I have moved here from the surviving an affair forum. I wasn't very popular there because I chose not to follow the MB method for ending the affair and used partial exposure that allowed WW to keep her job and avoid scandal at work and exposure to our children. I probably won't be popular here for the same reasons I wasn't popular there. I don't think my circumstance is typical. Most write that off as arrogance, but it is simply my desire to do the right thing. But writing these things down is theraputic for me, so just pass over this thread if you get frustated with people that don't immediately follow advice. But I have learned a lot from reading here and I think someday, someone in my circumstance might benefit. I have never felt such pain as I have the last month. It has helped to read from others that have felt the same.

After the limited exposure two weeks ago at the counselors office to WW and later that night to OM and OMS, I am optimistic that there will be no contact. But as I said in the other thread, my biggest fear was not lack of NC but that her reaction to exposure would be to leave both the affair and the marriage. That is exactly what I now fear will happen.

Following a week of walking on eggshells and avoiding the issue we had a date night where we had that good talk that brings issues out and seemed to be the kind of talk you need in recovery. The following day I asked "so you really do love me" and she said "of course, that was not the issue I never imagined leaving you for him". So I left town for a week of work with normal contact by phone and text. I returned with gifts and flowers and other LB deposits and WW seemed normal and liked the gifts and the expression of feelings they represented. But then, while actually removing keylogger on her laptop, I find a link to a lawyers web site. After checking her phone GPS log, I found she had visited a lawyer last Friday afternoon. I paced for an hour thinking what this could possible be and then at midnight went to her in bed and asked. It was clear from her stoned emotional response "I had to take care of my options" that she had seen him to discuss divorce. I lost it and cried and got physically sick. She didn't move or say a word other than she had planned to tell me in the MC session the next day and she was sorry I found out this way.

At the MC office, she rejected my suggestion that divorce was an overreaction and typical of the lingering "fog" of the affair. She said the affair is part of a pattern in our marraige caused by her lack of love for me and divorce should have happened before and must happen now or we will just be here again in the future. But before we left the MC convinced her to consider separation first and that's where I am today. By tonight, I have to leave and give her space to consider if she wants to make that call to her lawyer and file the papers she said she already signed.

As I will explain in the next post, I believe it is more important for our recovery for me to be non-confrontational and listen to "her voice" and do what she asks more than try and change her mind. So after writing this, I have to find a place to live and a source of hope that this will be part of our recovery process. I don't really think I have a choice because she said her heart is stone at this point so she is only making decisions with her mind about what she wants without any real feelings of compassion for others. She says she no longer is capable of crying for anyone. She also said I should not consider the separation if i had expectations that things would change. She said she might make that call any time regardless of my agreement to separation.

So. She's leaving you for the OM.

So here I will explain the reason for the title of this forum. How do you recover the love in a marriage that never had the love that marriage should have? Ours is a story of two souls unloved at home and screwed up long before we met. We are the classic codependents looking for love from each other we never had for ourselves to begin with. We've encountered the conquences of this issue several times in our 28 year marriage, but each time we made it through with therapy and gained a better understanding of our issues, only to repeat the pattern again. This affair is the most recent crisis. WW sees it as a sign there can be no fix and the only sane thing to do is divorce and live alone. She is not interested in recovery.

But I think we are still better together than apart. I will explain this using my WW as the example but it holds true for me as well. Despite being beautiful and intelligent and caring, WW grew up in an alcoholic family where she never felt loved and never felt good enough. So she is really never happy and often depressed. Early in our marriage this drove me nuts because I was ignorant about these issues and saw it as "I'm never good enough for you" and I got frustrated that she was never happy no matter how hard I tried. So early on, my angry reactions to her unhappiness caused more unhappiness and she tried a few times to end the marriage, once by a previous affair. But after counseling and kids maturing and issues better understood, I thought we had turned the corner. I understood her and accepted I was never going to get anything more than the small amount of love she might have left over for others after first using most of it to take care of loving herself. That's my codependence. But I felt that was a source of reason to be together and that eventually the pattern would reverse and good marriage times would help individual self-esteem and the same spiral that took us down could take us up.

But therapy was tough for each of us and we resisted dealing with those core family issues from our childhood and stopped therapy too soon once friendship and fun and intamacy returned to our relationship. The affair has created a new crisis, but for the recovery to be successful long term, it is clear to me we have to get at the root self-love issue before the other-love issue.

So that's why she is seriously contemplating divorce and why our recovery is not going to be typical. I think we need separation and the space and time and return to therapy to remind oursleves this is not the fault of me or the marriage. The marriage is just the catalyst that brings it to the surface. As shawshank redemption taught us, "salvation lies within" and we need that self-love and acceptance first and need to keep working at our deamons before we can work at sharing a life.

As she said, it is not a marriage when you constantly feel you are not meeting the others needs. But in our case, we may simply not be healthy enough even at our age to have the ability or energy to meet others needs after meeting or masking our own. So we need to recover something we never had . . . or continue to lose it once we get close to having it.

