Wow. I was going to continue from my first post, but I am so embarrassed at what I posted - even the title - that I just can't even look at it. So...

It's 3 1/2 months since DDay. I had a PA. Met the OW twice and almost had sex the second time. It's been a very difficult road trying to change my own behaviors that lead to me having emotional needs met by other women. It was never something that I knew about before, but fully understand now.

My wife and I started counseling with Steve maybe 5 or 6 weeks ago. Besides meeting with Steve and following his guidance - I have also met with a psychiatrist and am regularly taking medication - and will continue to meet and take meds.

My current f'up is the trickle truth I gave my wife. I first told her that I only made out and did some light petting with the other woman when in fact I touched her down there and we almost had intercourse. Now, after 3 1/2 months - I told her the truth and things have went crazy. I know everyone will tell me why and how she is so hurt - I am fine with hearing that - it helps.

I will be taking a poly soon to confirm my involvement with the OW and that there has been no other situations in our married life.

As of today - she wants a divorce. Prior to today I was following the counsel of Steve and based on what my wife was telling me - I was making progress in doing all I can to fulfill her emotional needs AND protecting myself. It was not easy - my wife has a lot of emotional self defense that kept her from allowing my attempts to meet her needs from doing anything, but we were working through it. I completely blew it by the trickle truth. I was too frightened of what I did to tell her the truth. Frightened of what she would do or say.

Posting something on MB is part of what she is asking me to do to even have a small chance of avoiding a divorce.

Question -

We own a rental property outright (no mortgage). Her parents and brother paid most of it off, but our own family money helped for some of the down payment, monthly mortgage and improvements etc... My wife wants me to sign over the property to her. I have hesitated for many reasons that all have to do with a divorce settlement - that is just as likely to happen as not happen.

I know I screwed up with the PA. I know that not telling the entire truth has brought back all the pain and suffering. I think it may even be worse since she thought things were improving and it feels like her world was rocked - twice.

Is giving up a significant family financial investment to my wife, who could then easily transfer it to her parents (and probably would or should), which would change the finances of a divorce settlement - Is doing this appropriate and wise?

I have seen and read enough about divorces to know that even though people may start out nice - it often becomes very, very ugly.

I don't want a divorce and my wife knows that. I am doing everything I can, but she told me that if I don't sign over this property then basically there is no way to avoid a divorce. Also, signing over the property does not avoid a divorce - it just avoids an immediate divorce.

... Just had a bad hour long conversation regarding the house. She feels I am up to something evil by not signing it over. I am just so uncertain about the future and don't want to make an emotional decision that could really turn out bad.


Edit - Just realized that some people may claim that I am full of sh*t because I can't have trickle truth and still be fully participating in counseling with Steve. When I first spoke with Steve I told him the entire truth. I also told him about my wife's struggle with depression and strong suicide thoughts (at this point she was medicated for two weeks). At this point, I urged Steve that to tell her the full truth may be too much considering her emotionally charged condition. I don't believe I exaggerated the situation, but I can now admit that my reasons for getting a delay in telling my wife the full truth were all to do with me being afraid to face up to the consequences of my actions. At the time I positioned it as all about protecting her.... I can hardly believe how selfish I acted.

From your previous thread - http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/u...in=165310&Number=2574446#Post2574446

You have stated that:


Why haven't you still done that? This is good way to show your wife that you are not interested in money and immovables, and that you will do anything to win her back.

I believe that your wife is looking for some assurances from you, through ACTIONS that you are repentant, and truly wish to work on things. The fact that you worry more about the house than she, shows CLEARLY that you aren't invested in this marriage. ALL you care about is covering your own AZZ, and that is an action of a wayward. There are bound to be many more actions that your wife is going to need from you before this is on its way to a true recovery, are you ready for that?

