Hi Reading: Maybe my husband is "playing" with me, and telling me what I want to hear to get me off his back so he can continue to cheat on me behind my back. And if he is not the man I believe him to be, if he is "playing" me for a fool, then I don't want him.

I have such a hard time believing that my beloved husband would play me for a fool. Other than my brothers and sisters (who along with my husband are my closest and dearest friends) and their families, I don't allow very many people in my life. I have truly learned through the school of hard knocks that there are users and abusers around every corner! My rose-colored glasses were knocked off a long time ago.

I am who I am though. I can't change me. I can't condemn the whole human race either, because people have disappointed me in the past. I want to believe that most people have a conscience, will hold themselves accountable, and will choose to do the right thing. Even so, I will trust but verify as all of you have strongly recommended.

I've had the pleasure of knowing my husband for twelve years, and I have seen an abundance of good in him. I could make a list a mile long of all the good and kind and altruistic things he has done for others. His account in my love bank has always been overflowing. He's a good man. Either that, or he has put on one heck of a charade to fool me for years and years.

So I recognize that he might be playing me for a fool, but my life experience with him up until now informs me that this probability is very small.

I think I'm being a good warrior, capitalizing on my strengths, while protecting my own health and well-being. I do think I should probably make an appointment and get anti-depressants. I need a clear head, but have never taken anti-depressants before. Can anyone give me insight on that issue?

Thank you for this link! Very informative and helpful.


Pepperband wrote:


This truly resonates with me. In the immediate aftermath of the grenade, I was so overwhelmed and pushed to my emotional brink of disaster. When my husband had his emotional outburst, I knew that I had to stop the insanity or I would be destroyed.

And I am asking, "who the heck am I . . . and . . . who the heck are you?"

If my husband is not the person whom I believe him to be, why would I want him?

Just a clarification, there is always room for improvement. I can eliminate my "bad habits" and work on meeting my husband's emotional needs. I can change the dynamic of my relationship with my husband and build a better marriage. But there are certain things that make up the core personality of each individual that are just part of who they are. I don't want to lose my kindness and compassion towards others even though I've been hurt. I want to strive to learn and to become a better version of the real me. In that regard, I guess I can indeed "change me."

Deb, but can you accept that he has already done this? And here you are telling us you do want him. Your words don't match your actions and this is why you have so many people pointing out to you that you are headed for trouble.

You posted Plan A methods, but I would point out that Plan A is for an ongoing affair. Are you saying that your H's affair is still active?

Most marriages do not recover from affairs. They limp along in a crippled state of the pre-affair marriage and are more vulnerable after an affair than before. Yours doesn't have to be like that if you follow this program. If the affair is truly ended, as you say it is, then you should be following Dr Harley's program of RECOVERY [not Plan A]- here is a good summary:

Dear Deb:

My husband had no intention of "playing me for a fool." He had no intention of leaving me for the OW, whose life was a mess. He wanted me for one purpose, and her for another.

When he deceived me, it was just so he could keep his life set up the way he had it - me at home for domestic support, financial support and "sure thing" low-effort sex; her at work for admiration, conversation, an attractive partner and the excitement of the "chase."

He had compartmentalized his life, and deception was necessary to "keep us in our boxes."

No malicious forethought - just pure selfishness.

BV

I understand that you're saying my husband has already played me for a fool when he went and got the OW and put her up in a motel at our expense.

I know my husband has hurt me by doing that, and he admitted his mistake. And where do we go from there?

My husband tells me that he loves me, he has agreed to have no contact with OW, and wants to work on building a better marriage. I believe he is sincere. But is he playing me for a fool at this point?

I am willing to forgive his transgression with OW and work on our marriage IF he earns my forgiveness by keeping his promises of no contact, complete transparency, etc. I want to believe his words and his promises, but all of you have made it clear that his words are meaningless. I must verify.

During this verification process, if I find that he was not sincere in the things he told me, but is lying to me and continuing to have contact with OW, then I will contact my lawyer and file for divorce.

I might not be using the right words, but that's where I'm at right now in my thinking. Because he had an overflowing account in my love bank prior to this transgression, I believe he deserves a second chance. Maybe I am a fool, but believe I married a good man who made a mistake and who wants to make amends.



My husband agreed to no further contact with OW. Other than my husband's word, right now, I have no personal knowledge whether this affair is over or still active. I was advised not to accept my husband's word, but to do snooping, investigative work, gps tracking, and the like.

