Now, on to the other issue.


You are a serial cheater.


I know you.

I am married to you, or at least, a version of you.


My husband has had .... gosh.... I have to think now.

1976, a ONS
1979, left me for EA, and this didn't pan out for him, and he came home
1979, he got home and had a ONS about, oh, maybe two nights later (what a mess he was)
1990 ish EA - he just revealed this to me, and lied for nearly 20 years about it despite my near-constant attempts to get him to talk about it.
2005 PA

He had porn issues, too.




His idea was that porn didn't really matter; it had no impact on me, and it was something he "just did". I often asked him to stop - he said that it bugged him when I said this because, like you, he felt like I wanted to "control him".

I didn't want to control him. I felt hurt by his porn viewing, and its impact on our SF. He grew more and more interested in porn, it led to more fantasy on his part, and he - like you - began to look outside the marriage for his fantasy life to be fulfilled.


Your sense of "control" was/is nothing more than your reaction to being told that you are doing the wrong thing - and not liking it.

You knew at the time it was wrong. People do not like being told things they are doing are wrong - and they react by getting angry, and blaming the other person for being "controlling" or "mean spirited" or "not understanding".


I also want to point out that you said that many people don't understand you. My guess is that they understand you just fine; they back off because you tend to withhold information they need, lie by omission, or manipulate the truth to fit your own needs. You likely also trickle truth them, and offer a "reason" why you didn't tell them the entire truth right away if they come back and ask why you didn't mention this part or that part if they find out something more. You probably say, "Oh, I was going to mention that but....", or "I didn't think you would be interested, " or "I didn't want to hurt ______", or "I was going to tell you but...."


And then you offer just enough to skate by to the next thing.


They understand just fine.

This will NOT work for recovering from an affair. If you do this, you WILL lose your marriage and your family.


FAIR WARNING.


SB

Welcome to Marriage Builders, Amalynn! I'm sure you don't feel safe right now. We're going to work with your husband on that, don't worry.

In the meantime, please start your own thread - it's easier to help you that way. Tell us your story, starting from when you got married.

Again, welcome!

I don't know what to say.

I want to never lie to my wife again.

I want to have great communication and radical truth.

I would do anything to save my marriage, including change jobs and cut lifestyle and move to a cheaper part of the country. But how do you escape temptation? It's everywhere. Isn't the biggest part of the solution solving the reason WHY I go looking for something outside my marriage?

No, it is changing your behavior and your ENVIRONMENT so you are not tempted again. Who cares why? You don't have to know WHY you do something in order to change.

Because you are selfish. Knock it off. Get over yourself, and realize that there are other people in this world. Real feeling human beings. You affect them, even if they have no affect on you at all. Escape temptation by removing yourself from it. Easy as s&@t.

Schlag, as you know, your BW is posting on this site. Please stay off her thread. We're going to ask her to do the same with yours. This will help both of you.

Amen.

You guys that are saying I love myself are WAY off.

I despise myself and I have for years.

Then, why should your wife love you?
Are you saying that you consider yourself to be a hopeless mess?

Quit feeling sorry for yourself.
It's very unattractive.

Narcissists always do. And you try to fix it externally, rather than where the problem lies. You will like yourself if you never do anything you aren't proud of. Proud in the way of glory to God or would tell your folks or share your pride with your wife and children.

I've always been amazed that she loved me so much.

I'm not hopeless. I have a lot of good qualities. She'll tell you herself when she's not wanting to rip out my eyeballs and jam them in the garbage disposal.

I am not feeling sorry for myself, just sorry about what I did.

Thanks.

Going to therapy to explore the WHY is one of the issues I discussed with Dr Harley regarding my STBXWH who is also a serial cheater.

What if the therapist tells you an underlying childhood issue is the reason for your cheating? Then what? Poof, you are going to stop cheating? Stay in therapy for years discussing the childhood issue and you will be cured? Think about it...

Dr Harley says that we are ALL wired for an affair and that everybody would unfaithful under certain conditions and nobody would be unfaithful under other conditions. That it is the conditions that have more to do with unfaithfulness than anything else.

If you can't control yourself and you can't resist any temptation, then all opportunity needs to be taken away. In addition to changing your job, integrating your lifestyles so that you spend most of your free time together, NO female friends, probably no cell with texting/internet capability, no email, no social networking, just to name a few things...

I don't think so.

Not really. Were you thrilled with the chase? Were you feeling powerful with each conquest? Did you think of what you were doing to your wife, kids, parents, inlaws, friends, siblings, etc... When you were engaging in affairs?

