Exactly, NG.

That is so true. I do have some hope that the kind, selfless woman I married is still in there somewhere waiting to come back out one day. These ore the only two things that give me any desire to fight this fight. If we didn't have kids, I likely would have pulled the plug and moved on by now. This is just too painful to see this continue on and on.

At least it seems the withdrawal is starting to really impact her. I guess I need to strengthen my resolve and try to get through this.

FR, here's the GOOD news:

Your wife is depressed, weepy, quite possibly ashamed of herself, and seems to have been slammed and abandoned by her parent for her behavior.

Her AP is apparently out of the picture, which contributes to WW's sense of abandonment, and disgrace.

You, on the other hand, have forthrightly maintained a demand for disclosure of her infidelity, and a return to proper marital behavior, and have neither abused her nor been falsely accused of such.

Seriously, a BH rarely gets dealt such a winning hand.

WWs prototypically must hit flat rock bottom, and then fall into a sub-basement, before they can give up their embedded fantasy of an alternative (adulterous) life with their POSOM. Yours seems to be on an express elevator to those nether regions. Let her fall! When she is crushed, defeated, and barely able to function, that is when you will be there with your offer of help.

falconrap, I am catching up on your thread and I think you are in a really good position. She is in withdrawal and if you will stay in Plan A, she will draw TO you.

What were her complaints with you before the affair? Was there something lacking in the marriage?

Trying to get her to actually come up with definitive reasons for why she did this has been like trying to hold water in a bucket with no bottom. About the only complaint she could muster was that I spent too much time on the computer (it's my "hey I'm bored an need something to do" activity). She says I lacked passion, but that is a projection. Her biggest reasoning was that she supposedly always had thoughts for the OM (guy who cheated on her then dumped her 20 years ago), and that she just wasn't happy with me (she "took a chance on something safe"). If I really had to say what the problem actually is, I think it stems from the fact that the OM first cheated on her and dumped her, then the guy she came down to this state with also cheated on her. From day one she's had self-esteem issues with regards to her weight. I could never get her to shower with me, or make love anywhere else than the bedroom (i.e. In the dark, or low light). After our son was born, she found difficulty in trying to get the weight off and it affected her desire to make love to me. As that continued, I got a little frustrated (I know...an LB before I knew about these things) with it it. But still let her know I loved her no matter what.

I think she may have felt that my slight pulling away, in response to hers, meant I had planned on cheating on her. Not sure, but I may ask her tonight about this. Then a couple of years later, when we had to deal with a bunch of issues to get into our new house, and our son got kicked out of a daycare, e decided to have another child, and she started to change much more noticeably. She was down all through the pregnancy and appeared to have some postpartum after words. I then discovered, after the affair that around the time we decided to have our girl, they made initial contact. So I think this is where it all started.

Now there are a lot of little things I have done, like interrupt her to try and solve her problems, as well as not giving in to all of her desires, but she apparently also wants to go live back up north which I am fine with, but this may have been a quick escape route as well. Unless she gives me more definitive answers on what I actually did or did not do, it's hard to answer beyond this.

I did just have an oops today. I sent an email to the FIL talking about my thoughts on what he should focus on when talking to her and what I was thinking of the situation in general. Good stuff that I want her to really know, but I accidentally sent it to her as well (dang tablet!). She asked for the originating emails from the FIL, as she has before, but I shot her down by telling her that it wasn't meant for her. That if she wanted to see these emails, and all the others, she would have to open up with me to be 100% open and transparent (all passwords and accounts). And then I told her that at least now she sees that I am truly trying to help her, and not me (obvious from what I wrote). I also mentioned how the incident with my son on Saturday impacted my feelings for her (big hit on the love bank there!).

Should be interesting to talk to her tonight. Thoughts? Am I screwed?

Now that you know about lovebusters, do you think you lovebusted her fairly often?

And it was a good thing, not a bad thing that you didn't "give into all her desires." Capitulation is bad for marriages. A better solution is using the policy of joint agreement and coming to mutually enthusiastic agreements. This program will help you with that.

