Congratulations Neak

I have kisses implanted in my behind tonight ... but at least S3 ate all his kisses tonight so I can kiss my behind goodbye tomorrow.

Congrats for all you stand for and all you do...Tough~

So very awesome Neak. Congrats.

I love this!!!

What is awesome too, is that now that we know the formula, if (WHEN) our $LB takes a hit, we know how to fix it. Stop making withdrawals, duh, and which EN's being met will most quickly repair what was lost.

Before reaching critical mass.

And waving ***HI*** to all my good buddies. The store doesn't leave me much time for fun on the net, but I think of you all often, and pray for you all the time.

Thinking of you two too, Neak. Congratulations on the anniversary!

I should say -

Congrats on the NON-anniversary!

I know it's late, but I still wanted to congratulate you! You are an amazing woman. Thanks for sharing yourself, your time, and your humor! My Best to you both.

OE

Thanks again!

By God's grace, we recovered. By God's grace, I would have thrived, even had we not recovered.

83 frigging pages! I can't believe that I read it all, but I just couldn't stop (though it did take me a few days). I can only echo what others have already said; your story is an inspiration and you are a gifted writer. For someone at the beginning of all this heartache and pain, it is so reassuring to read a story of success. Reading about your recovery has helped me understand some of my own feelings better and made me feel normal in an abnormal situation. I hope yur family is doing well!

On my display, it's only 28 pages. Of course, when you put 397 posts per page.... j/k!

I'm so glad you found reading it helpful.

Our family is doing well, with semi-normal things to worry about. One of our biggest worries right now is Mr. C, who has been failing his way through high school, passing just enough classes to go on to the next grade, but not enough to actually be able to graduate. He's just finishing up 10th grade.

AJ and I sat him down last night and had a chat with him. He is currently failing 4 core subjects. If he somehow managed to pass all of them (sorry, not happenin'), he would have a full load the next two years, needing 15 units passed and none failed in order to graduate. And he's so bright! It's very frustrating......

So we basically told him, you have to be going to school as long as your under 18 and living at home. At whatever point you pass your GED, that can become college instead of high school.

Of course, he'll only be able to take college part-time, because he'll also have to work part-time for AJ in order to be able to pay for his own classes.

The Princess made it to our State Music Festival with her vocal solo, flute solo, and the ladies' group she also sang with. We'll be leaving Thursday, since I'm the accompanist. She is doing well in school, taller than me now, and is a highly motivated young lady.

The Dervish is still his hilarious, irrepressible self. He takes nearly all of his classes in the special ed dept, but it's almost all because of his attitude in the classroom. He refuses to do his work, and totally spaces out. The battery of testing they gave him shows there is NOTHING wrong with him, which was no surprise to any of us in the family. We may well have another early-GED college genius on our hands if he keeps up.

AJ and I gave the hardware store back, and were both relieved to do so, for reasons that had little to do with why we actually gave it back. It took up more of our time than we could afford to spare, but the main reason we finally gave it back was some difficulties with the owner.

The main one was, we keep the Saturday Sabbath, and the owner comes from a devout Lutheran background. Well that alone isn't a problem - basically everyone here is Lutheran. I play at their church every week, and we're all happy as clams together. But the elderly owner, for around 80 decades accustomed to being open on Saturdays, refused to stay out of the store on Saturdays, and sold to all his loyal customers who dropped by.

AJ tried over and over again, and the owner only saw it as, "you believe one way, and I believe another," instead of "I NO LONGER OWN THE STORE AND I NEED TO DO WHAT THE BOSS TELLS ME TO!!!!!!"

There was also a little matter of him selling us his carpet and flooring business, which he was supposed to manage, and instead he started his own flooring business, conducting it right out of our store.

We could have changed the locks, and forced the issue with the flooring, but that didn't seem like the best choice for us and for the family. So we pulled out of there, and are setting up our own stuff in the little storefront we were already using. It's a fraction of the space, but when we close it on Friday, it stays closed till we open it back up again.

I'll be managing it (with a LOT of help from Neaksis, who is also leading the remodeling project - I'll have to post some photos when we're done), and only open 8-12 M-TH. That way I can do all the hours myself when AJ is working, and still have time to clean the house and cook delicious, wholesome meals. And drive bus, of course. Oh, and post on MB periodically.

