Agree with everyone above. Dollars to donuts the affair is still going on. Dr Harley says NOT to take a WH back unless they are on-their-knees-remorseful. Does it sound like he is remorseful to you?? I say heck no. And I think if you do some snooping you will see that we are right about the affair still going.

He needs to agree to all that LongWay said or you are just setting yourself up for a false recovery.

Prepare for Plan B.

v2013, your husband is acting like a chicken****. He's acting like anything except someone grateful for the 2nd chance from a woman who is actually, amazingly (given what he's done) still willing to work on this marriage with him.

Tell him I'm a man who had an affair. A little over 4 & a half years ago. And amazingly (given what I'd done), my wife gave me a 2nd chance & was still willing to work on our marriage with me.

The point of my relating that info is not to put myself on any kind of pedestal. Far from it. I'm very sorry to say I ever went to a place in life where I needed to save my marriage from an affair that I had. The point of my relating that info is to testify that it's possible for a guy to not only save his marriage but to work with his wife hand-in-hand & make it better than it was before the affair.

Possible, that is, if the wayward spouse will stop acting like a chicken****.

Very early-on, our marriage counselor made it clear to us that nothing would work if I made my efforts conditional on my wife's attitude or if I insisted on knowing up-front how she'd feel about me 2 or 4 or 10 months down the road. It wasn't she who bore an obligationn to go the extra mile to demonstrate her commitment to the marriage, it was I who bore that extra obligation.

However, your husband is acting like it's somehow the other way around, as though you owe it to him to prove in advance how you & others will ever be able to forgive him. He has it [censored]-backwards, ma'am. It's incumbent upon him to go the extra mile to show he's remorseful.

His objecting to the list of your conditions that are required to be met in order for you to feel emotionally safe with him is the reasoning of a child (and with that comment, I may have given offense to parents of any number of high-functioning children who reason better).

Explain to him that your list is not a list of "demands" -- but that rather, it is simply a list of conditions which are needed in order for you to be able to feel like he's invested in this marriage. You are not demanding that he meet them -- you are simply enlightening him as to these conditions, and offering him the free choice as to whether or not he wants to meet them.

If he does, then you will be sailing on a smoother course. If he balks, then you may explain to him that he has made his choice freely, and show him the door (and this time, mean it). In that way, you may show him that you've got some inner steel that he'll be bound to respect. You see what my wife told me (2nd quote below, in red text) on the day I confessed my affair? She was all about loving me & forgiving me, but she also wouldn't stand for any bull****.

If your husband wants to snap out of his self-pity party and learn a thing or two from a man who managed not to screw up his marriage after his affair, and from some of the many other good & wise people here, have him sign up here and give me a shout. He'll have to dial his misplaced pride down a notch, but he's got a life-altering choice here before him: either to be a man who learned from his mistakes and learned how to do better, or to be a man the remainder of whose life will be defined by his mistakes -- which is to say, not much of a man at all.

You can make a list of the things you need in order to feel honored & respected by him and he can choose to view that list as "demands" on your part; or he can look inside himself and decide that he wants to choose to meet that list because he wants to become again a man that both he & you can be proud of someday. He can be that husband; or he can wimp out because it sounds hard, or because he wants to know all the outcomes in advance, or because he can't imagine how anyone can forgive what he's done, or because he's still in such throes of addiction to his affair-partner that he won't take the necessary & crucial step of ending contact with her altogether & asap.

Tell him I wanna know whether he's gonna wimp out, or whether he'd be interested in some tips from a man who's walked in his sad shoes for a spell.

Can I ask a bit more about your exposure? Are your family and his family in full possession of the facts and supporting the marriage?

I don't think you have exposed the OW have you? Tell her f&f about her attack on your marriage. Is she married? A boyfriend? Tell him too.

You should also do workplace exposure if they work together. Are they equals at work or is one subordinate to the other? Having sex with married coworkers is not a brilliant career move and they should both realise the consequences of this.

Have you read the Exposure 101 thread? Without a full exposure your husband will stay in la-la land where it's ok to keep his wife dangling and his lover on the backburner. he needs to be shocked out of that mindset.

He will need to leave the job. No arguments. Your marriage can survive his anger. It can survive financial hardship. But it cant survive casual contact with a person he is addicted to. If he runs into her again, the A will be back on eventually. Of course it hasnt ever really ended.

Prepare for Plan B immediately too. Part of your husband's la-la land mindset is that you will always be there for him and your home is still is his home no matter how he behaves. Make him realise it's a real choice and he can't have home until he earns it.

Plan B preps are in my signature. He can sit in a world of his own making alone until he can commit to giving you a proper recovery. Exposure will help.

Link to Exposure thread.

forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2566583

Oh and don't fear Plan B, it's amazing. He is just as likely to become remorseful after losing access to you.

And you get a well earned break. I am sure you are exhausted dealing with the U-turns and blame games of an addict.

thanks Brainy!

Thank you! I really needed to hear that from a man's perspective who was in that situation.
Yesterday, I approached him and told him that I can no longer do this alone. I will see him tomorrow (due to his work schedule) and will tell him to move out. I cannot go on with my life being a second choice.
The reason I approached him about all of it again was because he was unreachable all day and withdrew cash from account and was gone all day. He is lying to me - I know. But he says he has no contact with her anymore. I don't believe it. He completely removed all my access to our cell phone bill records so I "don't investigate and stop calling people". But I told him yesterday, for someone who has "ended all contact" to the lover, he is acting like he has a lot to hide. So here we were, he is telling me that he loves me but he doesn't know how to make it right with me. He says he can't be intimate with me becuase it feels awkward. He says all he wants to do is go to sleep because then he doesn't have to confront the situation. He says he is just not there and doesn't know how to get the willpower to work on it. He says he can't tell me he is committed to me.
He knows he has everything to lose if he loses me. But somehow he doesn't feel motivated to get his s***t together. And it's my fault because I let him come back each and everytime without a real committment. It has to stop, 100% or nothing this time. I will go to plan B.

Can I ask you a personal question? When I ask him if he still has contact to her, he firmly says NO. But I feel like his actions speak louder than words. Do you think I should get the password for phone records again and make sure for myself? Or should I just go to Plan B and let him figure it out?

He says it's not easy to get over me, because I'm too good. See the problem is that I never thought anything of myself. And it totally translated into our relationship. I now started to realize my worth. People always say I look like a VS model, I didn't want to hear it and just wanted my husband to shine. I was always in the background letting him have his fun and be live. I was always the one holding myself back from everything, taking care of him, house, work, school and our 3 dogs. I now realize that I'm better than what he is giving me right now. I deserve better. He knows that, and he is afraid to let me go because he knows I won't be alone for long.

Yes, my family and his family knows. Our closest friends know. They are all supporting us.
The OW is someone he occasionally runs into when he is working (not always). I have not talked to her. But I have called her mother and exposed that to her, letting her know that he daughter needs to leave my husband alone and that I'm not divorcing him. She was upset about the exposure and called him that night to complain, she thought it was inappropriate... Haha, really?

How long did it take you to find the strength to leave your lover and commit to your wife? Was it awkward at the beginning? How did you overcome it?