Enough with the BS. You didn't just suddenly realize that you may not be believed by some of the posters here, you read your wife's thread. STAY OFF OF IT. She needs to know that she can speak freely on there, and that any of what we tell her would be for her benefit, and that you wouldn't be privy to it. She needs to feel SAFE there.

I'm having a hard time believing that you didn't do more with OW then what you have trickled out with now. You are still VERY foggy, and you have A LOT of work to do.

Did Steve actually tell you that you should keep information about the A a secret from your wife? I do not believe that for one second. I think that you lied to him, to protect yourself, and then you lied to yourself about what he said to justify why you didn't tell your wife. You need to look at YOURSELF, FIRST.

MTH, you can dress up a pig and it's still a pig.
You sound very noble and giving, but I call 'bull' on your concerns about your wife's emotional health. You weren't too worried about that when you were screwing around with another woman, were you? And even after being on this site, hearing post after post after post, describing trickle truth for the trip to hell that it is, you STILL cower and refuse to tell your poor wife the truth. What'd that get you? More heartbreak for your wife. Nice.

And you STILL haven't given her the rental, so she has some feeling of financial security in case you pull some other crazy, self-centered stunt. What's up with that? Get signing, son. And stop putting your own financial interests ahead of your wife. Sheesh!

MTH,
Sign the property over.

You need to read Wulfpack Girl's thread regarding trickle truth.
CT

wow. Yeah. I've been where you are at. Almost exactly. And over 2 years after my H learned the whole truth, we're most likely divorcing. Trickle truth is that bad, sir. Not only did you have an affair, but you looked your BW in the eyes and lied about it. Lied to everyone (except, as you say, Steve Harley, but I cannot believe that he would sanction withholding the truth from your BW).

And you don't even have the "excuse" I had of not finding MB. My God, man, you were HERE, on this board. Surely you read the material on radical honesty? Read some threads where trickle truth was involved? Yet you still chose to lie to your BW. "Protecting" her. What you were doing was tricking her into remaining married to you. I wrote this some time ago to a WW who was continuing to lie to her BH, and this will explain to you what you were doing to your BW (just change the genders):


Original here .

You have a lot of work to do. To start with, 1.) Take a poly and 2.) Sign the property over.

What bothers me about this is that you are asking US instead of HER. YOU ARE ASKING THE WRONG PERSON. You do this whenever you don't get your way with her. You tell her to ask us or you ask us in order to manipulate your wife.

I would strongly suggest you stop doing this if you want to save your marriage. You are not here to make us happy, but HER happy. You have been lying to your wife this whole time and if you want to save your marriage, then you should do what it takes to make her happy.

And I don't believe for 2 seconds that Steve told you to lie to your wife. She should call Steve today and ask if he told you to lie to your wife.

Hopefully, my wife will call Steve regarding the trickle truth. She is upset because either I am lying and NEVER told Steve OR he knew. He did not tell me to lie, but he did approve waiting until things calmed down. I did not exaggerate the suicide issues.

Back to the topic of the rental property - I will try to sign it over. It's highly risky since she has already stated several times that she no longer loves me and wants a divorce. If she does divorce me I will have to find a way to put my life together.

I would love to hear from any former wayward husbands. How did you do it?

How did you find the motivation?

When things are very difficult I am only able to move forward because I know on an intellectual level that divorce is bad for many reasons. But, with a negative love bank.... How did you do it?

Actually LYING to your BS while pretending to be in recovery is the most likely thing to lead to suicide so I don't believe Steve told you to do that. You and your wife have been in a false recovery all this time because you were lying the whole time.


I would urge you to do everything in your power to PREVENT divorce by demonstrating you are serious. We are not going to give you ammunition to use against her so I would give up that tactic and do what the hell she asks.


I would stop worrying about your "love bank" and tend to your very victimized wife. If you don't take care of that, you won't have a marriage to worry about.

It is very disturbing that you are on here talking about your own "love bank" when you have effectively WIPED OUT your wife's with your dishonesty. What are you doing to fill HER love bank? That is where you should be focused.

