broken,

I am in the same boat. My wife is much like yours, fully repentant and sorry she did so much to hurt me. I cant help but feel like you too. Like, I'm the one now that is stuck either way. Danged if you do, danged if you don't. It's hard and I fight with it everyday too. We just have to hope that God rewards us for keeping our families together regardless of how we feel.

Okay,

Maybe we were both being overly dramatic. It is just when my BH says this it drives me crazy because, preA he missed bedtime 4-5 nights out of 7. He was rarely home for dinner and made it to maybe half of there sporting/scouting/church/school events. By no means was he a bad parent but he more or less relied on me to "fill him in." Since the A he has taken a proactive approach. This works well all the way around. If he decides to divorce (and 14 months later he still is not sure) then he will be much better prepared. If we stay together his active involvement is still better for all of us.

I would suggest you talk to WPG about your fears. I think she would be open to hearing them. As much as she wants you to stay, I'm sure she wants your happiness more and would work to make sure you two could parent appropriately.

Even with adversarial parents it can be done. School and sporting events are public and schedules are readily available on websites. Schools are computerized as well and most times sending info to both parents requires a touch of a button. Although your kids are young, most are internet savvy and can e-mail, text, and call on a regular basis.

Don't get me wrong, I fully believe you can make your marriage work if you so choose; however, don't let fear hold you in place. Although I want my BH to stay with me, I don't want him doing so out of fear.

You are putting up roadblocks to your recovery and you are doing the same thing to your unrecovery (I think I just coined a new word). You need to work on taking them all down and making your decision from your heart knowing that either way YOU will be okay and you are worth being happy.

It also sickens me that she took our DD�s to meet OM. Little did they know what was going to happen.

Broken: Have you read "Surviving an Affair?"

Have you even considered doing phone counseling with the Harley's?

Are you taking your AD's as prescribed by your doctor?

Are you doing anything at all to help yourself out here?

Because sitting around obsessing over every little thing that your WW did day after day is not healthy. You are only hurting yourself here.

What @writer1 said.

If you've fallen off your AD meds, and are refusing to speak to a counselor, your problem really isn't your former unfaithful wife right now. It's YOU. You're focusing so hard on the past you can't see a future worth living, and unless you change that this cannot end well.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: what you need right now is to be following a PLAN. Right now, your wallowing-in-resentment-and-punishing-FWW strategy is leading to absolute misery and neither personal nor marital recovery.

Broken,

I was blunt with you before and I will be again. Why? Because you are playing victim and I cannot stand it. You are a grown, intelligent man, and a father of two children.

The pain will NOT EVER GO AWAY as long as you wallow in self-pity. You were asked have you sought out the Harley's. I believe the answer is no, but you did try a loser of a counselor and gave up. Good choice on that counselor bad choice in not seeking better.

YOu can end this marriage. It is your right. Actually, it is your W's right as well,and I wonder if you really want your WW to make that decision rather than say you did.

IF you decide to stay, then as a grown man with children you should certainly know that unless something changes nothing changes. You are sitting around waiting for lightening to strike while doing NOTHING for your marriage and certainly not accepting what you W is trying to do.

But, in actuality you are just sitting there feeling sorry for yourself. I know this hurts, everyone posting to you knows it hurts, your W knows it hurts, we all get the message. Now that you have sent the message to one and all, what are YOU GOING TO DO?????

It is your choice. So far you have wallowed and asked Short answer no if you don't do something. Your W cannot make it go away. She can make life in the future much better than it was in the past IF you will allow her to AND you help her do it. It is your call.

Do you really think leaving will help? Do you think wallowing as you are will help?

You want things to change, then change how you interact with your W.

PLease think about this.

God Bless,

JL

PS: Your W had an affair and for that she is solely responsible. But, the status of your marriage before and now, is on you, and please don't try and tell me you were perfect in the past, I know you were not and so do you.