At what point do we move from Plan A to Recovery? Do we start on recovery even though I have not yet verified through independent means, snooping, etc., that the affair is truly over?

I ordered books, HNHN, LB, and 5 Steps to Romantic Love. We are going to read through these books together.

I'm trying to do this the right way, and I may not use the right words or totally understand what step I'm at in the MB program--but I appreciate all of your help! It's keeping me sane! Thank you so much!

I will have to find your thread and read more about your situation. Were you able to work through this?

Deb,

Start with the book "Surviving an Affair". Also, watch Dr. Harley's 30 minute video about affairs. Words don't matter, but actions do.

Did your husband write a no contact letter, to be approved and mailed by you? If he refuses or does so grudgingly, then he has no plan of no contact for life. The door is open to continue with this OW. I think the last I read was that your husband got very emotional about this, but did not write a letter. I wish I had realized that, when my husband didn't want to write the NC letter, that he intended to keep a relationship with OW.

He must also tell you the entire truth about what he has been doing. You do know there is more than what he has told you.

Steps to recovering from an affair:

1. The WS agrees to no contact with other person FOR LIFE.
2. There is complete transparency, especially changing the conditions that made the affair possible. Neither spouse should be able to have a secret, second life.
3. Build a passionate marriage, meeting each other's top emotional needs. Become each other's favorite recreational companions, have intimate conversation, be affectionate and meet each other's sexual needs.

AM

Ask to see his credit card bills for the past five years (since he met her).

Ask him to take a polygraph and get checked for STDs.

If he won't even admit he has been sexual with her........you will need to, even in Plan A, treat it as though he has been.

Waywards lie. They are not honest. They tell fibs. They just do.

Deb. does this hit home with you? Here is a link to the entire article:

Can't We Just Forgive and Forget?


Your WH needs to EARN back your trust and forgiveness. He redeems himself by becoming completely transparent and living his life in a way that protects you and your marriage.

You need to snoop and verify NC. This helps you to feel safe to see and verify that WH has now become who he says he is. Think of your WH as an addict right now. He needs your help to break this addiction.

Please re-read this, Deb:

Deb.

Do NOT underestimate the predatory nature of an OW...especially some homeless 22 yr old looking for a meal ticket. Your WH may seem to be on board ...but the addiction is very strong. My own FWH caved when OW continued to pursue him.

Your WH needs to get a new cell phone number, and e-mail. OW needs to be blocked including the office phone.

Ask OW Mother for help in keeping her daughter away from your husband. I would also send her a copy of the NC letter handwritten by your WH to dispel any doubts that she may have over the severity of the situation.

Take control of the wheel here. Set your WH up to succeed. He will thank you once he comes out of the fog.

Then what do you need anti-depressants for?

I was a good man, for 6+ years of dating and over 16 years of marriage ... until I got sloppy about my boundaries and started spending time & exchanging conversation & confidences with a woman to whom I never should've given the time of day.

I'd always been a boy-scout. Our life-experience together told my wife that she had nothing to worry about. Once, when it was still "just" an EA, my wife voiced a suspicion to me. I denied that anything was wrong. And she believed me, because her life-experience, and the experience of our 22 years together, led her to give me the benefit of the doubt.

You're depressed about something more than the weather. Yes, I may be wrong, and yes, on this website you've got an anecdotal, self-selected audience that is heavily skewed toward the share of the population that has either suffered from, or engaged in, affairs in their marriages. But don't give your experience any benefit of the doubt over what your eyes & ears tell you today. Every man who's having his first affair is a man who never had one before.

Deb, what you don't understand is that the man who had this affair is not your husband as you know him. He is an alien. You know your husband; WE know the wayward mind. Your husband is under the spell of an addiction to this OW. It is because of this that WE know your husband better than you do - as he is now.

My husband has not written the "no contact" letter. I sent a private message to OW's mother to discover if mother did in fact come and get OW on Saturday. I will ask my husband to write the "no contact" letter and evaluate his emotional response to my request. If he is enthusiastic about doing so, and actually does it, then I will take possession of the letter and figure out how to get it to her. Hopefully, her mother will cooperate and provide her mailing address.


He was engaged in trickle truth-telling, so I can't know for sure if I have the entire truth about what he has been doing. I just have a huge knot in my gut about requesting a polygraph, perhaps because I want to move forward with my husband and build an affair-proof marriage.

