|
|
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5
Junior Member
|
OP
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5 |
Hello everyone,
I have been lurking around this site and forum, reading posts and articles and finally decided to register. I hope I can get some wisdom.
Our marriage has been very rocky almost from the beginning, we did not know how to and sometimes were stubborn about meeting each others needs. In 2009 we started MC and it seemed to help and we started slowly to recover.
In 2010 we moved oversees and when I was pregnant with our youngest I discovered that my H was having an affair. It has been over 7 months since discovery.
I was so shocked about it and since I myself was not sure if I was happy in our relationship I have allowed it to continue. We made an agreement that we will try to get through for financial/social reasons and see how things go without breaking off the contact with OW as long as they were not having sex or be together alone. He has made an effort to meet my needs and to build the trust, it was very hard on my because I wanted him to take care of me but the thought of him doing it just to leave in near feature was unbearable. I wanted some certanty as to where we are going. We renegotiated and agreed that we will be trying to work on our marriage.
I kept bringing up that if he wants me to stay with me he needs to stop contacts with OW. he was refusing. Then one day I told him that I would be leaving. He begged me to stay and confessed that he once again had sex with ow. I stayed. Things seem to be getting better, some days good, some so-so, however the general mood is much better than it has ever been.
OW has moved aways . However they kept contact on FB
and complained to her about his emotions. He is still attached to her emotionally. When I confronted him about his contacts he told me that he never intended to sever contacts with her completely and that he actually hopes to keep her as a friend and doesn't want to hurt her feelings by deleting her as a friend from FB and severing all ties. I have been trying to explain to him how dangerous it is to keep in touch with ow, how it keeps him emotionaly attached and how it hurts me. I have shown him this site but he just keeps sayng that others should not influence what we think. He says that he understands it but refusing to do much about it. Ow does not want contact anymore and he said he will go off face book for right now too.
I am trying my best to meet his needs and to listen to him on how I can improve. He has done a lot for meeting my needs and I can say that I am almost happy. I have rediscovered the person I fell in love originally and I want to fight to get his love back.
Should I suck up my hurt and worried feelings, concentrate on doing the best I can and enjoy what I have? Or should I put my foot down and say, what you are doing is asome but if you want to keep your family she needs to go for ever? I keep thinking that maybe he will just get over her with time, but the thought of them resuming contact and possibility of another affair kills me.
Last edited by hopscotch; 11/18/11 01:54 PM.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 1,757
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Oct 2009
Posts: 1,757 |
Hoscotch, I'm sorry you've had occasion to find your way here, but welcome to MarriageBuilders.
I'm very sorry to say, your marriage is not even close to beginning "recovery." Please ask the moderators to move your thread to the "Surviving An Affair" section of the forum. It gets more traffic, and you'll get more help there.
You are going about this in the worst way possible: By condoning his remaining in contact with his affair partner, you allow the affair to continue. Even if he's not seeing her for the moment, an emotional affair is every bit as destructive to a marriage as a physical affair -- usually, they are simply two sides of the same coin. (Affairs don't happen when 2 strangers meet in a grocery-store aisle and decide to get a hotel room. That's just not how it happens. Most people would never begin an affair without first establishing a fairly deep connection on an emotional level. That emotional connection is what allows affairees to do things they thought they'd never do -- it allows them to feel that they're "in love" with the affair partner. Seen in this light, this emotional connection is really the most dangerous element of the whole mess -- it's how the whole mess started.)
To end the affair, he must end the contact and break the emotional attachment to her. Without this, he'll never be able to focus enough on meeting your emotional needs (because of his infatuation with her -- all of the fun & flattery & admiration with none of the bills, childcare or other real-life issues that exist in your marriage), and you'll never feel emotionally safe enough with him to give your all to the marriage.
He will continue to keep "cake-eating" (saving his cake & eating it too is what they call it when a guy doesn't want to leave his marriage but doesn't want to quit his affair), because you've made clear to him, through your words & actions, that you're willing to tolerate this arrangement!
Do you see (below, second quote in red text) what my wife told me on the day I confessed my affair to her?