Been there, said that. Sat there and cried in front of her and screamed that I just didn't want to hurt any more, that I didn't want to be angry any more.

I still hurt, I am still angry.

Day by day, it's getting better. Day by day, I find I am even HAPPY sometimes.

You have one of two decisions to make; get off your [censored], and start working towards recovery. If it doesn't work, you can walk away.

Walk away.

Doing NEITHER leaves you... exactly where you have been.

Option 1 leaves you with the right to say you tried.

Option 2 means every time you see her afterward, you will know you did not.

I have read SAA, I am taking my AD�s, no I haven�t decided to have coaching with the Harley's. Because I haven�t decided that this marriage is worth recovery. The way I see it we had 3 D-days, D-day 1 I discovered a massive amount of text�s to OM. Lied to and told they were just friends. D-day 2 was a week later that I had discovered chat sessions and e-mails. Lied to again and told it was just an EA, for 4 more months. D-day 3 found out it was a PA after 4 months of lies. I did fight for my marriage after D-day 1 up till D-day 3, for 4 hard months. I just think D-day 3 ended it for me. That the way WW was able to lie to me and others for 4 months shows just how evil she is. Why would anybody want someone like that in their life?

Well, Broken, I know it feels terrible to you, and it doesn't really help to know there are far worse stories on here than yours. But there are.

My H lied to me for 10 years. I had more D-days than I can even count during that time. One of them occurred a week after our wedding. Another occurred when our son was just a couple of months old. It was terrible. It hurt more than anyone can imagine. Had I known about MB at the time, I may have been able to formulate a plan that would have saved me all those years of agony and pain. I certainly wouldn't have just stood by and put up with it.

You have that plan available to you. Why aren't you using it?

My H and I didn't have a plan. Even after he finally gave the OW up and established NC, I had no plan to help me through my pain. I stayed with my H because of our kids, but I distanced myself emotionally from him so much that I eventually had my own A (3 years after his ended) and we ended up with an OC to boot. That's what staying in a M without true Recovery can lead to. Does that sound like something you'd like to do?

I'm thinking the answer is no.

You have two choices here. Well, two workable ones at least. You can stay with your wife and try to recover your marriage, or you can decide it isn't worth it and walk away. Choice #3 is stay in your marriage without any real recovery and risk ending up where I did (or some other equally bad situation). You seem to be fence sitting in Choice #3 right now, and it is a very dangerous place to be.

Hi there,
I think everyone that has been cheated on feels the same way you are.......at the time we don't think our lives will ever get better or that we will survive.....
It just all seems so much to deal with......we want to bail.....emotional decision.....
You know yourself when you calm down from all the emotion and start to think logically again, you might think differently.....
Right now you feel out of control, we all feel that because someone else has changed our lives for us, we didn't have the control to stop it......that sucks ......
You have to make a decision if your spouse wants to work things out in the marriage, then you have to become accountable for your part in the marriage breakdown and decide to forgive, you won't ever forget, it won't ever go away.....it's just a period of time that was unpleasant for you.......life isn't perfect for any of us........You have the power to try and make it perfect though but that will take all of you and someone willing to get out of the past and into the future........
Start by trusting that things will get better UNTIL.......that's where you start.....if it works out, then think of how happy you will be.....
If not you tried.......you have been together a long time ........
Find that inner strength you have, we all have it we just forget we do when stuff like this happens.......
win her back with your leadership and control...........

Broken,

You say your wife is evil, but have you asked her why she lied for so long? Maybe she realized how much she hurt you, and felt by withholding the true nature of the relationship she was protecting you somehow.

My WH was so afraid of telling me everything because when he came out of his fog he knew he didn't want to hurt me with the details. In fact, during the A he told OW that he would never hurt me! As sick as that sounds coming from someone in the midst of an A, I believe he meant it.

Only you can decide if your M is worth saving, but you'll never know unless you try. I printed the article that DNM linked for you, and believe me, it helps. Only YOU can decide to try to move forward and stop thinking about the painful memories.

