Hey Pio!!!

Great news mate.

(((Pio

Man hugs! I had totally forgotten! That really made me laugh. You still have my email. Really great to here from you. I never did run up Ayers Rock and with my knee, looks like it will never happen. Send some warm weather this way. All the best buddy.

BigK)))

Hey Pio!! Thanks for the update. Glad to hear you are doing well.

Hi Pio!

So happy to hear you are doing well!

All the best!

Hey Pio! Good to see you and happy to hear you and Gemela are doing well.

Looks like its time for a biannual update. Things still going strong. For past two years, no more painful memories and no doubts. I can finally say I made the right decision to fight for the marriage with no reservations. We will be empty-nesters begging September as DDs will both finally be in boarding schools. It will definitely be a new experience. It is still hard to believe where this all started and it was, at times, a painful journey. I would not change anything though. If big k is still around, ((bigk

Did someone call my name? ((Pio

So delighted to hear you are doing well! Life is great for me and my wife as well. Kids getting married and all of them out of the house. New phases of life....

Hey bigk. I'm not sure who is still here and who is not. Congratulations. I'm still a few years away but not as many as I would like. I heard a rumor that Uluru is off limits. Tell me it isn't so! If true, that's one off the bucket list. Gemela has been with DD2 in another country since January so I have been a bachelor. Definitely not part of the MB program but I have been surprisingly okay with it. My personal vocational circumstances just made it unrealistic for DD2 to attend school here and she was too young to go to boarding. It is not the ideal circumstance and I find that I can go for weeks and my longest conversation is with my cats. I am starting to forget words. They will be back next week. I hope it is the last time the DDs will ever come back here. That is the general plan. We can get together elsewhere during school breaks. DDs chose different schools. While this will likely preserve peace in the family, it is havoc on vacations as each school has polar opposite terms and breaks. DD2 gets two four day minibreaks. Air travel to and fro is almost three days. Not sure how we are going to handle that when the time comes. Here things are stable but could change overnight. With pil prices what they are, I think I am stuck here for awhile. Of course I could go back and DDs could go to public school. They didn't appreciate that suggestion. Don't know why. Worked out okay for gemela and me.

Do you know anything about Bigger? I don't know if I ever thanked him for pointing me to MB and getting me off that other board.

Gemela and I are planning the future. Trying to decide where to live. Right now we are looking at Virginia. No idea why really. I read an article on the best and worst places to retire. I think Virginia was #4 or #5. They had a place called Idaho at the top but I had never heard of it. Not even sure if it is really a thing. But I had heard of Virginia before although it's not exactly where I thought it was. Shoulda studied harder in geometry.

Sir

Why would you purposely separate from your wife if you have already dealt with an affair?

Excellent question and was not my first choice. In fact, the original concept totally fell apart. Cliff Notes version is there was a very big tail wagging the dog. DD1 left to go to boarding school all on my dime. We did not really know what else to do. She got into a very bad situation her last year here that led to cutting. We did not know what to do but she was desperate to leave. She thought a new start was the answer. Anyway that started the ball rolling.

DD2 went into depression. She wanted to leave to. We started having that conversation casually and suddenly it happened that gemela's gemela and her significant other (gemela's gemela was and remains an OW but don't get me started) were being tranferred to a SA country with a difficult environment. So gemela's gemela decided that, since DD2 was going to school in a nicer place, she would send her daughter there too and make it a family thing. Turns out a govt obstacle prevented us from actually folowing thru at the time. No bother. The sister goes ahead and moves with her daughter and starts school. So the sister pretty much put us in a point of no return. I told gemela from the beginning that this was a very bad plan. That's effectively what happened - a bad plan. Well the niece has flunked out so that's a good thing. After next week, she is gone. No longer my problem.

Yes separating was not without thought. But it interesting that gemela goes out of her way to get me to trust her. I also took (and always willl) the stance that, if she wants to cheat, she can and will. In that event, I would simply file for divorce without a second thought. I suffered too many miserable years to ever want to repeat it. Since I finally (and some will argue the contrary) got the basics of MB, i know that i have done everything I know how to do to make this marriage successful. If that is not enough, I got nothin else to try.

In some ways this has been cathartic for me. I scheduled two vacations so that our time apart was limited. This last one was the longest at 10 weeks apart. Neither gemela nor her gemela can be with the girls at school for more than a few months in any given year so they were tag teaming looking after the DDs. Probably way TMI but you asked. If this had gone on much longer, I don't think they two of them would have spoken again. So I said from the beginning it was a bad plan and now gemela agrees. Was not a cheap experiment though. I won't say how much because it is embarassing.

