Hello Everyone,


I've come here for some advice on the subject I am about to let everyone in on. Two weeks ago my husband left, he walked out on me and his son.

Now,I had caught him speaking to a girl and at that time it could have seemed harmless but I didn't react well to it. I'm very jelous at times. I know this is something I have to fix and I've been working on it. So, later on that afternoon he called and said he wouldnt be coming home and that he didnt love me anymore. We've been togeather four years almost five.

At first I did everything I shouldnt have done, that first night I begged him not to leave us, that he owed it to us to try to work things out. Obviously, that did not work out.. things have gotten easier and yet at times even more tense sense then.

I'm not sure if he has an affair he swears he is not, but I feel that he is emotionally having one. I'm not one that will jump up and down and yell for a divorce.. I believe in trying to make a marriage work through almost anything.
He's told me he hasn't loved me in a while.

What's strange is everyday he stop by the house for an hour or two.. He sits and talks to me or doesnt talk and we play with our son. Then every night after he gets out of work he calls me.. he says he doesnt love me but the things he does makes me feel like he still cares.

I want to try to be the person I once was the one that he loved but I know I can never completely be that person...I'm a mother now. I want to be happier and be more joyful those are the things he said he fell in love with.

I have tried to not let my temper flare up at him over this, I have not yelled at him once, or acted out. I have tried to be calm, but I have made snide remarks which I know are not helpful. At the time he is unsure if he is coming home.
-Also, he has been deeply depressed and before he left was drinking in excess...he swears he's not drinking like that.-

What things can I do to show him what he will miss if he doesn't come back home? What can I do to try to remain polite and be more of an encouraging wife, understanding one, and not a discouraging one?

It is an affair. All of the flags are there.

Please, click 'notify' and ask for this to be moved to the Surviving an Affair board.

There is A LOT of help and information there for you.

The basics:

You will have to snoop and get evidence.
You will have to expose this affair to the world.
You will have to demonstrate you can be a good wife by meeting the needs of your husband.

Read up here

I'm sorry you're here, but help is available.

Welcome.

I flagged it.

Part of the issues he has had with me is I am very snoopy, but I feel I should be able to trust him and not have some wierd vibe. I don't want the D word.

He's irritated by snooping because he feels entitled to a Secret Second Life which can enable him to have an affair. He's irritated by snooping b/c he has something to hide.

If he has nothing to hide - snooping isn't a problem and actually is a good and easy way to prove your love for your wife.

Too much trust can destroy your marriage.

You can SAVE this - but you gotta do some tough stuff to get there and it may seem like the advice is crazy....but this plan can work!

There's nothing wrong with snooping. He should have nothing to hide, unless it's your birthday present. You're not invading his privacy if he has nothing to hide - you're invading his secrecy if he does. There should be no secrets in a marriage.

We need a few questions answered please:

How old are you and H?
How long have you been married?
Children? Ages?

And yes, all the flags are there of, at mimimun, an EA.

Welcome to Marriage Builders. Please follow the advice of the vets here. They KNOW what they are talking about. All the concepts will go against what your brain is telling you. Just do what they advise. You will be amazed.

You shouldn't trust him if he objects to snooping. People who have nothing to hide, don't hide. Obviously he has something to hide.

You are right to not trust him. It is too much trust that leads to affairs. My suggestion would be to snoop - stop asking him if he is having an affair - and then come back here when you get the goods. We can help you with next steps.

Dr. Willard Harley:

"Jealousy is a normal reaction to a threat to marriage. It's not a Love Buster. The discovery of porn use can trigger it, as well as an increase in IB. Spending more time together will lower your feeling of jealousy if it's spent meeting each other's emotional needs and following the POJA whenever you make decisions (and knowing your husband is not watching pornography)."

You think you're a snoop, PJ? Here's some of what I reserve the right to do on a random basis:

I've got my H's password to his work email as well as personal email and jump on there at random times to check his emails. I also have his password to his cell phone and work phone and check them periodically for any messages or calls.

I have a voice-activated tape recorder that I have been known to place in various spots at various times.

I rifle his drawers. I go through his wallet. I check all his pockets.

I examine his clothing periodically for scents and stains.

