Hi Everyone

As you can see, this is my first time posting on MB and I really hope you can give me some help/advice on my particular situation. I've read all of Dr. Harley's Q&A columns, and a lot of the threads on the forum, but none of them seem to apply specifically to my scenario. The closest advice column I could come to was "Can One Spouse Save a Marriage? Part 2, Letter #1", in that I am desperate to save my marriage, but my WS has absolutely no interest in trying. My main concern is that Dr. Harley specifically states in this column that "Here, the question is, if your wife has left you, can you save your marriage? Some day I'll do another column on what to do if your husband has left you. I know it's sexist, but my answer is not the same for both situations."

To give you the whole story; my husband and I are together 7 years and have been married for almost 4. Long before we got married, we had discussed the fact that I did not want children and he agreed that he was happy with that decision. Then, back in October of last year, he told me that he did, in fact, want children, and that this was going to be a deal-breaker for him. We agreed that we would go to counselling for this issue, but instead, we just swept everything under the rug and never actually made the appointment.

Fast forward to the end of November, when he again said that he wanted children and that if we couldn't have them (eventually, not right away) that he wanted to separate. We agreed to go to counselling, but he asked me to stay in my mother's house while we were waiting for the appointment, so we could "get used to" the idea of being apart if the counselling didn't work. I agreed to this, which I now see was a mistake.

We had two counselling sessions, and we didn't seem to be getting anywhere fast. The second session took place the week before Christmas, and at it, my OH begged me to come home. I decided not to, as I was afraid we would end up pretending everything was ok again, and end up in front of the counsellor with the baby issue again in another six months time.

Christmas came and went and I realised that I could not imagine a future without OH and that I was willing to at least consider the possibility of a baby. I sent him a text on the 3rd of January saying "I can't live without you, please give me a chance to change my mind". His response was "We need to talk, I'll come up on Saturday". Little did I know, he was coming to tell me that he slept with someone else on New Year's Eve, and that he is in love with her. He said that he knew it was no excuse for it happening so quickly, but he genuinely thought the marriage was over.

A few days later, after the intial shock had passed, I told him that I was willing to try and overcome the infidelity and try again. His response was that he no longer loves me, that this other woman makes him happy.

I have been struggling ever since with how a man can go from loving his wife and wanting her back, to not loving her and loving someone else in the space of 2-3 weeks. From reading this site, I can see now that he is in withdrawal and "addicted" to the other woman.

So, I suppose my question is where can I go from here? My WS is now adamant that there is no point in us trying to work on the marriage because he doesn't love me anymore. Obviously I can't force him to engage with me, but neither do I think that Plan B will have any effect in our particular situation. I think that if he received a letter from me saying "I'm cutting off all contact with you", he'd be absolutely delighted, as it would leave him free to carry on his affair.

I'm just so confused about what to do, or whether there is even anything I can do. I know some people will advocate leaving him be until the affair ends of its own accord, but I can't sit around waiting for that to happen, I'll lose my mind.

Any advice will be so greatly appreciated, folks. And sorry for the long post, but I just wanted to give everyone the background, as it's quite complicated.

Thanks for listening/reading.

Welcome CaliDeas, Sorry you are here. Have you moved back in to your house yet? This needs to happen ASAP. You cannot easily recover a marriage while you are apart.

He is not in withdrawal if the affair is still active. Have you exposed the affair to anyone yet?You will need to gather names of friends, relatives and such from the OW's side as well as both of you and expose this in one fell swoop... After you move back in.



CV

Hi CV, thanks for your reply. I haven't moved home yet. To be honest, I'm afraid to even suggest it - I think if I tell him I'm moving home, he will just move straight out himself; that there's no point in me coming home because, as he keeps saying "our marriage is over".

I also meant that he was in withdrawal from our marriage, not from the affair, which is ongoing. All the blocking language he uses about our relationship makes it very clear that he is in the affair bubble and doesn't want to hear anything I have to say.