It sounds to me like the biggest problem in your marriage is that a) it was neglected and b) she has poor boundaries around men, which is basically what led to the affair. I wouldn't ask her NOW what the issues were because you aren't going to get an accurate picture from a foggy WS.

And no, you aren't screwed at all! Just hang tight while she comes out of the fog and avoid lovebusters at all cost.

Just had to get involved in the conversation because your situation sounds so similar in so many ways to mine three years ago.

You're in Plan A. NO DIVORCE TALK. None. Change the topic if she brings it up. Don't discuss it as an alternative. You're willing to talk about marriage. You're not willing to talk about divorce.

No talk about the affair. None. Zero. Zip. You can get the details later when you're ready to start recovery. For now, if she brings up OM, you can change the topic.

No other Love Busters. Try to rein in your annoying habits. If you play time-sucking computer games of any sort, STOP THEM. Use that time to meet the Four Intimate Emotional needs with her:

A) Intimate conversation. Find out about her past, present, future, hopes, dreams, and desires. She'll probably interject a disrespectful judgment here and there. Do your best to ignore them. Practice active listening and find as many times to ask her about her feelings as possible. Share the same about yourself: your problems, desires, hopes, etc.

B) Sexual Fulfillment. This one may be on hold for a while, but you can express your desire for her and find ways to romance/seduce her without it becoming physical right away. Think "long game" here: find ways to make HER want YOU. MarriageBuilders doesn't talk a lot about seduction techniques, but suffice to say there are other books, articles, & web sites that talk about effective ways to seduce someone. The fun part is that you know exactly who your target is

C) Recreational Companionship. Find out what kinds of things she likes to do, and ACCOMPANY HER WHEN SHE DOES THEM. Does she shop for groceries? Go with her and help her find the things you need (arranging a sitter while you go together). Find excuses to be together alone and do things... even if you kind of annoy her by being around her. The alternative is to be apart, and that's not a good one for recovery.

D) Affection. She doesn't want you to be physical? GOOD! Find ways to meet her need for affection in non-physical ways. Notes, cards, flowers, favors, planning events... the possibilities are almost limitless. Never underestimate the power of walking up when she's doing chores and asking, "How can I help you with that?"

That's it. That's Plan A in a nutshell: meet the Four Intimate Emotional Needs. Spend a minimum of 15 hours alone with your spouse per week (preferably more like 20-30) meeting those intimate needs. During your time outside of those 15-30 hours, try to meet other needs well, like family commitment and financial support. And don't engage in any Love Busters.

But while you do it, remember the Stick: you will not tolerate infidelity. If you catch her engaging in secrecy, you must be Radically Honest and tell her exactly how what she is doing makes you feel. And that's a real key: being radically honest about your emotions.

It's really hard to do!

There's an exception to Radical Honesty here, though. And that is "don't discuss your snooping techniques". Change the topic, go do something else, walk to another room, but that's a topic that must remain your secret until the day your recovery is well and truly established. And perhaps even after that.

Plan an end date for your Plan A at least three months out from today. That will give you a target, to see if you can hold out that long and build Love Units so much with her that she'll start to reciprocate. If her withdrawal isn't well and truly gone by six months, you can be pretty certain there's some kind of ongoing contact.

Best of luck.

Well, you certainly did yourself no favor, FR. Here I was lauding you for proper behavior, and now WW has something she cam resent you for!

FIL is not IN your marriage, so programming him to parrot your emotions to your wife is inappropriate. "Dad, please keep the pressure on her to return to a life of fidelity and honor," would have been all you needed to say. SAY being the important word here, amigo! WRITE is a creating a dagger pointed back at yourself!

STOP MAKING EXCUSES FOR HER BEHAVIOR. She doesn't lose the baby-fat, projects HER insecurities on you, and goes out and slams her AP? (What, he LIKED fat chicks?) There is no acceptable reason for affairing around. The more you incorporate that into your psyche, the more it will comne through to her.

