My husband and I just had our ten year anniversary at the end of October. We had been having issues for a couple months and in September I had originally found your website and presented it to him. He read through some of it and told me that he didn't think it would help us. Mid October we found out I was 5 weeks pregnant with our second child, our relationship then deteriorated more and for a short while in October till the beginning of November we were estranged. He came back after two weeks and told me that he wanted to try and save our relationship. For the next week I struggled to get him to talk to me, and he was not being very affectionate, finally one night I decided to check his texts... after confronting him with what I found, it was revealed that he had been having an affair since September (before I became pregnant). This was not the first time he had been unfaithful to me. He had been participating in a live action role play group for the majority of our time together. Both girls he had cheated on me with were part of this group. (I had found out about the first affair shortly after it happened) I told him that I if he wanted to try and save our relationship he wouldn't be able to participate in the group anymore and he wouldn't be able to see the girl again either. He agreed, though I could tell he didn't want to stop going to the group.
Since the second affair was revealed I have been back on your website reading and doing as much as I can. But your system is not set up for only one of us to be participating. I have repeatedly asked him if he would be open to some outside assistance for our marriage and he, almost defiantly, will not accept it. I keep trying to communicate my needs to him and get him to reciprocate but he chokes up and won't talk. I know, without a doubt, we need outside assistance in order for us to rebuild our marriage strong and healthy, how can I get him to see this as well?
Welcome to MB, Aundrea. I am sorry to hear of the events in your marriage.
The board is extremely slow this weekend because of the Thanksgiving holiday, and its aftermath, in the USA. Please stay around and answer questions until at least until Monday afternoon, when the board will pick up again.
There are many things that need to be dealt with in your marriage. You are correct that you cannot rectify the marriage on your own, but I would not agree with you that this cannot be done without outside assistance.
Let me make it clear that I would strongly recommend assistance from the Marriage Builders coaches. I have used the telephone coaching system for two phone calls, and my H and I are now doing the online programme, and both have made a huge difference to our attempts to recover form his long-term affair and work towards rebuilding the marriage. From what I have read, other kinds of counselling - individual or couples counselling - can be positively destructive at times, and I would urge you to go with MB if you can ever persuade your H to join in.
You could, BTW, try phone coaching by yourself for now. MB phone coaching is done by Dr Harley's children, Stephen Harley and Dr Jennifer Harley Chalmers (not by Dr Harley himself). It would be a good idea for you to speak to one of them on your own, and they would coach you through recovery from the affairs and they would help you get your H onboard for a session by himself.
But your major problem is not to get your H to agree to coaching, but to get him to agree to ending his affair and rebuilding your marriage, and as far as I can see, he is nowhere near doing either.
He needs to first, become transparent about his actions towards this latest OW. Does he have any contact with the "live action role play group" (what is that? Is it a drama group, or is it therapy?) If so, that needs to end. He needs to write OW a no contact (NC) letter. You must read this letter and send it yourself, but it must not show any signs that you were involved in it.
He needs to tell you the identity of OW and you need to tell her H, boyfriend or parents about the affair, and ask them to persuade OW to keep away from your H. It would probably be good for you to tell the role-play group, too, about the behaviour of their members. If there is any kind of therapist involved in the group, then he or she needs to be aware of the potential for this "role-playing" activity to forge bonds between members of the group.
You need to find out where he was living during your 2 week separation. If he's only been back home since November, BTW, I highly doubt that he ever ended contact with OW. If she lives anywhere near you, you will need to move house eventually as well. You will never recover if OW is easily within reach.
He needs to change his phone number and let you have access to his phone and email accounts. This is not negotiable, and if he shows and signs of whinging about his "privacy" or about being "constrained" by you, you must take this as a sign that he is not willing to be honest with you and is hiding something.
You need to put a keylogger on his PC and a voice-activated recorder hidden in his car, because it is highly likely that he will open a secret email account or buy a pre-paid phone and use it when he is in the car, where he thinks you cannot hear him.
Also both you need to get checked for STIs, and you must not have sex with him even after you are cleared if you have ANY suspicion that he and OW are in contact. You are in the early weeks of pregnancy, and any infection that you get now could severely harm your baby.
So for now, please tell me what you know about OW, where she lives, what the role-play group is about, whether he still has contact with it, and who in OW's circle knows about the affair. Tell us also the same things about the first affair. How long ago was it? Who was OW? How did it end? What guarantees do you have that it ended when you were told it did?
How old is your child?
