I have had each and every single one of those thoughts... I just never made my escape to do so. That's not a bad thing.

I do have to agree that; he can't stay away, and he can't keep it NSA - in fact, I'm guessing it actually takes effort for him to carry on as he has.

Unfortunately, I have nothing to back that up.

You're leaving out an important peice of information....... You're BH became a wayward during this time...... You're Plan B was to deal with HIS active adultery. Your situation is VERY different than WPG's! WPG's H is not a wayward, he's in pain!


I don't necessarily disagree with your premise. I will point out however, that WPG agreed to this in the begining. And, YES, she has every right to change her mind!
This is why I encouraged HONESTY.
Transparency & O&H communication MUST exist for healing to begin for both.


Again, Steve knew you were dealing with an OW (multiple OW's)in the picture!


Harmony, you have a great deal of insight in many of your posts, and please know I'm not trying to discount you, but I don't think the comparison to your own situation (use of Plan B) applies here....

Editing this post because Dr. H clarified and I don't want to confuse anyone with contradictory advise.

Editing this one as well for the same reasons.

I understand your point, but nearly all marriages are dealing with Love Busters on a regular basis.
WPG can stop this drain on her bank with HONESTY and by not participating in SF until her H agrees to move home..... It doesn't take a dramatic, stressfull action like Plan B to stop this drain on her love bank.... It's not like an active affair is going on here, or drunken behavior of some kind....


Plan B was designed to end active affairs!

It is NOT a concern unless she continues to be DISHONEST! Unless she continues with the NSA and "pretends" it's OK.

Why would her BH want her back if she still can't be honest with him. Do you want your FWH to keep secrets from you, or do you NEED complete openness & honesty?

Her dishonesty led to her affair to begin with! This vicious cycle of withholding truth, because of fear or because he may not want her again, must stop, before her BH has no love left for her.

WPG trickle truthed her way into the dilema she now faces..... Are we suggesting MORE trickle truth is the way to genuinely persuade him to come back to the marriage?

{{{{WPG}}}}..... Please know I'm NOT beating you up!
I want to see success in your life and in your marriage.

Harmony2010:

I'm not sure who you are as I can't remember your being on our program, but if you are who I think you are, your husband was having multiple affairs after you had yours. The advice given to you to go into Plan B was to protect you from your husband's affairs. Since WPGs husband is not having an affair, and is grieving from the shock of discovering her affair, our advice is to press forward with Plan A as long as possible. Of course, if Plan A really does become unbearable for her, separation is a possibility, but it's likely to lead to a divorce. But with support from those who are encouraging her to save her marriage, she may be able to get through this tragedy. By the way, I'm not sure I know what a "Mocha" Plan B looks like. Plan B is not seeing or talking to a spouse. Granted, a letter explaining the conditions required for a return is part of that, but beyond that one letter there should be no contact. Anything short of that is Plan C, which doesn't work in protecting a spouse from the damaging effects of an abusive or unfaithful spouse. If I'm wrong about any of my assumptions, please correct me.

Best wishes,
Dr. Harley

Thanks for the clarification Dr. Harley!

MarriedForever:

I do agree with your comment about avoiding SF if it's making massive Love Bank withdrawals. Plan A should not cause Love Bank withdrawals because the way you meet each other's emotional needs should be mutually enjoyable. The withdrawals in Plan A should come exclusively from the fallout from an ongoing affair.

Best wishes,
Willard F. Harley, Jr.

Hi! WPG,

It's been a while since I've posted in your thread, but I still read it to learn from it.

I wanted to remind you about something that you wrote back on 12/31/2010. It was a letter that you sent to your DH.

Quote:


Good morning, sweetheart.

We miss you. I miss you.

I know it feels like we will never get through this. But my promise to you is that I will do everything that I can to be a good wife to you, to give you what you need. Dr. Harley says that typical recovery takes 2 years. We have not yet reached a year from full disclosure. I am the one who not only broke our marriage, I broke our initial recovery. If you can find it in your heart to give me the whole two years, and if this time next year our marriage is no better, then I will be willing to discuss separation. I promise during this year that I will do all that I can to help us recover. This can be a better year for us - I promise you that.

I've learned so much about how to meet your needs, how to be a respectful wife, how to care for you. Please give me a chance to continue to prove that to you.

All I want is that chance. I want to be your wife. I want to raise our children together.

You are the strongest, most incredible man I know. You have shown that to me over and over again, not just over the last year, but throughout our lives together.

