Oh, gotcha. I didn't equate that immediately to a 3-way in the strictest sense. I was thinking it was a voyeur thing. No matter. Thanks for pointing it out.

I see many posts on this thread that are clearly *NOT* in line with Marriage Builders! If you are going to post to newcomers, please help this poster with MB concepts or refrain from posting. The purpose of this forum is to help people with MB concepts, not our own personal philosophies.

Any questions, shoot me an email.

Thanks....

OK, I will bow out
Take care

June72,
I understand where your husband is coming from. A year ago my husband had an affair at work. It only lasted a little over a month but it hurt me deeply. It sounds to me like your husband needs serious one on one therapy. If your husband is asking you to do sexual acts such as involving other people that will further the destruction of your physical intimacy than he is wrong.He is extremely insecure. He doesnt need to know every detail about your sex life with the OM but what he does need to know is that it was just sex and that your desire for your marriage is to make love, is to have a deep emotional connection with him and only he can fulfill that if he wants to. I struggle with this concept daily. My sex life has become just about the act. It is a daily question of how can I be better than her. I feel devalued. When such a powerful and strong word like love is thrown around i feel that it is devalued, look this may seem harsh but when sex is thrown around it is also devalued. Your husband may be struggling with this as well. He feels as though he is in a competition that he should have never been in and sex is not about making love any more its about being better than anyone else you have been with. Be honest with yourself and with him. Dont lie to him because he will know the truth, but if you feel that sex with your husband is about making love and your most satisfying intimate times are with him than he needs to know this, maybe daily. It will be a difficult task, He probably wont believe you for a while because in his mind hes thinking if it wasnt as good as me than why did you keep doing it? He doesnt understand where you were coming from in the least and if hes anything like me, that is a huge struggle. I pray that you can be strong and that your husband will seek help, apart from you. You do have to empathize and it sounds like your trying.

"He doesnt need to know every detail about your sex life with the OM but what he does need to know is"

It is only and only the BS's right to chose what level of detail they need to know about the OP and everything connected to the affair.

That statement comes across as a WS in the fog. Where the WS justifies having a PA. Then further justifies what is best for the BS.

Yes great logic. The same person's logic that said it was ok to go have SF with the OP, is now using their same logic skills to determine what is best for their BS.

Last, some BS's can get by with never asking any questions and are satisfied with being told that the affair is over.

Other BS's have to know every detail as if they witnessed the whole thing.

Many fall in between.

I'll second that notion!

"He doesnt need to know every detail about your sex life with the OM but what he does need to know is"

That's one of the things my W said which enrages me.

It is only and only the BS's right to chose what level of detail they need to know .....That statement comes across as a WS in the fog. justifies having a PA...Other BS's have to know every detail as if they witnessed the whole thing.

It also feels like the WS is still protecting the OM, and keeping the relationship with OM special and private.

God Bless
Gamma

Mel, Believe it or not I agree with you much more often than not. And here is a good example:

�My point is that your cruelty may have created resentment beyond what your H can endure. I know I would not have endured that for one week, and he tolerated your cruel and abusive treatment for a YEAR.�

I tolerated this level of abuse, and more, for ten years. After trying to recover for 5 years after D-Day 2, I finally calmed down enough to realize I was not able to recover. Not martially, and not personally if I stayed. However, it�s not so much the resentment I can�t overcome. It�s the emptiness. The sheer length and magnitude of the VLTA. The wasted time. The missing children she kept us from having (secret birth control so she would not get pg). The sex acts she did with him but would never do with me. The deep love she had for him. All the years of lies. The years of mental abuse. It�s all just too big to fix. Not even using MB. I tried, but I could not do it after all. It will not ever go away in my head if I continue to live with her.

And for OOK: �Some of the things I did would not be healthy to do in a marriage (I won't go into details, but there was another person involved in some acts).�

Sheesh. This right here is enough to put him off you forever. I cannot stand to touch my fww because of the egregious magnitude of this kind of disgusting thing. I can�t perform at all because of this. It's possible he would not have married you in the first place if (if he knew) you had done this before he met you. I'm trying to give you a truth here. He is so disgusted he does not know where to turn for relief.

I think you might be able to reach the necessary fork in the road if you set him free to decide. Use DR Harley�s language in the resentment article posted earlier in your thread. Tell him he is free to decide once and for all. Though it may take him a while to decide, he won�t know what he wants for some time after you set him free. Accept his decision when he finally makes it.