It sounds to me like you've been listening to the Fog too long.

Every wayward claims that the love isn't there, that it never was and it was all wrong from the start.

It's part of the script.

The two of you married. You had something once.

You can have it again.

STOP listening to the Fog.

Let's stay away from concerns over popularity, pls, because it's not about that at all. Any negative comments you received on the SAA forum were made out of the frustration that other posters felt while they watched your cafeteria-style approach to exposing your WW's A.

No one says MB's approach to killing an A and recovery works for everyone. No one says every marriage will be saved, or is even salvageable, or that matter. Sometimes the best outcome for everyone involved is the end the marriage.

But when we see someone who wants to save the M come here for advice and then start picking and choosing and relying on Plan Hope, we just cringe and hope it works for them. It often, often does not. Enough that we cringe when we see it coming.

FWIW, I still think your M is salvageable. But I suspect it won't end well for you the way you're headed. I do wish you luck, though.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. She's not interested in marrying OM and he's not interested in leaving his BW, but these two will remain together. Kinda like Jackie O and Maurice Tempelsman.

I'm not going to 2x4 you here, but I'll ask you "what is your plan?" The beauty of MB is that it is a PLAN, a plan for ending A's and eventually R your M. You obviously chose not to follow the plan, and now you are feeling the repercussions of that.

Separation in just an excuse for her to continue to have sex with another man. She will not be working on herself or contemplating her M at all. She will just be thinking about how much easier it is now to have sex with OM. Be a man and tell her if she wants to separate, make HER leave. She's probably thrilled right now that soon she will be able to bang OM in your bed, in your home. Why on earth would you make it all comfy and cozy for her to continue her A? Unbelievable.

If you want to save your M, you must blow this A out of the water. That means exposure to everyone. Now.

You cannot even begin to think about R while she is still involved in an A. You are not even close to that point right now. Go back to the SAA forum and listen to the advice, or continue to be a doormat and enjoy your upcoming S and then D soon after.

If you understand codependence you will understand me when I say "if I thought divorcing me and returning to the OM, would make WW happy, that would make me happy!". But she and I both know that would not be the case and is why that issue quickly left the table.

Our issue is this: Every time our marriage gets stronger and our intimacy gets stronger, our fear of abandoment causes us not to trust the intimacy and the reaction to that fear is to withdraw from the intimacy. That behavior is not normal nor healthy, but it is not our choice, it is the personalities our damaged childhoods created. If you don't think you are good enough, you are vulnerable to people who do tell you that. In our case, hearing it from me is never enough because of past history where she heard differently while I struggled with understanding her lack of happiness. Hearing it from someone new is attractive and addictive and caused the affair. But she is aware enought to know it would only be temporary and is probably why she chose someone distant and unavailable.

So can we just play what if and help me and others like me with the real issue. How do we see another failure as a learning opportunity instead of another commitment to fail again?

Codependence can be addressed and treated, as can many disorders.

The first step in recovery is identifying the problem. The second step is asking for help.

It seems you have already done the first.

Doing the second is difficult, but not impossible.

This isn't the site to address mental health issues.

Codependence is the other side of addiction. You'll read here that no help can be given to recover and rebuild marriages until the addiction is addressed. Address your codependence issues and I think it's likely you'll find a lot of your marital problems will have "mysteriously" disappeared!

Pls, you seem to think you're talking to a bunch of Pollyannas who never left the farm. And you can't be more mistaken.

Welcome to the world of the dysfunctional childhood family. I grew up in poverty. Was emotionally abused. Sexually abused. Physically abused. Had a birth father who refused to recognize me (ouch.) Wore my brother's clothes to school. Had the church bring our family food on holidays. Had an alcoholic father and an enabling mother. Watched my drunken father pointing a gun at my mother when I was ten.

You want to hear some more? Because there is more. My H, OTOH, had one of the cushiest lifestyles you could want as a child. Ozzie and Harriet incarnate. Guess who had the affair?

And that's just ME. Others here can tell you similar stories of a childhood that sucked.

Navel-gazing and relying on psychobabble to remove the option of effort to build a great marriage will get you - a failed marriage. 'Fear of abandonment' is a handy little phrase that people use to attempt to justify something that isn't there.

Either you're in or you're out when it comes to recovering and building a marriage. Childhood episodes are a distraction to that effort and serve to derail recovery while 'important examinations' of events 20, 30, 40 years ago are placed high on the importance scale.

That will not serve you.

Your WW had her affair because she has poor boundaries and was given the opportunity to have needs met that you were neglecting or were unaware of. Meeting each other's needs is where the rebuilding begins. Not that she got passed over for volleyball when she was 11.

You follow the basic concepts and articles on this forum. The plan to create romantic love works whether you ever had romantic love or not, because this is how romantic love is created.

