They're both watching your every move. That is, after all, the number one rule in having an affair--don't get caught!

Please don't assume that he's weak and unable to withstand her advances. It's insulting your intelligence to give him such an out.

Quite true.

]
Consider a few things, PAP. In order to have a happy marriage, decisions must be made that meet these requirements:

1. both parties are enthusiastic about it - BOTH parties are happy. Not just one. The decision made about his travel job was made at the expense of your happiness. So, decisions that are win/lose are taken off the table in favor of decisions that are win/win

2. the decision must complement the marriage. In this case, the traveling job harms your marriage. The marriage should be put first in these decisions

And I do understand that your husband is happy in this position. But your marriage and your own happiness has been sacrificed in the pursuit of his happiness.

A better alternative is to find a job that makes you BOTH happy and complements your marriage. This job is not the only job in the world. There are many jobs that do not require travel.

I too had a job that I was miserable in. I too had to travel about 6-7 nights a month. Stress can have an awful effect on everyone�but only if one allows it. Looking back, I now realize this was a choice AND part of the reason I was unhappy at work was that I was unhappy in my marriage.

The beauty of maturity and hindsight.

Your H does not know what he does not know. None of us have a crystal ball. Little did I know that one day my phone would ring and a better opportunity would arise that took away all travel and paid at a higher level than I had ever experienced. I am quite happy in my career now.

MB has taught me that the career must compliment the marriage NOT the other way around.

I can see no possible way that our current R would stand any chance of survival whatsoever if one of us were required to travel. R is VERY difficult even with 15-20hrs/wk UA time.

We both feel the effects of even 1 evening where we don�t get quality UA time� As Dr Harley says, UA time is the cornerstone of his program.

I am so sorry to hear where you are at. My heart bleeds for you� Prayers to you for your well being.

I was thinking the exact same thing. Happy in his job..at what cost?

Define 'happy'.

Don't see too many smiles coming through the screen today.

Folks, I think it's also worrisome that evidently "travelling" has been presented as being necessary to making any job acceptable to WH.

Phrased differently, "I can best be happy in a job which takes me away from my wife and family."

I wonder why that is. Maybe, pAp, you should pose that exact question to WH during your next session with Steve?

It concerns me, princess, that OWH has found your thread on this board, and I wonder if it concerns you too.

He seems very similar to OWH in my case, who had a near-breakdown over his wife's affairs (as I did over my H's) but was unwilling or unable to do everything possible to stop them, or to end his marriage. OWH in your case seems not to have confronted his wife about her affairs, much less told her that they must stop.

I wouldn't want you to risk everything that Steve Harley advises you to do being reported by OWH to his wife, and thwarted. In your shoes, I wouldn't want that woman knowing anything about my marriage.

I am very, very down and depressed today. Lower than I've been in the past 3 years. I meet with Steve in a couple of hours and have literally 3 pages in a notebook littered with questions. Everything from Plan B to what messages am I sending my kids by trying to work through this AGAIN. I'm a lost soul at this point.

SugarCane - I led OWH to this site years ago hoping he would follow the protocol laid out. If we both did it, then maybe something could be done. I couldn't believe that he (finally) posted and then was alarmed to have his thread linked with mine. Then to have him share on the board word-for-word what I sent him alerting him of their broken no contact... If it's possible to edit his/my thread so there isn't a link from one to the other, I would so appreciate that.

I can tell all of you that I have verified no contact for Oct 2010 to Oct 2011 and then from Oct 2011 to June 30, 2012 when she sent a text (that I missed) just saying "Why?". There is a claim of no contact again until Aug 7 and in my computer sleuthing I cannot find anything prior to that date. On that date in the evening she sends a text, somehow knowing I am away, of "I think we're alone now"...

Traveling is an issue. I know that. All I was trying to do is get you guys to stop making me feel worse so I could recover from the shock and try to heal myself. Throwing it in my face over and over was not good for me. I was dealing with it all pretty well with Steve's guidance until I went to this bboard and saw everything here. I thought I asked you nicely, but even after asking I felt like you were trying to beat me up. Steve asked me SPECIFICALLY to not dwell on fixing the marriage at this point and try to just heal from this latest blow. Unfortunately coming to the board probably set me back from whatever healing I may have been able to achieve over the weekend.