Everyone in both my family and his is aware of the affair, as are all our friends. I know who the OW is, but have no way of contacting her other than through Facebook, and no way at all of exposing to her family. I am also extremely loathe to go down the route of contacting her - I don't want to anything that will potentially drive them closer together. That probably sounds foolish, but it's how I feel.

I agree with Celtic,
My guess and you probably don't want to hear this, your husband was probably already involved with this woman on some level, maybe at least an emotional affair and it only turned physical when you left to live at your mothers, WS's use all kinds of excuses as to why the marriage isn't working when they are emotionally attached to someone else.......
There are steps you can take to save your marriage, don't give up this site, this will be your place to come to for help and support........
Lots of folks here that have been in your shoes.......

Why even suggest it? Isn't it your home as much as it is his? Just move back home! Tell him you've realized the folly of living apart, and you want to work on things together. You need to be together to do that. Don't make it easy for him to screw around on you! It's normal to feel this way. Exposure is counter-intuitive, but it works more often than not.

There are many online people-finder search engines that can help you. If you know her name, go to www.intelius.com and plug it in. For a couple of bucks, you can get info on her as well as names that are associated with hers.

If you have her FB page, copy the friends on a Word doc and save it. It's likely her family is on her friends list.

And I agree that this has been going on a lot longer than New Year's Eve. Your WH is playing the "I want to have kids" card as his reason for leaving the marriage, and it's not that at all. He's just having an affair and picked that excuse instead of admitting he's an adulterer.

Caitlin,

Exposing her to her family is not about contacting her its about letting her loved ones know that the man she has been dating is married and that his wife is pretty much still in the picture and wants the marriage. You are enlisting their help to bust the affair and keeping your marriage together.

Here is all you need to know about exposing the affair ncluding how to get to the OW friends and family on facebook

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2566583#Post2566583

You need to move back home regardless of what your WH thinks or is going to do. It's your home and you have a right to be there. He has to face the consequences of his choices so if he wants to move out let him struggle to find accommodation etc.

Thanks for all the replies, guys. I have asked WH if the baby issue was just an excuse to leave me and he is adamant that it was not. Given that just a week before Christmas, he was begging to me to come home, I'm inclined to believe him. I also believe that the physical part of the affair did not begin until New Year's Eve.

I do, however, totally accept that there was an EA taking place long before they consummated it physically. He never made any secret that he was good friends with this woman - in fact, I used to jokingly refer to her as his "other girlfriend" (I can tell you now how stupid that makes me feel). He has since accepted that they were always close, and that when we ran into trouble in our marriage, he allowed himself to become closer to her. I can now accept that clearly she was meeting some of his ENs that I wasn't.


And what if he just says "Fine, move back in, but I'm not living here with you" and buggers off? That's my biggest fear. Because I genuinely think he would go to her (she lives alone) and I would have effectively given him an excuse to move in with her. As it stands, he is living at home with our three dogs so is very limited as to the amount of overnights he can spend with her. His sister lives next door to us, so he can't bring the OW to our home (plus, he knows that I would physically kill him if he did).

Move back in. Put the burden of leaving on him.

But be strong and say that you're going to fight for him and your marriage and it starts with you moving back to your house.

But you do have a tall mountain to climb. There is very little leverage in a marriage when there are no children in the picture. At this point, it is a breakup with paperwork since no kids are involved and there is no family unit to save.

I'm not bashing marriages without kids. I'm merely telling you that there is little to bring him back to you if you go to full no contact.

This other relationship was a threat from the start and opposite sex friendships with regular contact are a real threat to a marriage.

Your best chance of reconciling is to move back in. Even if you pose it under the pretense of "roomates". That will give you the opportunity to begin a proper plan A. Has anyone encouraged him to stop the affair?

CV

If he does, you are no worse off, but you don't want to be the one accused of abandonment of the marriage.

I'm a lot worse off. I'm stuck at home alone (apart from the dogs) with my entire support network an hour and a half's drive away and with the knowledge that he's now living with her. And will then be in the position of trying to reconcile while we're not only living apart, but he's living with her.

If I thought for a second that going home would help matters,I'd be in the car right now. But I genuinely think that it could make a bad situation worse.


