Think about Friday night and why your BH got out of bed.

Something's been on my mind all day and I figured you wouldn't want to get into it when I was home at lunch - I probably was making a disrespectful judgment by assuming you didn't want to talk about it, and if I was, I apologize...I was enjoying being with you last night. To be honest, you sort of suprised me because we haven't been intimate together in a while. I guess I was nervous and a little unsure of what you wanted, I was afraid of making you feel uncomfortable or pressuring you to do something you did not want to do. I'm so scared of doing the wrong thing with you. When you got up, I first thought you were going to shut the door, then I thought maybe you'd gone to turn the A/C back on since I'd turned it off last night, but then you didn't come back to bed. I should have gone to find you but I just kept hoping you would come back. Then when you did come back you didn't seem interested in picking up where we'd left off. I thought maybe I had done something wrong, that was why I asked you why you'd gotten up this morning.

All day yesterday I felt hurt over the text you sent me. Not just my own hurt, but I ached for the pain you are feeling. All I wanted to do was come home and see you, and be with you, and somehow try to minister to the pain you felt. And then when I got home yesterday, for an instant before I got out of the truck I saw you talking to Mom & Dad and you seemed animated and relaxed, and then as I got out of the truck it was like a wall slammed down and I literally watched you close off. So when I went to bed last night, I was feeling down and more than a little hopeless.

I want to be with you. If I seem to hold back sometimes, it is because I am waiting to get a signal of what you want. I'm scared, DH. I feel like I've done so many things wrong - and here I'm not talking about the obvious, I'm talking about during this recovery process. I screwed up so many times. I shouldn't let fear hold me back and I am sorry I allow myself to doubt myself so much that I am afraid.

I just felt like I needed to tell you. I think that lately I have not been good at letting you know my feelings. I'm afraid to ever let you see me being less than positive and optimistic. I want to communicate with you. I want to know what you are feeling. I don't care how raw and ugly the emotion is, I just want to know. And it's time I did better about letting you know how I feel, too. I started writing in a journal plus in the notebook I made for the Respect Dare. I want you to know that you can read anything I write, anytime. And if you ever have questions or want to talk about anything I have written, then please ask me and let's talk about it.

More than anything I want a passionate, romantic marriage with you. I want us to build our new marriage together. I choose you. Every day. I'm in love with you, DH.

I believe what I suggested is in line with MB principles. If JC has told WP something different, she should follow JC.

She explained why she wasn't going to ask those and I asked her to please explain to DH

WP -- remember your LB is taking withdrawals whether you are aware of it or not. I'm guessing the polygraph was a pretty whopping big withdrawal.

WP, if your H chooses not to believe the polygraph for any reason, remember that's his choice. And it is a choice.

I'm finding the fact that this thread has this focus after so long sort of sickening, so I'm going to bow out now, but WP you will be in my thoughts and prayers -- as a WW who has tried to implement MB principles unilaterally, I feel your pain.

Now that he has all the information, please set a boundary on how long you are willing to talk about the A, then enforce it.

Finally, this issue of the OM's size. I suspect that size was not the issue, but focusing on it is a marker for his deeper fears. What are they? Simple, he fears he has never satisfied you and he never will. His trust in himself has been destroyed and it must be rebuilt. Know what might help? You being more demanding in bed. Tell him what you want, how you want it, where you want it, and then make sure he knows if and when he satisfies you. I know this sounds backwards, but trust me, us guys want to know when we satisfy our W's and we don't need lies. We need guidance if we are not getting it done.

WP � I hesitate to speak after JL as anyone would � since I read whatever he says, I found myself back on your thread.

I don�t know who your H is so I haven�t read his thread.

I try REALLY hard not to project my personal situation on my posts to others. REALLY hard. I�m probably crossing that line with this post, but I�m going to say it anyway. You didn't try at all in this case, Seekingbalance. Your post sprinkles in a couple of valid points that were a challenge to extract from the great, goopy gobs of projection. Some of us who know what recovering marriages look like from the inside are trying to help WPG get there.

Know reading what I am about to say that if my H asked me to take a polygraph on the details of my relationship with OM, my response would have been an immediate and unequivocal �shall we have one lawyer or two � I�ve been researching collaborative divorce, and I think we can do that.�WPG doesn't need ANY lawyers to recover her marriage. Because of her unique history of dishonesty for many months after D-Day#1, she carries an extra burden of reassuring him as to what the true story is. It is excellent & altogether reasonable that she take a polygraph, and she should not be made to feel bad in the least for having done so.

Why? Because I recognize that if he were to put me through that as a condition for reconciliation, I would hate him so much there would be zero hope of building a healthy marriage. Given that he already hated me for having an A, I would simply end it there. No thanks for the projection. Let's stick with MarriageBuilders here.

I don�t know if DrH has weighed in on the utility of polygraphs in infidelity, but in my opinion they have only one legitimate use: is the affair over? Thank you for your opinion. My opinion is that a polygraph might also be of use in giving some confidence to WPG's BH about the veracity of events as WPG has described them.

There is a level of humiliation below which I absolutely refuse to fall. Taking a polygraph is at least 5 degrees below that level. Actually, it doesn�t even have a level it is so far off what I would do. That�s me. I tell you that so you can weigh what I am saying appropriately. Seekingbalance, on your very first day here under your original screen-name, I posted the following: "Humility. If you want to give your marriage a fair shake, you need to ooze with it. Your words indicate that you do not." Regrettably, it appears this is still true 4 months later.