I think I only did LB's once in a while over years. As did she. I'm trying to avoid them now.

She came home a little late tonight. But has conversed with me about homework for our son. We'll see how she responds to me tonight.

NG, the FIL is only involved in the sense that he has been wanting to try to get her to break out of the fog. He's also been my sounding board, as my own dad is the blank stare type when I get to talking about this issue. He asked some suggestions and I gave him some, including my thoughts on the matter. Unfortunately, I accidentally sent it to my wife as well (was only what I wrote).

As far as what I attribute her issues to, it was in response to what I may have done to put the marriage in this spot. I had to think long and hard, reading everything I have, and I was generally good to her, with only some bad stuff on occasion, and not the amount I would think would set this affair up.That's why I think it's more to do with her self-esteem issues than anything I did, though I believe there is plenty of room for improvement in myself.

BTW, evidence points to her meeting not going PA. I think the OM might have chickened out. I don't know. Her communications indicate no PA, when at first it looked like it might.

@falconrap: Be wary of gauging your progress by your wife's responses to you. Typically, how she acts on a given day has very little to do with your behavior unless you love-bust terribly against her. It usually has much more to do with her internal state, or the state of her relationship with her affair partner.

My wife was very cheerful, loving, and attentive on the same days that I had documented evidence of contact with OM that day. And after a few days of no-contact with OM -- despite my remaining in a pretty darn good Plan A -- she'd be very unhappy. Dr. Harley is right to compare affairs to addictions.

The sea-change in behavior occurs when she falls in love with you again and feels OVERWHELMING attraction toward you. And that usually requires more than a few short weeks of withdrawal to begin to rebuild. Right now, you're in a holding pattern; your efforts to deposit Love Units are mostly in vain until her withdrawal wears off. You just want to avoid taking out more withdrawals from her Love Bank, more or less.

Yeah, I have to watch gauging her, especially since she is still in the fog. Last night we talked about the email that I accidentally sent her (God seems to work in mysterious ways - seeing the method by which I accidentally sent it). Knowing full well she's not going to buy in to her rewrite of material history or that she is in a fog, I proceeded to talk about it anyways and demonstrate how she has forgotten memories, how what she has said is the same that all waywards say, and how affairs are like an addiction. All seed planting for when the logical side of her brain gets a chance to come out and think about things. I made sure she understood just how painful infidelity is to the BS, and made sure she knew that she wasn't trapped on her current path.

I know I've had mixed advice on discussing the D with her, but I made sure she new that the law was very unlikely to give her want she wanted - in terms of the kids - even if I agreed to her terms. My state's laws are pretty rigid in these areas. Then I have her a broad overview of my plan, no details, and let her know there was a path back. A much better path. It was really interesting when she continued to tell me that she always had feelings for her ex HS bo, as she as stated before, and that she was unhappy with me for most of our marriage. When I reminded her that we had a lot of fun, were quite compatible before our son was born, and that I knew she was happy then, she sort of backed down and said she wasn't completely happy back then (like people are generally completely happy in marriage?). I then mentioned her self-esteem and weight issues in terms of her feelings, and how she always expressed this dissatisfaction to me. And then I pressed her on why she was unhappy with me. No answer except "always felt this way about" the OM. At the end I simply asked why she couldn't be happy with me, especially if we could work together to create a fantastic marriage. No answer. I pressed several times and she couldn't come up with any, as I knew she wouldn't.

I generally knew what she would say and think through the whole process, so this was all about planting seeds in her mind that what she knows is wrong, as a grip on her and has distorted reality, and that I have a plan for a great marriage just waiting for her if she comes to her senses. The life line has been cast, and now I begin the long wait to see if she takes it and lets me pull her out of the abyss. I got to her with a simple reasoning on how I knew she what was thinking wasn't right. Mentioned to her that, considering how painful it is to do what she did, that no one who was thinking clearly would do that to someone who didn't deserve it. I could see that comment hit home. The wheels were turning. I never blew up, was mostly calm, only getting slightly upset once, and doing so very briefly without yelling it doing anything that would be an LB.