That's right: I'm speaking to you as a man who had an affair once. I know how they think from the inside.
You need to do several things:
1) Get & read the book "Surviving An Affair" asap. My wife & I will both tell you, it's a book that may well have saved our marriage. (And I'm telling you this for free. I don't get a penny for volunteering my time here. I just hate to see other couples have to navigate the same crap that I put my own marriage through.)
2) Expose the ongoing emotional affair to people whose esteem he values: Parents, children, pastor/rabbi/imam/whatever, and/or friends that you confide in as a couple. Lots of betrayed spouses make the mistake of fearing that this act of exposing the affair will harm their marriages further, or that it'll cause the wayward spouse to become outraged. But consider this: Your marriage can survive his temporary anger. It cannot survive his ongoing affair. Ongoing secrecy & lack of transparency provide the cover of darkness under which affairs develop & thrive. Exposure of an affair to the light of day, the light of truth, will very often kill the affair.
3) Tell him that you love him and want to do the best you can to save your marriage to the guy whose ring you accepted for forever, and then tell him that you've come to realize that this cannot happen as long as he remains in contact with (and thus emotionally committed) to another woman. Please tell him that for the sake of your marriage, he needs to cease all contact with her. Do not become angry; show him calm, steely determination -- give him something to respect. Tell him that he needs to:
-- Close his Facebook account (yes, people can & do live without them!);
-- Write her a "no-contact" letter which you preview & approve & verify as sent (you can read more about them on this site);
-- Change all of his cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses so that OW can no longer contact him easily;
-- Begin living a transparent life. That means he needs to give you all of his passwords to all of his new cellphones & e-mail accounts.
If, after 7 months of dragging you along in a false recovery, he is unwilling to take these steps, then you must convey that you are serious, by indeed, as my wife promised to do, putting him out on his [censored].
Hopscotch, you've proven to him by your accommodating actions that you can be fooled & that you'll put up with whatever rubbish he dishes out. That wasn't your intention, I'm sure, but please have no duobt that that's the message he has perceived. So now, you need to show him that you're made of sterner stuff. Tell him -- and show him, by your actions -- that you are resolved to save your marriage, a real marriage -- not the fake marriage that he's willing to tolerate for the sake of his affair, but rather a real marriage where both partners are emotionally committed to & "all-in" for one another, with no interlopers to siphon off the romantic depth. After all, that's the kind of marriage you & he both got married for in the first place, right?
Re: your wayward husband: Doesn't want to take advice from others, does he? I rather suspect that he simply knows what he's doing is dead-wrong, and therefore that he'll not like the advice given, insofar as it will conflict with his desire to lead a bigamous lifestyle without regard for the feelings of the woman to whom he promised better than what he's giving her. It's too bad that he's aware of this site for the moment. You'll need to be very careful not to tip your cards here. This is why I suggest that you expose the affair immediately. Do NOT warn him in advance, or else he'll try to spin the story in advance to your exposure targets, to make it appear as though you're crazy/misinformed, etc.
Hang in there, hopscotch. Please think carefully over what I've written to you. You'll also get more advice in the days ahead, including from some of the very knowledgeable people here who've been in a betrayed spouse's shoes.
Me: FWH, 50
My BW: Trust_Will_Come, 52, tall, beautiful & heart of gold
DD23, DS19
EA-then-PA Oct'08-Jan'09
Broke it off & confessed to BW (after OW's H found out) Jan.7 2009
Married 25 years & counting.
Grateful for forgiveness. Working to be a better husband.
"I wear the chain I forged in life... I made it link by link, and yard by yard" ~Jacob Marley's ghost, A Christmas Carol
"Do it again & you're out on your [bum]." ~My BW, Jan.7 2009
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,589
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: May 2008
Posts: 2,589 |
Hopscotch,
Gloveoil is correct. Your marriage is not in recovery yet and your husband is extremely cruel.
Put your foot down. H must end contact with OW forever. He must put precautions into place (no facebook, maybe no computer at all), and then he must commit to building a romantic relationship with you.
Read the book, "Surviving an Affair" as soon as you can.
Are your H and OW in the military?
