It would VERY much be in your interest if the Thanksgiving trip were made as traditional:

- a return to "normalcy"
- a post-card of family togetherness spanning three generations
- a refutation of any of WW's "we're finished" ideations

Do not play fair, or above-board, on this, but do NOT get caught being sneaky. Use MIL to supply guilt as available; remind kids of the good times with the folks up north. Meanwhile your attitude is "I want whatever you think is best, sweetums!", but don't start planning the dinner at home, either.

Who else would be expected at this gathering?

Right now she is still mad at her FIL and MIL for getting into her "personal" business. I am hoping she will change her mind by then. Up there would be the FIL, MIL, and the families of both sisters. Pretty big family gathering. I might be able to be a little sneaky and see if my S will ask her about going when it gets a little closer, but I don't want her to think, obviously, that I am using him. I may get that out of him by simply letting him know we can't go this year, as he wanted to go earlier when the wife took our D up there.

One of the other big issues I have is she has a business trip to the other coast that she has to support for a few days right up until the day we were originally scheduled to go up there. She had talked to the enabling cousin about possibly meeting up out there, but that would require travel on the cousin's part as well and it looks like she won't be able to go. That will be about 5 days of us being apart and I can't do anything about it (the cost would be prohibitive for me to try and go as well). I do plan to work her on this and see if we can't get her mind changed.

She's stubborn though. So I'm going to be trying, but won't count on it. I will make sure that we are scrambling at the last minute to do T-day stuff to help drive the point. If I can get us all up there, I know the family pressure, and the ability for us to find some time alone without the kids, could really help us reconnect.

My wife has been snooping. Don't know what she expects to find? Maybe she'll find this thread (hi hon! ILY!!!! Still trying to save our marriage!!!!).

Don't know what to really think of her right now. She's been a lot more "taker" oriented the last two days and is mean to us when we do something she doesn't like. Maybe she found something that makes her mad, like me, oh, I don't know, trying to save our marriage?

This is to be expected;


http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi3610_state.html



Between withdrawal and intimacy lies conflict. Conflict is where you are going to know that this is NOT a sprint, but a marathon.

Chin up, keep chugging forward. Remember, this program isn't a quick fix, it's a guide to developing new marital habits.

Long term projects are my thing. I have a lot of patience when I believe the end result is worth the effort. I just have to get through this long stage. I wish she would turn on a dime, but the fact that I have been seeing steady progress is encouraging. Tonight she was very pleasant most of the time, but then had a moment or two late. Tonight was definitely better than this morning and the prior two days. Up and down we go.

You know HHH, reading that link again, and going on to the part about bringing the marriage out of withdrawal and back toward intimacy reminded me of what I have been going through the last couple of days. As her attitude went south for the past couple of days, my taker was coming out and telling me that all this c__p isn't worth it and that I should just give up.

I've been overriding that guy, big time. Today, as I was staying home with DD, I cleaned the WW's bathroom, as well as doing other household chores. She thanked me for it but thought my DD wash't giving me too much of a hard time. I let her know that she was, but that I did that when she was resting. I also exercised some good POJA on what we were eating for dinner. I believe it made a difference in her mood, and I believe that doing this type of stuff consistently will continue to wear down her taker and move her through conflict back to intimacy. Time will tell.

Interesting. I suspect she may have found my email to the OM requesting he de-friend her. She apparently de-friended me yesterday when she made some changes to her account. Nice and juvenile. Just another reminder of how far I have to go. She's clearly conflicted on being nice to me versus being mean, and keeps bouncing back and forth. I just wish their was a faster path to recovery, but I know that the long hard road is what I must face.

What is your "internal" calendar for Plan A execution?
Does she know (without knowing the end-date) that she is "on the clock"?

Having your own termination and progression deadline will enable you to devote full concentration to Plan A actions, without having to create a grid of expectations.("I'm gonna give it Hell for X months. I can do that without any reciprocity from WW.")

BTW - Your note to OM was, in a word, stupid. Even if you haven't the gumption to bring ruin to his life, the way we have been advising, you shouldn't be a supplicant, asking him for favors. Whatever the non-effect on OM, it makes you appear weak, to WW ("Oh, isn't that darling? The husband I betrayed is asking my sex-partner for help in winning me back!") and to YOURSELF!

Well, my email to the OM was more of a stern de-friend her now, because no contact means no contact type email. I was being direct with him, not pleading or asking favors.

He's still out of the picture.

Originally, my plan A was through October, but I realized that, in my situation, sticking with the suggested 6mos-1yr time frame was more realistic. Right now I'm planning on March, unless significant progress is there to avoid the risk of plan B. I told her I would only wait so long, so she knows I have a time table. May need to reiterate that at some point.

