I read you post on the 4th. You asked WH for the why when you were meeting all his needs.

How about not having proper boundaries and letting the OW develop a close personal relationship.

This allowed feelings to develop, and with the OW letting it be known she was available is all it took.

CV, thank you for your reminder.

No, we ( I) have not done those things you pointed out. In my head, I know what I should do, but in my heart, I found no desire to do it. My heart at times screams to get out, but out to where and what?

How to cleanse my head off all the selfish, self- center thoughts of focusing on myself and my ENs only? Oh I know I sound really dumb, but that's what I am and where I am! Sorry for babbling. Yeah, sounds like I definitely have some sort of fog over my head, all I need is to find a OM then I get the whole adultery package.

Strange is that I am yearning for, fantasize for a romantic, intimate relationship where I feel love, but my H is not in that picture, no man I currently know is in that picture. Had dreams of dating men, totally strangers that I never met in real life (probably do not even exist in real life), woke up and wish I lived in that dream, feel guilty about not loving H.

Sorry, here comes a whiner...

TheRoad,

I believe that you hit the nail right on the head. H had a session with Steve this morning and Steve reinforced this point, worked with H to set up a protection plan ( NC plan and weakness protection plan).

I have been angry and resentful because my H NEVER listened to me about his boundary or any of my warnings. I was very uncomfortable about this lose interaction with women, I appeared to be a paranoid jealous, b**tchy wife. Yet many years went by w/o any affair. I guess he proved his point that rigid boundary was not necessary for him, and I stopped complaining about his interaction with women. That was specifically when he became the bishop in our church. I thought I could trust him...

I am very angry because H discounted, disregarded all my counsels and warnings. I am frustrated because I am not sure if he would ever get rid of his stupid pride and starts to take what I have to say into his heart.

It's Valentine, I wish I did not feel this way...

TR, Thank you so much for that wisdom you shed into my dark confusing state.

I am in such a dark moment and need help. After battling with my WH's affair and recovery for 3 months ( he appeared to be with full cooperation), I thought things started to take a new good shape and we are at the stage of getting ready to recover.

Wednesday night WH met with our church leader, he came home and told me some of the details of the meeting. Some of their discussion brought me the unsettled feeling about what he did during the affair. WH claimed he never touched the woman under her clothes, never had sex with her (they met at the park twice, one time in the evening). She claimed they had sex.

When we counseled with Steve, Steve discussed with me about a polygraph. He brought it up with WH, apparently. WH said Steve decided that it was not necessary to take one. In my stupidity, I dropped the issue also.

Wednesday night, during our conversation, I looked at him in the eyes and asked "did you touch her vagi*na?" he looked right at me in the eyes and answer no.

Thursday I convinced him to take a polygraph, just to clear out any charges against him (from the church stand point- had sex vs. not had sex) and also bring me total peace about his honestly.

Friday morning I booked a polygraph. He became more and more agitated. We had an argument over the phone, I knew the answer - he was still lying- so I canceled the polygraph, and also canceled our next appointment with Steve next week.

Eventually in Friday evening he confessed that he did things with her more than he told me. AND- he said that Steve Harvey told him to hold off that information. Knowing the philosophy and practice of the Harleys, I don't believe that chit at all. BUT, since I have not confirmed that with Steve, I can't say it was untrue. I believe that if Steve did, it was from my H manipulation (he claimed I was in serious depression and any info like that would drive me to suicide). Of course if it was presented that way, Steve would not have push him to tell me the truth, knowing that he would be part of someone's death (I wsa on antidepressant and did not have that problem)

What I see is that my WH never had the change of heart for the true recovery.

I feel hopeless and deceived even worse. I felt worse than how I felt on D-day and the day afterD-day. I gave him many times in the past to come out clear, but he did ALL he could to convince me he had nothing else to hide things from me.

Dday was in November, in December, after I threatened to hire a private detector to dig up his history the last 17 years, he spit up his porn addiction problem. Also in December, he hid the affair phone and solemnly lied about his knowledge of it (he did this because I wanted to take the phone in to recover deleted text messages). In January he confessed that he threw the phone away.

And now in February more of his affair came out...

This trickling truth is killing me and I feel there is no hope in the future that he will ever become a honest husband.

Is there any reason why I should hang on to this marriage? Please someone give me some hope and reason to save this marriage.

Desperate,

Minjo

Get the polygraph and put an end to trickle-truth. Why on earth did you cancel it???