His parents have. So he wont talk to them anymore. Any of our friends who have tried to contact him have been met with the "I just don't love her anymore" wall before they even get to have the affair conversation. He is pushing everyone who won't tell him what he wants to hear away.

Just to give an extra bit of background, two days after d-day, I went home to speak to WH about the whole thing. I laid my cards out on the table that I was willing to try and work on the marriage. He then told me that he didn't want to, that whatever happened between him and the OW, that he didn't love me anymore and had no interest in trying to save the marriage. It was like speaking to a robot; he just would not engage with me at all. Any time I asked how he could go from begging me to come home a week before Christmas to not loving me a week after, he just kept saying "I don't know", or "I've just changed." I told him I thought he should go for counselling on his own. He subsequently told his mum that he was going to go back to the counsellor we had been seeing.

I left very frustrated and went back to my mum's and basically went to pieces. A few people said some things to me over the course of the next week that made me realise that maybe I hadn't been the easiest person to be married to. I did a lot of thinking about this over the week, and asked WH could we meet to talk that weekend. He came up to Dublin on the 14th of January and I told him that while I wasn't to blame for him sleeping with someone else, that I could accept that maybe I hadn't been the wife I could have been, and that I was sorry about that. He got very upset, crying profusely, etc. He held my hands the whole way through the conversation, kissed my hands, and then when he dropped me back to my mum's, we had quite a passionate kiss. However, I was very careful not to bring up the subject of a reconciliation again, as I wanted to let him think about what I had said about my own behaviour. Again, maybe that was a mistake, maybe I should have pushed the issue then.

Last Thursday, I went home to drop some stuff back and to see the dogs. I told WH that I thought we should go back to the counsellor again, together. He got very angry, saying that everyone was trying to pressure him all the time. I said that I wasn't trying to control him (he had mentioned to his mum that he felt controlled by me during the marriage), and he said "You've been controlling me my whole life" and stormed out of the room, telling me that I should leave.

(This is turning into an epic post, sorry). To cut a long story short, we got into another long conversation about where things had gone wrong in the marriage, and he eventually said to me "CailinDeas, I'm just trying to figure my own head out. I will go back to counselling with you, but let me go to him on my own first, ok?" We ended up kissing again that evening, but slept in separate bedrooms. I went into him to say goodbye the next morning, and he pulled me down onto the bed, where we lay with his arms around me for about 10 minutes. We ended up kissing (quite passionately) again, but then he pulled away, and I said goodbye and went to work. We had a couple of perfectly pleasant phone calls since then.

That was the Thursday before last. I have since found out that he spent Saturday night just gone (the 28th) with OW, and since then, he has gone back to Robot WH, the wall has gone up again and he just doesn't want to know about me anymore.

All this blowing hot and cold has me at my wits end. I am genuinely conflicted about whether or not to stay in phone contact with him - basically, I don't want to annoy him into running to her.

I have a question that I think needs to be answered sincerely and honestly by you(to yourself) before you do anything else.

Are you willing to consider having children?

I'm willing to consider it, Scotland. But I'm not willing to have (or even promise) a baby just to try and get him back.

I have already decided that if he decides he is willing to try a reconciliation (which seems unlikely any time soon), that we will need to have a lot of counselling before we can decide whether a recovery is actually possible.

But, yes, a lot of soul-searching after our counselling (but before I found out about A) convinced me that I was at least willing to consider the possibility of having children.

I will also admit that I told WH after the second counselling session that I didn't think there was a whole lot counselling could do for us. It was only after two weeks of thinking about a future without him that I realised that in my heart of hearts, I didn't want to lose him and was willing to consider it.

Fair enough. May i ask why you don't want kids?


CV

I just never, ever have had any interest in them. I never played with dolls growing up, I never went gushy over babies. When people at work brought their babies in to show them off and all the women in the office would gush over them, I'd be annoyed at the distraction. All I can see is how many demands they put on a relationship and don't see any positive trade-off. I have seven nieces & nephews and I love them all, but I don't particularly like spending time with one or two of them and I'm always kind of relieved to see the back of them when they go.