Along with telling her the truth. Do you want her to find out from Steve that you lied about his role in lying to her? If you are smart, you will just tell her right now that you made that up. Its time to man up, my friend. Don't make her find out from Steve.

p.s. I want to assure you that people here WANT to support you, but true support involves helping you come clean in every way. True support means helping you stop manipulating your wife. I know it is hard to change overnight, but the best way to change into an open, honest, non-manipulative person is to just jump right in.

Start by being honest with her, no matter how painful. It is much easier for her to deal with hard truth than with lies. Abandon any and all blameshifting and take full responsibility for your actions.

If you want our help, you are going to get honest, my friend.

MelodyLane - I have clearly stated that Steve did NOT tell me to lie. Only that he knew I did not tell her the full truth and that he was fine in delaying the truth until she was in a better emotional state. While I do appreciate your comments, please be more careful how you read and respond.

I will not defend this position any longer - my wife can call and confirm.

Yes, I wiped out my wife's love bank. I know that... I was working on it the last 3 months and the trickle truth nuked it again. I mention my love bank because mine was very low prior to D-Day. Even though I caused all this mess - when my own LB goes to zero -- It is hard to find motivation to move forward.

I really am looking for how other wayward husbands made of go of it. Hearing from betrayed spouses is a learning experience, but a former wayward husband will have a different perspective that may help me. I think, over the last 3 months I made tremendous changes. My wife, when not upset, tells me things were going well.

I think we just bought 5 more spots with MB. Meeting with Steve helps - so this part we are working on.

Any former waywards?

Yes, what you are saying is that STEVE endorsed and condoned your LYING to your wife effectively creating a FALSE RECOVERY. Let's see if that is true since it has all but destroyed all your past efforts at recovery. Do you see how effective that tactic was?


If you want her to fill your lovebank, then stop whining and start helping her. She obviously can't fill your lovebank when you have incapacitated her with your continued lying and deceit. You have made her an emotional wreck by lying to her and making it impossible for her to fill your lovebank. You did this to your marriage. What is required now is that you render aid to your wife. How about focusing on HELPING HER instead of crying about getting your needs met?


There is no former wayward husband who is going to give you any different perspective because the perspective you need to hear is Dr Harley's. His perspective is that full and complete honesty is essential. And that your manipulation tactics should never be validated. I sense you are looking for sympathy and validation and you aren't going to get that here. You will get support for doing the right things, not the wrong things.

Saving so that minjo can read this to Steve.

You say above that you didn't tell her for her own good because minjo was struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts [over your lies and cheating, of course] and then you told another story on Saturday after she had to drag the truth out of you. So which is the truth?



Completely different stories. And in the latter story, you tell us that Steve endorsed and condoned not telling her in order to "protect" her.

This is why I am looking for useful comments from former wayward husbands. Right now I am wore out, no love bank and ready to just give up. I will sign the house over and just give up. I don't care.
I know I did this... I know my wife is in a worse spot.... Still, it doesn't matter. I don't know how to move forward.

Sounds to me like you are shopping for answers you like better. Well, guess what? I *AM* a former wayward so you are in luck!

I have explained to you how to move forward. Tell the truth. Cut the crap. The full, unvarnished truth. Stop spinning her and render first aide to your wife. Stop crying about yourself when your wife lies bleeding on the floor. Stop coming to us to ask if what your wife asks is legitimate. You don't have to please us, you have to please HER. That is disrespectful and it won't help the situation.

THAT is what it will take.

MelodyLane - Quoting my wife doesn't help as it's not related or it's taken out of context... read what I said here. I have been very, very clear, but you don't want to see it.

I know you have a harsh view of waywards... I totally get it, but your harsh views don't actually help because your view is clouded. I am not questioning the significance of what I did. I am trying to find out how I can move forward.

I am empty.

MelodyLane -

Your signature indicates you were betrayed. You are also female. Your perspective is going to be different.