At any point did I ever indicate that I did not take my life seriously enough to get married?

MB works if you follow the program. It's a great program and my marriage is better than it's ever been, and we're not following the program as well as we could because DH is out of town 4 days a week.

You can send an email to the Harley's and if they feature you on the radio show you get free books. I got my first copies of SAA, Love Busters, and HNHN from the local library.

Marriage is hard at times, and I think the biggest thing I've learned from MB that's made this *huge* impact on me is that sacrifice in marriage is bad and must not be done. That with the Policy of Joint Agreement, the Love Bank and Emotional Needs stuff, the Policy of Radical Honesty, and Dr Harley's excellent writing on Negotiating really helped us through some hard times.

Thankfully our hard times started over what to do with our ailing dog that decided eating cats was good. I learned a lot about us as a couple and us as people through that.

Good luck in making your marriage work.

ARe you married? If not, then you didn't take marriage seriously enough to GET MARRIED. That is my point. Folks here will be glad to help you, but many are not inclined to give this relationship a level of seriousness that you did not give it.

I think that was really targetted at me.

ML, I do know the marked difference between marriage and "shaking up". I married my high school sweetheart and we had a son. He died 2 years before I met WP.

Good, then you know it is not the same. That is a start.

Did your relationship begin as an affair on his part? I notice you mentioned in a later message that he went through a D.

His unwillingness to get M'd may have a lot to do with his D experience.

Hello Man,
I believe you're right in that his D experience is THE factor in his unwillingness to remarry. He said we would for so long, then changed his mind, but wanted to keep the family intact. No, the relationship did not start out that way. He was seperated but did not ask me out until later at what he thought was the end of his D process. As it turned out, when he was to receive the final orders she found out that he had moved on and renewed all kinds of crazy litigation - (ie he must have a hidden house in my name - I didn't even know him all that well at that time). Nothing came of her and her lawyers new efforts at discovery, except her $30,000 lawyer bill that he had to pay because she left her job. The rest of the story is fairly typical, she got the house, most of his retirement, alimony. My comment was made without really thinking, other than the fact that he refuses to tell me who OM is. I believe she works with him but he says not.

KC, why didn't you stop seeing him when you found out he wasn't divorced yet? That he was willing to pursue a relationship with you before the ink was dry should have been a huge red flag to you. Did his W think you were the OW? WERE you the OW?

As I said, I was not an OW, and the D was literally within days of final orders. He had no idea that it was going to be continued and for so long with renewed vigor. I'm not saying that I made the right decision accepting a dinner invitation so many years ago, but I was no where in the mix of the cause of their divorce.

I'm sorry to hear that you're in this situation.

If you don't have the name of the OW, you need to start snooping and identify her. Put a keylogger on his computer (www.eblaster.com is a good one) and spyware on his cell to track phone calls and text messages. Here's a link with options...

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=71&page=1

Don't believe that he won't contact her again. Get her name and expose this to everyone...his family/friends, her family/friends and, if they work together, DEFINITELY their employer. For your relationship to be salvaged, those two need to be forever separated with him leaving his job if she works there.

Did he ever tell you the reasons why he was getting D'd? Did you ever find out via other means, e.g. the XW? And yes, there is a purpose to my questions. People get D'd because there's a breakdown in the relationship, and quite often infidelity is the cause. If it was infidelity on his behalf, then it's possible that the recent cheating you detected might be part of a pattern of behaviour on his part that's been present since his previous M.

But you can't say that with any surety, kc. At best, you were one of the final nails in the coffin. You altered the course of events. You can't know if they would have gotten back together. Reconciliation between divorcing spouses just prior to the final decree happens all the time. Especially when a child is involved.

Can you see where this woman wasn't crazy at all? She found out about her husband knocked up another woman. That's enough to make any wife 'renew' litigation. I'll stop short of calling it crazy, because that sounds dismissive, and I have a feeling that your WH's wife was just making sure she and their child was completely taken care of, since her husband had 'moved on', as you say.

Bottom line, kc - this A may be a tough one to kill for a number of reasons.

1. Your WH is a serial adulterer and is okay with that.


2. And he's obviously deceitful, but it concerns me even more that he is deceitful in seemingly every area of his life.
If he hid something from his wife, don't you think it stands to reason that he'll hide things from YOU?

3. As well as manipulative, of course.


kc, I'm telling you these things to make you understand that your partner entered into your relationship agreement deceitfully. He lied to you and had no intention of marrying you. Why would he do that, if he knew he could convince you to do otherwise, right?

I'm sure he is a 'renter' (get the book MelodyLane suggested) who is making sure his OWN back is being scratched. I'm also sure that there is more that he is hiding from you. He is playing the field. Because in his mind he is not married. He doesn't even 'portray' to be married, and that's okay, because he's not!

I'm not going to beat you up, kc, I'm sorry if it sounds that way. But it is crucial that you understand the difference between being married and living together. Your partner obviously already knows the difference.

It's going to make it harder to kill the A. Not impossible, mind you. But harder.