Your wife does seem sincere in her remorse, which seems to be a good start, but only YOU can choose what's best for you.

I send you all my prayers.

As a FWW who appears to have a lot of similarities to your wife, I will try to give you my greatest fear for you and for her.

She will give and give and give....because she loves you, because she is remorseful, because you deserve it, and once again because she loves you.

She will give ....until she stops.

This isn't a threat. It is a fact. Each of us only has a certain capacity to handle our taker. We may or may not even know when that is...until it is too late.

Prior to my A, I gave...consistently, for many years...until I stopped and had an A.

That is not a justification...not at all. I could have done many other things but I had an A. I had always had much stronger boundaries...but they were very weak by that time...and I didn't see it...and when I did, it was too late. I rationalized, compartmentalized and all kinds of other izes.

To be honest, I'm not sure I could have come back from the withdrawl I was already in prior to the A. My DH's willingness to at least try increased his love bank balance substantially.

Things are falling off a bit on his end, due to feelings like you are expressing. Because I got a glimpse of what could be and from what I read here, I believe it and it makes me want to try through all the hard stuff.

But, I am more sensitive to my own feelings and my own love bank balance and I know this can't last forever. With my EP's in place and my boundaries established, I'm cautiously optomistic that I won't have another affair. That doesn't mean I'll be able to remain in a marriage where my love bank is being depleted....forever. I want to be able to, I am praying for the strength...because my A was that wrong...but I cling to each kind word and to each deposite and I cringe at each AO.

You have a huge life altering decision to make, but, if left unmade, someday you won't.

@Broken -


Something doesn't make sense here. What is making this so ambivalent. There is some information missing.

Is this what it is about, punishment? Who are you punishing? Yourself? Your WW? Both of you?

Do you think that you could have prevented the affair? Do you think that you're going to go back to the way it was?

I think you really do want to save your marriage.

Tell us what your ideal marriage would be like.

Now tell us why you can never obtain it.

@Broken2009: All these concepts you worry about are very basic and covered in Dr. Harley's published works and courses. I'm glad you're finally diving into the specific things that are bothering you, because these are problems you can solve together!

First off, let's cover her dishonesty at the start of your recovery with "trickle-truthing" you after D-week, resulting in another D-Day four months later when you discovered that the affair had been a PA. I also had a "D-Week" where I made discovery after discovery after discovery over my wife's denials. It was simply a hellish month, with the first Discovery Day sparking the beginning of the torture.

But before I dive into it, answer me honestly: During your first "D-Week", if you had discovered it was a physical affair, would you have divorced her? I mean, just given up and been done with the relationship? I may be wrong, but my bet is "yes", and you told her so. That ties in with what I'm about to share.

There is a chapter in Love Busters discussing dishonesty covers your question (paraphrased): "Why did she continue to lie to me after D-Day about having had sex with OM?"

There's no way I can do this topic justice in a forum post. You should really break out your copy of "Love Busters" and re-read Chapter 6 on "Dishonesty". It will help you understand your wife's dishonesty... and your own. If you don't own a copy, why not?

So why do people lie? There are four reasons:

1. Avoid-trouble lying. This has a clear motivation. A person sees themselves in deep (or deeper) trouble if they tell the truth. Therefore they lie to avoid the repercussions of the truth. This, clearly, was the main reason your wife was lying after D-Day.

2. Trying-to-look-good lying. Another easy-to-understand motivation. A person wants to impress someone else, therefore lies to try to look like a better person. I was guilty of this a lot when I was trying to pick up girls as a teenager. I don't think this is involved in your wife's lying. She wasn't trying to impress you; she was trying to dodge trouble. Con men commonly lie for this reason: they try to look like the kind of person you should trust.