Personally, I think it's great you are already looking into this issue.

Be aware though that the plan doesn't work unless followed. And while the plan works regardless of your past or current "issues," meaning you don't have to pay through the nose for counseling that goes on for years teaching you navel-gazing and psychobabble before you even get started, the plan won't work if you have issues that prevent you from following the plan, such as abuse or addiction. And an affair is an example of a powerful addiction.

Every trip to the bar to stare at drinks sets recovery back and keeps the addiction current. KWIM?

I agree and was actually thinking about it before you posted - this is not the place for dealing with the codependency issues - and I will need to do other things to deal with that. But I am serious about ending the A and R the M. So serious, I don't want to screw it up by solving an easier problem rather than dealing with the root. That's why I posted the status because 15 years ago, I solved the easier problem or became complacent that the tougher problem was solved which is why I'm here and maybe someone else will learn from that mistake.

It's the same place, dude. It's all one forum.

Why did you post this here in "Recovery" Do you actually think you are in recovery? You still should be on your other thread in "Surviving an Affair" There is no recovery in your posts that I can see.

It does not surprise me that your WW now wants a D and wants you out? Why on earth would you be the one tomove out? Don't do that. It will not serve you well regardless of whether or not you recover your marriage. I can not stress this enough. DON'T MOVE OUT AND EXPOSE THIS NOW.

On the contrary, this is an excellent place for dealing with your codependency issues.

The first thing you do is try to work this program. Seriously.

Right now codependency is just a label for your excuse not to work the program as given.

I read your post above where you mentioned codependency and personally I felt like step one to overcoming codependency was screaming out at me like a sore thumb: stop enabling your wife's affair. You're doing it, bud. You can stop doing it. Whether you call it "codependency" or not, here's the steps to follow, and if you follow them you will maximize your chances of ending that affair. If you don't follow them, calling it "codependency" might make you feel better, I guess. But your excuse seems kinda fluid and vague and changing. One minute it's because you think contact at work is okay, now it's because you're codependent. Face up to the real problem, bud: you don't want to do these things that people are suggesting you do. You don't want to follow the advice you've been given, the advice you came here looking for, the advice that has saved an awful lot of marriages before you ever came along.

In my post I listed two reasons that cause people not to work the plan. One was addiction and one was abuse. Which one of those was codependency? Neither. Codependency is not keeping you from working the program. You won't work the problem because you don't want to work the program.

Addiction will keep people from being able to work the program.

An affair is an addiction.

Got it?

Man up and take care of that problem, and you will be "codependent" no more.

I may be way off base. If so, I know I'll be corrected.

Right there is why you are separated and getting a divorce because YOU DID NOT follow the MB plan. If you still do not want to follow the MB plan then please do yourself a favor and file for a divorce.

But if you do want to follow the MB plan then do exactly what we told you to do 2 weeks ago.

But don't come here and refuse to not work MB because you will get NO sympathy from anyone WHY?

BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T LISTEN!

Sorry for harsh words I am very blunt and tell you exactly what I think.

Good luck.

The problem is not "co-dependence," but rather conflict avoidance and enabling. "Co-dependence" is just an excuse to not lift a finger to save your marriage.

Dr Harley called this one right when he said "it's hard to save a marriage when you become an enabler." radio clip here

PNA, Your wife has had two affairs through your marriage, and now she wants a divorce. I know you are a bright guy, I am guessing economics professor? And you think you had this beat. You do not, its circling the drain.

If you are going to ever take advice, take Mels. She seen more and read more than every marriage counsellor in your town combined.

What you are doing is failing badly and you are running out of time. I think its time you started listening to Mel. Pronto. Your marriage is screwed, you have nothing to lose. If she tells you to stand on your head and sing the national anthem, you should do it.

I am new but I have been around enough to know the score. Its not hard for an outsider to see where this is going.

BTW real glad you're back. Now listen up.

I am listening Mel but the old therapist was absolutely correct. WW bolted and went right to D to flee. She said she would have done it without hesitation if I had turned this into a public university scandal. I fear separation but having agreed to it I don't see how turning to exposure now does anything but make me look crazy and uncommitted to our current mc plan. I bought her Saa book but she read just a portion and said those people are crazy . . . Who would want to reconcile with someone that ended your career without coming to you first. Believe me her affair is over!!!! We are dealing with what now and me coming down with demands is just going to make that phone call and it's over.
It's not enabling. It's surviving another day. We cuddled all night. She even kissed me and thanked me for taking her out. But today is move out day by 6 so my only plan was to ask her to talk about postponing separation and trying Saa plans first in addition to counseling?? She might but she is really not afraid of D or exposure. She is comfortable in the role of victim either way.

I am desperate for advice that works but it has to be relevant to the people and history and not just the formula that attracts people to this site

edited to add: btw, separation for about two months was part of the first affair recovery (20 years ago) so there is some history in her and my mind that it can be successful.