I review our cell phone bill - if there is a number on there I don't recognize, I *67 and call it to see who answers. If they have an automated voice answering system, I come right out and ask my H whose number it is.

If my H has a night meeting, I will occasionally ask him to take a picture of the meeting area on his cell phone and immediately forward it to me.

I have unannounced 'shake-downs' when I go through his car to see if I can find anything that doesn't belong there.

I go through his address book, his work planner, his expense account.

There are a few other things in my arsenal, but I'll leave them out so I don't tip my whole hand. Vets know what they are.

Do I do this every day? No. I don't feel the need to as much as I did right after D-Day. And it actually takes very little time.

My H knows this. He welcomes the scrutiny. He no longer has anything to hide. I welcome his scrutiny of me and I've shared all my passwords with him, although I'm not a wayward and he seldom checks. We are both transparent.

My FWH has earned his 'F', but I'll never blindly trust him 100% again. How naive of me that I trusted him so completely in the first place.

How old are you and H?

I'm 27 and he is 31

How long have you been married?

1 year but we have been togeather for 4

Children? Ages?
Our son is 2

I found numbers of someone he has been speaking with though the phonecalls just seem to be too much to be a causual conversation or one of her feeling guilty and talking to him about..or tghe fact he swears this girl is marrying an ex employee of his in a month that just joined the military.

He's always been this way about not liking me snooping, it's not just started. I can't get him to understand why I do what I do because he says he full trusts me and he just cant understand why I dont him.

Though when he first left he refused to try to work things out, he said he was done with it. Today after I snapped and I hashed out some things and he did on the phone over the phone calls and over things as a whole. I told him I wanted to try marriage counceling and he was opposed at first. Then he said he'd go once, and tonight when we talked he said fine if you want to try marriage counceling then we will.

No, he didnt say it ina postive manner but he did agree, I feel like if I can get him to do it..It may end up being a more postive thing if he will just talk to someone else.

I feel that he still cares for me because of some of his actions if that makes sense.

I told him tonight that I dont expect him to forgive me for being overly jelous through teh years right away just as I couldnt just drop the things in the past either that caused this. I told him it'd be a slow process for us both, but if he could try to overcome things and look at us in a more postive light that maybe we could work it out ..even if he doesn't think so. I just think it's wortha try.

Sorry, I work late afternoon into the night or I would have replied sooner.

YOur situation is very familiar to me. I was in your shoes 6 years ago during my WH first A with a co-worker. He wanted to leave us and told me he did not love me anymore but then he was caring and at the end he did not leave.
He accused me of being jelous and snooping, well no wonder I was.,..he was having an A!!! At the time I thought it was all my fault, I thought my jelousy drove him away from me, he made me believe it and I did. I was also couseling with a woman who told me how awful I was and that I deserved my H to cheat on me. Crazy but true. So I was in a situation when I got emotionally beaten by both my WH and the couselor. I truly believed it was my fault and entered into a "plan doormat" which eventually enabled my H to walk all over me and to continue his wayward way of thinking and acting.
He played the "impossibly jelous" card against me all the time.
He too did not want to do any counseling and he made it sound as if he was doing me a favor by not leaving us. At the time our son was 13. He basically stayed in the M for our son.
This became evident recently when he hooked up with the downstairs neighbor and sneacked behind my son and my back for over a year waiting for our son to graduate. Soon aften our son graduated we separated and that was it.
If you want to go thru a similar situation then keep setting the bar low and keep blaming yourself for it all.
If you want a good chance at saving your M:
---find out who the OW is and expose to everyone (family, friends, workplace)
---tell your H that you are willing to work on the M provided he does M couseling with the Harleys or reads MB books with you and does the excercises there described.
---tell him you will need access to his cell phone, his email and all the rest
Do not fall for: you do not trust me, this has been an issue all our marriage...you are so jelous. All this is cr@p. You are his wife and have all the reasons to be jelous, he is causing you to be. It is not you, it is his behaviour. You need to understand this and stop beating yourself up!!!
Every M has problems but not every spouse runs into someone else's arms every time the going gets rough.
Having A is a choice, no body makes you. Why are you not having one? You could, right? YOur H is not perfect...but you choose to deal with the problems and not to find comfort in someone else's bed.
DO NOT become a Door Mat. Stand up for yourself and your son. YOu are not at fault. YOu did nothing to deserve your H treating you the way he does.
Set the bar high. You do not want a M with the man your WH has become anyway. You do not want the man to come back to the M half heartedly only to cheat on you again soon after that. And he will because your expectations are so low and he knows he can play with you like cat and mouse.
I know it is hard because you think that if you do all of the above you will lose him. Ironically, you will lose him if you do not do all of the above. I can testify for that.
Stand up for yourself!
blessing

