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Don't bring her here, JF! You will lose this place as a resource. There is nothing we can do with her here. We can't help her here as long as she is this fogged out.

It is extremely difficult, she has no one in her family or friends that offer any comments to help her fight for the marriage.

Everything I do is seen as attacking, aggressive, and hurtful.

She has moments of sanity now, but she doesn't want to spend the money for the marriage builders course, she is still in the mind set that I pushed her into an affair, or I'm at least as guilty as her for it.



Exposure has helped some, but like I said her friend and family are not supportive of the marriage, here is a run down of her family and friends:

Older Brother: Divorced, similar mindset (anger issues) and is currently in a relationship with a married woman.

Younger Brother: Never had a real relationship. Can't understand or relate to the situation.

Mother: Taught my wife how to rage and hurt others. NO HELP HERE, she is Toxic to the marriage.

Aunt: Multiple divorces, most likely unhappy in her current marriage.

Uncle: Ultra Christian man, wife will have none of his opinions.

Grandmother: No one will tell her the situation, she is in bad health, and very likely learning about the affair would send her to the hospital/grave. Simple stresses have sent her to the hospital many times in the past.

Best friend: recently divorced, cheated on her husband, says its just something that happens and tells her I share the blame in it.


OM is still calling her for status updates on what I've done recently and she still talks to him. We did a NC prior to this, she has shown him no commitment to sticking to NC, if she can't stick with it in stressful times, what incentive does HE have to stick with it?


If life had a "REDO" button right now I'd slam it.

Somewhere in her is the woman who looked at me years ago and said "I'd never do anything to hurt you.", but all I see these days is the woman who -does everything to hurt me- and seems to have endless sympathy and care for everyone and everything else in life.

Believe me, this is exactly how she will react to this forum. If she came here it would be ugly because no one will coddle her here.



Please follow the plan I outlined above. Tolerating her abusive behavior is only emboldening her, JF. Women do not respect men they can run over and our love is very contingent upon the respect we feel. You should DEMAND she end all contact with the OM and back this up with legal action.

Agreed. Even FWSs are not going to coddle her. If she isn't up to reality, it's just not going to help.

If she won't spend money, try this; print out the articles from the Infidelity section of the site. Either read them together, or take turns reading them. Do 1 or 2 articles each day, but don't concentrate ALL of your time on this. Discuss the articles with each other.

Also, go over the basic concepts and questionnaires. In fact, do basic concepts first, and save the questionnaires until you have gone through a fair amount of infidelity articles and Q&A.

FWW and I have saved this material in a 3 ring binder.

If she is open to that, it is a good start.

Plan A her. Make sure you are putting in 20+ hours of UA time meeting each other's ENs, WITHOUT DISCUSSING YOUR RELATIONSHIP OR THE A.

If the conversation DOES fall into this vein, try to shape it away from "what you have done to hurt me" and into "how we will improve going forward."

You are throwing away the most valuable tool you have - exposure - by presuming to know how people will react to the news. Why don't you do it anyway, and see what happens?

Exposed to all but her Grandmother already. (Doing so would almost certainly put her in the hospital.)

What I was trying to say is that everyone is "On her side". And trying to give some perspective on what type of family she has.

I've asked them to help, but they have all said that its none of their business. When they do talk to her, they all offer the hollow "I'll support you whatever you do." or provide comments that are closer to her mindset than mine.

"He is just as much to blame as you are."
"These things happen all the time."
"You are not bad for doing this."

The idea of just printing out the articles might be something she can stomach.

JF,
Have you looked into a restraining order? Report this guy to the INS and inform the police that he has been threatening you. At least try and get a restraining order that prevents him from coming around your son. Make it legally impossible for your wife to take your son around him. And I am absolutely convinced at this point that you need to have your wife thrown out for abuse so she can hit rock bottom. And under no circumstances should you or your son leave your home. Your wife leaves. Period. End of story.

How sad that her own family doesn't give a crap about her.

JF, what do you think of Unfettered's great suggestion to get a restraining order against the OM? How can you cause him as much trouble as possible?

So, its been a year since exposure, and I'm not much better than I was last year at this time.

She stopped seeing OM, and there has been no direct contact with him. (He has two kids with her cousin, and she does talk to the cousin, and the cousin and OM are not together).


We've read books together, talked so much this year, counseling...

There have been a number of 'revelations' from her... moving from admitting kissing early on, to her performing oral sex once, to multiple times. She still says no "real sex' happened although I have a difficult time with that still...

Anyway, she still blows up and yells, and says awful things. I can't feel safe with her, I desperately want to.

How can I feel that she won't hurt me like that again, if she is still willing to hurt me with the same crap she has done for years...????

If we didn't have a child together, a wonderful, and loving child, I think we would both agree to walk away.


I don't know if I'm posting for help or just somewhere to vent, because I don't have any friends that could possibly understand the pain and hurt I live in. I just need to share with -someone- who can relate.