AM
BW - 70
WH - 65
M - 35 years
D-day - 17 Apr 08
H broke contact 11/1/09
Back in love after the worst thing that every happened to us.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5
Junior Member
|
|
OP
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5 |
Thank you mods for moving it here and thank you GloveOil and army mama for advise. I will get a book ASAP.
armymama -No we are not military, we just moved overseas for H educational opportunity.
GloveOil- I have a horrible time keeping secrets and actually was getting pretty bad anxiety during the time when i was snooping on him and had to keep quiet about things I found out when we were alone. I wanted to make sure I had enough evidence to confront him.
I did tell my parents when I suspected the affair and they have been supporting me.
They are very close with his parents so he will not have a chance to make up a story about the affair to them.
I guess I am trying to do a plan B and convince that he needs to forget about her for the rest of his life while meeting his needs. So far I have been unsuccesfull, he just gets upset with me bringing up the affair.
Also, when I bring up that he needs to cut all ties to her he sees it as me presenting him with moving goal post, I was Ok with them hanging out, then talking and now when he went off Facebook I still keep asking him to do further things to prevent the contact.
That is my weak point, after all I had allowed it to continue in the beginning. I am having a hard time finding a footing now, and standing my ground.
I wand us to succeed and I get subdued by his actions, however I know deep down that I can not trust him fully and that he has acted in the way that made it sound like we were on the same page and then when cought just say, well I did not promise anything. For example, we were having conversations about terms of our recovery for first time I kept saying that he needs to stop being in contact with her. At some point he got upset with me and said that I want to cut him off his "friends". I told him after that that if he wants to keep in touch with friends I will live him. He begged me to stay, cried and asked to give us a second chance. I said that I would only agree to it if he stop contact with ow. He said that he "understood". I took it as a yes to my request. I have unfortunately blown that agreement. I can not go into detail, by we could not stop the contact with ow right away, instead he said he would limit his contact with her during that time and it would be easier for him not to contact her when she moves away. So I took it as is, and has been patient. She moved away and a month after he resumed the contact, messaging her on Fb, every other day until she told him that it hurts her to keep in touch with her. He told me about it and said that he is not going to contact her except to wish her a Happy Birthday. I guess he thinks that if he doesn't hide it from me, it is not bad. I took his telling me as a an opportunity to tell him that he should not ever contact her and that it was our agreement before, to which he replied that he "understood" me does not equal promise to stop contact with her.
After I read what others write and even what I write, I do know deep down what I need to do. I do need to hear more of it, follow through.
Thank you
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1 |
OW has moved aways . However they kept contact on FB
and complained to her about his emotions. He is still attached to her emotionally. When I confronted him about his contacts he told me that he never intended to sever contacts with her completely and that he actually hopes to keep her as a friend and doesn't want to hurt her feelings by deleting her as a friend from FB and severing all ties. I have been trying to explain to him how dangerous it is to keep in touch with ow, how it keeps him emotionaly attached and how it hurts me. I have shown him this site but he just keeps sayng that others should not influence what we think. He says that he understands it but refusing to do much about it. Ow does not want contact anymore and he said he will go off face book for right now too. Hi hopscotch, he will have to agree to delete her from his life FOREVER. That is not negotiable. Make it clear if he ever contacts her again, or vice versa, that this will lead to divorce. You should ask him to leave immediately if he does. Is the OW married, and if so, does her husband know about the affair?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5
Junior Member
|
|
OP
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5 |
Ow is not married and her family knows about the affair. Her mom actually told her to "go for it but to be prepared to get hurt", she herself was ow and did not regret it. Our common (with ow) friends know about it but they stay out of it.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1 |
Ow is not married and her family knows about the affair. Her mom actually told her to "go for it but to be prepared to get hurt", she herself was ow and did not regret it. How do you know this?
