the lover with whom she loves so much and return to her husband, whom she does not love.

A more succinct way of saying what I said.