karma, everyone I know, knows. He didn't try to hide what he did when he left me. People already know he had a secret affair first, left me for OW, and then has come back.

I got very angry numerous times, like 6 or 7 times in the last year, refusing to back down, literally following him, a few times I ended up raging at him and my words were very attacking and unkind.

He will talk more these days as long as I am not getting really upset. Two months ago, I became VERY upset and I ( srry you guys will wince) a rant on his facebook about what had happened, what I felt about it, what I thought of it. He had it off of there in a few minutes, but apparantly a few of his guy friends were hitting "like" and laughing at him about it. He felt humiliated and told me with me doing things like that, he believes it's "too late" to salvage anything.

I felt a big loss of dignity and self respect when I did that to him. He shamed me for it because I shamed him.

This "too late" nonsense is fogtalk.

You did not shame him by exposing, he only SHAMED himself by having the affair in the first place.

Listen girl, you seem to be taking an awful lot of responsibility for the problems here. Your WH has you on the ropes, living in fear and making you feel foolish for being insecure.

Anyone would be insecure after what you've been through!

He needs to be bending over backwards to make this up to you and if he's not, I'm afraid that's a bad sign. he knows he has the power here. All he has to do is tell you to 'get over it' and you're shaking with fear.

It's time to stop blaming yourself and hold his feet to the fire. What do you have to lose? A crazy making wayward perhaps.

I am so sorry, it's hard to get in every detail.

His friend is married and lives 1500 miles away. the interaction is online and appears to be confined to facebook and an online game.

I don't feel distance or marriage can stop people who really want to step out, but he is telling me how absolutely ridiculous I am being over this girl. Maybe I am, but when I see her on his facebook, my heart starts pounding really hard and my body starts shaking.

She knows I don't like her now and appears to be amused by it.

Zibbles, the only leverage I feel I have at this time is to withdraw and be polite when we interact. He doesn't like that and tends to slow down and think deeper when I do.

No--you are NOT being ridiculous. Marriage vows are kept by people who take them seriously.

She is amused, most likely because she is having an A with your H, emotional, perhaps physical. When was the last time that he went away?

You don't NEED leverage. You are his WIFE. You do NOT need to withdraw and be timid when your marriage is being destroyed by secrecy and lies.

He went to Germany last October on business.

Mad world

And does this woman live in Germany?

This will be hard, but you have to do it. You will need to start snooping.

We're here for you.

She lives in Canada. We live in the United States.

Ah, okay. I still suggest snooping though. With his behavior, he is hiding SOMETHING. No man is that hostile in that way after an A unless he has either restarted his A or started a new one.

ha ha, he is always saying that instead of coming to him for answers, I am always looking around him for them.

I wanted to tell him I don't bother asking him because I already know he will lie to me. Why bother?

I don't ask him unless I think I already know the answer. I asked him about this girl the other day and I swear his knees were shaking.

He says I am making him a nervous wreck and then he said he was going to leave for a day. I said ok. He didn't though.

She must be his OW, or he is close to getting her to be, if he is that nervous.

And yes--that is very smart. You already know he is going to lie, so why bother asking him? You want truth, and you will get that by snooping.

Is there a family computer you can put spyware on? What about his phone?

He left you for three months without a word!

You are terrified that he will leave again. Are you prepared to stay married to someone who is unfaithful and so disrespectful of your feelings? I hope you are not that desperate.

You need to stand up for yourself, with firmness and dignity.

Follow the advice here and start snooping.

You ask for advice on the fear and neediness?

You are needy because you have put yourself in the impossible position of trusting an addict who still lies and shoots up.

You need to Plan A. When you snoop and expose it will help bust up the A. This will help bust up the addiction and you will feel more control and less neediness.

Plan A is giving him conditions (while being amazing and attractive) and say "This is what it will take to keep me in the marriage"

Neediness is a love buster because you have no boundaries for leaving so you are stuck with making demands.. You have to be prepared to leave not to be needy.

There has been no progress. If he wants things repaired, he needs to answer your questions about the affair. It appears that he wants to sweep it under the rug. You are seeing the results of attempting to recover that way.

I suggest that the two of you talk to Steve Harley.

What an incredibly disrespectful thing for your husband to say!

Ellie, we've had plenty of posters on this very site who came here to recover from affairs that started online and from a distance. They're only a plane ride away...

What does this mean? How does he 'slow down' and 'think deeper' when you withdraw?

I woke up this morning, and I feel this misery in me. I thought for a few minutes how he appears to try so hard and I was feeling so happy, then I thought of that girl.

I think he is honestly telling the truth about her. He was shaking because he has been lying so much and he knows I hate lying. I have told him all winter that if wants me to trust him, he has to tell the truth. I think he took a risk and did tell it. He was scared of my reaction. My reaction was hurt and anger, which he then tried to hide from because I didn't calm down right away.

Truth was, according to him: he has more contact with her than he admitted before. It actually appeared harmless to me, and I wouldn't have thought a thing about it, if it had been anyone else. The reason I feel so upset is because I had told him I felt uncomfortable with her and asked him to cease contact.