Listen to atena, PJ. Learn from her experience.

Some observations:
Your H is most likely in a PA, not an EA.

He is getting all of his needs met by having both of you. That's why he's going back and forth between the two of you.

He is agreeing to MC for one of two reasons:
1. He is buying time and easing out of the M. Going to MC will enable him to say "See? I tried to save the M. We even went to MC."
or
2. He is buying time to groom you to accept or come to terms with the OW, or to gaslight you into accepting the lie that there is no A.

Your 'jealousy' is also known as your 'gut' or your intuition. Listen to your it. Intuition is your body's internal 'fight or flight' system that senses danger before it has actually appeared. Don't ignore it. He is trying to hound you into burying that intuition so he can continue his A. Don't allow it.

Have you read about exposure yet? You will need to expose this A.

yes, my WH and I counseled with Steve but WH had already announced that he was counseling with Steve only to help me get thru the separation,not to save the M. He was pretty upfront about that with Steve who told him it was a shame not to put his energies in the M and decide to leave to pursue OWs. Yes, my H did tell Steve he intended to end the M so he could find someone else and be happy with her.
What he did not tell Steve was that he was already in a full blown A with that someone else and that A had been going on for at least 6 months by the time we started couseling with Steve.
So, yes, they use couseling for all sorts of staff and in my opinion till you WH is totally ready to give up OW, you have no chance.
One word of advice, get all your proof about the A under you belt and should you counsel with Steve, tell him right away that your WH is in an active A,
At the time I counseled with Steve I had no clue WH was in an A even if I suscpected something. Once I snooped, however, I found no proof.
blessing

This is exactly RIGHT ON!!

I told myself this "I only do MC just so he can see that I "tried"

MC won't help.

What will help is exposing his affair.

Purchase a VAR and put it in his car, find out who this woman is and

EXPOSE EXPOSE EXPOSE...

Sorry you are here, but you can get your marriage back if you listen and do what the vets say.

All right, I hate to be blunt but you are off-track.

The answer isn't to get him into counseling or hash out things over the phone calls when you suspect an affair. You are just showing him your cards and he'll do what he can to appease you and take the A further underground.

You need to quietly snoop. Checking the phone records or email accounts that he KNOWS you know about isn't going to cut it. Get a VAR & GPS in the car and get a keylogger on the computer. Once you get the goods, come back and we'll walk you through what to do next.

Have you read up on Plan A? Drop back on the R/M talk, make the house a nice place to be, try to figure out what his top needs are and most importantly, stop lovebusting behavior.

Hang in there!

lovebusting?

Sorr, for such a late reply and where can I find a voice recorder that doesn't cost an arm and a leg and where could I even hide it in his car. I've told a few of our friends and his mother I think he is seeing/talking to someone and I know who she is. I even have her phone number but she will not talk to me, I wishs he would because I'd ask her everything upfront and remind her she was aiding in destroying a marriage with a child involved. I've spoken to her once when this first started on the comp and she denied anything and said she'd pray everything worked out. I just don't believe it.I've checked his phone logs online and the calls to her number since I told him I knew..have not been nearly as often or as long. A) he could be not calling her as much or B) waiting until he thinks I'm not looking at the logs as often.

You need to expose this affair to everyone, not two people there and 3 people there. ALL in ONE day.

Family
Friends
Co-workers
Neighbors
OW's friends and family

What are you waiting for? You know what you need to do to kill this affair.

You can hide it in his glove box by taping it BEHIND the glove box.

Is it possible he has a throw-away phone now since they know you're watching?