I know where you are on that. I went through it, too. And things were great - but that whole time, I had an itch in the back of my mind because I knew better. And when the truth came out, it was like a wrecking ball.

I may be a strange duck, however. At first, I had to make sure that she was OK. A part of me was going to walk away, but before I could do that, I had to make sure my W was safe. A lot of what I have have done has been under the motivation of her being safe so that I could leave. I have to make sure she will be healthy and happy.

I have actually asked her a couple times if I could just go.

Stubborn woman... won't let me.

I'm not all parties and ponies every day, but I try. Sometimes I fail. And she... she just tries to join me in the fire.

That is another thing you and I have in common. We have women who will join us while we burn. Yeah, it sucks. It HURTS that they would do this NOW, after they destroy everything. But tell me, could you ever find another like her? Could you imagine any body else weathering this storm with you?

They broke their vows, brother. In doing so, they have given us the chance to truly honor ours, because we are facing the worst.

Broken,

DoNoMo is not kidding you on this point. Your FR was not as false as you seem to think. In fact, what you did was very very powerful and it changed your W. She say a you, that just swept her off her feet, hence she had to come clean, and she had to leave thoughts of OM.

I really do hope you speak with Jen at MB. She is very good. I should also point out that they don't call what they do counseling, they call it coaching because their goal is to help you find the best path for you.

I would also suggest that you speak with your W about what happened to her during FR. I really think you will be surprised at how powerfully you did affect her.

hang in there.

JL

broken

You have been getting a lot of help here from some very good people. I can't offer better then what they have said. I will add that I have been reading your WW's posts and feel that she has come a long way and has learned a lot from MB and changes are taking place in her.

I'm sure changes shall continue in the both of you and you will find a common ground. But you will not see these changes in WW or how you are feeling now because these things take time. The way your WW had to go through a false recovery because she needed to go through withdrawal from the OM. She needed to do the work and time for things to happen. You need your time as well.

Recovery takes time. Two to five years. You have been together 17 years and two kids. This should help you to focus on healing. You are not able to accept WW�s changes yet. And, the healing process does not appear to be happening because it takes time to process what happened and what is happening now. Your thought processes are overloaded. This is why I urge you to sit tight and let time do it�s work.

Isn�t it better to keep your family intact for your kids while this sorts itself out. You can always pull out after a year or two. Those years with your kids you never can be gotten back.

I can�t express why but I feel good about you and your WW.

I think I can express why. The mere fact that broken2009 showed up here, willing to ask advice and express himself, indicates he's in Conflict.

Remember the three states of marriage? Intimacy, Conflict, and Withdrawal?

Conflict often feels very negative to most people. But it's an opportunity to grow, recognize your own needs, and make sure that you are making agreements in your own best interest. And, since @broken2009 was in Withdrawal before, being in Conflict now means he's moving toward intimacy.

Think about that for a second. What will cause a spouse to move from Withdrawal to Intimacy?

Only one thing.

Love Units.

That means that @wulfpackgirl is depositing Love Units in @broken2009's Love Bank. And, with any luck, they aren't getting withdrawn faster than they are being deposited.

Love Busters on her part make withdrawals.

Now, this next idea is a DoNoMo-ism, not a Harley-ism. But it's how I see things.

Triggers temporarily raise all the thresholds. Certain states of mind and environments temporarily lower all the thresholds.

Bear with me on this last idea. It's something I've been playing with for a few months, and it sure seems to meet the facts. Triggers don't seem to reduce my wife's Love Bank balance, you know? Like, this morning, I was horribly triggered. She reminded me she was going to hang out with Phil's soon-to-be-ex-wife, Donna. Phil's a serial cheater, and the two of us stopped being friends as a result of my opposition to his affairs. Which, of course, means that due to my own Extraordinary Precautions, I can't be close friends with Donna.

BOOM! Triggered like crazy! Why? Because Phil was a serial cheater. During my wife's affair, she became secretive and gaslighted me like crazy, just like Phil did during his affairs. Maybe this wasn't my wife's only affair? Could she have had more before?

