I don't want to give up. I don't think I can give up. But really at what point do you realize that there isn't anything to fix. Am I fighting a losing battle?

Sir: Do you have any concept at all that you are the injured party here? That your cheating wife should be looking to YOU for consideration and accomodation?

Dial up 1-800-SetOfBalls (www.SetOfBalls.com)

Understand that if you haven't the stomach for this fight, then it's just as well you bow out now. The time for playing "nice" is over. Her aim now is to ruin your f*****g life. Your only goal is to ruin hers first.

What is your pleasure, my friend?

I am here to learn and need help. I am a very open minded person and have a great ability at looking at all sides of a problem. So feel free to tell me where I'm right and where I'm wrong. I have thick skin and can take the scrutiny.

Here is a summary of what I have learned so far.

That she is still carrying on with the affair. She is to some extent in her mind, and I understand that. I understand that I should do everything I can to hinder the possibility of the affair continuing but if that is what she really wants there is nothing I can do to ever stop her. She still has freewill. I know that there has been no contact on her part. He is not cooperating (can't do anything with that, he has nothing or noone else in his life that would cause him to care about exposure). Am I supposed to make her a prison and cut off all ties to outside world so that it doesn't happen again. A caged dog will always run when the door is opened. That seems a little backwards from what we are trying to accomplish.

I have learned that i am very good at snooping. I can't tell you all the tricks as she may turn to this for help also. I know a lot more than she thinks I know. I see a lot more than she thinks I see. A good magician never tells his tricks, and a good investigator never jumps out and says , "here I am!". I have the surveillance under control.

I have learned that I should "grow some balls" and ruin her life before she ruins mine. See i think that it takes more balls to stay and fight than to run and call her a [censored] from a distance.

I have learned through the concept of this site, I should be loving, caring and nurturing to show her how much she needs me. At the same time I have to be hard and make her feel terrible about what she did. Everything I have been told by the group here seems to points to me being cold and distant, hard to deal with and not there for her. That is pretty much what got me involved in this. I have some responsibility too.

I didn't need to learn, that being in a loving relationship means to care about the other person more than you care for yourself. That is the one thing I'm sure of. I'm not worried about my well being. You said she will ruin my life. I am saying that without my family, It wouldn't amount to much anyhow.

None of this is stuff we have told you to do, so I wonder where you are getting this?

For an open minded individual with the ability to see things from all sides...you are misinterpreting almost every single part of the marriagebuilders plans.

Are you wayward? I have to ask since your interpretations are those of waywards' and not betrayed folk.

The plans and doing them critically, clearly following the outline will give your marriage the best chance to survive and thrive.

The plans are logical and respectful of all.

One thing you learn doing them is your actions create the feelings. Act right and your feelings will follow.

Do not let your feelings about how things work lead you. Logic is best. It is romantic too (which is critical to the plans)

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That seems a little backwards from what we are trying to accomplish.

What "we", we as in the people posting to you, are trying to accomplish is to get you to see that your wife isn't different than other waywards, that a lot of what she is saying follows a pretty common script that we see here all the time. We are also trying to accomplish getting you to follow a predefined program of actions that will kill the affair.

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You are not trying to ruin her life, you are trying to ruin her affair.

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We would all agree with you, the question we would have is what you're doing called fighting? Are you prepared to fight for your marriage? That's the salient question.


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You certainly have joint responsibility for the state of your marriage but the choice to cheat is 100% hers. We are not telling you to be cold and distant, this statement leads me to believe that you haven't even started reading the materials here yet. because Plan A is anything but cold and distant. We are trying to teach you that you don't stand a chance in hell of saving your marriage unless you kill he affair first.

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While your wife is involved with another man she is certainly not invested in you as her spouse. Asking for a separation has never, ever, helped anyone recover a marriage. Think about that for a moment, logically. You're not thinking very logically right now which is undestandable. If your wife wants to have "space" in which to "think about things", tell her she can leave you in your house with the kids, find a place of her own which she can pay for and yet still pay her fair share of the household bills and that you'll be waiting for her return. You'll soon see that she is not interested in finding herself she's more interested in finding you gone.