In a very big nutshell, that's how we're doing.

Very inspirational. We are all at different points in our processes and I recognize several that I have had in common with yours. Thank you for sharing your story as it certainly helps to know that most of what we go through is "normal" under the circumstances and that we should not be discouraged that things sometimes move a step or two backwards rather than forward. It is sadly interesting to learn all of these things about a WS coming out of the fog and the signs of fence sitting.

If I saw this profundity of yours the first time around, I've long since forgotten it. Deep, Neak, very deep!

tl

It's truly amazing how scripted the whole thing is. Of course normal for a wayward is raving lunatic status, but the good news is that their very predictability makes them treatable with the same medicine.

LOL at Mom. I hadn't remembered that little gem of wisdom-or-something, either. When is Neaksis going to make me a t-shirt?

This is how my WS has reacted to my discovery of the A. I never got the ILYBINILWY directly either. However, WS mastered making the words, "your are such a wonderful mom...you are the best mom in the world" sound like the most enormous insult even though it was said with all sincerity. You see, when the WS is standing there and has nothing at all nice to say to you, but is in fact responding to your questions about the affair with the worst, meanest possible response and looking at you like, "there, take that" and then follows it up with, "but you are the only woman I would want as a mother to my children," oddly, the latter actually hurts just like an insult.

It may hurt like an insult, but really it isn't. Somewhere deep down, probably deeper than he can admit to himself, he KNOWS that the beautiful woman of integrity he married is the only one suited to bring up his children to be people of integrity. And that a skankola isn't exactly Mommy Material.

One of the things that bothered AJ the most at the time was when the OW said schmoozily that she would be a mother to his children, she just didn't want to be their mother full-time. He rather tactlessly replied that they already had a mother. Which went over like a lead balloon.

Just one small word of advice - in general, don't bother to question a WS about the A. The small bit of truth you may get, you won't like. The flood of lies that you will most likely get, you won't like, either.

A loving, love-busterless confrontation is much different. Instead of asking questions, you make statements. "I know that you saw your adultery partner last night." "How do you know that? Are you having me followed???" "It doesn't matter how I know. I know."

Don't get too detailed in your statements, such as, "I know that at 10:43 last night, you called OW and talked for 47 minutes." That leaves you open to arguments over the details. The more vague you are, the more their imagination will fill in with even more info than you actually discovered.

You: (Knowing that he had 2 hours unaccounted for that were doubtless spent with or talking to OW) "I know what you did last night."
WS: (panicking) "What are you talking about?"
You: (mysteriously) "I know, and so do you."
WS: (Does she know about the sex? The phone call? The diamond earrings? The secret cell phone? Does she know that OW mentioned marriage????? HELP ME) "You think you're so smart."
You: (even more mysteriously, nodding in agreement) "I know everything. We all know."
WS: "You evil psycho stalker woman, no wonder I'm divorcing you!!!"

And then he looks over his shoulder ever after, over time beginning to associate OW with the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, rather than the original secretive thrill o'naughtiness.

AJ can be very thankful that his A took place before I knew what I know now. Too bad about all the other waywards whose BS's can learn from the experiences of those of us who went before.

244 pages!!!! (When using the print feature and saving it in PDF format to read at leisure.)

Thank you Neak, I appreciate your words of wisdom and encouragement. Additionally, not questioning but only accusing is a tactic I had not yet considered. However, since the affair "ended" in Oct 2012, I thought I needed to have truthful details/information for the sake of the verifying through a polygraph. If I do not question, what exactly am I trying to verify in a poly?

Sorry, I hadn't read your story. From your post, it sounded as if you were questioning him about an ongoing A. And really, if he's getting that defensive about answering questions, he doesn't sound very repentant. Seven months down the road, I would expect him to occasionally have moments of fog, but to overall be well on his way to being a good FWH.

Since he's still so angry about you asking questions, as you do indeed need to do in R, I would recommend vigorous snooping. (Maybe you're doing that anyway.) When heavy fog persists much longer than it should, there is often a reason for it. It may not even be direct C - I remember a WH who remained foggy because every once in a while he would look up the OW's website online, read about her, look at her photos, and see how she was doing. Just that was enough to keep him firmly entrenched in waywardness, and he didn't really begin making progress till he got caught.

I married my best friend and she knows who she is