Since you seem to want the entire truth, there was a threat on my life by OW and OW's new EA. It may have been all in stupid drunkeness, but I have documentation of the exchange. It did prove that my WH and POSOW weren't in contact as of May. But it also proved that she was still pining after my H and was possibly reaching for help from her new boyfriend (who lives not far from us) to reel in my WH again. I only have this because of my contact with OWH. I so badly want to go no contact with OWH, but it is the only way I know what the little skank might be plotting. Though now that she's gone completely dark on him, I don't have that.

I will chat with Steve about the situation today. I'm sure he will give me good guidance. Please know that I may not be back to the board for awhile as the triggering that it's causing is sending me to dark places that I can't deal with right now.

Have you been into your doctor for some help? AD or anxiety?

Please make sure you're doing self care. Eating, sleeping, exercising.

princess, I am so sorry that coming here has made you unhappy. I had no idea that this would be the result when I asked you to update us.

You need to stick with Steve's advice. He is the professional and he knows best how to help you. We on the board were unaware that he had said what he did (underlined above).

As for my wanting the entire truth...

Well yes, it is hard to see someone in the same position that I was in for years (a travelling H and repeated D Days) and know how that will cause you to break down mentally, and not try to stop you doing as I did. I was in as bad a mental state as you sound today for about 3 years, princess, and I would do all I can to help someone else not suffer for as long as I did. But I wasn't trying to drag the truth out of you and force you to post it here. I was pointing out that I could see that there were other things that we were unaware of and I was hoping that at least Steve was aware of them, so that he could advise you fully.

I hope that today's session brings you some positive suggestions that you can use. PLEASE see a doctor about your depression if Steve advises it.

You need to click "notify" and ask the moderators if they can help you with that. I'm sure they can.

What did you mean when you said that OW has "gone dark" on her H? Are they still living together? What has happened?

Yup.


How can OW call the very night you leave?


Simple, she has in inside informant. One wayward husband.


"She's so persistent..."


Dog don't come back to the dish if it ain't gettin fed.


I bought the persistent/pursuant AP for about... not at freaking all.


Hello?

Just lighted here to do an update. We had our 6th and 7th sessions with Steve last week.

I need to give some feedback here. When someone is coming here with a false recovery as devastating as this, please don�t start throwing stuff they know in their face and pounding them with it, especially when they have asked you nicely to stop. We don�t want to hear what idiots we are and what we did wrong. We want support. We�re also trying to share our stories so maybe some lost soul later will find the thread and get some help from it.

The facts are as follows: Since the October 2011 broken contact: WH had a business trip in Nov 2011 that we made into a one day trip so he would not stay overnight. He had one 3 day trip in February that frankly brought us a bit closer together since we got to talk on the phone and email/text more often than we do when he�s at work... And we did �pillow talk� both nights until one or the other fell asleep. There was a one day trip again March of 2012 with no overnight. Other than that there has been NO travel up until late August. Travel IS NOT our #1 problem. It is still a �travel job�, but it is SO much less in this past year than previously � because we�ve pushed for that. We did put that EP in place after October. This trip in August was supposed to be a one night trip, but he got �bumped� on his way back and �had to spend the night� to catch a flight the next morning. I smelled a rat and confronted him when he got home� But not before the deed had been done. However, contact was made in July and they had a month of disgusting love emails/texts/phone calls that was just as damaging, if not more, and led to this. As a matter of fact, I did find out that she had planned to come up here a couple of weeks prior, but my WH told her then that I would have to know. That stopped that from happening.

Our #1 problem is this � WH put EP�s in place but never bothered to see that he needed to protect his weaknesses, which meant he also failed to protect me and our marriage. Was I meeting his ENs? Doesn�t matter because he was still addicted and had never come to the realization that there was no way to resist this if he as much as let the phone come to his ear or press the �send� button. This affair was rekindled twice because of that. He had no clue the severity of this addiction and how that �just one more hit� could blow everything completely up. He supposedly gets it now, but I�ve got to tell you I am worried about me sanely making it through 2+ more years of �recovery� at this point.