You need to stay put, follow this program and save your marriage, not get in little digs at us for telling you things you really don't want to hear or suggesting courses of action that you really don't want to do. It's hard work to recover from infidelity, let us know if you're up for it and we'll help you.

Somehow, you interpret our exhortations to be firm about the behavior you are willing to accept from your WW, as encouraging you to "cage" her?

What we know, and she does not truly "know" (although she might suspect), and you seem unaware of, is that her moving out, having just been discovered as having an affair, is the WORST thing she can do to the possible future existence of your marriage. It will almost assuredly lead to its dissolution. If you have any hope of recovering your union with your WW, THAT CANNOT HAPPEN. WWs, free to see/pursue/enjoy the presence of their OMs, do not come home.

Her judgment right now is clouded, much as a drunk, or recreational drug user, by the "drug" of having two things at once:

• a new toy, in the person of OM, to play with, reaping the ENs coming from romantic, carefree, spontaneous attentions
• old reliable you, providing the real-world, hardheaded family support and childcare responsibilities

And with her as a drunk, would you as her husband give her permission to drive a car, knowing the possible tragic results?

Modern society being what it is, BHs are no longer able to incarcerate or otherwise detain their wives when advisable. Your only weapon in this fight is KNOWLEDGE, applied as required. It is vital that you understand the inevitability of dissolution once she leaves to further explore her new "toy".

Convincing her of your seriousness to NOT acquiesce in her abandonment of your family is paramount.

Hi, makingitrite,

I hope you stick around. I ordinarily wouldn't beat a dead horse, but I think this one might still be alive, so hang with me for a minute:

There's a contradiction in your wife's thought sequence, as you described it above. Didja notice? The other man was filling certain needs of hers. So even if one assumes for the sake of argument that he's out of the picture -- which I can't know one way or the other -- how does she figure you'll be able to fill her needs if you're not around? Her need clearly isn't for solitude or "me-time" to figure things out -- if she'd wanted that, then there'd have been no reason for her to spend her time on the other man. Even if one of her needs involves you changing some of the ways in which you relate toward her, do you think it'll be easier, or tougher, for you to make those changes noticeable, tangible & palpable for her if you're apart?

What I'm saying is, if there's a vacuum, something's gonna fill it. If you're not there, chances are it won't be you.

Having been one, I can personally vouch for the notion that actively wayward spouses, as well as spouses newly out of an affair, are not the best judges of what's best for them & their marriages on all matters. (If you don't take it from me, you can read back a few posts & take it from my wife.) This "separation" talk is one of those particular matters. I'm not saying you can't save your marriage if you separate, just like I'm not saying there's any guarantee whatsoever that your marriage will be saved even if you stay together. I'm not telling you there's only one right way, or only one road to success.

However, folks here have been giving you advice on the way to give yourself the best odds of success. Separation will lower those odds, if saving the marriage is your definition of success.

I'm not saying you're a bad guy for wanting to think it all through, and I'm not saying your wife is evil or beyond hope for not knowing (or for not knowing that she doesn't know) which way's up right now. No one here wants to see you guys fail. If we just said "Sure, go along with what she's asking for, split up for a spell", then we'd be doing you a disservice that you don't deserve.

Hang in there.

GO read my meaning exactly right. Her "life" as it exists right now, is a fantasy within a dream. Asking her to kindly stop mooning over OM, is likely NOT going to prove effective.

Threaten, cajole, impoverish, expose, disrupt - ANYTHING you can do to knock her out of her mistaken belief that the path toward rebuilding marriage passes through different mailing addresses for the couple in question, you should do.

I'm sorry for the confusion people. I think most of you know that these are circumstances that can twist a brain into knots. I really appreciate you sticking through this with me and not writing me off.

It feel that I have so many emotions going on that it is hard to focus on the actions needed. I looked back at this thread and see clearly what you all have been telling me. I thought I had the affair under control.... I don't. I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do... I'm not. I've made some steps in the right direction but I've got to fight harder.

I have had a lot of time to reflect on this and the biggest issue I am having trouble with is her indecision. Someone said walker that she can't think clearly. I see that. Will the clarity come with time. Will it come with showing her love and filling her needs.