I know that the words I say are nearly impossible for you to believe. That is my fault. I can't change the past, but I can - I have - changed myself, and I will continue to grow and become the wife to you God calls me to be. Together we can build a new marriage, one that gives both of us what we need and want. I am committed to doing that and I am committed to carrying the weight of recovery for as long as it takes.

You asked me not to give up on you. You have said it is because of what I am doing that you have stayed. You also asked me to remind you of the words you wrote to me - the card that I still carry in my purse - when things get bad.

I promised you then that I would not give up. Please come home. Let me show you how hard I can fight for us. Together we can do anything. Give me 2011. Let's do this together.

I love you. I will always love you. I will never give up on you.


So what happened WPG? It's only Feb 5th, and you're asking if you should go to Plan B? At least you clearly know the answer to that one already.


Like everybody has told you more than once, and I repeat: You have to loose the expectations. You still haven't, it takes time, and we never get to be perfect at it, but if you try hard you'll be able to do it.

Your H is having a hard time, and you have to be there for him. Be grateful that he's letting YOU fill his SF need. Instead of thinking that he's using you, see it as an opportunity to get closer to him. Next time, go to Victoria's Secret and get a sexy outfit, and wait for him. You are his wife, use whatever you have available to meet his probably #1 need!!!!!! IMHO, the problem I see, is that you're expecting him to stay home after the sex is over, or to be affectionate. But then again, that's why you have to drop all expectations. Start retraining your mind to see the SF as an opportunity to get him back!!!!

And don't even talk about depleted love banks, YOU know that it can be refilled. That's what MB is all about, right?. Just don't loose the focus. I mean, my LBank is in negative and sometimes I even hate my DH, but I know what WE(DH and me) have to do to fill our LBanks back, so I don't even care about it. But we have to be patient, we have to give them time to heal.

You know what I think is really abusive(since somebody mentioned that your DH was abusing you), to ask a BH to do a Plan A to a WS, that's torture and truly abusive. So you see, we actually got it pretty easy, in comparison to what BS's have to go through. It doesn't matter if your DH did or didn't do a Plan A, I'm just saying, if there are BS who have done it and have been able to recover, WE can do it too.

Relax, one day at a time. YOU CAN control how you react to your DH's actions, YOU really CAN. Turn then into positive actions. You can't give up just yet, not that easy. You are the one who knows that staying married is the best thing that you can do for all of you, so don't make it easy for him to go away. Not all days are going to be good days, but you just keep adding positive things slowly but steady. Don't worry if what you did was OK or not, we are learning, this is a long process, so take it easy on yourself. You know, we're only HUMAS!

So YOU keep fighting.... Read your letter again, and again, and again!!!!

Take care, and Good Night!!!!

Hi Dr Harley

Yes you are correct in who you think I am. I have counselled with Steve for about 6 months now.

Thanks for clearing that point up, i just want the best for WPG, and am always keen to express that I am new round here and would not want to hamper anyones progress!!!

Harmony.

ABSOLUTELY!

Great post Rizos!

Good to know!

Great post, ITA.

I'm going to go back and edit my other posts since I was offbase. I don't want to confuse anyone else.

tst and MarriedForever,

Thanks. I'm trying to learn from you guys. Both of you are great 'posters'!!!! I don't post frequently to avoid messing up somebody else life. Thank God for people like you guys who keep us on the right track. Thanks a lot for your help. WPG's thread helps me keep focus on my own personal target....

Sorry...I needed a break for a while. I appreciate everyone weighing in. Thank you, Rizos, for reminding me of my own words. It's just so hard to keep fighting when every day he seems to slip away more and more. Knowing I'm to blame for it all. Knowing it's my fault I have to hold my littlest one at night when she cries because she misses her daddy. I mean, if this is it - if he never comes back to me, if he never gives me another chance, how will I stop beating myself up for ruining so many lives? I can't stop beating myself up now, even though people tell me to have hope, even though I know it's not productive to waste time beating myself up. I can't imagine how I'll be when - if - the D is final and there's no hope left.

I try to be upbeat and positive when I see him, look nice, smell nice, the whole nine...but I only see him about once a week. I send him cards and gifts. I'm trying to take care of the house and the kids and everything else. I guess I really don't know what else there is to do as part of a Plan A. The fact of the matter seems to be that if he has made up his mind, there truly is nothing I can do. It doesn't matter that divorce is not what I want, because I gave him the "get out of marriage free" card that he's playing right now. As Dr. H said, he has to choose me. I can no more "make" him do that than I can make the stars fall from the sky. I can hope. I can pray. That's what I got.