Because I know now that he lied, that all those things he told me was plain lying and even with the polygraph and without his change of heart to become an honest man, going forward in the future, I will still have a lying husband who are vulnerable to cheating and lying.

I really like your signature line. Is it really true? Do we need to imagine for the marriage to thrive?

Minjo, I think the mistake you have made is continually give your husband the benefit of the doubt. You have been in a false recovery for some time now, but if you will stop giving him inappropriate trust and hold him accountable, I think you will get somewhere.

I am flabbergasted that you cancelled the polygraph when you know he is hiding something. This is part of the decision making process that has led to this terrible place. If you had insisted on the polygraph from the beginning, he wouldn't have withheld the truth all this time.

And he is lying about Steve Harley. Steve didn't tell him to lie to you.

So, first step is make an appointment for the polygraph again. Before you tell him, write out a list of questions and give him one last chance to answer them all truthfully. Give him 2 hours to come clean about everything and tell him he has to pass the test or this marriage will not work.

You have hope if you will STOP letting him dictate the terms of your recovery. You don't let the rapist decide the recovery process for the rape victim. You need protection and the first step is get all the truth out. That is not negotiable.

\

I am at a loss to understand this. Minjo, hold the man accountable - that is how you change his heart. Shine the light of day on his black heart so it can heal.

Minjo, I want to point out something else I saw in your husband that made me suspect he was still wayward. He left the forum when he was asked some hard questions. A wayward who is sincere cannot be "run off" by wild horses. The fact that he left when he got some tough questions reflected someone who is not serious.

Why am I saying this? Because you need to make it a condition that he post here to US. We can see right through his bullcrap where you sometimes can't.

MelodyLane,

I am at lost at how stupid I am also!

You are NOT a stupid woman! Some people do not have good instincts about this, hon. And it is very hard to do the correct thing when you are under emotional duress! That is the beauty of this forum, we can help each other through our blind spots.

We are here to help.

MelodyLane,

You know how much I appreciate you? Much, much more than I can say!

Regardless of me stupid or not, here come another definitely stupid question:

I am right now speaking with my WH in our bedroom.

I am asking my H to leave (move out) since yesterday and I am still doing it. He told me it's a bad idea, he asked me to ask you if it's good. So I am, asking that question.

Hope you are around at this moment!

minjo, that is entirely your decision. You have been in a false recovery all this time because of his lies, so you may rightfully feel that you need a break until you are satisfied you have the truth.

Your husband needs to be doing everything in his power right now to make you feel better, and if moving out achieves that, then he should move out for now.

He needs to be busting his [censored] to make you feel better.

Yes,

that makes sense! I have been very uncomfortable about him leaving and bad-mouthing the people here. I will make it one of the condition, right now!

Here is the list of things I want WH to do, I want to see it mostly accomplished by this Wednesday (some can't be done right away) or he can move to the hotel housing at the YMCA when they have opening this Wednesday.

Disclose all to his brothers.

Disclose the affair in his own words to my brother ( I already did this myself, but want him to do it in his own words).

Write a no contact letter, similar to the one in the SAA book, with modification

Disclose the affair to people at church.

Participate on the MB discussion forum

Taking a polygraph test every 3 months.

Read through the book SSA within 2 weeks.

My WH agreed to do all. Is there anything else I need to add to the list? Is there anything in this list irrelevant to our recovery(the exposure part)? I felt like some of these items only serve the purpose of punishment to scare him from future offend, but not contributing to recovery otherwise. His brothers live so far away, have great respect for him but have not much interaction with us. My brother is very close to me and both WH and I hold great respect and love for him. Also, the affair is completely dead, utterly dead. It's was dead by successful exposure from both my side and the other family's side and the intervention of church leaders. WH actually "hates" the OW! Go figure!

WH told me Steve did not think it's necessary to write the NC. Now I think that was a bit strange, knowing that my WH lies, I will check with Steve for sure. But, he must have thought that way since he did not ask me to follow up with it. Somehow I felt that WH might even be able to manipulate Steve and played the 2 of us because we all 3 don't get on the phone at the same time. WH best static is exploiting loopholes, cracks and hair splitting opportunities and miscommunication. It's very hard to get to the bottom of an agenda with him without him bringing in irrelevant matters to derail the true agenda.