Time to wait now.

Out of curiosity, anyone with experience on about how long women tend to take to come out of the fog after OM contact was stopped? Even some guidance on when the sensible person may pop out and be vulnerable to more seeding, such as showing them articles on their condition. Just looking for information on when I should be ready with opportunities to keep this process going. Of course, I do realize that some never really come out of it, just want to think about things I should do should the opportunity arise.

Thanks.

falconrap, anywhere from 6 weeks to 6 months. I think most are out of it by 3 months but some take longer. Things that hold a WS back would be keeping momentos or gawking at the OP's facebook page so keep an eye out for that.

I wish I could just go on her account and just de-friend his a**, but that probably wouldn't work. She has stopped trying to communicate with him, since he won't respond back, but she does have things like a movie and some songs that can remind her of him. Are those more of the "just slows the process down a bit" type things? Or are they "back to square one" types? She has toned down her sniping at me a good bit since our conversation.Yesterday she seemed much more interested in small talk with me, so I'm hoping the draw to him is receding a little.

Thankfully, she doesn't have any mementos, though I'm sure she has emails and texts, but I haven't seen her looking at that stuff. She tends to spend a lot of time on FB seeing what her other friends and family are doing, as well as the fan pages she's liked.

Dude, stop asking "How high is up?" questions, and start filling in the pit you're standing in.

What knock-her-socks-off Plan A actions have YOU taken? Remember, you are now in the process of (re)courting your wife, so approach it in exactly that manner.

MB is an action-biased program, so either start taking actions or admit you're not MB material. Gauging how big the hole is in SS Marriage is less important than putting a plug in it. Got that?

Hey now...don't get me wrong. I am trying to build up quality time between us and continue to be a real good guy around her. I will be amping up some other things to try and keep me fresh in her mind. What I am looking for are things to watch out for that I can take advantage of. In other words, whether there are moments when I can inject some reality when she is actually vulnerable to it, and what kind of time frame (ML provided me with this) that I can generally look at.

My goal right now is to be the best husband I can be under the circumstances, while trying to avoid setbacks where I can (some are unavoidable) and take advantage of openings. I need to be able to recognize those openings take advantage of them, hence the questions. I think you are being a little to harsh NG. I'm just asking questions to clarify from other's experiences, nothing more.

If you have suggestions for "knock-her-socks-off actions" that I can do to a woman who doesn't care much about gifts and admiration, and won't let me really touch here when affection is a top need of hers, please feel free. I have a few ideas, but the more advise I can get, the better.

This is correct.

Because Facebook was a major venue for her affair, if she chooses to recover it must no longer be a part of her life as it is today. I've seen couples succeed in creating a "joint" husband/wife account -- John Jane Doe, for instance -- but the status-quo of "she has her account, I have mine, and we don't have one another's passwords" cannot stand if you wish to recover.

In my wife's case, her withdrawal symptoms kept recurring intermittently until we finally found and removed the last mementos of OM approximately five months after No-Contact. Mostly photos on her laptop and in her email account that she would bump across from time to time. However, this final removal also coincided with some counseling with Jennifer Harley Chalmers, so my wife and I have very different perspectives on what exactly turned her around at that point.

Taking unilateral action to prevent contact -- YOU trying to block OM, instead of HER blocking him -- will pretty much always backfire. Don't do it.

Your goal right now is to WIN HER BACK. Enforce your personal boundaries, follow the "carrot & stick" approach, but your job is very simple. Not easy! But simple.
* Time: Spend at least fifteen hours a week in her company, trying to meet her needs.
* Care: Meet her emotional needs, particularly the Intimate Emotional Needs of Intimate Conversation, Affection, Sexual Fulfillment, and Recreational Companionship. Although you want to clean up your act all around, focus more on the needs you can meet in her presence; she didn't fall in love with you for how well you did dishes or laundry. But do those from time to time, because a husband cleaning a kitchen is a lot like foreplay for many women
* Protection: Refrain from all Love Busters. This includes Selfish Demands (note that demanding the affair end is an exception to this rule), Disrespectful Judgments, Angry Outbursts, and Independent Behavior. Try to make every interaction with her a positive one.
* Honesty: Be radically honest with her about your thoughts, feelings, plans, hopes, dreams, past, and present activities. The only exceptions to this: don't ever talk about the affair once all the facts are known (I don't think you're there yet, there's probably a lot more you still don't know), and don't discuss how you keep track of what she's doing.