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5
Junior Member
|
|
OP
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5 |
Ow is not married and her family knows about the affair. Her mom actually told her to "go for it but to be prepared to get hurt", she herself was ow and did not regret it. How do you know this? Per ow own words. I have became "friends" with her when the affair has started and had conversations with her after i found out. She is young and believes that everyone needs to do what ever needed for their own happiness. She was "helping" my H to find his happiness. We had a forced "open" relationship for very short while, while I was figuring out what to do. I was expecting a baby any day when I found out and figuring out how I can support myself and my dd with a newborn if I leave my H. So, I know a lot of each of their reasons and views.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,554
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,554 |
She is young and believes that everyone needs to do what ever needed for their own happiness. What a "wonderful" approach to life. Likely taught to her by her mother, no doubt. Does this pursuit of happines allow for lying, stealing and dishonesty as well?
ManInMotion
===========
(see "MiM's Story" for more details)
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1 |
[Per ow own words. I have became "friends" with her when the affair has started and had conversations with her after i found out. She is young and believes that everyone needs to do what ever needed for their own happiness. She was "helping" my H to find his happiness. Ok, so she is retarded. I would still inform her parents and ask them to persuade her to buzz off. They might not be as nuts as she is and have some influence there.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1 |
[She is young and believes that everyone needs to do what ever needed for their own happiness. I guess we should be grateful she is not a serial killer or a child molestor. 
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 320
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Jan 2011
Posts: 320 |
Hi Hopscotch,
take from one who has been there, he has to end all contact, if not you will find yourself where I was a year ago with a H in a 'just friends' relationship, that I hated but miserably enabled for 5 years.
eventually I got strong enough to tell him I was leaving and then amidst many tears and snot he begged me not to, but also said they had been shagging on and off for the last 5 years. I finally got the whole truth.
No such thing as just good friends honey once they have been rutting. They keep doing it.
If you leave, you will survive, but if you allow it to carry on as friends, then be prepared, it will be horrid, hurtful and you won't get over it as a couple.
A year of nc and I hardly recognise my H. He is here and working at making us better, he is kind and thoughtful.
This is the man who when he was going off to meet her turned to me and asked if I was just going to sit there and shake the whole time he was out? Want that??
He has to delete her from his life if you are to begin to recover. Sorry but it's true.
Your way or the highway on this one.
Me 50
WH 52
WH in A 6 yrs in total, last 5 yrs JGF (Not!)
DD final 1.12.10
NC letter sent 3.12.10
Working at being the best I can be, the rest is up to you.
He is still a plonker, but he is my plonker!
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5
Junior Member
|
|
OP
Junior Member
Joined: Nov 2011
Posts: 5 |
ok I understand that there should be no contact and I will not tolerate if we ever contacts her again. I see our second chance as a new relationship and not patching up of old one. It it was someone else I would not engage with that person in a comited relationship if he wants to keep in touch with his lover. The same should apply to my marriage with my H.
I have read up on exposure and plan B. I do not think that exposure at this moment is appropriate, it would cause more harm to both of us then benefit. It would make me look vindictive, since there was no contact for last two weeks and ow does not want contact with him anyway.
However, I feel a need for him to do a no contact with her for the the rest of our life if he wants to stay married to me.
We have a trip home coming up in about a months, we will be visiting my parents, I can say with them if he refuses NC. otherwise I can not do it. I can not go anywhere from here.
Is it fair for me to wait until then to give a letter to him? It would be couple months from the moment that communication between them has stopped.
|
|
|
|
|
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1
Member
|
|
Member
Joined: Apr 2001
Posts: 92,985 Likes: 1 |
However, I feel a need for him to do a no contact with her for the the rest of our life if he wants to stay married to me.
We have a trip home coming up in about a months, we will be visiting my parents, I can say with them if he refuses NC. I would let him know TODAY that your condition for staying in the marriage is no contact FOR LIFE with the OW. Explain that you can't stay in the marriage otherwise. Let him know you will give him an opportunity to EARN your forgiveness and this is step #1.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.." Theodore Roosevelt Exposure 101
|
|
|
Moderated by Ariel, BerlinMB, Denali, Fordude, IrishGreen, MBeliever, MBsurvivor, MBSync, McLovin, Mizar, PhoenixMB, Toujours
|
0 members (),
441
guests, and
59
robots. |
|
Key:
Admin,
Global Mod,
Mod
|
|
|
|
