Chicken. Bwack-bwack-bwack...lol.

This can be a nice conversation, really! "When you were a kid, what did you think marriage would be like? How about after you got your first girlfriend?"

"How did you see our life together playing out? Did you see a purpose for adding me to your life?"

These are better if you tell yours first, since you're the girl. "When I was a kid, I thought marriage was xyz because I saw *this couple* or *that* doing *whatever*, but after I dated so-and-so, who I thought I loved, I wondered if there was something I was missing that made *this couple* make it look so easy..."

If you're in a long habit of non-self-disclosure, this is tougher to smooth into. You could start belligerent if you want, lol. Say, "Ya know what? I'm not going to hold back anymore. I've been stuffing my feelings for a long time, and NO MORE! I absolutely HATE these drapes. How do you feel about putting up blinds?" Then slowly, over a few days, open up about other non-threatening topics before you drop MARRIAGE.

I know I can be a bit of a chicken when my feelings are on the line � hahah
Anyway, I did ask him about the marriage, just waiting for his response, which leave me waiting and testing my patience� In the meantime I did pull out some old files from when we were getting ready to marry and the ENQ that we completed right after we married, we did try this program in the beginning, just for fun, but I don�t think that we really give it a fair shot. In these documents I did find some interesting things about his idea of a marriage and at that time he said that marriage is being passionate about something. In addition, he said that the reason he wants to marry is because our relationship had a potential of growing into long term partnership, friendship, and love.

Just thinking biblical, I'd focus on the partnership aspect. Women created as helpers and all. He saw you as someone who could help him achieve his goals. Do you know what his goals are, are you helping? I may be getting way more biblical than you or he like...however, I don't think it is wrong for anyone to 1)have good honest goals and 2)have a helper.

Helping has been a big struggle in my M, mainly cause I didn't think he was having good goals. His head is turning slowly, but wow, it's a struggle, and it takes a team...not just me, sadly. So if you're like me and don't think your H has good goals (for him...and I go biblical...good Christian (following the teachings), good husband, good father, THEN everything else...ymmv) get ready for the long road of helper. Men who believe but think they don't need to be taught are difficult.

OK so its been a while still did not tell him about MB but in the meantime I found out that he has been using this call service for sex? OMG I am so ashamed! What do I do now? How do I tell him??

He should be ashamed.

1) snoop, data gather, expose.

2) get down to the SAA boards!

I am done snooping I want to start recovering and feeling better. Thank you!!
How do I get moved to SAA??

Click on the notify button and request that the mods move your thread.

Sorry it's turned out this way for you, XO.

What is the evidence you have?

xo13, that cannot happen unless he quits using the call service for sex and this all comes out. The first step is to confront him and demand that he stop committing adultery and commits to a program of recovery.

MoodyLaine, I did confront him� He said that he has sent the e-mails I have found but never used the service, which I am not certain I believe and I told him that. He said that nothing happened, but the e-mails said �I am a generous professional if provided with excellent professional service�.� And give out his contact information� I did find one e-mail that if he wanted to he could contact this individual, contact information and time was provided as well.
Once confronted, I did ask him how he wanted to handle. He said he was curious, which I am not sure what that really meant. He also said if I wanted to separate he could find a place and would move out. I said I didn�t want to separate, but I do want to fix our relationship, but will need his participation. I said that I wanted him to cancel all of these accounts and ensure that there is more transparency in our relationship. He deleted all of them before we even had a chance to get into a serious discussion about it and agreed to the terms. He was embarrassed, because I did make him sit with me as we verified that the accounts were cancelled.
He did apologize, but I told him that apology is not was I was really looking for. I also told him that I am sure that there are actions I have taken or lack of actions� that led him to feel the need to engage in such behavior, so I take responsibility for that, but that does not give him a right to do what he did. He basically repeated what I said and said that he has been very frustrated with us, and yes he has said these things, but there was not action that followed� he said that he would have left me if he did that had actual �sex� with someone else. I don�t believe him right now.
My defenses I totally up right now and every call he makes or takes, or every time he gets on that computer I wonder?!?!? I feel scared that I can�t trust him again, I think that is the strongest feeling right now.

Is he still doing the computer games? To me, and correct me if I'm wrong, I'd wonder if you embarrassed him, patronized him, made him feel like a child or that you insinuated that his computer gaming was immature? Do you think he is ashamed of it? That it's only for kids or 40-year old single men living in their mother's basements?

Just a thought, and I wonder what your perspective is and if you've subconsciously made him feel less "manly" for his computer pursuits.

I imagine that, in light of the escort service discovery, being nice is extremely difficult, but have you (in the past) taken an interest in what interests him? Where am I going with this...try to take an interest in the computer game stuff even if it's completely foreign to you. It would be to me, but it'd be worth a shot. Nothing to lose, everything to gain.

It'd surely count for UA time, and you never know what you'll learn of each other. I bet it would go a long way if you can do it in a non-patronizing and as genuinely as possible. Hard to do, I know.

Here's hoping that next Christmas will be a better one. Take care.

xo13, you did a great job in confronting him and asking for transparency. And you cannot trust him. It was too much trust that led to this in the first place. Instead of trust, set this up in a way that he CAN'T do it again. I would strongly suggest you put a keylogger on his computer [go get eblaster at spectorpro.com] and, if you can, download flexispy to his phone. Don't tell him about any of this, just keep a close eye on him.