The next thing is my feelings. I know that anyone who has been through this has looked back in retrospect and tried to figure out I did wrong. I look at what I did right. My problem is that I can see what I did wrong but really I did alot right. I did a lot that I never got "credit" for. Which leads me to two issues.

Is she seeing that I'm filling those needs of hers now? The one she seemed from him?

The other,
I get mad as hell. I look at what I was doing for her and I think. What did she do for us? I don't come up with much. I'm not referring to during the affair but really far back, years back. I see her as a selfish person and I don't know when that started. That's not the girl I married. But it gets me to questioning myself. Is that the person I want. Is the person I want someone who would rather run to another than work on what what she already has.I'm working so hard to keep her and I'm questioning if she's what is good for me. I know that she's offing stuff out also and she may see that she wasn't good to me but when will that be. Will it be in a week, a month, or just a little too late. It just weird that while I'm trying to make her feel loved and show her what I can do I'm making myself feel worse about what she did and if she will work on it or if she even cares.

Maybe the fog will start to lift.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for the guidance. Thanks for letting me ramble incoherently. I does help.

Please listen to these guys, please.

I waited, hesitated, didn't want to rock the boat...finally listened and understood what they were saying: exposure doesn't end marriages, it ends affairs.

My posts are sprinkled with me relating what I thought was hogwash from the vets:

My W thanking ME for exposing/ending her affair, thanking ME for saving her, our family...

The family was cleaning up after dinner last night, I offered to do the dishes, but my wife insisted...I said "but I haven't done enough to help out today".

My W's response: "you've done enough for me alone for a lifetime...".

Even the kids could read between those lines....

Eyes on the Prize (thanks, NG!)

Thanks helpfordad.

That kind of feedback gives me hope.

In the line of work that I do I am used to seeing a problem and doing what I need to correct the problem. I am so used to getting immediate results that I struggle when I don't get the response I'm looking for. I need hope to keep me going now.

I think I see that what I'm doing us helping but still question her. I have to. The trust is not there. I said earlier that she seemed happy before. Never saw it coming. My fear now that I'm seeing what I saw before and that all her responses are a charade.

I think I have to take it for what it is and keep snooping, keep loving and give it some time. I think I was loosing my faith in it but I see from all of you that faith is the biggest thing I need right now and also the hardest to attain.

Hope on the horizon has come from you all. Thanks for bearing with me. I'll be back when I need my friends here again and I'm sure I will. Maybe someday I can give someone else like me the hope you have given.

As I was reading your post, my W texted me from work to say "ILY tremendously...thank you for being my prince and saving my life -- I am eternally grateful to you xoxo."

I still can't believe it, but the vets are right -- we're not at this point w/ out exposure. My W thanking ME for making the affair public, getting OM fired from job, having friends/family contact W to ask "WTF are ya doin'?" It befalls us to be the man for our family, the hero, and end the 'addiction' our WS's are stuck in.

Come heck or high water, I am positive my W knows that the OM would never, NEVER, even think to act on her or the kids' behalf in that way...even if the M failed, I would know (and so would our children) that I did my best to make it work.

And remember, the MB program is for YOU, the BS (thanks, Lexxxy, I think)...it may or may not save the M, but helps you to be in control of you and be the best husband/father/person you can be...

Good luck.

Makingitright:

Don't have faith. Have a plan. Use the MB tools and you'll recover your marriage. It's NOT a cookie cutter solution. In fact, it's really a very smart form of BEHAVIORAL MODIFICATION to restore the love you once had.

And the GREAT thing about it is: YOU individualize it to your needs. It gives you steps, because pondering and worrying won't solve anything.

Actions work. Read the 10 basic concepts before you go away. You owe that to this group of fine posters.

Cheers,
Sweetpea

Not going away. Just hanging back. This is too good of a tool not to pay attention.

You MUST have faith to give you the strength to enact the plan. I've listened, and you can't think it's going to be ok. You have to have faith in yourself, in her.have faith that if you follow the plan it will work. I understand that now.

I like that outlook, MakingIt. Yes, of course you should have faith in your abilities and your wife's ability to change. It's just that you need to act. And that's the beauty of Marriage Builders. It gives you the tools to act: kill the affair and then restore the love. It works. Really.