Another question I have is what am I supposed to do? plan A? B? F/U? anything? We are planning to do the online program once the crisis, the injury treatment phase (Steve's term) is over. But that's down the road. For now, what should I do? I can tell that WH will not stick around long if he gets no emotional needs met by me- ie sex, love, affection. But I am pretty much incapable of providing right now. But if I don't provide anything, he will see it as putting in hard work without reward and he will quit. He is so used to receiving from me, even though he does not see it.

This part is hair spitting to support what I just said, warning: tedious to read-------------

WH argued with me tonight that my love bank with him is empty and he saw it fruitless and almost impossible to do the many things I asked (beside the list). I asked him so why he insisted that he loved me... He said he tried his best to love me. Then I responded that I am responsible for his love for me, and if I withdrew all love unit, there is no way he could love me, the "try" part does not work. (He often told me " I am in love with you", "I enjoy being around you"...) After my comment, He mumbled something and found excuse to end the conversation (it was very late also).

Well, a lot of hair splitting here. I am sending him back to the forum so people here can help me to see through this fog.

How to prevent WH from reading my thread? He definitely will read this stuff specially when he is back active on this forum.

Again, I am amazed and grateful for the amount of time and effort people here spend to help me (MelodyLane and all others who have given me and WH valuable advices).

melodyLane,

I read your respond in my new topic about divorcing vs dysfunctional relationship. I agree with all the points. Regarding the point that my WH is very manipulative and cunning, that is not far from the truth either. Matter of fact, he is very clever and always brings up convincing points.

How would you defog this:--- long and tedious ----------

WH claimed that he worked very hard the last 3 months to recover, which he did. But I pointed out that the hard work was put in the wrong place at the wrong time (being more affectionate, spending lots of time together, being kinder and gentler...) If we used remodeling our basement to compare with our recovery work, telling all truth is like ripping out the old paneling walls and replacing them with new drywall, doing all other extra nice things is like putting on a new paint coat.

The expected increase in value of the basement will not be the same if only applying new painting without ripping out the old panelings.

Now that the old panels were ripped (in our situation, old hidden truth came out this weekend) after the new painting job because the room actually still shows many flaws even after a beautiful new paint job. Thus the new paint coat went down with the old walls (all the nice work done the last 3 months was destroyed).

He told me that the last 3 months work actually changed him and gave him the strength and trust in me more to fess up the remainder truth about the affair. Because of the 3 months work that we were closer and he felt safer about me and himself, he could spit it out. He could not do it before.

This is somewhat true, because he gave me more details of the hooked up affair night. First he only admitted that he touched her vag., today after I firmly insisted on a divorce without pressing on for more truth, he told the rest of the affair details of their penni*s / vag encounter (yet still claimed he did not enter her and had climax). This piece of truth came out in the process of me firmly asking him to leave and I did not desire any polygraph.

Why do you think this piece of info came out at this time when he had not reason to tell me. Or is it because he knew I would have found out anyway from Steve and my church leader (he confessed with them but not with me).

If we remain married, I definitely will order a polygraph ASAP and once every 2 months (actually this is his idea).

Your H is such a bullshytt artist. The reason the truth came out now is because you threatened a polygraph test, of course. Being too much of a coward to tell the truth is not an excuse for lying. What he did was put you through a false recovery all this time.

He is not a very good bs artist, by the way. I know 8 year olds who come up with better crap.

Even so, minjo, the basic issue from my perspective is that you ALLOW him to get away with this stuff. You continually give him the benefit of the doubt, rather than hold him accountable.

I don't want you to schedule a polygraph every 2 months. I want you to schedule one NOW in order to get all the truth out on the table. Make out a list of your questions, give him a chance to answer them and then go through the polygraph test.

You need ONE polygraph test. In the future, you shouldn't need a polygraph test if your marriage is so transparent that he couldn't possibly carry on a secret second life.

You should be in plan RECOVERY. But the first step is for him to man up and give you all the truth. THEN you can decide if you want to stay in the marriage. Make up the list of questions give it to him and get your answers.

He will have to commit to giving you just compensation and doing what it takes to recover his marriage. Otherwise there is no marriage to save.

By lying to you all this time, he has made it virtually impossible for you to trust him. You realize now what a practiced liar he really his. For someone to do this when they were being given mercy is harder to over come than the actual affair.

My feeling about your list is that sending the NC letter is probably a good idea. The other items might just make things harder so I would take them off. For example, exposing to his brothers is not going to help him. Have you exposed the affair to your kids? If not, you would want to do that.

I would focus on holding him accountable in every way, minjo. He has a long practiced habit of deceit and you can help him overcome this by ceasing to give him the benefit of the doubt.