Did you want some help saving your marriage? I don't see a question here.

Lunia, as my WW did, your spouse will re-write history and tell the OW how bad your relationship has been, and how bad you mistreated him. Wayward spouses, if they have any character and morals at all, must justify the affair somehow. And it's usually through a re-writing of your history. They share the same fog talk, until they are convinced they would be better off together.

But you hold alot of power, through your shared history and kids.....something the OW does not have. If you were worth nothing, your husband would already be gone. He is an addict plain and simple. It is very, very powerful, and good judgement goes right out the window for those having an A.

This may sound painful, but you should act right now! Make his life miserable, particularly during the holidays. Let everyone know why daddy isn't around for Christmas. Affairs have a hard time surviving out in the open, because it's not a comfortable place anymore.

I wouldn't delay even one more day.

Plan A, ie: the carrot and the stick" is only supposed to last about 3 to 4 weeks. After Plan A, Plan B is the next logical step which is a complete and total DARK separation where you do not allow the WS through to you at all.

The reason this affair has dragged on is because you have unwittingly propped it up. It has lasted longer than it should because you filled in and met the needs the OW was not meeting, enabling him to have BOTH you and the OW. He has become accustomed to this arrangement because he has been so enabled. He has even less motivation NOW to end his affair.

See, the OW probably meets 1-2 top emotional needs and you meet 3-4 minor ones. When you remove yourself from the scene and refuse to make yourself available, the job of meeting those other EN's falls to her. An OP usually fails in that regard, which starts the beginning of the end in the affair. The affair becomes full of conflict. And when it becomes full of conflict, since they have a renters/freeloaders mentality, they start making demands and KEEPING SCORE. When the score is not settled the fights escalate. Fighting is like a snowball rolling down the hill. The more you fight, the more you FEEL like fighting. And this is what happens in affairs.

If you want your H back, your best strategy is to send him a nice Plan B letter today and change your locks. Tell your children you won't be speaking to your H for some time. Not until he ends his affair once and for all.

Prepare for your H to try to get through by making all manner of promises for the "future" in order to get his status quo back of you BOTH. It will be meaningless so you can't pay it any mind. I would keep him for several months while the affair crumbles and only let him come back when he has a proposal that ENSURES there won't be a repeat.

Otherwise, you are just propping up this affair.

I have a plan B link I will come back with. For now, learn as much as you can about Plan B and start getting your ducks lined in a row.

And another thing I learned through my experience: your spouse (like many people) do not find "pushovers" particularly attractive. Conversely, a strong, confident, and loving person is highly desirable to most everyone. Stand up. Stand proud. And refuse to be a doormat for your husband. And especially don't let him come anywhere near your bed! Waywards find a sick satisfaction having sex with a spouse and a lover at the same time. You are helping him satisfy his sick addiction.

Time for tough love.....take a deep breath and put plan B into action.

I agree about getting this Plan B going ASAP. You have been enabling his cake-eating for too long....

Bad idea to wait. Actually there is no better time in the year to go into Plan B than just before the holidays. That gives the OP a taste of what divorce will be like. The timing is IDEAL to shut him down now. He will have to spend his Christmas with a strange family without his own loving family.

As far as splitting finances, this can be done by including in your letter that you expect him to continue supporting you and the kids while he takes over all of his credit card debt. Additionally, I would stipulate that your children are NEVER to be exposed to his filthy affair partner. That is very damaging to kids to be exposed to adultery. For visitation, he can pick up the kids in the drive way and take them to a hotel, etc. But, he should not ever be allowed in the house.

I would get the book Surviving an Affair by Dr Harley asap because it will help you understand the dynamics we speak of.

Here is the plan B letter from Surviving an Affair.I would deliver this to the OW's house and give her a copy with your note on it that says: Dear Skankyhola, I love WS with all my heart and am willing to do whatever it takes to make him happy. I will wait for him to give me that chance.

My Dear Sue,
I apologize to you for my part in creating an environment that helped make your affair with Greg possible. I foolishly pursued my career without understanding my responsibility to meet your most important emotional needs. I was not there for you when you needed me most, and we are now both suffering for my mistake.

I am willing to avoid the mistakes I've made in the past and create a new life for both of us that meet your needs. But I cannot do that until you end your relationship with Greg once and for all.

Until then, I will avoid seeing you or talking to you. I will also not be able to help you financially. Our friends Jane and Paul have agreed to help make arrangements for you to visit the children whenever you would like. But I will not be here when you visit. If you want to communicate about the children or any other matter, it will have to be through Jane and Paul.

I ask you to respect my decision to separate from you this way. You must know about the suffering I have endured because of your relationship with Greg, and I simply cannot be with you any longer, knowing that you are with him. I still love you but I cannot see you under these conditions.

As soon as you are willing to permanently separate from Greg and are willing to follow the measures that were suggested to ensure total separation, I will be willing to discuss our future together.

I want us to be able to rebuild our marriage someday. I want us to be able to meet each other's emotional needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other. We need to build a new lifestyle in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never again be a reason for us to separate. I want to be your best friend, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you as my best friend.

I loved you when we married and I continue to love you right up to this day. I just cannot be with you or help you as long as you are seeing Greg.

With my love,
Jon

End this filthy affair and you'll still be the ones left married.

What I don't get, what's confusing everyone is that she's not pretty, she's older than me, she doesn't enjoy *any* of the same stuff we do, her kids hate him, she's almost a recluse with no friends, doesn't ever want to do anything unless he's taking her out to dinner. She *loves* spending his money, though. Waits on him hand and foot, gives him pedicures and is turning my good old boy (redneck) husband into a metrosexual.