I was honest with him about the NSA SF. I told him I just couldn't approach it as sex only, nothing else. That it hurts because I want more than NSA with him. But I can no more resist him than, maybe, as some here have suggested, than he can resist me. D@mn it all, I want him. I can't stop myself. Despite how much it hurts I can't stop wanting him. Despite family and well-meaning friends who try to remind me of how "unhappy" I was in our M, I still want him. If he wants me, I'm pulled to him like a magnet.

And you're right, all of you. The pain I'm feeling is nothing compared to what I inflicted on him. And that is all tied in with what I am feeling, that I am in pain, but I caused it and I deserve it. And when I confide in people (trust me, no guy friends, just my family and my best girlfriends!), then they tell me no, I don't deserve it. That I didn't deserve how he treated me for years. But neglect and not having my top EN's met - even what these well-meaning folks tell me now was more like borderline emotional abuse - well, none of that justifies what I did to him. So I'm stuck. There are days I don't know how I'm supposed to feel. There are days I feel absolutely nothing, days I have no desire to get out of bed, or times after the kids have gone to sleep that I sit on the couch and don't do anything but sit in the silence, not having the energy or desire to do anything at all, even turning on the TV.

While there might be some things happening that I could view as tentative glimpses of hope, there are just as many things happening that have that air of finality about them.

So I'm keeping my side of the street as clean as possible. I still adhere to EP's, no desire to contact POSOM (I don't think about him, either - other than, I have to admit, a wish that crosses my mind every once in a while that he was suffering and living with as much pain and turmoil in his life as H and I - even though I know he's not the only one to blame for what happened, even though I know that hate is not something I need to waste energy on), no desire for any other male, for that matter. Staying off FB. I still go home for lunch unless I work straight through it. Definitely not going out partying on my weekends without the kids.

I'm trying to put myself together again. I don't always know how to do it, or what to do. I know regardless of what happens, I still have to put myself back together again, for my girls.

Just...thanks for helping to keep me going.

Nothing new to add...I just miss my husband. I've never wanted anything as much as I wish I could go back in time. I wake up every morning, the nights I can actually sleep, wishing it was all a bad dream. If you're reading this, broken2009, I love you. I miss you.



I will be the answer
At the end of the line
I will be there for you
While you take the time
In the burning of uncertainty
I will be your solid ground
I will hold the balance
If you can't look down

If it takes my whole life
I won't break, I won't bend
It will all be worth it
Worth it in the end
Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
When the stars have all gone out
You'll still be burning so bright

Cast me gently
Into morning
For the night has been unkind
Take me to a
Place so holy
That I can wash this from my mind
The memory of choosing not to fight

If it takes my whole life
I won't break, I won't bend
It will all be worth it
Worth it in the end
'Cause I can only tell you what I know
That I need you in my life
When the stars have all burned out
You'll still be burning so bright

Cast me gently
Into morning
For the night has been unkind

WPG:

You may have caused all this pain.

Your H is making choices. His pain is his to deal with.

You can make choices. Choosing to not engage in NSA SF with him is a healthly choice. I personally could NEVER have NSA SF with my spouse. Even at the worst points of our marriage did I EVER feel that I just TOOK.

If he was a bad husband for years, No, it wasn't an excuse for your affair. It can be the reason for your divorce however.

He can make a choiceto be married. Or something else.

You can too. Marriage is fragile, and extraordinarily difficult.

This one may be irretreivably broken. He wants the benefits, (NSA SF) but not the costs. (That you may like to be treated than more than a piece of meat.)

If the family was important to him, if the M was important to him, he would make the choice to fix it. Maybe he can't. And that is cool.

Who cares if it is all your fault. Who cares? If knowing it is going to be your fault is what is preventing you from making healthly choices, then you have GOT to start accepting fault. Accept it, decide what it takes to move away from it, and then start doing what you need to do.

If that is divorce, then so be it. Will it be tough on your kids? Sure. But this sitch is tough too. And can continue for many years.

Don't worry about the fault. Just worry about what needs to be done.

His pain is his. He will find a way to deal with it. You have decided to do something about your pain by trying to do things differently than you have in the past. That is to your credit.

He is standing by the side of the highway, without even putting up the effort to stick out a thumb.

Sorry about the pain you created. Time to get up from that pain, and move forward. This TO, shall PASS.

LG

Not even during your 4.5-year, deeply intimate affair, LG? You don't feel that were just taking from your wife then?

What do you feel that you were giving her?

Let me know if you'd rather I started this question on a new thread, LG or WPG.