I really wish I could just vanish, not the kind where I pack up and leave my kid fatherless, but just vanish like I never existed. I'm not living, I'm just existing.

I have spent years trying to talk to her about us and her behavior towards me and my behavior, and shes gotten to the point where she pretty much just says I've worn her out on talking...


WHEN can you call it done? WHEN can you look back and say you gave it an honest effort and its time to stop before someone gets hurt any further???

Stinks.

I will say this. Life is way short. Too short to spend with someone not not 100% owning up to her actions and didnt offer compensation to the BS.

I didnt go thru you entire thread here, but before I do, is it possible youre not letting her back into your life? Are you not forgiving?

Sounds like you had a marriage-long issue with conversation with her as did I. DDay this changed for me. Sorry to hear a year later this has not changed a lot for you.

While I went thru a lot of mood shifts like you are still in, on downshifts in mood, I would convince myselft I could be as good a father, if not better, living separately from my wife. And, in the O&H policy, I let her know this.

Unfortunately, this HAS to apply to some BS.

mike

I think the bottom line question for you, _JF_, is what do YOU want?

Not having read your entire thread makes it difficult for me to grasp the extent to which you've applied the MB principles, but your last post merely states
which doesn't sound to me much like working MB's program.

The reason I'm responding is because your post rings of your WW still being in a wayward mindset.
Have you worked a stellar Plan A? And if so, why after a year have you not gone to Plan B? You said nothing about exposure; did you expose the affair to everyone with an influence? What about No Contact?

There are a lot of pieces missing in your post, _JF_. I suggest you take a moment to do some self-surveying and find out what YOU want for yourself and your marriage.

Her seeing her cousin may be a trigger that keeps OM alive in her mind. My thought is she needs to end all contact with the cousin.

Something is up that is keeping her wayward.

Post her EP's here as well.

Exposure happened, and she still resents me for it, calling it unnecessary and that it ruined a good deal of her trust in me.

...

Dr. H sent me "Surviving an Affair" and "His needs her needs"..

We went through them last year, and keep opening them up frequently.

I feel like I try to give her what she needs, but it seems like it only lasts a week or two before a blow up.

I have tried to make sure I share thoughts with her.. both up and down, to fulfill the open and honest part of our relationship.




Before the affair I can't think of many times when I even raised my voice to her. Now she can get me so angry and hurt inside, it seems I'm behaving in ways that frighten myself.


Honestly, I don't think I can do Plan B, if I get out, I'm so scared that there won't be anything in me to want to recover.



Maybe I don't know what I want... I'm terribly introspective, our marriage had trust issues for so long. (its going to get long and personal and incoherent here, so feel free to bail)..

I met my wife when i was ~20 years old, I had never had a serious relationship, only having kissed a small number of girls.

She was pretty straight and narrow until she turned 18, and but she had a number of serious-ish boyfriends and sexual relationships before we met. She was trying to put that all behind her when we came together.

Now, I'm largely the one that has initiated sex, and even to this day I've never seen her fully nude (10+ yrs together)...

She feels ashamed of her body, and while that bothered me, as well as her having past relationships, I've always been able to just work with it.

but the affair, she was sexual with another man... Its just devastating that after so, so long with me, she still has so many points she won't cross, but with another person she went so far.


its like that everywhere I look in my life.. Every rough spot, every bad thing she called me(calls me to this day), all the complaints and holdups, she didn't have with the OM...

I guess that's how it goes right?

I just still have such a hard time coming to grips with how in the world someone else could so easily, so quickly overshadow me and all I have (tried) to provide for her. How easy it was for her to hurt me for someone else.

Everything is in doubt now, and has been for so long.


My worst fear is that all her yelling and hurtful words are the truth, and the kind times are her just dealing with a bad situation as best she can.




I want to love and BE loved, for who I am, and what I can do.

I can improve myself slowly, but I can never be someone else.

I don't expect her to be someone else, I'm just asking for the truth.

I don't know how she can love and accept me yet still say such hurtful things in anger...

Yes. I had the same issue with my wife. Despite what I think is an exceptional figure especially compared to some of the women that we see, she has always been guarded with it around me. Always was a problem I have never been that way with mine around her.

And, when I heard about the lover, that sent me nuts because now she was able to share it with someone else?

She did claim that she DID NOT turn into a porn star with him and turned him down very often (like me) this doenst do anything to make it better for me. Having sex or performing oral once with anyone not me, is unacceptible.

Upon dday, unlike too many WWs I read about here, my wife was released from something he had on her that she wanted away from for a long time. Maybe not so much what he had on her but laziness and being too comfortable in life was what ended. Doesnt make me happy to say that another dude has a invisible hold on her but I do believe that was part of it.

The part the saddens me to read in some BH posts is how their wifes cant snap out of it and see the A for what it was. A cheap thrill based in nonsense.

A year into it I think you need to enter in Plan B and make her want the marriage otherwise you are spending too long a time depressed and again, LIFE IS TOO SHORT.