Oh, one more thing: �For instance, in his mind because I never refused OM for sex, I should never refuse him. That's just not realistic even under the best of circumstances as this is marriage not an affair.... I know this is not fair, but it is the way that it is. So there are all these hangups, which in his mind are my problem to solve... BUT in my mind we need both of us to solve them.�

This is still all about you. I heard pretty much that same excuse from my wife. Does not fly. Not at all. Basically you told your H you do not love him as much as you loved OM, and you never will. You have confirmed to him remaining married to him is your second and your compromise choice. I tried to get past this same statement of my wife�s for four years. In the end I could not make it work for me.

You really do need to call the MB counseling center. They will tell you want you need to do to make this work out best for all involved. If you cannot afford it, let me know. I have donated the cost of MB counseling to several other posters (and some non-posters I know personally). Mostly out of compassion for the BS, though.

I agree with BobPure here. And for what it's worth:



This is the crux of the problem for this person�s husband, and why the task for this poster is Sisyphean; by claiming that her �morals� prevent her from doing some sexual act and that her lack of �self-respect� is to blame for her affair, she isn�t answering his questions in a truthful manner. Moreover, from the viewpoint of her BH, she isn�t really repentant of her affair because what she did was wrong but rather because of the reaction of her husband and the fallout from her actions.

OOK, it wasn�t lack of respect for yourself that caused your affair, it was lack of respect for your husband and your marriage. Just as it wasn�t lack of morals that lead you to perform so-called �self-debasing� acts or sexual debaucheries, it was your desire to please your lover. And that is what your husband can�t wrap his mind around, and that is continually fueled by your denials that propel his unfortunate desire to equate your refusal to show that same desire as proof that you are not really repentant or that you really love him. As far as he is concerned you are only worried about losing custody of your child and the hit on quality of life that loss of your husband�s income brings in. You state that you didn�t love this AP, but were willing to do things with him that you refuse to do with your husband, you state that you love your husband but are not willing to do sexual acts with him � do you see the contradiction there? That you put more weight to your two year affair than you did, and still do, to your marriage, saying that it�s �just not realistic even under the best of circumstances as this is marriage not an affair.... I know this is not fair, but it is the way that it is.� You take those words and tell me just how openly honest you are being with your husband about your love and commitment to him as opposed to just wanting to stop dealing with his hurt.

I would be willing to bet two things. First that you were a very demanding spouse for your husband, that, in his mind, you �made� him do things for you (example � buy a house he didn�t really want), and that is just additional fuel for the fire when he feels that there are a lot of things that you didn�t do for him before, during, and after the affair, and I�m not just talking about sexual acts. I�ll bet that there were a LOT of things that you gave to your AP that you refused your husband, and that you treated your husband very poorly.

Secondly, I�ll bet that your husband doesn�t really want to have aberrant sex as much as he wants to hear you say that you�d be willing to do it despite the way it would make you feel. You feel that he wants some measure of revenge or that he would feel some vindication, but I just think that he wants confirmation from you that you really truly want to be with him. Yes, one may ask that out of all the ways that you could reassure him, why does he focus on this ONE aspect of the affair? Because this aspect has been the most humiliating for him. You said it yourself, that he seemed to deal with other emotional aspects of your affair on an even keel except this one. If you asked him if he really wanted to do those things, that you would do it if it would make things right between you, does he really think it would make him feel any better? That you know and understand WHY he wants it but you also know it would really serve no purpose other than to make him feel even worse than he does now. How many betrayed spouses REALLY want to do the same acts that a wayward spouse and his/her lover performed?

Yes, I would agree that you shouldn�t have to put up with verbal abuse, just as I would agree that no one should have to perform threesomes if they don�t want to, and that he doesn�t have the right to hide money that you have earned from you, but it is the way that you handled this that has caused your husband to lose all trust in you. His independent financial behavior, his refusal to report his whereabouts or plans to you, and his preparation for a probable divorce, all stem from your husband probably feeling that you really haven�t shown him much of anything to make him want to stay with you. In his mind what is the perceived benefit from maintaining his marriage to you? What�s in it for him? He probably wants to sell the house because for him it is a symbol of all the things for you and how you not only did not reciprocate but paid him back by having an affair. So now he�s going to make things right in his mind, unfortunately in ways that will probably end your marriage.

You really should schedule a session with the Harleys � I think that they can get through to you in ways that we here can�t and help you plan a coherent strategy to stop this vicious circle you both find yourself trapped in and start to rebuild your relationship.