This is a struggle for me. Will knowing every sordid detail about every contact he has ever had with OW in the past really help me to heal? I have absolutely no desire to torture myself or put images in my head of him with her that can never be erased. I want to leave the past in the past and start with a clean slate, i.e., it's what YOU, my dear husband, do from this day forward that counts!

I started reading threads and posts about brokenvase's situation last night, and every single revelation was like a knife being twisted in her heart. I'm reflecting on all of BV's well-written posts describing her emotional journey, and forgive me BV, but I don't want to walk in your shoes. I don't think I'm a strong person.

How much "truth" is good enough? He had an affair. Whether it was an emotional affair or a physical affair or whether it was a ONS or long-term . . . an affair is an affair is an affair, and that is BAD. Knowing the details doesn't make it MORE bad, or LESS bad. Knowing the details would only serve to torture me and put images in my head that I don't want to have in my head.

So, I'm struggling with the merits of knowing every painful detail. Do I really need to know if my husband's lips softly kissed OW's lips? Do I really need to know if my husband caressed OW's breasts? I'm struggling here on this requirement that he must tell me the "entire truth." I need additional guidance in this area.

You won't be moving forward UNLESS you get the full truth. You don't have to know each and every sordid detail, but you need to know the basic facts. You won't be "leaving the past in the past" if the OW and her lover have secrets to which you are not privy. This is why the full truth is the first step.

I agree it is tempting to sweep it all under the rug and pretend like it never happened, but that is not how it works. As long as you don't know, you will wonder and wonder until your resentment grows and festers. And then you will find yourself in a position in 6 to 8 months where you are STUCK and can't get unstuck until you get the truth. Just get it done now so you CAN move forward.

So if you are serious about recovery, get the full truth NOW so you can move forward.


Not knowing is what will torture you. Of course it will hurt. We are not saying it won't hurt. But it will hurt WORSE if you are left to wonder.

You need to decide the level of detail you need yourself, but you do need a certain level of detail in order to understand the PICTURE. Such as when they slept together and where. HOW they communicated. How this began.. If he gave her any gifts, etc. Did he have any pet names? You need to get enough so you have a full understanding. He needs to paint you a picture.

Deb,

To reinforce the point, unknowns will kill you emotionally. The LEVEL of detail is, as Melody said, up to you.

The father of one hero "kid" that was killed in Aurora said yesterday that the 10 hours of waiting was worse than knowing that his son was gone. He wanted to know the circumstances, and said publically that the details (his terms) of his son's death brought him peace and the ability to even begin to cope. What this father wanted was the truth. We can't heal without it, truly.

You need truth, my friend. The details are up to you.

I am a flawed person--a chronic "sweep things under the rug" kind of gal. I usually crumble under the weight of drama. I'm a passive peacekeeper! I have been doing this my entire marriage. On those few occasions when I have tried to stand up to my husband, he transforms from that loving, smiling, can I get you anything kind of guy into a spoiled child who has emotional outbursts and temper tantrums.

He started doing his spoiled child routine tonight, and I confronted him on his modus operandi. I told him that his raised voice and his emotional outbursts shut me down emotionally. So please stop. We were discussing the issue of our finances and how I have given him 99.9999 percent control over all of our money.

I pulled up our joint bank account and pointed out to him the thousands and thousands of dollars he blown through in a short amount of time. He is going to the bank several times a week taking huge cash withdrawals. The next thing I know, he's throwing a major temper tantrum.

He started deflecting by yelling about my sister and how she is never welcome in HIS house ever again because she should never had gone to his parents' house and told them about OW. He even texted my sister and stated she was _________ (long string of really bad names)!

Next thing happens my sister tries to call him, and he hung up on her and shut his phone off. Then my sister called me and told me about the offensive text, and I confronted hubby. It is unacceptable for him to take out his anger on my sister! I will not allow him to control me through an effort to alienate my family members and to isolate me from my family support system. It won't happen!

Next thing my sister shows up at our door and my husband yelled at me NOT to let her in, that she was NOT welcome in HIS house! Nonsense! We're going to resolve this right now. My sister came in the house and they started YELLING. I was frantic! Separate corners, please!

Then my brother called. My sister called my brother and let him know she was on her way to my house to confront my husband. I told him she was already here! I told him that we would work this out, my husband crossed a boundary, and he needed to face the consequences.

