You've seen where I sit with it. So, there are a few things to think about.

Remember that the minimum time-line for recovery - if it's done right - is two years. 730 days. It could take up to 5 years.

If you are still in the grieving process, the coaster goes up and down, through hard curves... sometimes upside-down. Your feelings will be all over the place. My thought is that it's the threshold for romantic love that moves - so some days you can be in love, and some days you won't.

There is also the drain of grief that infidelity causes.

There is poster named Brokenvase that explained it so well, and then I found a quote about trust that was essentially the same thing;


The shattered pieces may be glued back together, but when you put water in, it will leak out. Slowly if the holes are patched well (EP's), quickly if they are not.

The solution is to keep adding water. It's endless, tireless work. However, the reward should be worth it.

So, centering focus, there are 3 things that often keep us in the mud;

1) Trust - should never have been given to the level it was in the first place.

2) Forgiveness - cannot simply be given, and would be foolish to do so. It will be earned over time with action - openness and honesty, transparency, EPs.

3) Time - it will take a minimum of 2 years, up to 5, to recover from infidelity. Doing so will require strict adherence to; the Policy of Radical Honesty, the Policy of Undivided Attention, the Policy of Joint Agreement, Extraordinary Precautions, meeting Emotional Needs, and avoiding Love Busters.

All of those things interact and are interdependent of each other, and create and interdependent relationship.

Chin up, chest out, let 'em clank.

You can do this.

There is a tad bit of fog that hangs on, as well as a lot of self-loathing.

The first thing they might worry about when we tell them about our feelings such as being "disconnected" or "not in love (me)" is that we are going to bolt.

It's a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness - they believe that they have done far too much damage to recover from.

This is why it is important to include the fact that while you may not have all of the feelings that you want, that you aren't giving up, and then to follow that with some PoJA brainstorming to get some UA time created and EN's met.

For my part, when I make these kinds of statements, FWW gets into high gear to start creating some UA opportunities.

If yours is not, then it has to be you.

Someone has to lead the charge.

When the reward is to create those good feelings toward your spouse, the effort is worth it, even when you start feeling out of gas.

I haven't read your entire thread, Northwood, but the above can't be stressed enough.

Did your W complete the just compensation items? Accepting responsibility for the A, NCL & EPs (to your satisfaction)? Because if not, it is much harder to proceed to the "connection" phase of recovery (after the initial HB period). We worked with Steve and he was very emphatic about this...

Good point. In the past few weeks, she has been the one to step up as, she said, she thought I needed a break from being the only one to work on the marriage. I think she gets discouraged (like me) because...

1. There is a bit of faking it to make it involved.
2. When the other person knows that, it puts a slight chill on things.

Make sense?

Hey SusieQ (Hawkins or Creedence version? )

Cliff's Notes here, W gave the ILYBINILWY speech around May or June of 2010 right about the time an EA with a co-worker started. I kind of plodded along with no real plan until I got fed up in January and got her family involved (exposure). I had her quit her job the day of exposure and a NC email was sent that evening.

She didn't really mean it and I discovered about six secret email accounts as time went on. Trickle truth.

About a week or so after the first NC, I went off on her about the email accounts, completely lost my [censored]. She got the message that it was either him or me and the kids. A real NC letter went in the mail a day or two later. Yes, I'm satisfied with just compensation re: responsibility for the affair, NCL and EP. They took a while, but once I saw that she was freely doing those things it made a difference. You know?

Withdrawal took until late-March when she said she was 100% on board here. We've since lost the momentum, and that's what worries me. But, I've we've identified the complacency so, I guess, that's a good thing.

I think the reality is that I spent so much time and energy killing the affair, that now I'm a little stunned to see that the underlying issues are still there to be addressed. It's been a reality check and I now know why many say recovery is harder than killing an affair.

Since she's waiting in the carpool line to pick up DS, I shot her an email back:


Thanks, y'all, for the inspirational language--what's the saying, plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery?

Had to look that up! I haven't heard either! LOL

Excellent!

It is very true, isn't it? Once you get through the HB, the first year or so is very tough. It really does get better as long as you keep on track... I am happy to see you are getting some good support from posters like HHH. Hang in there!

Thanks, Susie. Yes, it does help to have these people to bounce things off of.

I thought for sure your name was from the song--that's the first thing I thought of when I saw it!

NW - You're dating yourself with the song reference! LOL...but you're a little young for the Credence version - I don't know the other one.

Ha ha, I know all sorts of useless facts...but little about the useful ones!

Oh, I'm sure I've seen someone else state the same thing here, so you are just plagiarizing a plagiarist.

The thing that haunts both a WS and a BS is fear.

As I stated, a WS fears that they have just done way too much damage to recover, or be forgiven. I'm not sure there is a bigger fear for a repentant WS than losing their BS.

It's hard for us to fathom "Well then, you shouldn't have cheated, lunkhead!"

RH is important, but it isn't RH if it isn't complete. And part of that completion is doing just as you did; stating that you aren't going to be a slave to your day-to-day emotions, and that you are committed to recovering the marriage.