I can appreciate your viewpoint and can understand how helpful it must be for a WW to be able to come here and see people like yourself that have walked a fair piece in the same shoes and dealt with it successfully. I applaud you for your helpfulness and willingness to share your insights. It takes guts for a WS to come here and post, I get that. But not everyone replies to WS with the intent to take revenge against their own WS vicariously, using the poster as a surrogate to further their own agenda.

You took me to task for my remark about hiding behind morals or one�s religion, saying that it was not helpful to the OP in rebuilding her marriage. I would beg to disagree, I think that by seeing other people�s viewpoints and seeing how they may correspond to how her husband may be feeling would be a help to her, seeing as how her current modus operandi has been failing miserably. I�m not trying to claim that I am right or anyone is wrong, simply offering an alternative viewpoint without disparaging the OP or anyone else. I won't bore you with my views on organized religion or professed standards of morality as they would probably be somewhat offensive or incendiary to some. My point was that some people would find her somewhat hypocritical, and I think I explained myself better in my other post.

FWIW, I never thought OOK was a troll. I do think that she is someone stuck in a vicious circle with her husband and neither of them can find a way out of it.

Does your BH say this or is this you talking?

americanjim, I think your statement that people would consider a Christian cheater hypocritical is absolutely correct. There was nothing remotely Christian about the choices I made. It's a like a lung cancer specialist choosing to become a chain smoker -- completely stupid and irrational.

I think I bristled because there was a sentiment that seemed to be floating around that anyone who has ever cheated is automatically struck from the realms of decent humanity forever. And so I was on high alert. Sorry about that.

Hi outofkilter,

I feel at this time that you are most likely feeling overwhelmed in the fact that a few people are taking off on your thread. I also feel that a good source for you right now, if you can manage it, would be to have a personal consultation with Dr. Harley. This would be for you initially. You have found an excellent resource here, but now I feel you need to go to the pro on this site, and that is Harley.

Please take care and consider,

Tom

ook,

I posted a letter earlier in this thread for you to give to your husband. It is one approach that could open a new pathway for the two of you.

Your husband is angry and resentful - that is the crux of the issue.

He carries resentment because he remains, in his mind, in a competition for your love.

The problem for him is that you took the long way home. He felt at the time that he was your second choice.

Since that time, the two of you have not done the work that you have needed to do in order to properly put this marriage back on a solid foundation. This is Marriage Builders 101, ook.

So, my advice is pretty concrete for you. Basically, you are starting at ground zero in your recovery efforts with your husband. You have some wayward thinking, because truthfully you still do not see how your current behavior contributes to the alienation of your husband, nor do you see how you could change your own behavior to make things turn around for HIM.

Here goes:

1. Give him a letter similar to the one that I offered for starters. Your letter should be meant as an open and HONEST attempt to tell him of your grievous errors in thinking and behavior with the OM, how ashamed you are of that behavior

AND

how you have changed due to your own horror about that experience.

ADD IN THERE

that you know that your HUSBAND does not want, nor does he deserve to be married to a woman like that - and you no longer want to be that woman, and you want to change his image of you into the woman he DESERVES to have as his wife.

PLUS, tell him you are working on a plan to make this happen, to have the marriage of his dreams, a mutually loving and exciting marriage for both of you.

2. Ask him if he would like for you to write a letter of "No Contact" to the OM. This is up to your husband, but make the offer anyway. Given the fact that it has been awhile, he may not see any need, but make the offer, and have one written and ready for him to send if he says YES. Have it written for him to see - before you make the offer. This shows you MEAN IT.

3. Instead of offering to install a keylogger and offering your passwords, etc., JUST GIVE HIM A LIST. Hand it over to him, all ready to go. Type it up, a complete list. All of your email accounts and the passwords, your Facebook account (better yet, just CLOSE THAT), your Myspace (close it too), your cellphone password, anything that requires your password, give it to him. Then, already have a keylogger on the computer, with the password given to him and the report going to his email, with instructions to him on how HE can change the password. Just give it to him and with a smile.

4. Give him a notarized statement that says you agree, without condition, to 50-50 joint custody of your child should any divorce occur, scheduling details and living arrangements to be mediated should any divorce actually happen. Add in there that if you have any further incidents of infidelity, you agree to his having physical custody. Period. No arguments, no conditions, nothing. Just give it to him. He deserves that, and this should be a no-brainer to ease his mind. This is a major part of the tension between the two of you, so SETTLE IT NOW.