He said he became resentful of my request, because he thought it was so weird that of all people, I chose her as a "target". A target in the sense, that he believs I am transferring my upset about the affair to someone who actually is innocent of any wrong doing.

He has other facebook friends who have been way worse than her, and workmates he has interacted with a lot more, and not once did they bother me. I can honestly say that I haven't seen her do much of anything that would normally have bothered me.

It appears to me that the act of showing anxiety for the first time ever over someone he knows, panicking, and asking him not to talk to her, has resulted in resentment in him to the degree that he is ignoring my request ( as in YOU don't tell me what to do! And I will do this to make sure you know you are not controlling me) and is in fact, now making it clear to me that the problem is not the girl, the problem is my lack of trust and constant anxiety.

From what I can tell, he is feeling very resentful and guilty towards me over my pain, is tired of seeing it and feeling it every day and sort of "getting back" at me for punishing him by asking him to support me in a way that makes him feel shamed for the prior affair.

He has been willing to discuss today. He says he is more interested in finding ways to address our relationship than worrying about some girl he hardly knows and who he barely cares about. He is upset and worried that I may ask him to get rid of friends again and again until he is socially isolated.

Honestly, I can see where this comes from, he had a prior marriage with a VERY controlling woman who DID destroy so many of his friendships that he ended up alone for a few years. That prior marriage partner, for example, would get into arguments with his friends girlfriends, and one time even physically attacked one of the girls.

I am not controlling, I never have been. This is the first time I ever asked him not to talk to someone other than OW. He is accusing me of giving him an ultimatum. I asked but didn't give a consequence, but at this point I am becoming demanding, it seems.

So to be clear, he did have a prior affair, I don't believe this girl is another one, she is a big bone of contention, though, and he is being stubborn on the basis of not being controlled and fighting me because he is afraid of being isolated again.

We are clearly locking horns over this.
He says he wants to talk more about it in a day or so and would like for us to set the matter aside for the weekend. I said ok.

He did go through his facebook page this morning and remove all of her comments, and he set his settings so she wouldn't be able to post anymore. She was a friend of his friend and was linking in through the other guy's page. He said he will do this now, has zero problem with it, and will discuss more after the weekend about cutting her out further. Apparantly he wants the option to talk to her if he feels like it and the option to respond to her if he feels like it, even if he never talks to her anyway. I am refusing to say it's ok. Am I being stubborn over something stupid?

I still feel pretty bad all around. First to have the affair in the background, second to feel like he is struggling with himself due to his own issues, over how to act for me, and last, I feel this hurt in my chest that is very real.

We had a great last 2 weeks, and we seemed to be getting back on track. This has blown it apart, though for the first time in a long time he has not run off and he has shown real interest in talking.

I think it is possible that we are getting the problem over the protocol of communication more than anything, big part of me feels that if he really understood at this point, he would simply and quietly minimize his interaction with the girl. Which from what I am hearing and seeing has amounted to 5 or six comments on a facebook page in the last 2 months.

Martital, I mean for the last couple of years he has been very resistent to me. The more I pressure him to talk and work things out, the further he retreats. I have been desperately needy and my eventual outbursts have happened when I became so desperate and upset, I literally went into an upset that had me calling him 20 times when he wouldn't answer the telephone, or getting so upset when he was at work and refused to answer an email that I sent him 10 more. None of which he answered.
He tells me he cannot answer to that much anger. It scares him, so he hides.

I feel that is so unfair. I wasn't just angry.. it was pain and feeling so abandoned, then when he was clearly non responsive over a harmless but necessary mail, I became upset. I have thought about it and the lack of response reminds me of trying over and over to find him during that 3 month period. One of the things that stings the most... he was with OW and I could see his car there, and OW would contact me to make fun of me, but not a peep from him.

As clear as I can see it, he's not understanding how bad this is for me and I am losing control of myself every once in a while.

If I go quiet and back off, he will, after a few days, believe things are calm and he will sit down and talk, offering concessions and listening to me and try to help me more. I used to just chase him all the time to sort things. I wanted really to go and hide, but I was scared to. I was afraid he would think I didn't care and he would leave. Then finally I reached a point last summer where I went quiet for weeks at a time. When I responded to him again, he was more responsive to me. I ended up going off like that a few more times and after a while he appeared to try and keep it from happening.

So it seems when I pull back, after a couple of days of that, he doesn't like it and he is willing to talk and negotiate. That is what I meant about pulling back and the response from him.

This is why I am calling it triggering for me. I am in a state of pain, panick, and I am angry over having to even worry about this. The panick is very real to me. When you are shaking and your heart is pounding and you are desperate to be cared for what else do you call it? And even more important, how do I make this stop.

indiegirl, I have been so needy. I feel humiliated over my own actions over the last 2 years.

In retrospect, I think I mishandled this request to him about this girl. Instead of asking him to act for me, I am thinking telling him that telling him that I can't recover when I feel unsafe would probably have opened up a conversation about what he and I could do together to work on this.