That will at least give her some assurance in her uphill battle against guilt and fear.

Cliff Clavin is that you? And what is sad? I work with people who are young enough not to get that. ARGH

Scotty - ROTFLMAO....me too.

Nope, but sometimes I feel like him Too bad you cannot make any money in useless tidbits.

Just tell your co-workers he was Mack in Cars. My oldest made us watch it so many times, I think I have it memorized.

Wow, I threadjacked my own thread...I usually only do that to Andy.

hey now...t/j is encouraged on my thread. BTW - We also have Cars memorized over here.

.."Fly Stanley, be free. Everyone else is seeing this too, right?"....Filmore...aka the late, great George Carlin

Ha ha, always thought Tommy Chong would have been a good choice for him as well.

NW, glad you are getting some laughs.

Look... it sounds like you are just having a bad day. You and wife together. If you are connected, your bad days can occur together a lot. This is an opportunity to be there for her. Also, like HHH said I think.... this is an opportunity to kick up the UA. Kick it up. Practice meeting EN's and avoiding LBs.
Don't push. DOn't press. Just spend UA time together and do your practice. You will deposit $LB units.

I am learning that when I am feeling blue I feel better with my wife. I have been too needy about it the past couple months about it. I just need to kick back and enjoy feeling connected. Wallowing too much is indeed real. Real emotions are attractive. My wife has learned I am not an unfeeling monster like she thought. But its just unattractive at some point. She appreciates it if I explain my sad blue feelings and then allow ourselves to have some good UA. We end up feeling more connected and repatching the vase a little bit more.

Hey stretch, hope things are going good for you.

Yeah, was kind of a down day and the UA time is a factor. Like you said, I think my wife gets a bit overwhelmed when I talk "too much"--she's just not used to it, I guess. Shoot, I'm not that used to it either and am/was more the type to just not let on that things were bugging me. Wallowing is easy to fall into and hard to get out of sometimes.

We talked about UA tonight, think we're getting back on track but will probably have to work at this a bit harder to avoid falling back into the same old routines. But we know what the problem is, so that's a good start.

Just seems we do a lot of stopping and starting over lately. A little more consistency would be nice but I guess I should start with myself on that one. Hard to fault someone if you're guilty of the same offense.

You guys help a lot, thanks for the perspectives.

Ding, ding, ding, ding!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

The opioid for my pain, is she who caused it.

Seems strange, no?

Oh, and Ratzenberger is also Ham in the Toy Story movies. The evil.... DR. PORKCHOP!!!!!!

(cue lightening crash)

Well, crud, stretch, looks like you were right on that.

MC was spectacularly crapilicious today. W is on that damned depression slide again, been about a month since the last dip. Great, just [censored] great. I'm not even bothering trying to avoid the censor program, it'll just have to redact my entire post probably.

So we're sitting there in counseling, talking about the "no connection" ***edit*** for the fiftieth time and, as usual, I'm doing all the talking and wife is just kind of sitting there with a blank expression. Ok, at $75 for fifty minutes, let's at least ***ed8t*** pretend to be in this office or, hell, at least on this planet, can we please do that???!!!!???

The whole time, I'm thinking this is exactly how she acted last summer when that ***edit*** OM was involved. Exact same conversations, exact same blank *** stares, exactly exactly. I'm triggering all over the damn place and can sense that I'm about to go completely ***edit*** and, somehow, I manage to calm the ***edit*** down without ever showing just how close I was to going ballistic.

But I was good and didn't have any AO or DJs like I normally would. I'm getting housetrained, I guess.

So this therapist is actually pretty good and my snooping has turned up nil so she finally opens up and.....

...it's just the stupid depression and she cannot explain it and doesn't even recognize when it's starting to hit. Boy, i sure as hell recognize it now! But she tries to explain what she's thinking, and I finally see what's going on. Nothing is going on. No thoughts are really there, she's just kind of there, sad, but doesn't know why, cries over nothing (and I'm serious, cries over things that are really not something you'd cry over). It's existing without really living. Strangest thing, and I don't think I could ever really understand what it's like to be feel so hopeless in the midst of so much hope.

So we talk about the anti-d meds, had hoped they were on track but guess not now. *Sigh*

It's like I'm fighting two battles here--a former wayward plus this depression which I cannot really fight. But when she was wayward and depressed, I got so used to seeing them as one and the same that now I'm having trouble differentiating between them. And, since she's depressed, she doesn't want to talk about it so my mind starts to wander, I withdraw, she gets upset that I'm withdrawing, she quits talking, my mind starts to wander...............FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF-WORD!!!!!

But we were fine this evening and spent some time together doing nothing, really. Kind of nice. I'm doing my best, for once, to actually be there for her through this. She's doing really good at empathy, and I'm doing better as well. We'll get through this, it's just always something (it seems) that pops up and trips us up. We both need a break from micro-managing our marriage and examining the minutiae, need a vacation, could really really really use a new money tree for the backyard as well...it's been picked clean for some time now

As always, thanks for reading. My day started out really crappy, turned out ok. One of our fellow posters didn't have too good of a day today, my complaining kind of feels petty in light of that sometimes.