Down, down, down I spiraled, for several hours. Then, at one point, I buried myself in my work. I forgot about the triggers and whatnot, and just had too much to do to think about my own personal problems. And I came out the other side of that looking fondly toward tonight, wondering how I can meet some of her needs even though I'll probably be asleep by the time she gets home.

There you go! Back into Intimacy again! And she did nothing! Truthfully, I love her just as much.

On the flip side, I think it's possible to lower the Love Bank thresholds for Romantic Love, too. Countless drunks can tell you about who they slept with that they'd never have slept with in their right minds.

So anyway, I told you all that so I could tell you this. Triggers are going to drag you down into Withdrawal. You'll want nothing to do with your FUW, and anything she does to try to win your heart repulses you. But if you rebound out of that into thinking that maybe it might be worth a shot if you just didn't keep getting beaten down, then you're popping back into Conflict.

Allow your FUW to deposit some Love Units in this time, and eventually you'll pop into Intimacy. The mechanics of love are straightforward, both in a marriage and outside of one. You won't realize what her Love Bank balance is; nobody has any idea what other people's balances are unless one crosses a threshold between Intimacy, Conflict, or Withdrawal (or Hate, but that's not a state of marriage, that's a state of homicide waiting to happen). Just one day, if she meets your needs well enough long enough without doing things that make you miserable, you'll realize you love her again. The key and last ingredient is giving this enough time to work on the two of you.

I will offer one last piece of advice. The longer you spurn her attempts to deposit Love Units, the worse off you'll be if you decide to recover. You can decide to divorce at any time in the marriage. Tomorrow, or years from now. In my state, it can take just two weeks from the time you file until the divorce is finalized. You can always change your mind and divorce.

Clue-by-four warning!

Your window of recovery is narrow, and growing narrower the longer you fail to master your triggers rather than letting them master you. @wulfpackgirl claims that she'll keep working at it, no matter how long it takes, but if you don't eventually start reciprocating by meeting her needs, it will be impossible for her to continue. It's just the nature of human relationships: all love is conditional. Unconditional love is God's domain, not man's. She needs to be thrown a bone occasionally, or eventually you'll no longer have the choice to be married.

bump for a new week.

Thank you everyone for your advice, I am truly grateful. A new day/week, but all the same. Just so hard to deal with sometimes, I try but just seem to sink deeper. Kind of like quicksand. Trigger trigger bang, just shoot me. I�m still at the crossroads and still looking back, not sure which way to go.

Which way, which way to go...?

It starts with one simple question; do I love my wife?

Why are you still there? Is it because of a yes answer to that first question?

Ok, then. Let's figure out what to do.

Hopefully, you are addressing your depression properly. Finally have the right med, using it properly.

I had something else that may prove useful come up in class today, it was regarding PTSD, which can be a symptom of being the BS. Talk to your Physician about the possibility for a Beta Blocker to take when you have triggers/flashbacks. This will help to alleviate your physical response to the stress of said trigger/flashback, which can also help to stabilize your mood.

This is up to your Physician and you. If he is up to it, it could prove to be a useful tool for managing trigger response.

It seems you are peeking out of your shell from time to time. This is a good sign. I have also read that, while you may not be active and/or responsive, you aren't quite combative nor chasing FWW off. This is another good start.

Get in as much time together as you can possibly manage. If she doesn't join you in activities automatically, invite her. I know you don't want to, but if you are to move forward, you have to give YOURSELF the opportunity to have her LB$ balance build.

A MINIMUM of 2 hours each day needs to be spent in UA time. There is no overkill point here, only a point where if you don't meet it, you will both sink.

I did this to myself yesterday without even meaning to, or knowing it would happen, and it lead to me triggering.

Make better use of your thread if you can. Get your feelings and questions out. Most responders here have been where you have been. Some in better condition, some worse. It's a wealth of help at your fingertips, and all objective viewers who do want to help YOU. That means saving your marriage or moving on.

I think most would prefer saving your marriage, though.