My brother wanted to call the police. OMG! No, no, no! I don't want the police at my house! This is not going to get violent. We're not violent people, we've never been violent. We're going to work through this! My brother demanded that I call him every 5 minutes or he would assume violence was occurring and would call the police!

This is insane!

My husband threw a temper tantrum. He sent an ugly text to my sister. I told him to please grow up! Are you done with the proverbial throwing yourself down on the floor kicking and screaming? This is OUR house and my sister is welcome here anytime she wants to come over! PERIOD. You sent an ugly text and now you need to face the consequences and apologize. PERIOD. It's embarrassing to be exposed, but you brought this on yourself. PERIOD.

I have never stood up to my husband like that before, but he was trying to insert a wedge between me and my family members. They all love me fiercely, as I them, and his tactic will not work. So don't go there!

Anyway. When the dust settled, my husband left the house and stated he was going to his place of business. He said he needed space.

All I could think about when going through this is what I've been saying on this discussion forum. I married a good man. Now I have to amend that statement. I married an overgrown child! A spoiled rotten child who apparently needs some discipline! I feel now like I've been slumbering through my entire marriage and just got the biggest wake-up call ever.

Is this a typical scenario? Anyway, I told my sister that I love my husband and we're going to work through this but we're obviously going to have to endure growing pains.

This post puts things in perspective, somewhat.

I read a post on another thread where someone noted that his/her grandma always said, "The Jews at Auschwitz would love to have your problems."

My problems are so small in comparison to other people's problems. My problems have arisen in my marriage,in large part, due to my own conflict-avoidance behaviors. I think my husband takes advantage, knowing if he has an emotional outburst, then I will back off immediately to keep peace and harmony in our household. I want us to discuss our issues like grown ups!

Maybe I need to videotape an episode of one of my great-nephews throwing a temper tantrum, show it to my husband, and ask him if this is his way of building a better, affair-proof marriage. Because, if it is, this tactic is not working for me right now.

As my husband was standing at the door declaring that he was leaving to go to his business because he needed space, I asked him where OW is right now? I have no confirmation that she actually left town. He tossed his cell phone on the table and said, here, keep this, rest assured I won't be making any calls. "Born yesterday" sitting here knows that he has telephones at his place of business, but I can appreciate the dramatic gesture. Well, of course, now I'm snooping through my husband's cell phone. And I'm going over the details of our day.

My husband and I had not spent our day together. He allegedly had a business commitment to deliver a cargo-trailer full of merchandise (beds and dressers) to a customer in another town who was setting up a boarding house for influx of workers. My husband hired a man to help him load and unload. Husband told me hired man's name and stated he was a good worker, didn't drink or party, but liked to gamble. That was an interesting tidbit of information. Likes to gamble.

Prior to taking this trip, my husband said he would take the long way there to avoid traveling through X town--the town where he had picked up other woman. What difference does that make, I wondered, since OW's mother lives in the complete opposite direction. Isn't OW now staying with her mother, that is, if everything panned out the way it was supposed to pan out? Why would my hubby make sure that I knew his trip would be a lot shorter if only he drove through X town, but he wouldn't do that in order to give me peace of mind. As far as I knew, OW would not be in X town on Sunday.

At 5:25 PM, my husband called me to let me know he was in X town. (What happened to the alleged plan to go the long way and avoid X town?) He said he was sitting outside the casino at X town waiting for hired man who wanted to do some gambling. Oh really? Yes, that makes sense because hired man has gambling problem. Yes. Hubby said that he gave hired man a half hour to gamble, and he was waiting for hired man in parking lot. He said he didn't want to go inside casino because that is where OW's former BF worked.

I was suspicious that he was calling me because maybe he checked my internet history, found this forum, and read that I was going to put gps trackers on his vehicles. Was he trying to come up with a plausible reason, therefore, for being in X town on Sunday? (I was suspicious earlier about this possibility because I posted about financial transparency and his business records, and about two minutes later he sent me a photo of his business bank statement. Coincidence?)

Had he driven OW to X town with our cargo trailer to load up her stuff? and was hired man sent into the casino to keep an eye on OW's boyfriend while my hubby and OW were getting her stuff? Why would my hubby find it necessary, when describing hired man, to tell me that he liked to gamble? Because that would certainly explain an impromptu stop at the casino in X town for hired man to get a 30 minute gambling fix.

I think my husband was up to something. Do you think so too?

I wonder now if my hubby drained our personal bank account because he plans to get rid of me!