I did the exposure thing, to all our mutual friends and they're all pissed at what he's doing. They keep telling him that it isn't that he's with someone else, it's that he's cheating. He's sooooo pissed that they know (IT'S OUR PRIVATE BUSINESS!!!!!!!) and that they're inviting me out with them and not him.

Great job on the exposure!! ... Dont worry about what he says! He will be mad ... he will say all sorts of things to throw you off. There is a thread about all the WW sayings .. and stuff they say while in FOG mode. They are aliens until they awake from their fantasy.

As for her not being pretty?? Well, you dont have ot be pretty to meet EN's .. I have read that many affair cases the WS will downgrade to feel better about themselves. Could be wrong tho. When your under the spell of getting your needs met in a fantasy world .. her looks dont matter. What matters to the WS is that the needs that are not being met at home .. are being met by someone else. So by doing plan B you are taking away the other needs he gets met with you and he will now have to resort to trying to get them all met with her. Which according to you, doesn't look like it will last that long anyhow if shes is how you say she is. He can NOT have his cake and eat it too.. and it is up to you to present that to him.

YOur doing great tho already! Exposure far and wide will ruin this affair pretty quick.

@Lunia2009 -

What is your plan to recover your marriage?

You've gotten lots of good advice here. Hopefully you change your plan from Plan Doormat.

You should know by now if you keep repeating the same actions you will keep getting the same outcomes. So how are you going to change your outcome to a recovered marriage?

Let me help you with this. One of your H's emotional needs is NOT Physical Attractiveness. There. However, he appears to have an EN for attention. Use this knowledge to your advantage.

He is an attention hound, constantly needs reassurance. We used to laugh about it.

His affair started just over a year after he lost his father to cancer and 2 months after he had a minor heart attack. I thought it was a midlife crisis. A year of research has made me realize it's not a crisis, it's just an affair.

One thing I have learned is that he doesn't want unconditional love. He lost 75lbs to be with OW. I used to tell him that I loved him no matter what, health problems, weight, whatever. That would piss him off. I wasn't until I started mentioning weight he's gained back or that he needs to not eat "this" or "that" that he started being more like the guy I married.

Another thing is how I look. He's a really jealous person, so I used to dress down all the time, made him more secure. After he left the first time, I put away all those clothes and bought new. Makeup, heels, the whole shebang. That was suggested in that book, Magic of Making Up, I think? The effect that had was he started kinda stalking me. One of my best friends put it the best way... he started peeing on me. When we go somewhere he always tells people, this is MY WIFE... instead of, this is xxxxx.

I can't start plan B until after Christmas, we're traveling to his grandmother's house and they just lost his grandfather last month, us separating is too much for his grandma and mom. I don't want anything unpleasant for them right now, so it will be a charade for their benefit. His mom thinks of me as the daughter she never had, the last separation had her hysterical for weeks. I'm not going to ruin Christmas, they need peace and love.

Another long post, sorry. I want to save my marriage, I just want to be sure it's for me and not for comfort. I've been feeling very used and abused and I'm starting to question that.

Lunia, I don't think I have ever met anyone LESS upset about her husband's adultery in my 10 years on this forum.

You have been abused on a level that is as traumatic as rape or physical assault and you calmly add that you have been "questioning" that.
How do you explain this odd flat affect?

It's probably a combination of things... but honestly, it's most likely that I hide behind words. The bigger the words, the more professional the sound, the better I feel. I write a LOT, at work, at home, stories and journals. The trash talk/freaking out is saved for my journals.

Don't misunderstand, when I first found out it was as if I was dying. I found out that heartbreak is a real physical pain, I couldn't eat, sleep or have a conversation without crying for about 2 months. I snapped out of the crying for the kids. They needed a mom, not a blubbering mess. Still not sleeping well, but I am eating at least once a day.

We've gone through this "stage" already. His justifications and accusations. A lot of those conversations had me slack jawed in shock. Stuff he "remembers" never happened, conveniently forgetting all the good times, all the times I'd taken care of yet another injury (he is very accident prone), making up slights, telling me I was being a [censored] when I wasn't. At the very beginning, he even made up abuse from childhood and said he has scars, not even considering that after nearly 19 yrs, I knew every inch of his body and I could tell him the story of each scar he has. He was listening to a LOT of break up/misery songs, and used to play them to me, and have a story for each one. The fog + him taking literal meaning from songs and making each one a memory of our marriage made it impossible to talk to him.

It's a little better now, when he tells me I'm being a [censored] or mean, I tell him to think about what I just said, he usually apologizes now, admits I'm not being nasty. Even when he tries to start arguments (I stop responding and hang up now) he calls back within 10 mins to apologize and admit I don't deserve his anger.

OW is Jewish, he's already spent Hanukkah with her and her kids. If we didn't already have plans to visit relatives, he wouldn't celebrate Christmas at all.

Also, from day 1, I've not allowed the kids to have anything to do with the OW. H asked DD14 ONCE to meet her, that made her cry, and I went off on him. I was very firm and told him there was NO WAY my kids would be around a woman that moved her boyfriend into her house with HER KIDS less than 3 weeks after they started dating. He hasn't asked since and even admitted that it's so easy to come to my house because he told her that I don't want my kids around her so he HAS to visit to see the kids.

Like I said, just before the holidays is the best time to go into Plan B. Spending Christmas without his family is a huge wake up call. It is the most IDEAL time of the year to go into Plan B.