Telling you how you should feel is abusive. It's a disrespectful judgment. Dr. Harley's position is that disrespectful judgments should not be tolerated in marriage.

Your WH is really wayward. You seem to be back in physical or voice contact with him. Look how upset you are again because you're listening to his utter crap.

You should go back into plan B, and this time, don't let him back in until he becomes the guy I described in a previous post - the pleading, grovelling, repentant guy who is desperate to meet your EPs.

Atlanta, protect yourself, dear. You do not deserve to be treated like this.

Why do you and your H continue to hurt each other with LB's?

Atlanta, are you reading my posts? You are dealing with an extremely abusive man and the solution is to stop talking to him at all.

I wish you had spoken to us before you had come out of Plan B. This man was gaslighting you and still having contact with his two OW -- to the point that you were close to having a nervous breakdown. He is still gaslighting and abusing you and he still has contact with one of the OW.

You need to go back to Plan B. Now.

I agree with this, word for word.

Yea I agree too, your hubby is emotionally abusive. Separate with plan b until he makes radical lifestyle changes. His decisions have separated him from his family not yours. Don't let him gaslight you anymore.

I know I sound pathetic. But I am in tears and i feel like this huge balloon of pain is growing in me. I understand that AO are not helpful to discussion.

I feel so hurt.

No, I don't want contact with him.

I worry about you because you have been dealing with this for a very long time with no relief. Your H has had 2 affairs, fathered an OC and is still treating you abusively. Women have nervous breakdowns and suffer post traumatic stress disorder from staying in these situations.

Please, please, please go forward with the divorce. This guy is just trying to pin you back into place with the YOU'RE CRAZY crap that used to work so well.

No one needs to be married this badly.

Shame on him.

What is stopping me is that he is reasonable in a way. everything is fine with him as long as there is calm. but.. he is disrespectful.

I am too upset to be calm to talk to him. because I am clearly upset and freaked out and he is reacting to my upset so he gets sarcastic or rude on the basis that I am attacking him.

And I try not be upset. I was calm until I saw that email from his exwife and it hit me upside the head again. Who do I talk to about how I feel if I am sad or frustrated or something like that mail cuts right into the heart of me and the grief and fear come back.

Am I supposed to never say anything to him when this happens? I resent that. I feel he should sit and listen and offer comfort and explanations. I DON'T think he should be abused by me in the process, but how do I talk to him without the pain and anger showing. Do I just leave?

And I am not ignoring the divorce advice. Or that he is abusing and all of the history being commented about. He refuses to talk about what he actually did. He says I get too upset and he is scared of it because it feels so destructive to him.

You are not pathetic. You have endured gaslighting on a scale that I have not seen for a long time, even on this MB infidelity site, where there is plenty of misery.

You are not pathetic, you are sad, angry, humiliated, and hurt. And with good reason: you trusted someone to love you and treat you with honor and decency and he failed you miserably.

I learned this valuable lesson from this site: you cannot change anyone, you can only control yourself.

You cannot force your WH to do the right thing and while he does not, you must protect yourself. However, you can protect yourself while holding a hand out to your WH via a plan B letter.

Then, it will be up to him to take your hand and meet your very reasonable conditions so that you can have a happy and safe marriage.

In the meantime, live your own life. Be happy. Make more of your beautiful photos. Know that you are important.

Sticking to a dark plan B will give you this freedom.

Agreed

Atlanta, there is nothing reasonable about him.

Abusive spouses like to get their spouses brainwashed into thinking that abuse is "reasonable."

You should not reconcile with him without an acknowledgment from him that YOU ARE NOT THE CAUSE of his demands, disrespect, and anger. You should not tolerate a single instance of demands, disrespect, or anger from him ever again.

This is the problem. You are a perfectly normal, rational, intelligent woman who has been through TOO MUCH. Like I said earlier, Dr Harley does not recommend that women endure more than FOUR WEEKS of this treatment and you have been enduring it for YEARS.

For the sake of your mental and physical health, I IMPLORE you to shut the door. Go into a very dark Plan B and don't see or speak to him for several months. You don't have to make any decisions about divorce today. But you do need to shut him out of your life. Your husband is no closer to being committed to protecting you and is not serious about recovery.

Dr. Harley often suggests separation where abuse has entered the M. He takes a strong stance on both mental and physical abuse.


He often speaks about abuse, AO and LB's on the radio program. He makes a compelling case that the first step in dealing with AO is establishing that no one can MAKE either of you have an AO. It is always a choice by either spouse. Every single time. By recognizing that no one can make anyone have an AO, he has found that this self acceptance is the first step in eliminating them.


Have you read LB's? Long book but very helpful to identify those traits in ourselves and our spouses behaviors.


Dr Harley also discusses how to make conversations safe when talking about difficult topics. You both have to agree to not judge the other person or be disrespectful. As soon as the conversation takes a turn for the worse, either spouse should walk away until emotions have cooled off. He often discusses how people are 'temporarily insane' when they have an AO.


If starting today you both committed to never commit another LB against each other, your relationship would take a drastic turn for the better. Today.

My fear is that she is well beyond the ability to control her AO's because of her long term exposure to abuse. This is why I am strongly urging her to shut this down and go into Plan B for awhile. A person can only take so much abuse before they break down. I think she may be at that point.

But he also makes the point that when a woman is being abused, she needs to get away from the abuser. She has been enduring this for about 3 YEARS and so far has been through 2 affairs AND an OC. Harley would have told her 2 years ago to go into Plan B. Her H is openly and flagrantly still in touch with OW #1. I believe there comes a point when one's psyche is so damaged that their emotions are out of control. I believe she is at that point.

I guess my mistake was in not ending the interaction when he started to explain to me that he had the affair and left me because I was getting so upset at him for having the affair.

He says his belief that I refused to control my upset at him made him flee from me.

I got sucked in trying to point out to him that people are going to be upset and have some strong emotions when they are openly being cheated on.

He says HE at least TRIES to control HIMSELF. And then he said he has learned one thing, "There is no point in trying to talk to you when you are being like this."

What was I actually doing? I was desperately trying to convince him that cheating and having OC who pop out of nowhere kind of would elicit a strong reaction from most people.

He is not interested. He says I am just attacking him and to STOP and he puts me down for loss of control. He tells me that I can complain to him about things, but the way I do it is massively irritation.

Then he leaves the discussion. Doesn't say he is going, doesn't say goodbye. Just leaves. It was instant message.

And I am sitting there feeling jerked around, manipulated, screwed with, invalidated and he disappears and doesn't come back for days sometimes.

That is usually the point where I have AO. Which basically amounts to getting very upset and sending him a huge long email about WHY I am so upset.. because of what he has done. And he says that seriously makes him so mad he is refusing to even address it. English is not his first language so it makes him mad to see the long email.

In principal, 20, I agree with Dr. Harley. I can't talk to my husband about his affair, the OC and the effect it has on me because it makes him MAD and he lashes out at me.

If I may be so bold, it seems you have a yearning to get him to understand you and finally change his mind about how unreasonable he thinks you are. He won't. Let it go and close the door. For your health. Even then, it's going to take some time to get to living your life. Every time you engage with him, you wipe out any of the forward steps you've taken. You'll wait for an eternity before you'd hear him say "I understand your pain and your reaction."