WH kept saying to me when all this kicked off properly back in late November "But it'll be different when it's your own" and "You love the dogs so much, imagine how you'd feel about a baby that we made together". But I genuinely felt that I would end up resenting the child because I think WH (or OH as he was at the time) would end up loving it more than he loved me.

Seems like a bit of a stupid thing to have been worried about, considering he's already saying he doesn't love me anymore...

CailinDeas,

Waywards in affairs VERY often re-write marital history to justify an affair. My husband made mountains out of all kinds of molehills to make it seem ok in his own mind to be boinking some other man's wife.

It seems to me as though your husband was ok with not having children right up until the time he was involved with his OW. Is that correct? Or was having children a long-standing issue in your marriage.

The methods to bust up an affair remain the same.
1) Expose the affair to all who can influence the affair partners.
2) Establish no contact between affair partners. Implement extraordinary precautions so that the affair does not re-start or a different affair starts.
3) Recover the marriage by avoiding lovebusters and meeting each other's emotional needs.

AM

AM, I am just pointing out that it IS possible that her WH has wanted children all along and didn't have means to express it. It IS possible that it is just history re-write, but if it really IS a deal-breaker, then I wouldn't want CD to try to rebuild a marriage that would end over this issue.

CD, your reasons for not wanting children are valid, and it seems you have given it a lot of thought. When did you decide that you may want to have children? Is it something that you decided only after you realized you may lose your WH? I think that if you recovered your marriage, and then had children, you may actually begin to resent them.

Many people who have children don't understand why someone would choose not to have them, but it is a valid choice to make.

I actually have a couple of friends right now who are engaged to be married in August. She says that she doesn't want children, and he says that he does. She says that she is willing to consider it as a possibility. This is something that will ALWAYS be between them, and in some ways, if they never have children, I think he will feel tricked into marrying her. It's not fair to either of them.

You met your WH when he was 21, married him when he was 24, it IS possible that he changed his mind. It is also possible that he is re-writing history. What were HIS reasons for not wanting children?

Hmmmm....seems as if something is missing in regards to CDs lack of interest in kids. Maybe it's enjoying the freedom of not being tied down or having to provide for and nurture the child. I'm not a woman, but I have always heard that there is no greater bond than a woman and a baby. I kind of feel like CD just doesn't know what a bond like that would feel like.

My W loved being preganant, but not delivering (who does?). We equally shared the closeness of having a child. We were scared at first. Some people just don't want anyone depending on them for fear of disappointment. I'm not judging, but find it interesting that CD is one of few women not wanting children.

I told him at counselling that I hoped I would change my mind (he changed his, after all), but that I couldn't guarantee it.


I know this is a genuine risk, and that's why I don't want to go into automatic recovery mode even if he does agree to a reconciliation. I want us to go back to counselling with a view to recovery, but only if we can genuinely resolve the baby issue. All I know right now is that I can't see a future without him and that I'm willing to consider the possibility of children. It may turn out that we try to reconcile, and that the subsequent counselling only cements in my mind that no, I genuinely don't want children, and having them would be a mistake.


He always wanted them, but he was willing to put that aside in order to be with me. He said in counselling that when we got married, he thought his love for me was stronger than his need to have children, but that over the years, particularly since my youngest niece was born (she's two), he realised that he really, really wants to be a dad.

My two cents, and you're all perfectly entitled to scoff at it, is that the baby issue was genuine. He "knew" I wasn't going to change my mind, and he couldn't walk away from the marriage still in love with me. So he had a PA with this woman (who he already had an inappropriate opposite-sex friendship with) in order to draw a line under our marriage. He has now decided that he loves her, because if he loves her then he can't possibly love me anymore, thus removing any doubt or regret from the equation.

I don't deny that there were underlying issues in the relationship; that he started this friendship with OW because she was meeting ENs that I wasn't. I accept that I was guilty of many LBs in our marriage. I have asked him why he didn't bring any of these things up in counselling, and his response was that they were all things that could be worked on, but if we couldn't get past the baby issue, they were moot anyway.