Care, Protection, Time, Honesty. This is your way out. She may really drag you through an awful lot of excrement on the way, though.

First name; John
Middle name; Builder-Jane
Last name; Builder

You keep thinking that affection -- for a woman -- must include touching. Here are a few ideas off the top of my head that show affection in profound ways without touching:
* Fill up her gas tank without her asking.
* Cook and serve a magnificent dinner.
* Arrange a babysitting schedule on a regular basis so you can have time alone together. 3 times per week, for 4 hours.
* Schedule 3 four-hour "dates" per week with her. If she chooses not to spend that time with you, that's her choice, not yours. But you're there, dressed up (or down) & ready to have some fun together.
* Open her door for her when you drive somewhere.
* Pick up an attractive but inexpensive accessory, like a scarf or a bracelet. Let her know you'd love to see her wear it. You SAY she doesn't like gifts; more typically, a woman out-of-love with her husband doesn't like the EXPENSE a gift represents. So keep it cheap.
* Buy her favorite candy and leave it on the pillow. A very small sample, not a giant box. Lindor Truffles makes a nice six-serving box that's about perfect.
* Put a reminder on your calendar to pick up fresh flowers on a regular basis. Once every two weeks or twice-per-month works well if you remember to cut the stems daily, freshen the water, and for pity's sake avoid roses all the time. Figure out how to budget for this expense, and find a good deal from a local florist. Helps to get some skills with trimming the flowers. Don't "give" the flowers to her; arrange them somewhere she will see them and appreciate their beauty.
* Plan meals for you to cook at least one day of the week, and follow through. Make them special. My night is Sunday, and I usually will do something involving beef. The kids love the tradition.
* Plan a game night on one of your nights with the babysitter watching the kids, keep the house clean beforehand, and talk with your wife about inviting a favorite couple over to play some games together.
* One that my wife and I started in the wake of her affair: eat breakfast together every weekday morning. We cook the meal together, eat it, and clean up together. It's time alone together every day (for the prep work; during & after the meal is family time).
* Text her to let her know you're thinking of her during the day.
* Do the Recreational Enjoyment Inventory, and find the five activities you both rate highly. Plan to do those five together with regularity.
* Invite her to go for walks with you. You do all the prep work; she can come or not come as she wishes. If you bundle up the kids for the walk and get ready to go, she'll begin coming along.
* Take up a recreational activity she might enjoy, that you think could improve your health. Running, cycling, and swimming are three common ones. I cannot speak more highly of the benefits of finding a healthy activity you can enjoy with your spouse! Your brain releases endorphins with exercise, and if the two of you start an exercise program together, you will reap HUGE benefits in both your marriage and your own health.
* Write a few notes to leave in her sock drawer, medicine cabinet, or vehicle reminding her of something you appreciate about her.
* Plan a vacation together. Like you sit down, look at the options, figure out something that's in your budget, and then brainstorm with her about it.

Me? I've got a lunch date with my wife today at the gym. I have my running clothes in the car and will meet her there. We'll do forty-five minutes running around the indoor track (it's getting cold here!) and every time we pass one another we'll wave, wink, touch shoulders, or do something like that. We also play hide & seek with our water bottles, generally she'll put her bottle somewhere and I'll try to find it to put mine next to it.

There you go. And that's what I thought up without even thinking hard or typing very long! I'm sure you can find ways to show affection -- which, ultimately, is just "find ways to show her you are thinking about her" -- without touching.