As a guy, I can tell you, it'd be pretty humiliating to have your wife boff another guy, crow to him about how he's bigger & better, and lie to you about key aspects of the affair for months afterwards even after you've gone all-out after D-Day#1 to take her back. That's humiliation. Volunteering to take a polygraph to try to assuage some of his fears to help him heal? That's merely humility.

I have to ask you this. Do you REALLY want to be married for the rest of your life to a man who:

1. Will not commit to a marriage recovery program. How do YOU know what WPG's husband WILL do? All we know is what he HAS done, counselor. Assuming you have not obtained special powers of clairvoyance not characteristic of homo sapiens, all else is mere speculation.
2. Will not let your A go and evidently brings it up at whatever time he wants in whatever way he wants with wanton disregard of how that might impact you in that moment.Point taken. The guy's been lied to for a long period of time. He's hurt. It is altogether proper for WPG to cut him some slack in this respect.
3. Sends you A bombs in the middle of your work day 10 months out, thereby demonstrating zero understanding of your emotional state and vulnerability. 10 months after D-Day#2 and over a year after D-Day #1, despite lies upon lies, he's stuck around. He's been a provider for WPG and a dad to their kids, and he's here on the boards trying to hack his way through to making sense of what's happened to him, and how he can avoid having his life go the same way his parents' life went. Again, he gets some slack on these grounds.
4. Sort of maybe kind of wants you to take a polygraph where you will be questioned about intimate humiliating details of your life. WPG offered. It wasn't his idea.
5. Won�t commit to accepting the results of that polygraph as dispositive. How'll you feel next Tuesday, counselor? Or at any time in the future? Can you tell us? How can we know today if what you say you'll feel is actually what you'll feel?
6. Doesn�t go with you to the polygraph, thereby reserving the right to question the whole process. Could he not have reserved that right even if he had gone with her?
7. Doesn�t go with you to the polygraph to ensure that the exact questions he wants answered are asked and answered in a form and way he finds acceptable, It was his right not to sit through WPG's polygraph.
8. In my opinion, is obsessing to a grotesque and repellant degree on the physical details. Seekingbalance, if your husband cheated on you, and told the other woman that her **** didn't stink like yours, and then continued to lie about the extent of the affair for months afterward, I submit that you or anyone might get hung up on physical details for a spell.
9. Puts you through that ordeal, which is solely for his benefit, without his presence to support you. Again, WPG volunteered.
10. Reserves the right to question the results of the polygraph, and/or bring up the results and/or any details of the A at any time in the future he thinks he needs to �heal�.

How do you see your future with such a man (and at this point, I�m using that term loosely)? An ad hominem attack is uncalled for here. How do you envision your children�s future? What is going to be their �take-away� message about marriage from a father who does that and a mother who puts up with it?

There is a poster to your thread who is who are obsessing about the most intimate (�how wet did she get?") details his wife�s affairs twenty years after the A � is that where you are headed? At some point, it may become a valid question. But a year & a half is a far cry from 20 years.

Really, what are you fighting for? From where I sit, it�s an illusion of what you wish your H was, but, based upon his passive/aggressive/punishment mode, never will be. He�s choosing that by the way. He doesn't want to get over it. Never will be? Is that your clairvoyance talking again, Seekingbalance, or is it as disrespectful a judgement as ever there may be?

My M is not recovered. If it doesn�t, it will be because of what JL said, not because I was unwilling to endure X amount of humiliation or do Y amount of making amends. My M may not recover. But for sure I will.

I hate if for YOU that you took that polygraph as I fear you just gave your H another way demean you. Love casts out fear, WPG. This you know.

There seems to be this unspoken suggestion in this forum that a WS has to do whatever for however long. That simply isn�t the case, which is why DrH recommends that once the details of the A are disclosed, the subject is closed.

That doesn�t sit well with BS�s who are in the majority here. Many BS�s post vociferously about any limits on discussion of the A as the WS trying to �control the pace and scope of recovery�.

Never mentioning the A after the details are disclosed is the MB program, and DrH includes it for a reason: it matters to the WS, and it matters to the M.

The goal is recover the M, not serve the interests of the BS or the WS.

1. Will not commit to a marriage recovery program.
2. Will not let your A go and evidently brings it up at whatever time he wants in whatever way he wants with wanton disregard of how that might impact you in that moment.
3. Sends you A bombs in the middle of your work day 10 months out, thereby demonstrating zero understanding of your emotional state and vulnerability.
4. Sort of maybe kind of wants you to take a polygraph where you will be questioned about intimate humiliating details of your life.
5. Won�t commit to accepting the results of that polygraph as dispositive.
6. Doesn�t go with you to the polygraph, thereby reserving the right to question the whole process.
7. Doesn�t go with you to the polygraph to ensure that the exact questions he wants answered are asked and answered in a form and way he finds acceptable,
8. In my opinion, is obsessing to a grotesque and repellant degree on the physical details.
9. Puts you through that ordeal, which is solely for his benefit, without his presence to support you.
10. Reserves the right to question the results of the polygraph, and/or bring up the results and/or any details of the A at any time in the future he thinks he needs to �heal."