She keeps vacillating between good and bad. It's become a little more extreme the last couple of days. One moment she is really nice and we are getting along and then super b__h comes out for a brief flame throwing moment. Her signals are all over the place. At one point I'm lowered down (bent knees) in the kitchen looking for something while she is right next too me cooking and she gets gets really close with her leg touching my knee, and no signs of pulling away. Later she snaps about something I forgot as though I had just yelled at her or something. It's really tough dealing with her like this. If she really can't stand me, why wouldn't she freak out at any contact between us, especially considering how close my head was to certain areas of her body? The fog, I'm sure, but something that can drive me nuts!

I'm hanging in though.

I don't have facebook, so I may be way off base here, but would her "defriending" you prevent you from seeing what is on her facebook page? If so, that may be her real intent with the little jab at you being an added bonus.

At one point I'm lowered down (bent knees) in the kitchen looking for something while she is right next too me cooking and she gets gets really close with her leg touching my knee, and no signs of pulling away.

You are SO being played.

Normally, yes....normally.

I wonder if march is too far away. The experts can be more specific, but the point of plan A/B is to show her exactly what you are willing to do, and how far you will go to have a good marriage then protect yourself and stop meeting her needs.

This works both ways. If you plan A for a few months (perhaps 3) then on a really high note go to dark plan B she will have such a huge contrast that it will force her to figure it out while you protect your love bank in the event that she makes a good decision. If you plan A for 6 months or a year, then you will likely start to falter (I sure did) then when you can't be around her anymore you plan B on a really low note. This doesn't work because she will start to think that you will care for her regardless of how she treats you and because you won't treat her as well as you did earlier in plan A.

If I had to do it all over again, I would do it exactly by the book. I would be captain plan A, meeting her needs in every way possible, while planning a very careful and sudden plan B, then drop the letter and dead silence until she comes back absolutely ready to give recovery everything shes got. Anything short of this is to some varying degree living in limbo which must be avoided, because waywards seem to have a the ability to cake eat until there is nothing left and it's all over.

As you can tell, I didn't follow my advice and my wife got very comfortable with limbo. Now I am filing for divorce and she is starting to act concerned, but she has so far to go before we can begin to recover that I'm not willing to wait any longer. I'm done dealing with all of the drama. If I would have plan B'd correctly, this could have happened a year ago and our marriage may have had a shot.

Personally, I wouldn't take my wife back unless facebook goes away. If she values facebook over my feelings of betrayal (she contacted OM and another guy over facebook) then I don't want to be married to her anyway.

Perhaps you should consider the same.

In what way? I could see that from an outsider's perspective...but what she is actually doing...not so much. If she was trying to play me, why mot show me affection? Or perform some SF to "keep me in line?"

I say this because I am seeing her go through the emotional roller coaster. The song I sent to her, that she says she can't listen to anymore (because it was our song - and what we danced to at our wedding) is on a CD that was in its case, in the house, until a few days ago, when I noticed the CD was in her vehicle, obviously having been played. I think she's confused and trying to figure out what she wants to do. Even in an email to her parents she noted that she would do what she thought was best for her "whatever" she ends up deciding.

But I am interested in your perspective...more so on how I can differentiate between emotional confusion and "playing" me. I've seen plenty of women play men (almost dated one of those type) and she's not really looking like she is doing that.

NG, let me clarify, because I think I see what you are thinking based on what I had written. She isn't making contact purposefully. It's more accidental, often initiated by me. I this I made it sound like she was getting all cozy with me, but she wasn't.

You do have a keylogger still installed, correct? What does it say?

When she is ready for reconciliation (being an optimist), I will certainly have her understand that I will monitor fully and that she isn't to have or accept, intimate conversations with men. If she can't do that, then pulling out of FB would become a need. I may change my mind and want her to give up FB, but I'm comfortable if she knows I am constantly monitoring FB and knows the consequences, assuming she's remorseful and wants to reconcile at that point.

As to the length of plan A, from what I have read 6mos-1yr is based on the man's ability to hold it together until they can't continue plan A without losing there love and desire to get the marriage back. So you have to know your threshold and make the timeline what it should be for you. Keel in mind that John and Sue (from SAA) actually disliked each other and took nearly 2 years to recover their marriage. So even if you are at the level of disliking your spouse, if it's still the right thing to do to reconcile, you can make it back if she starts filling you EN's and avoids LB's.

If I think I can't make it, I'll pull the plug earlier and go to plan B. I think I'm good for a while. We'll see.

BH, She just gabs about what she is going through, though not that much. Mostly she does that through texting, but even then she has backed off considerably. She apparently did this out of spite. She's acting like a teenager. Her communications on this stuff simply aren't what they used to be, which is why I think she is going through the process of trying to figure out what she really wants. She still has a strong urge to end our M, but she also has that side that I keep reminding of where we get along great and she seems comfortable around me until he taker pops out.

Believe me, I can see her going back and forth between the two mindsets.

Yea, that's the point, you gotta plan B before your love bank is empty. You can't just go along with limbo when it's past due. If you can go a year, that's great, I did a really good plan A for about 9 months, but I didn't pull out in time because I kept waiting for her to come around, and she did just enough to keep me from leaving, but nowhere good enough to have a good marriage. In reading your posts, I have wondered if you are going down the same path, hence my warning.