All of those spy methods will help you trust him because you should not trust what he SAYS, only what you can independently verify.

I want to applaud you for your very adept handling of this situation. You have the RIGHT idea about protecting yourself. And PLEASE go get STD testing. If he has slept with anyone, you could have been exposed and not know it.

Thank you! I do have a key logger, not a very good one but it does the trick and on our phone we can activate a tracking device, which I do have to be very careful with because he could easily find out and turn it off without me even knowing. My plan is to not let my defenses down for a second, I can�t right now and I think he knows which not a good thing for me because he will be very careful, but we will see.
I just had a pap test, I wonder if they test for STD, need to call the doctor and find out.
Thank you again!

I don't think they do. I told my OB/GYN what was going on, and he ran extra tests. There are different tests for different STDs.

thanks... I will need to call them on Monday.

I think that your basic problem is that you do not really know how to talk with (notice I did not say TO) people, xo13, unless you feel that they are giving you something that benefits you. Along with that, you do not have much patience and your feelings get hurt in a melodramatically easy fashion if things do not go exactly the way you want them. If your husband does not react the way you want him to, or more precisely, as he �should� to your infrequent overtures, you feel �rejected� (a common theme in your thread) or you get angry (grrrr) when he doesn�t respond in an appropriate time frame (i.e. immediately, if not sooner). Take for example the thing about calling him at work; a simple thing, really, he has told you that he is very busy at work and cannot respond quickly, which has now turned into not at all. My wife does not call me at work, I phone home for a brief call when I get the opportunity in the morning. I would be willing to bet if you were to tell your husband that you would stop calling to check up on him he would be agreeable to calling you or texting you voluntarily when he has the time.

Your husband has been telling you for a long time what bothers him about your behavior and, even more importantly, has tried to work with you (counseling, etc), so he was engaged and willing to put effort into your marriage, but you do not seem to be willing to listen. Or if you do, you only give a half hearted effort which quickly ends when you feel �rejected� because he doesn�t react positively immediately. So how do you expect him to believe you when he sees that you are not really invested in making changes? So he�s given up, as evidenced by his wanting to play the game and sleep on the couch, as opposed to interacting with you which gets him nothing but criticism. You are upset with him because he does not give you enough affection and enough of his time, but you admit that you spend most of your time with your kids, which he complained about but you dismissed as �excuses�. You said that he has always made the effort to be a good stepfather to your kids and gave examples � but have you ever given him credit for doing so?

So now you find that he has availed himself of the services of Hertz Rent a Girl, or at least seriously contemplated doing so. And you are relieved, because it takes the focus off of you, he is now the bad guy, right? But he has been the bad guy for your whole relationship, has he not? Look back over your thread and find how many POSITIVE things you have said about your husband? Not many. And I question your answer when you were asked if you were rejecting your husband when it comes to SF, although I do wonder at this point just how hard he would try given what you�ve written here. And of course, the constant cheating accusations certainly didn�t help.

But the escort service is NOT the root cause of your problem, just a deplorable decision made by your husband; the real problem is that your husband has one foot out the door, xo13, and it won't take much more for you to push him right out. A hardworking guy, who has tried to be a stepfather to your kids, with a hypercritical wife who has a flair for melodrama � and you ask what is in it for him in your marriage? You already know the answer to that, xo13, you have to ask yourself just how enjoyable it is to live with you?




And the kicker:


I guess it remains to be seen just how much you have listened. You really need to read the portions on this site about Plan A. You mentioned that you did the EQ - would love to see what your husband wrote.

This is how you talk to strangers who want to help you � can imagine how you talk to your husband:

Quote

MelodyLane... are you going to offer some advice or judge the quality of my post?

Really appreciate your honesty and there are some very honest good points in your post. Without a doubt I have not been treating my husband in a way that he deserves to be treated. I take full responsibility for that and want to change my behavior; however, I am not sure how that justifies his cheating. I can understand the gaming, sleeping on the couch, or whatever, but cheating?? That in my opinion is going too far, unless like you said he is on the verge of being done with the marriage, if I understood correctly.
I am trying and working on fixing my attitude/behavior. Thank you for your honesty, I really appreciated it no matter how hard it is to hear it.
Interesting that you bring up his EQ. I re-read it several times and each time I was reading it I was upset with myself for not taking the time in the beginning.

It doesn't, nothing justifies cheating, and I didn't infer that it did. You can't solve problems within your marriage by going outside of it; unfortunately he has not had much success solving problems within the boundaries of your marriage - so what potential solution does that leave him? Sometime soon it will hit him that it is just entirely too hard to be married to you, that the negatives FAR outweigh any perceived positives, unless you make a major effort to change how you treat him.

I guess you have made the first step, admitting that you need to make changes within yourself, but it is the follow through that's the tricky part.

N-O-T-H-I-N-G justifies infidelity. Ever. Infidelity does not justify infidelity.

It is, however, just one of the many endpoints which occurs when someone has "checked out" of the marriage.

Ok so when I confronted my husband last week about his less then noble activities, we both agreed to full transparency in our relationship. Now a week later and holidays finally behind us I would like to discuss with him how to achieve such transparency in our relationship? Suggestions and ideas are greatly appreciated.