No? Why? because you were seeking self satisfaction. Why? Because you love yourself.

No it isnt. There are no temptations in my life. I am a BS - one who has been dumped for the OW and that makes me incredibly vulnerable to a 'revenge affair'. Though i dont want one, I recognise that I may stumble into one. I recognise affair proofing myself as MY responsibility.

I even have vultures circling around me seeking to make good on my vulnerability but its not a problem because I have rules.

I dont speak to men about personal matters or get involved in indepth chats

I dont chat to men online

I dont spend time alone with men



You may think that I am different to you, that there is soemthing wrong with you that only a therapist can ferret out.

Not at all. If I behaved like you the results would be the same. Early on in my marriage when I didnt understood EPs, I treated male friends in just the same way I did my female friends, sharing caring and laughing with them.

I let them meet needs. I wanted their admiration and interesting conversation and I told myself it was harmless.

I never did get into an EA thankfully, but I started to feel the temptation to, which is when I put in EPs and started behaving like someone who was married.

With no EPS in place, even though I was very happily married, there was temptation.

With EPs in place, even though I am alone and betrayed, there is no temptation.

It really is as simple as that. By making it more complicated you are delaying doing the work.

But how do you escape temptation? It's everywhere. - Schlag

No it isnt. - Indiegirl

Always the contrarian, I'm going to disagree with you on this, IG. As a mtter of fact, I don't have to, because you refuted your statement almost immediately, but in doing so you provided Schlag with the answer to his issue:

I even have vultures circling around me seeking to make good on my vulnerability but its not a problem because I have rules...I dont speak to men about personal matters or get involved in indepth chats...I dont chat to men online...I dont spend time alone with men

Look, it's not just in marital/sexual connotations that temptations exist. They do, for ALL of us. But as part of establishing a way to co-exist with the millions of fellow inhabitants, we develop tactics and boundaries to fight off those temptations and conduct ourselves in civil manners.

I see a hot sports car parked on the street. I'd like to drive off in it, and I know enough about cars to be able to hot-wire start it. I do NOT do so, becasue in the greater scheme of things, enjoying such a joy-ride would likely bring high levels of misery and stress (arrest, etc) down on myself and my family.

With affairs, the "costs" of straying are rarely so clear, and the approach to a full betrayal is so well paved with apparently "harmless" interactions at its start that there is no necessary "big step" that most WSs must consider taking. It results from a myriad number of "little steps". The only way to NOT risk cheating once again is to recognize that the first "little step" is the one that must be declined (Sound like an AA paradigm? It should, we're fighting the same insidious process.)

This is where the tool of jointly established, verifiable EPs comes in.

Thanks everyone.

I'm working on EP's for my work. I have gone to my supervisor and the main boss above that this morning and had a meeting about finding a way to have full tracking / logging / accountability for Amy in some way. They are going to make it a priority to figure out if it's possible and how to do it. If I can't solve the work computer issue then more drastic measures will be necessary.

Last night Amy created an administrator password on our home desktop computer until such time as she can install whatever monitoring you guys tell her to. So if I want to get on the computer I have to have her log in, and once she goes to bed it is logged off so I can't get on.

Last night I ran around our block for my couch-to-5k run instead of going to the gym.

This morning I'm going to write "official" NC letters to #5/6/7.

Great!



Did you ask her if she enthusiastically agreed to this? She might not want you out of the house for recreation without her at all right now. Make sure you are choosing things that she is enthusiastic about rather than the lesser of two evils.

If she can't imagine a scenario where she would be enthusiastic about you going to the gym (i.e., her going with you, a family member going with you) then cancel the membership.

Yes, we had a conversation about where I should run. I settled on the block we live on because if she wants to see me all she has to do is step out front of our house and wait a minute or two. I'd be okay with not running at all and switching to the shred or P90X or something totally inside if that's what she wants.

Right now she spends most of her time angry and telling me it's not worth the trouble of doing EPs because I'm a sick [censored] that has piled lies on top of lies and deceit in the past.

So I just tell her (100% truthfully) that I know she may or may not decide to stay in our marriage, and it is absolutely her decision and her right to choose one way or the other, but until we are divorced I'm going to do the EPs - to make it possible for her to decide to stay.

I just pray there is something we can figure out for my work because in the current state of things, she would rather divorce me and have me keep my good job so I can pay her her child support - than have me find another job where we cut lifestyle and move.

Thread of Extraordinary Precautions HERE

This is a great thread about EPs. Make your own list, present it to your dear wife. WRITE them out, sign them and start living these rules.