Sadly, I know why I was not calm enough to do it. I didn't trust him to care enough about me to actually have the conversation. I am thinking I can re-direct energy from the "ultimatum" to simply telling him that I can't recover when I don't feel safe, then asking him to contribute with me some ideas for things we can do to work on a safe enviroment. He told me last week, in a moment of vulnerability that he is scared too and he also doesn't feel safe or trust that I am here for him.

I told him I AM here for him. He seemed to take that as encouragement to open up more and he told me some of the things that made him so unhappy before the affair. I am a little shocked. One of those things, for example, was me getting anxious about a savings account we had. For some reason he was plowing through the savings and spending it all, and I became alarmed and upset and asked him to stop. In fact I went further and asked him to replace about 500 dollars and I requested that he not access the account anymore to take money OUT because we agreed to put money IN, ie a SAVINGS account. he said he was so upset at that, he decided then not to share our money back and forth. After that, it has been true, he has never taken another penny from that account or from me even when I offered it unless it was small change for a bottle of water or something similar.

He felt, he says, that I humiliated him.

A number of things in your post are jumping out at me, and I'd like to address them.
First, two conflicting statements:
So he was lying to you about the amount of contact.
You only needed to tell him this one time. Telling him over and over that he needs to tell the truth is counter-productive. If you are going to become angry when he tells the truth, you can expect him to avoid telling you the truth. Stop the anger. When he tells you the truth, thank him for being open and honest with you. I understand that you might not like what you're hearing, but he will not be receptive to telling the truth if you become angry when you hear it. There's another way to let your concerns be known to him. Here's the thing: it doesn't matter why you want him to end contact with this woman. You are uncomfortable with that particular friendship. Pretty simple. Applying arm-chair psychoanalysis to ferret out your motivation is unnecessary. Nixing the girl will positively help your marriage. That will be a way to 'address your relationship'. She may have had good reason. Your H sure does have a lot of women friends that appear to interfere in his marriages. He can change his settings in a heartbeat. He's throwing you a bone. Don't catch it. He's the one who's being stubborn, and that needs to change. Would he be willing to talk to Steve Harley?

I don't know if he would talk to Steve. I agreed to wait a couple of days to try and talk more, so I will ask when we pick up the conversation again.

I would quote from your post here, Marital, but I am confused by the quoting interface right now.


Regarding the contact, I thought he wasn't even having contact with her until I went back through his facebook posts. When questioned, he indicated he had responded to an email she sent him, she wrote back and then he had written another one on his own. He was afraid due to knowing I would get upset at "the truth". Well I did get upset. Mainly because I had asked him not to talk to her and he deliberate initiated contact. Like it was more important to show he could do what he wants over doing what I need.

I am aware that he is mainly viewing my request as an attempt to control and isolate him, rather than what it is: in order to feel safe and recover, she needs to be out of the picture.

Yes, I figured I made a huge mistake by getting upset when he told me the truth. I have been thinking a lot about that. He is angry at me for the upset and has said 3-4 times in the last couple of days that if telling the truth creates so much drama, then next time he will lie to save on his nerves and my nerves.

I have not replied to that comment to him yet. My gut reaction is anger at him for there even being an issue around him being honest because I never used to get upset when he told the truth because the truth wasn't ruining our lives! Second reaction is to tell him there's the door and don't come back. Last reaction is to simply apologize for the outburst I had and tell him I would feel the same way he does, except I feel it would be better if we, together, addressed the issues that are creating an unsafe enviroment for both of us.

I know I have to arm myself against immediate upset out of control reactions. I take your point on that. I think if he felt he could tell me anything and have me listen with calm and good will, he would do it. He is afraid of it because I am getting upset.

From my own side, I never used to get this upset about anything. I have a lot of resentment over having this in my life, I guess. I need to think more on the reasons I feel this way. I am guessing I have some sense of entitlement to be angry that is getting out of control because I am afraid, tired, humiliated... all of those painful feelings you have in situations like this one.

Lying is wrong and abusive to our spouses. Lying means something that would hurt your spouse is being hidden. While he is so anti-truth, you cannot listen to a word he says (only trust his actions) and snoop very hard. I would certainly put a key logger on his computer to see the truth of his FB relationships. This creates a win-win for you. If you see nothing wrong you will be reassured and will love bust less. If you see a problem, you can tackle the problem.

I would drop all requests for him stop, while you snoop. For one thing, you need him to drop his guard and slip up if there is something going on. I am VERY worried that he changed his FB contact with her so it is more secretive and hidden.

1) Install a keylogger, (see operation investigate) This will give you a way to feel more proactive and less needy.
2) Drop your queries and act unsuspicious. Allow him to relax and see what happens online when he feels less watched.
3) If these changes cause him to ask if you are still upset about her, be quite frank. Say �Yes it makes me very unhappy. However I�m not interested in forcing you. I will only trust you when you voluntarily and enthusiastically remove her in full. You can tell me when you are ready�. Ignore any replies to this. Make your point and leave.
4) Work a great Plan A. Meet his needs, look amazing, work it like a rock star. Remember this involves being a woman who won�t put up with mistreatment. If he says anything hurtful, say �That was hurtful� and leave it at that. Act very much like you�ve gotten your spark back and could be gone any day unless he gets his act together. Be the strong woman he fell in love with.