POSOW started this affair to �seek closure� on how things ended between them 30 years ago. She wasn�t going to quit until she got �complete closure�. And he was able to resist temptation for long periods of time (1 year the first time and 8 months the next). She sent him little texts or emails every few months � just to throw the line out to see if this time she�d get a bite. (We don�t know how many she did in-between as she had to do some sleuthing to find that she was sending to the wrong email or number and find the new one) He would tell me about it and we�d delete them together� but she managed to find him twice where he was weak in his resolve to protect his marriage (if we don�t count the first time � which I don�t count because there wasn�t a no contact plan in place at that point and we knew nothing about MB and having no contact with former lovers�)

So, my biggest issue is not travel. It�s that I have a WH who is so good at lying and compartmentalizing that Steve thinks that a lie detector would be a waste of time because he�d pass � because WH believes his own lies that well. RH is going to be next to impossible. He claims that the thought of the POSOW disgusts him at this point. Seriously? It�s only been 4 weeks. We rushed to recovery too quickly last year. It�s not going to happen again. I�m in no rush to recover this time because I need to know for a fact that he understands every little piece of MB and doesn�t skip a single morsel of info.

I�m staying strong, but only because I�m following exactly what Steve tells me and not straying from that. I talk to him and he gives me guidance. Then he gives guidance to and grills my WH. My WH�s comes out of it saying the right things and for the first time is actually listening to me, holding me when I�m suffering and saying the right things and laying things out without me �finding� them. I don�t have to pretend to be strong and put on a happy face. Steve has made me relax for the first time in 3 years. It is not up to me to recover. He�s set that fact squarely on my WH�s shoulders.

Steve thinks we can get through this and I believe we can if he really can get WH to understand this addiction. I do know that without his help at figuring this out, and if I was taking �advice� from the boards, I would have thrown him out and filed for D the week of August 27th. Truth was that I was meeting his needs as best I could, but even with his needs met and EP�s in place, he still had an addiction that he couldn�t resist �just one more hit� on. He finally gets it � or at least seems to.

My advice for anyone now dealing with a WH that has little remorse is to get them on the phone with Steve. If I had done that last October I think he may have gotten him to this point last year and it would have saved us from this latest mess. I just foolishly thought that I could train the dog myself after reading all the books. Nope. This dog had to want to do the right thing for himself, not for me. The no/little remorse was my red flag. I needed someone else to get him to understand. It couldn�t be me.

If you had been taking Marriage Builders "advice" from this board all along, the false recovery would have never happened because your husband wouldn't have been traveling.

I will just remind you that this board gave you Marriage Builders advice all the way down the line. All anyone has to do is read this thread for themselves to see that. So saying that WE gave you bad advice is only saying that the advice of Dr Bill Harley is wrong or "contradictory" when he is the FOUNDER OF THIS PROGRAM!

Even though you are in denial about the causes of your husband's affair, the truth of the matter is that your husband would not have been able to hook up with the OW if he weren't out of town. If you had listened to the advice here about Extraordinary precautions, this would have never happened.

However, if you see anyone giving contradictory advice here [contradictory to Marriage Builders], I would encourage you to notify the moderators so they can ban that person. It is AGAINST the TOS to do so.

The above is what happens when one ignores the advice on this board.



PAP, you have indicated that you are somehow unique and this advice does not apply to you. If ignoring the advice had worked for you, you might have a case, but it hasn't. The proof is in the pudding...

Thank you for updating us. I am glad that you are working with Steve and that you are happy with the advice that you are getting.

My personal feeling after posting here for many years and having done phone coaching with Steve myself with xWH is that it does not work if the spouse is still "wayward" or engaged in the affair. Is it worth a shot? Yes, of course.

If your WS is not getting on board or still engaging in the behavior that is detrimental to the M, then I would recommend you call Dr Harley personally on the radio show if Steve's advice differs at all from what Dr Harley has posted on this website -- because sometimes their advice DOES differ. Everything that Dr Harley has ever told me has been SPOT ON regarding my ex.



After doing everything everything by the book via MB -- implementing EPs with Steve's help, doing the online course, making our marriage the best it has ever been, spending ALL of our free time together -- my ex had another affair. The only free time he had was while he was at work, and that's where he had his affair. I called Dr Harley up on the radio show and asked, how can I trust that my H will ever get it? That he will ever give up the SSL (secret second life) and IB that makes an A possible? I was very focused on the dishonesty and IB.