I just don�t get it. How can someone like my WW, who has always had a very high sex drive, expect me to believe she had SF with OM only twice in 3 months? I am awakened this morning by dead silence, power outage, and WW telling me she has been dreaming of us having SF. That she doesn�t want to dream about it but wants to do it. It�s only been a week. Sorry, but I was immediately shut off by the reminder of lies (trickle-truth) and how WW and OM talked/chatted about having the same dreams. How they talked and chatted mostly about SF and how much they wanted to be together. And only acting on those twice in 3 months, I don�t believe it. I must be some kind of fool for ever choosing this person to be my W, and an even bigger fool for staying with someone like this. Yes she has admitted that as soon as she gets paid for her pt job that she wants to use that money to take a poly. Sorry to be such a downer but as most days they start out real crappy

I don't have an answer for you. I only saw my OM infrequently but much of that is because distance prevented it. However I sometimes wonder if that wasn't part of the draw.

This whole experience is a fantasy afterall. When a fantasy happens all the time it becomes a reality....and we can't have that now can we?

I think you are doing what all BS's try to do, make sense of the details of our spouses and the affairs.......it's impossible to try to make some reasonable sense of it......there are no fixs, it wasn't anything to do with you, it was something in them that they were capable of ...........I would let her take the poly to set your mind at ease, it doesn't make sense to you, but maybe it will when you see she is telling the truth, affairs happen for a lot of reasons, maybe the sex part wasn't the biggest part, the chase the attention........huge pulls as well, it's tough for the BS's because we don't know the whole story.......
You need to give yourself more time to process all this, and just understand it wasn't about you it was about her bad judgement....
I was the same way mad at myself for staying with someone that could do this, not understanding who my spouse was anymore.......the person that I thought they were couldn't have done what they did, after some therapy I have learned that the person in my head really isn't who my husband was the guy who had the affair is...........that's hard to realize .........
Remember you don't have to do anything you don't want and you don't have to fix things today........time, patience and working on you is the key right now......

I so wanted to believe that she was not capable of it (PA). But something inside me knew that it did. Now that something is telling me that I don't have the whole truth. I knew that I would never take that path, having grown up with parents that did and how evil it was, I thought I had finally found someone who felt the same way, had the same values. I didn't expect the woman I married to turn out to be a evil liar. I think it is just best for me to end it. Just don't see any hope.

I never thought I would be capable either. If my H were to have given me a second chance I would do things so differently.

I know that it so painful to think the person you love most in the world your best friend would do this. I am sure for one moment your wife did not intentionally mean to hurt you.

I sometimes feel we let our guard down and allowed someone to take advantage of us, weak boundaries and allowing us to get in that position in the first place. Being on facebook, going on business trip ect....

Everyone deserves a second chance, everyone as long as they are repentant. I know this because I forgave an ex who cheated on me and we were together for 3 happy years after that before I felt I was too young to settle.

Best of luck Broken, but you can go on to have a better marriage. If I had half the chance I would make my h the happiest man alive.

Harmony, I know that you mean well, but anyone who doesn't know that her affair will hurt her spouse should not be married, much less walking about freely. She should be locked up because she is dangerous. Of course she intentionally hurt her husband. She knew that committing adultery and lying to him for years was hurtful. If not, she should be locked up because she is deranged.


Grown women are not "taken advantage of" without their permission. If she is a big enough gurl to drive cars and wear big gurl shoes, she is a big enough gurl to take full responsibility for her CHOICE to commit adultery. [unless she was held down and raped and that is a different story]


No one "deserves" a second chance. It is not an entitlement. Broken2009 did deserve to have a faithful wife, though. If she gets a second chance it won't be because she "deserves" it but because broken2009 decides it is in his best interest.

Although I would like to respond to Melody points I won't because it is just disrupting brokens thread.

Yes I did mean well and stand by my comments.

Broken2009, I know you have been through alot and no one could blame you if you did not choose to stay in this marriage. Looking at the length of time you had to endure trickle truth games and resumed contacts, your hopelessness is understandable. We have members here who has post traumatic stress disorder from going through less than you.

