Well, I guess I would hope Ready's H would be gone before then. I would not want to wait more than two more weeks to pack him up and get him out of the house.

I learned the hard way about the effects of continued contact (PA ended, but in-person contact lasted three months) and false recovery. It was the pits and I still have several long-lasting health issues. I was even grinding my teeth in my sleep, cracked a front tooth and now have a crown. I wish I had gone into plan B soon after D-day. It took a long, long time for my H to extract his head from his fourth point of contact.

AM

True, the days can really drag by when dealing with this kind of thing.

Ready- what's your schedule for making a move on this?

AM

You are truly an inspiration to me - thank you so much. I am not sure how I turned out to be such a forgiving person, but I really, really feel that my WH's problems have little to do with the OW. I continue to pray and hope that we get a chance to resolve/fix our issues, but it's so hard to be patient. Everyday he reinvents our marriage history, and it is more and more unhappy everyday. I am so scared to ask him to leave, but even more scared not to.

So, I am carefully preparing for Plan B. Planning to check in with OWH today gets things ready. I am not sure if I am strong enough to Plan B before Christmas, but if I can't then definitely before the new year.

Thank you for your support!

NW

I am preparing Plan B. Going a little slow, because I am so very scared, but moving forward. Sometime between now and the end of the month definitely. I just have to see how much longer I can take this pressure. Being in our home with him is worse than being by myself.

Thank you for helping me to move forward.

RTW, please do this sooner rather than later. Dr Harley only recommends Plan A for women to last 3 to 4 weeks. You will start feeling severe emotional and physical effects from being around this. And it will come on FAST. We have people who have had nervous breakdowns and years of post traumatic stress disorder.

While it is scary, I promise you will feel much better after a couple of weeks of no contact than you have in months.

Will he move out? I would try to get him out NOW and then get prepared for your Plan B in the next few days. The first step is getting him out, though. I would bring that up to him NOW.

Is he contacting the OW from your home? And have your children been told what he is doing?

This is 'normal' wayward behaviour; it helps to minimize feelings of guilt. It is to justify their actions to themselves, and to get others on their side.

Don't pay any attention to it, and trust your own memories. You are the one who is thinking and feeling rationally, he is in full on affair fog.

You are doing brilliantly!

rtw,

I know the thought of going to Plan B right before Christmas is scary. It DOES take a lot of courage and strength. Consider for a moment that it may work to your advantage in more ways than one. For those in Plan B, there is a certain amount of withdrawal on the part of the BS to go thru. The busyness of the season and being distracted by family and events can serve to get you thru the toughest parts of this change to your life. The urge to contact or to find out what he is doing/feeling will be tempered.

Plan B is the first step you make in taking care of YOU so that you can clear your head and carry out your plan.

I wish you well as you make this decision. You ARE strong, you CAN do this!

Ready, on December 18th, 2009, I entered Plan B(click on the link in my siggy to read my thread). It was very difficult to enter Plan B, and I was afraid. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. It was also one of the BEST decisions I have ever made. My children were only 6 and 9 at the time, and we managed.

It was a very difficult few weeks, but it got better. I can tell you that I feel so much better today than at probably any point in my entire life.

Don't put it off for too long. If you can get it done BEFORE Christmas, I would do it.

DO you need any help with the preparations? Are you ready?

RTW, you've demonstrated an amazing amount of strength up to this point in wresting control of your life out of the hands of your abuser.


I fear the continued pressure of him being in your house while obstinately carrying on the affair will adversely affect your health and well-being.

I believe it is in your best interest to use all legal means necesssary to force your wayward husband to leave your home. While it doesn't seem so on the surface, I believe you have a better chance at some level of peace over the holidays if you can get him out of your house now.

You may be strong enough to put this off, but why take the chance? Please get him out and go to Plan B.

I agree. Ready I had to get an attorney to get WXH out of our house. It took me 3 weeks and the pain was nearly unbearable. An hour before our emergency hearing I managed to get him to sign off on a great seperation agreement.

I said things to my WXH like, 'I need to be away from you because I am in too much pain to be near you right now. I need some space to think.....' all sorts of things like that. I believe he thought I would get over it quickly and he could move back in.

The important thing for now is to get him out. Once he is out you can file for exclusive use of your marital home and that will keep him out until YOU are ready to let him come home or ready to divorce him.

RTW, most WS's will just leave if you say this to them. But if he won't then you need to contact a lawyer to get him out like Smilingwoman did.

Several people here packed their WS's bags and set them by the door and asked them to leave. They LEFT. So, see if you can get him to leave voluntarily. And ask him for the key back.