Let me just add that gemela's gemela's daughter really wanted to go on this adventure because in the new SA country she was going to, she would not be able to continue her dressage and show jumping. So this whole thing was about going some place where she could pursue this and become wealthy and famous like that person, what's the name? The one that got rich and famous jumping horses. You know? Oh wait. Nobody has ever done that. Really poor decision making on her parents' part and they now realize that. Unfortunately it put us in a really bad situation in the interim. Her mother thought getting good grades was just a question of the amount of money because that is how it always worked before. She went to a country where those rules didn't work.

I don't really understand what you have written (what is gemela's gemela?) and I also don't understand why whatever it is that you are describing is important to you - especially since it seems to relate to your wife's niece education. How is that relevant to your marriage?

Even if it were your own daughter's education that forced this consideration, you are entirely wrong to have made such a bad decision for her. Your daughters' security is being put at great risk by you and your wife's choice to live apart from each other.

The best protection you can offer you, your wife and your daughters is for you and your wife to live together and never to spend a night apart.

It takes extraordinary precautions to ensure that an affair does not develop in any marriage - whether or not it has suffered an affair - and takes those same precautions to rebuild a marriage that, like yours, has suffered a affair (and a deep one, at that).

Nothing should come above your marriage, and with making sure that your marriage involves meeting each other's intimate emotional needs (intimate, face-to-face conversation, affection, sexual fulfilment and recreational companionship) for at least 15 hours per week. Nothing should come above making sure you spend every night together. Nothing should come above making sure that your lives are so transparent and integrated that an affair could not start without the other spouse's knowing about it. If you want your marriage to be a passionate marriage that lasts a lifetime, nothing should come above it; not your daughters' educations, not making money as an expat, and ABSOLUTELY NOT some other child's educational aspirations.

I'm really sorry to read this update. As someone in a marriage where we had to take the extraordinary precaution of getting my H to give up working abroad, and eventually, to retire early while we still had a child at school, I'm really concerned for your marriage.

Hi piojitos! Thanks for the update, even though it is not a good one. I am sorry to read you and your wife aren't in recovery and are taking such risks with your marriage. But since you didn't ask for advice, I won't give it.

Haven't seen bigk in a few years, but the last I heard, he and his wife were doing very well.

Oh, I see bigk replied above! Hi bigk!

Hi Pio, have you spent time recently reading here on the MB forums?

One thing that comes up often is a saying: Anything that comes before the marriage will come between the marriage.

Dr. H recommends that couples never ever spend a night apart, especially after an affair. It just won't work because couples need a minimum of 15 hours of UA time each week in order to just MAINTAIN our love for each other.

It sounds like you weren't enthusiastic about your (or is she gemala's?) daughter going away to study dressage?

Please stay and post and update here. Hopefully once your wife returns next week, the two of you can POJA some changes going forward so that your MARRIAGE will come first for the rest of your lives.

OH!!! And Pio...something new...there is now an APP for smart phones! You can download the app and listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show for free every day!

Listening through the app allows you to save your place and not have to jump in wherever the continuous loop is (like when we used to listen to the show). It's pretty awesome.

You may be right. I was not happy gemela chose sister and niece over our family but I would have always come second there. Now it seems that has changed. I think gemela has come out of this with a different attitude. Hope so anyway. This has soured her a bit on the blood/water thing. The niece has issues that I hope she can overcome. I am glad DD2 is not here. Honestly I am so relieved that, should anything happen, I know they are safe. To some extent, I'm glad gemela is not here. But I can't live this way indefinitely yet there are hundreds of my coworkers that do exactly that. That is no life. Either gemela lives here or we live elsewhere. With WTI just below $60, now is not the easiest time to live elsewhere so gemela is coming back here. I'm sure M/L can give me the correct spot price. I'm just guessing. Gemela told me she is sick of how things turned out and just wants her life back here.

I will download the app. It will be hard to put down Sirius Ch 97 though.

BS2013,

We both viewed this little adventure as a sprint. Yes after next week it is all about planning the next phase of our lives. Maybe in Virginia. It has not been easy on either of us being apart. I know a lot more about cats than I did before. If it had not been for SIL (that would be gemela's gemela for those unSpanish speakers), we would not be in this boat. But if I had put my foot down back then, gemela seriously would not have gotten the point. SIL and I will probably never speak again. A few months ago, gemela was angry with me about that. Now she agrees. They may never speak again either.

Hey Pio and BigK

Guessing BK has Pio on his "watched list" so maybe he'll get this post too.


pio - If you feel like talking about it ----> you told your wife it was a bad plan. If you weren't enthusiastic, why did it happen anyway???

Maybe DD2 will want to or be force to come home too (like her cousin). Teenage girls are so difficult. Dr. Harley says that we are to try to manage and protect them as best we can, hope what we've instilled up to the age of 15 is enough, and pray they make it to college age.


I hope soon you can find a way to all be together. I just don't see "less family time" as the best answer to teenage girls acting out and depression.

Godspeed,
Mr. W