5. You begin a concerted effort so that the two of you begin to spend at least 15 hours per week together doing things that you both enjoy, and during this time there will be no relationship talk. If he brings it up, you work very hard to state pleasant things, using MB terms to focus forward, and MEET HIS EMOTIONAL NEEDS: you focus on Admiring him, meeting his needs for Sexual Fulfillment (within your boundaries), meet his needs for Recreational Companionship (which reduces that time out without you).

6. Fill out an Emotional Needs Questionnaire, as though you are your husband. Figure out, as best you can, what you think his EN's are. Then, set out EVERY DAY to meet the top 3 to 5.


7. Smell good, look good, and be kind. Every effort in you is toward meeting HIS needs. Read the information regarding Takers and Givers. You need to leave the Taker hat OFF.

8. Stay on this course and stay at MB. You need to learn how to draw your husband back into your relationship. And you also need to figure out how to respond to his anger. You can learn that here. But the problem is that he doesn't feel safe


YET.

You can fix this. Be patient, and build this.

It isn't called Marriage Fix-it-in-a-Minute. It is Marriage Builders. Building takes time.

SB

"But the problem is that he doesn't feel safe"

Schoolbus, I have not posted to you before, but wow, I recognize that you are talented, insightful, and well, you must be very well valued for your knowledge and willingness to share it.

The above is my sentiment exactly - that this marriage can go nowhere, from where it is now, based on her H not feeling safe, and that was in one of my posts as well.

Outofkiler, I agree with SB. Your H seems not to feel safe with you at this time, in terms of coming home, relaxing, and being welcomed. He is concerned that he is not the most important person in your life. As a result, he is reacting in a negative fashion, as most men with warm blood and still alive would!

Your situation is as frustrating to me as I am sure it is to you. But, as I said in an earlier post, it takes two to love and two to compromise to preserve that love. You seem to be focusing on the one, that is you. You could stay here for 20 more years, but unless you move off your toilet and become willing to demonstrate your remourse and your love, you will be in this situation for a long long time.

Good luck, and if you are serious please l head the sentiments from bliss and school.

The only thing I can say to you now is that I am not trying to be harsh, I am trying to encourage you to stay here and listen and at least respond, and to encourage you to contact Dr. Harley , and just to say that I will offer up some prayers for you.

Tom

Slight TJ but I don�t think ook is coming back so it�s probably immaterial.

Interesting you should feel that way. IMO adulterers are the epitome of humanity, decent or otherwise.

Paraphrasing from a passage in Torn Asunder: BS consistently tell me (Carder) they feel like aliens stranded on earth. Many no longer feel they are really human. Isolated, disconnected and as confused as if they no longer belong anywhere - they at the very least do not belong on earth any lomger.

I don�t feel very human at all any more. Haven�t for years now. I actually don�t like being human. Humans = adultery and I wish with all my awareness I was not human. I fought this awareness of total alienation from humans for a long time. Now I embrace it.

I can tell ook�s BH is moving in this same direction. It may already be as too late for him as it is for me.

Exactly what do you mean by this? I'm confused.

I think I can translate what she meant by adulterers being the epitome of humanity.

Humans are fallible creatures, destined to sin, and to fall. It is what we "do", and what most of us fight against every single day. Most of us struggle to be decent, to rise above that destiny.

All of us fail. Some of us fail in large ways, other in small ways. But every single one of us, to the last person on the face of the earth, fails. We all do it. Whether we are decent people, or evil to the core, we all fail. It is in what manner and what degree or measure that makes each of us different from the next in this fallibility; also, it is how we struggle against sinning, how we understand our tendencies toward it, how we set our boundaries, how we ask others to join our lives and help us be accountable against it, how we seek a higher power for guidance against it or how we seek moral guidance in our lives, how we learn to make better and better decisions over time to avoid it, how we feel remorse or regret or shame when we sin.......these things make us worse or less worse than the next man.............


Yet, we are all broken.

Some more broken than others.

You could measure this in "decency", but to tell you the truth, this could change from day to day within a man

and a decent man could become evil tomorrow
and an evil man receive salvation today.......

such is the human condition.


The epitome of humanity is our fallibility. Whether we are decent or otherwise.


At least, I think that is what Aph meant.

I could be wrong.


SB

ook,


I hope your child is feeling better. I know you were off the boards for a bit because of illness.