I got him to rent an apt....but I knew he would move out sooooo slowly that I would go insane. So as soon as I knew he had an apt, I waited until he was in the shower before work one day and took his house key. I then said good bye to him at the front door so he wouldn't try to lock it with the key he no longer had. Then during the day I packed up all his clothes and just before he got off work texted him that I had a load of his stuff in my car and I would meet him at his apt.

He was FURIOUS. He was so mad...it was May and I had brought all his clothes. He slammed around coats and stuff saying, 'I won't need winter things, I won't be here that long!' (he was btw ;), but I digress).

You just have to be methodical and get things done. It was not easy, but once he was out I felt MUCH better.

I am one of the people ML is talking about. My WH wanted to wait until some date in February to move out. I had initially agreed, and then I found MB and saw the error in my ways.

On my birthday, I walked my children to school, returned home with a friend who had boxes in her van, walked into my home and packed all of my WH's things and put them on the porch. It took about an hour and a half.

I had my mom take my boys to my sister's house so they wouldn't be there when my WH came home. Then I waited. My dad was going to be there for me, but my WH came home early.

We talked for a bit, and he finally left after giving me the keys.

He moved in with OW and has lived there ever since but MY life is much better than it ever would have been had I not entered Plan B when I did

You CAN do this. We will all be here to help you through.

Scotty, I never read this part of you story. Girl, YOU ROCK.

Ready,

Now is not the time to be a forgiving person, but rather demonstrate "tough love" to your husband. I too thought that source of many of my H's issues were unrelated to the A. My H had/has PTSD from Iraq deployments, turned 50 the year of the A, was working really hard (I thought) as well as completing a masters degree. Even with all that, the over-riding issue was the affair. My H's depression emanated from the A, not any of the other stressful things in his/our life.

Plan B will be most effective if you start it before Christmas. Your H will get a taste of what life will be like without his home, without his children, and without his wife. It will be a huge eye-opening, fantasy-killing time.

And Mel is so right. It does not take a long period of abuse (yes, contacting the OW while living in the marital home IS abuse) to have health effects on BWs.

If your husband ends the affair and commits to recovery of the marriage, then it will be time to think of forgiveness or rather a response to what Dr. Harley calls "just compensation". First things first, though. Your H has to end the A and agree to no contact for life.

AM

I have a similar experience. Mine was so mad at exposure that he packed a bag and went to his mothers house. He was refusing to go NC and my sister told him he would have to pick a day to get the rest of his things. He did this, but he only took what he needed for a short period of time leaving masses of stuff behind. He even told me he was keeping his key to the house because it was 'his house too' and that he wanted to keep his bike etc at my place.

It was clear that he was planning to waltz in and out of my life as and when he needed, cake eating and driving me crazy.

So I packed up all his stuff, got it into my car. Dumped it all at his mothers house. Then I changed the locks.

This was in the summer. I have healed one thousandfold since then. I know for a fact that he is going to be lonely at Christmas. He doesnt get on with his family, and thanks to my exposure he prob wont be welcome at the OWs family celebrations either. Even if he is - she's not me and he's had six months to learn that.

Plan B is a perfect time for waywards to see the cracks in their life and problems in the affair relationship. So is Christmas.

If it were me, I would be planning a fantastic Christmas for myself as part of Plan B preps and I would dump him into a lonely christmas without warning so he can have plenty of opportunity to think about what he's done.

What's new?

Ok went into Plan B, but poorly executed. WH did not want to leave, suggested that I leave. WH finally relented and we had a great heart to heart really connected on our issues. WH left, but I agreed he could return to have meeting with DC. I texted the update to my sister, who replied "he still doesn't want to work things out". I was sad when he left and then realized I forgot the 1st rule of WS - they LIE! My WH is still not over OW, although he says they can't be together because of my exposure. My sneaky WH is trying to underplay the A, so he can introduce her later. Sorry, this is not going to happen. This may get dragged out over the next two weeks, but my DC will know her name, and if he doesn't leave, I will take the DC and leave. I know the A is doomed, but I have to be patient. Meanwhile, most of the time I feel strong and in control of a bad situation thanks to all of you and MB. I have received many compliments on my appearance and attitude - I am not playing the victim. Also, not bashing WH, I just keeping telling people that he is in crisis and needs help.

If you are in Plan B there shouldnt be any communications or glimpses of WH - are the gaps sealed up now?

Tell us about your Plan B. Who is your IM? Have you changed the locks on the door? He's not going to be able to waltz back into the house tonight, right?

DO NOT ATTEMPT PLAN B UNTIL YOU ARE READY FOR PLAN B!