3. Protective lying. A person lies in order to prevent hurting someone else. I believe your wife's lies also involved at least some measure of protection: she believed she was protecting you from being hurt worse by lying about the extent of the affair. This is a very common reason those having an affair choose to lie: out of the mistaken belief that it's the truth that hurts their spouse, not their actions. Yet it's a valid motivation, even when it is based on a misunderstanding.

4. Born liars. If you can't identify any of the above motivations for someone's lies then you may be dealing with a "born liar". This is a person with a pathology, and these people often end up in jail. Your wife is almost certainly not one of these, unless you can identify a long-standing pattern of lying without any good reason all the way back to her childhood.


The key here is to realize that all three types are related, all three may be motivations for people and often combined as a single reason to lie, and most importantly the first three types of lying are all correctable with the policy of Radical Honesty. They really are. Your wife's story of lying to you during the affair and for four months after it ended is not unusual in the least. It took my wife 3 months after D-Day to finally admit the extent of her relationship with the OM. Most people who have affairs will only admit to as much as their spouse can prove. It's why they insist on knowing what your "evidence" is: so they can figure out what lie to tell to get into the least amount of trouble.

It takes time for a wayward to believe they can trust you not to hurt them if they are honest with you. Now you've got your honesty, but you feel like you had to dig it out of her, and she feels like you're using that honesty to hurt her, vindicating her reason for lying in the first place.

Now you know exactly why she lied for four months after D-Day. She was trying to avoid worse trouble, and had the mistaken belief she was protecting your feelings by failing to reveal the full extent of the affair.

Now what are you going to DO with this knowledge?


A last question or two, to ask yourself and share with your wife: is there any other woman in your life right now meeting ANY of your intimate emotional needs? Intimate conversation, affection, recreational companionship, or sexual fulfillment? Do you watch pornography or masturbate?

If the answer to any of those questions is "yes", then part of the reason you're so in withdrawal from your wife isn't what she did. It's what you are doing. That other person or image on the screen is meeting some of your intimate emotional needs, and creating "contrast effect", making your wife look much worse in comparison. Every sexual experience in your life -- even the ones you think are secret -- must be shared with your wife in order to eliminate this contrast effect. And if you're confiding in any other woman, or receiving affection from anyone outside your home, or spending a lot of time hanging out with a woman other than your wife, that's what's deep-sixing your chances of recovery right now.

Not evil post affair. Fearful from D day on.

Fear that you won�t be able to handle the truth

Fear that you will leave once you have the truth

Fear that the pain you are now feeling will reach levels that you will not be able to handle once the truth comes out

Fear and embarrassment WW will have to acknowledge out loud what she did to her BH is totally different to admit this to herself.

Your story is not unique
You had a WW
WW has been to scared to tell the whole truth so you had multiple D days

What you are part of is just a run of the mill affair.

You don�t want to call the Harley�s because you know they will see through you and the pity party you are throwing yourself.

Broken,

I know you fought for you marriage, your W says so as well. I know she lied that is what WS' do. You asked The answer is NO ONE would want a WS in their life.

The issues people are bringing up are the following: Is your W still a WS? Is your W capable of learning and growing? ARe you capable of forgiveness? Is she capable of forgiveness? Are you able to learn and grow?

Broken, I have been on this site a long long time. I will tell you that some of the BS's that have come here and some of the WS's that have posted here, could not answer yes to any of those questions and the BS was well advised to leave.

I will also tell you that many WS' that come here are in fact sincere, motivated, and actually do love their BS. They lost the path and frankly did not have the coping skills to deal with the situation as they saw it. When they get here and start reading about needs, love busters, the need for communications etc, and their BS also sees these things, many times very successful marriages are created. You could argue and rightfully so, that WS' that come here are already preselected by their willingness to learn and grow, thus they are more likely to become good spouses.

You have heard from a few of them, there are many many more that have come through here in the last 11 years that I have been here.

You have every right to leave her. Every right in the world. But the issue is could you find a person as dedicated to you as she now appears to be??? Could your kids do as well if you leave, but most importantly could you be the husband your W needs and the father your children need if you stay?