I would keep that option open, but ask that you give it a year before you make a final decision. Get the polygraph and see how she does. Write out a list of questions beforehand and give her an opportunity to answer them before the test.

If she does well on the test and sticks to this program there is hope in building your marriage to a better state than it was before. That is IF, you can get over your resentment. You may or may not be able to do that.

Your anger may dissipate if she really steps up to the plate. Your anger may be temporary, but divorce is permanent.

Please just know that there is hope regardless of your decision. It won't always be this bad, my friend.

I stand by mine as well. Thank you..

As pointed out here not every WW rips off her clothes the moment she gets alone with the OM and has mind blowing wild monkey SF all night long. At least every other night with the OM.

Being that your WW is willing to take a poly is a good sign she is telling the truth.

Next no matter how far an affair has gone there has always been a BH that has been able to say thank god it was:

only once

only nine times not double digit.

only ninety nine times not a hundred

only oral

only front door

only SF and did not get pregnant

there�s an OC but the OM wants NC with WW and OC

I hope you see the point. No matter how bad it was these BH were able to realize that some thing worse could of happened. They used that as their starting point to recover.

You whether you want to recover or divorce you are going to have to let go that your WW had SF with the OM.

So get that poly and use that to create your own starting point to recover.

I don't think that telling Broken that it could have been worse is going to make him feel any better. Yes, we've seen worse on here. Some of us have done worse or had worse done to us. But it's all very subjective. To HIM, this is the worst thing that has ever happened to him, the worst thing that could ever happen. His feelings are what matter here.

I also experienced a lot of trickle truth regarding my H's EA (turned semi-PA and internet porn addiction). In fact, it took him about 5 years to finally tell me the complete truth, or at least what I now think is the complete truth. No, you really can't ever know for sure, and that is difficult. We still have a lot of trust issues, but it does get better. Once EP's are in place and you have the ability to check and make sure that what you are being told is the truth, things get easier. But it takes time, a lot of time.

I know how it feels to think "Well, my spouse couldn't really love me if they would do that kind of thing to me." I believed this for years and I eventually allowed these thoughts to lead me down a very dark road that resulted in my having an A. Worst possible thing I ever could have done. But after I ended my A and decided that I finally wanted to see if my M could be salvaged after everything we had gone through, I finally came to a place where I had to accept the fact that my H's A wasn't really about me (just like mine wasn't about him). A's are very selfish, and generally, a person involved in one is thinking only of themselves when they choose to enter into one. Maybe that's what Harmony was getting at. Not that a person isn't capable of realizing that an A will hurt their spouse, but simply that, when one gets caught up in an A, they really aren't thinking about their spouse at all. All they are thinking about is satisfying their own needs, and pretty much everything else flies out the window.

I have read your WW's posts, and it seems as though she is truly remorseful for the pain she caused you. Maybe she wasn't thinking about how much this would hurt you when she had the A, but she is certainly seeing it now. The fact that you have a remorseful wife who is willing to follow the MB plan is a good sign that your M could be recovered. Of course, it is completely up to you if you want to put in the work and effort necessary to do so. It is a lot of work, from both sides. In my personal opinion, it is worth it. I do not regret the decision to recover my M. But you will have to decide for yourself if it is worth it to you.

@broken,

I hate to sound like a "broken" record, but what you're experiencing right now are things called "motivational swamps", "emotional minefields", and "creative wilderness". See http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi7100_counselor.html

This is EXACTLY the type of situation a MarriageBuilder counselor can help you out of.

Why are you so adamant that you will not speak to a MarriageBuilders coach yourself? What do you have to lose?

Was guilty of this myself - didn't quite work for me.


Huge WS behavior; blame the BS. BS behavior; blame ourselves.

And finally, Broken;


THIS is where you are. THIS is what MB concepts can and will help you to combat. THIS is what allowing your FWW to meet your needs, and attempting to meet her needs will help you reprogram.

Why am I so positive? Because as I am continuing my own education, learning MB, and facing these things myself, I cannot deny that every principle in MB can be applied to basic human psychology in areas of grief and stress.