I am wondering if you have taken any action with your husband yet, or what you are thinking about what we have said.

SB

OOK,

I don�t know if you are still posting or not, but I would like to come at this from a slightly different point of view. I know some of the things I am going to say will sound like I am attacking you, I AM NOT. What I want to attack is the problem. I want to see if you, I and the others can frame this problem in a way that will allow you to develop a plan to save your marriage. Dr. Phil did not invent this statement but �you cannot solve a problem until you acknowledge there is one.� I will go further as a scientist and say you cannot solve a problem until you define it, frame it, and develop a plan of attack and to check the results you receive.

The problem is NOT your affair any longer. The problem is the damage you did to your H. The problem is the price he paid to stay in the marriage with you and his apparent strategy for surviving in it now because of the kids. So the rest of this post is about what I think the problem is. When I am done I want your feedback on defining it further, THEN you can use the very powerful tools to develop a plan and implement it.

You said On the grand scheme of things you seem to understand what has happened to your H. Let me go a bit further. He tried to hang in there and save the marriage, he fought to end the affair. He thought he had, but you continued it for another year and then ended it. I am sure he was emotional exhausted. He asked for details and to your credit you apparently told him all of the details. It is not clear how long that took you or how forthcoming you were. Now he realizes he paid and EVEN BIGGER price to save this marriage than he realized and he is in shock. But, eventually he comes out of that and the anger shows up.

You do know what anger is don�t you? It is a secondary emotion driven by primary ones such as: pain, fear, anxiety, frustration, etc. You are starting to see these fears as his anger mounts. You feel you should take it and you do, but eventually you correctly decide you cannot put up with the anger and you confront him and his angry outbursts, AO�s. Stop BUT� Here is where the problem definition begins. What does your H have to accept? You did things for OM and his friends that you would never do for him? That you loved OM and had a passion for OM that you have never had for your H? That in an affair you are/were willing to be very sexually active, but in a marriage you feel that sex is a second class thing? And then you say You see they are YOUR problems to solve. You cannot possibly have a good marriage until you can solve these issues. You declaring that won�t do certain acts for �moral reasons� or �they are disgusting� is telling him that he is second class to the OM and others.

You have already heard others tell you this. But, my question to you, is what is supposed to make your H think that he is first with you? Is he supposed to accept the previous marriage situation, if you could get back there? That previous marriage situation led to you having an affair and basically taking a knife and gutting him from his crotch to his throat. So what are you offering him? What would YOU need if you were in his place and he in yours?

You also said much later.
You don�t understand him? He seems pretty transparent to me and others. Many have already said he feels he is in competition with OM and he flat out tells you that is how he feels. I am not recommending that you do something you feel is immoral or disgusting, but you MUST find a way to compensate your H for what you have done, and it doesn�t seem that you have.

Dr. Harley is big on �just compensation� and that is what your H is asking for. It is focused on sex because that is how you showed OM you wanted him and loved him. (I don�t want to hear from anyone about it was the �fog� not love. She felt is was love, and her H feels she loved OM far more than she loves H). You say you want a �real marriage� what would that look like to you? What would it look like to your H? You need to define that.

So the issues boil down to two. What is really the problem? And how do you provide �just compensation� and that entails you understanding what a good marriage would be for him and for you. It would entail you addressing the concept that it is fine to have lots of sex in an affair but not in a marriage, you are not in the �fog� now are you? It means really delving into H�s feelings. You are not his counselor, but he MUST be honest with you and tell you what his dreams are like, what his triggers are, and what hurts him so. Most of us can guess, but he needs to give voice to his pain, and YOU must listen and NOT tell him to just �get over it� which in essence is what you have done with how you have handled things. Your first quote was dead on, you have not handled it well.

Here is something for you to think about. He yelled at you, screamed at you, and called you names and when you finally stood up and told him no more, he stopped. When you had your affair and he found out about it, he stood up and told you no more, and you continued. You keep saying you cannot love him while he was so angry. You say you cannot love him because he is now silent. I ask you, when can you start loving him and make him feel he is loved?

It is my opinion that these questions, and statements require a response about your opinions about the real problems, some ideas as to how you want to solve them, and a plan to implement those ideas. You will receive a lot of help and ideas from us when you are really ready to formulate the real problem and start to come up with ideas on how to address it. You are quitting on him and he is withdrawing to protect himself from you.

I do hope you come back and read this, and I do hope that you consider what I have said.

God Bless,

JL