I think you can, but clearly the decision is not mine.

Broken I know I have been, shall we say, stern with you. YOu might call it something else. But, here is the point, people fail, if they continually fail you get rid of them. If they fail and learn, you have even a better person.

I do research and I tell my Post-doc's if they are not wrong they are not pushing hard enough. If they stay wrong, they will be fired.

Broken people are not judged by how perfect they are, they are judged how they overcome their failures and imperfections. We all have them.

You have decisions to make, and certainly not an easy one because you cannot foretell the future, neither can I. But, I would ask you to revisit that list of questions I asked you. I think they will help guide you.

One last thought, if you think the best you can get is the marriage you had, then you should call it quits. Your W wasn't and won't be happy, and you won't be happy. Most of us think your marriage can be far better and thus rewarding to you and to your W. It comes back to "Are you willing to learn and grow?"

God Bless,

JL

Dr. Harley goes so far as to say that if your marriage isn't better than it ever was within two years after an affair, the chances are slim that the marriage will survive. It MUST be better than it was, or else you're likely to encounter similar problems!

Hi broken ~

I haven't posted to you yet but I have posted on you W's thread a good few times. I figured I should read up on your thread too so that maybe I can get a better idea of what's going on and who knows ~ maybe I can help.

<FTR, I read all of your posts, thankfully you are a man of few words, LOL ~ I haven't read every other post on your thread, however, so if I repeat myself, forgive me. >

I have a suggestion for you, let me know what you think. You state over and over that you aren't willing to do any "real work" to recover the M since you don't know IF you want to recover it.

How about this: what harm would it to to put your all into recovery and if things STILL don't better, to call it quits then?

WHAT "if" ~ you end up with the M of your dreams, your W keeps all of the promises she is currently making, and you become married to your best friend? What "if" your beautiful DDs don't have to come from a broken home? What "if" you are the hero of your family and you work to recover from the worst trauma a person can go through?

You could always put your all into recovery, broken...and change your mind later. You would still have the "get out of M free due to an A" card.

In another post I am going to expand.

broken, reading your W's thread, her descriptions of you are reminding me so much of me. We too, went through a FR. My FWH then proceeded to have more weak boundaries concerning women; b*tch and complain about giving up IBs, using POJA, mope and complain about using MB in general. We've had a VERY ROUGH recovery. I have documented PTSD from all we've been through.

However, and I know I am not going to do our M justice in this explanation, and we aren't even fully healed yet but...our M is truly wonderful now, I am married to my best friend and I am in love with him. Our children still have an intact family. We spend all of our free time together because we WANT to.

We follow all of the MB concepts. After YEARS of begging him to help me recover, and his final serious boundary violation, I was probably worse off than you are now. I was so disgusted and finished with him I wasn't even posting here, nor on another board we are on together. He repulsed me and while no one could blame me, I was still encouraged to give it one more shot.

I am so happy I did. I let him lead recovery at that point but I did not fight it. I agreed to the UA time he set up every week, I did the MB lessons (we went to the MBW so we did the whole program with our coach and we have access to Dr. H; I highly recommend the DVD program).

It sounds like WPG is willing to do these things and WANTS to prove to you that she can be a wife you are proud to have. The question is, will you let her?

Why not try, broken? I know it's scary to be open and vulnerable to her again...I feel my PTSD creeping up just thinking about the anxiety you feel when thinking about that. But what if it's worth it?

Please think about this, broken. You can have a M better than ever but you have to do it. You cannot protect yourself forever. Right now the only vulnerability you need to invest in is TIME ~ UA time, RC time, conversation time. The only way you will ever know is to try it.

(((hugs)))

B2009,

One of the components in your recovery that is missing is that you have not told OMW.

I know that my recovery is on hold until I get to speak with OM. Still hunting him down.

God Bless
Gamma