Dr Harley redirected me & basically said it's all about the conditions that make an affair possible. And the condition that he saw in my case that needed to be changed that hadn't been already was that my ex couldn't work in the medical field anymore and probably needed a job working with me at home. He couldn't have been more right because w/n 1-2 monts of Plan B, he met OW4 through the workplace. Anyway, again, he stressed looking at the conditions that make the affair possible.

You continue to say that travel isn't the issue, but I know without hesitation that Dr Harley will tell you that it is a CONDITION that has made this affair possible = must be eliminated to recover and affair-proof your M.

If you want a link to that show, LMK. Again, I would strongly encourage you to call, write to Dr Harley and Joyce through the radio show if you are struggling with which direction to go now.

I do also want to give you a hug ((((PaP))))) because I honestly DO KNOW what it is like to live in a M when you are NOT BEING protected. It is HELL. Now that I am out of that situation, I can honestly say 100% NEVER AGAIN will I live like that. Never.

And it appears you have been living in this state of limbo for quite some time. Please understand that at least some of the frustration that you are directing towards this board is actually meant towards your WH for putting you in this situation.

I hope that you don't continue on in this state (with your H not doing what he should to make you feel protected and safe from further contact with OW) for much longer because it WILL take a toll on your health if it hasn't already.

The way it was explained to me this go around... You have to recover from the initial affair and set up the proper EP's and have the spouse want to carry them out for their own sake and protect the marriage above all else before you can even start to apply MB principles. I didn't mean to say that anyone's advice was wrong, but I will tell you that slinging mud at someone who is going through this, or making a betrayed feel like it is their fault that the affair took place is not part of the healing process.

I am sorry if Sugarcane took offense to my comments here or on the other thread. It wasn't her comments at all that I was smarting to. **EDIT**

If I had taken straight MB advice I would have gone into Plan B to D immediately after this 2nd FR. And if I had gone into Plan B and then D, many of you would have been applauding because I was following the program. Steve counseled against that. He focused on starting healing from the affair and setting up REAL CONCRETE BOUNDARIES and getting WH really on board to protect those boundaries/weaknesses before we tried to deal with anything else. I did not realize that he wasn't doing the latter when NC was established the first 2 times. I assumed he would protect them since they were laid out. And he did protect them initially - for me. But he never did it for himself. It won't be until we've discussed Love Busters and tried to eliminate LB's before we move on to trying to restore romantic love. It's a process. And we had to start over because some of our foundation just wasn't sufficient or obviously even there in some places.

All I am trying to say is that it is important to SLOW DOWN sometimes and see where someone asking for help is in the program (or got clobbered back to) before you jump on with your advice or comments.

We will be continuing with Steve. His help has gotten us much further than we ever have been before and I'm finally seeing a light at the end of the dark tunnel. I needed to bring in the professional.

Thank you SusieQ for letting me know that I'm not crazy. The advice is different, but it made so much more sense to me at this point. I will certainly call Dr Harley senior if I feel like we aren't getting past this.

Right now I'm feeling good that I've filled an entire sheet of paper with the reasons why this time our recovery is different - from my point of view. It was my latest exercise and I added 3 more lines to it today. It IS different this time. Travel is a condition that is a contributor, but it is the IB and the dishonesty that have to be dealt with as the primary issue. He is not traveling now and there are no plans to without me.

But I also know, and you have experienced, that it only takes 2 minutes of IB (a call, a text, an email to an old AP) to trash a marriage. Yes, it's that fragile. And I hope my WH finally gets that. It is still the 20 minute trip to Home Depot that will trigger me to wonder if he's called or texted her on some secret phone... or gone to the library to IM her from there... Or I'm looking for his blackberry when he's gone into the bathroom and if it's not on the charger I'm wondering if he'll call or text POSOW from there like he did 3 years ago... I don't have control over what he does. Only he has control. And he has to make sure that never happens ever again or our marriage is history. And if that is the case, it will not be my fault. He chose that outcome by choosing dishonesty and IB.

I guess I'll just sign off for awhile since my comments or background doesn't seem to be wanted here right now. Or I'm not coming across the correct way - certainly not the way I intended. BW Fog? Maybe I need to take a break here again to make sure my frustration isn't directed someplace other than my WH as SusieQ might be onto something there. Any of my comments were meant to help others, not hurt. So if I hurt anyone, please accept my deepest apologies.

Exactly! He has to know that contact is a deal breaker. Make sure he knows that and that you will stand firm on it.