I am saving up to get some direct councelling from marriagebuilders, but need some advise in the meantime about wether to buy an email recovery app to get at the last emails I never recovered.

I discovered my H EA in Feb. It was conducted via emails first through his work email and when he quit work, through his home business email account. After discovery, I asked to see the emails. H said he had deleted them except for a few.

He knew that reading those emails would hurt my feelings so he preferred that I didn't find out the truth. (Over the next 6 months I found out that my H is a conflict avoidance lier. )

He has never helped me (unbidden) to uncover his old emails and I had to find them by myself the hard way. I'm not very computer literate. 3 or 4 months after Dday I got so frustrated at not being able to recover much of the emails (I only read some of the ones he forgot to delete in his sent box that I found through time machine back up) that I told him I was going to buy a recovery programme. Only then did he show me another way to get at old emails through the backup library. He had known about this way all along. It made it much quicker to find them as it allowed to search for them. He could have saved me days and days by telling me about this way earlier. (As If I needed more resentment)

So now I have read more but can see from large gaps that there are a lot that I have missed. H questions why I want to read them all since they hurt and make me miserable. When he falls back into IB or other LB I end up quoting them back to him. That is wrong of me but I feel that our recovery is slow because of his lack of owning up to everything in the first place and also due to consistent LB from him in the form of TT that I discover.

So I feel compelled to find the truth for myself. Since Feb I have been spending days and days (and nights when I can't sleep), on and off, going through his computer and more recently through his old CD back ups and old paper diaries.

By doing that I found things he hadn't told me in the Radical Honesty questionaire.
These LB are effecting how I feel about him. Maybe that is why I still want to read those other emails?

Should I give in to my urge and buy this recovery programme, although I don't even know how successful it would be. The longer ago it is, the harder it is to recover old data. I'd only get something from the last 3 years anyway as H bought a new computer then.

H says I live in the past and that he wants us to live in the now and create a better future. But he doesn't help by not disclosing things to me. E.g. it was only by going through old CD backups that I recently found out that he had kept some old CDs with porn images on them. He wasn't using them, but still kept them (for the future, just in case I guess). Another sign of how strong his porn addiction is.

I resent spending nearly all my spare time trawling through old records on computer and diaries but that is the only way I have found out about some things.

Reading more emails of his correspondence with the OW will not shed more light on the general relationship however. Just give more details. But it's not leaving me alone. And as our back up system is nearly full, the longer I leave it, the less are the chances that I can recover much. I would have bought the recovery programme much earlier but I didn't feel brave enough to stand up to my H's opposition to buying it.

He feels that the more I know, the more I feel hurt. Also, I still think about it nearly constantly. There is much detail in 10 years of correspondence and I can quote much of the most hurtful stuff by memory.

It is true that I'm stuck in the past a bit. Still hurting a lot but that is partly because I am grieving my loss. My husband has only gained from his EA. First by the exitement, good feelings and phantasy he got out of it and then when I discovered it, by my meeting his EN of SF and Affection. I withdrew SF when he continued with IB and not spending time with me, but he gained all the fun he had doing his outdoor trips etc. and found some SF satisfaction through porn.

I have asked myself what I get out of staying with the memory and hurt. The only thing I can see is that it feels to me like I reward him for his hurtful behavior by moving on and forgetting, as there is no consequense, no repayment. Neither of us were aware of how many LB he does, as he is more quiet and does not criticize, like me. But I'm keeping a record now and every few days I need to write something. This morning I reached my limit over a simple cup of tea. Over our 25 years of marriage, I have infrequently said to H that his lack of ever making a cup of tea for me feels like lack of care. These last 6 months I have mentioned it again now and then. The last few weeks I asked him to at least boil the kettle. He does that now. When he has read books to me recently, the authors mentioned making a cup of tea for their wifes and I make a friendly comment to him, reminding him that I would like that too. (He does not have hot drinks himself. ) So this morning, when I was short of time to make one myself, I became very angry inside that he has not found enough motivation in him to learn to make a cup of tea the way I like it. I did not give in to an AO however and instead told him in a respectful way of my disappointment. Even if he does it now, it won't feel as good as if he had done it without the many many prompts and requests for so long. So I will have to overcome my resentment even if he starts making me a cup of tea.

Oh dear. I'm sorry this is so long but I need some encouragement from those of you who felt like this and who now feel in love and different. My self esteem was very low before but is even lower now since the OW was very highly qualified and I have always felt low in that regards. She also shared many outdoor interests with my H and literature and activism. Sometimes I feel like explaining to my H that I am the wrong women for him. We still haven't found much recreational act. for both of us. Mostly I now try and do what he's interested in.

I'm so sorry for your continued pain.

Have you asked your WH to sit you down and tell you everything and answer all your questions?

What about giving him a polygraph?

You're right to question what you have to gain gain by staying with the hurt, so that's why once you have EPs and transparency in place you need to work on making a mutually romantic and fulfilling marriage. Once the questions of the affair are answered, it shouldn't be brought up again. I would suggest that the saved records are deleted whether on CDs or computer backup.

Neither one of you seem to be in love with each other, and if you feel certain that things are in place to keep another affair from happening, start working on lovebusters and meeting each others' intimate emotional needs for 20 hours a week.

I think if your intimate emotional needs were met, whether he makes you a cup of tea or not won't be the problem it is today for you will feel cared for through his meeting your needs with mutually enthusiastic agreement. Right now, it sounds like you're demanding this act of affection. Demands drive your partner away.

The only time I felt that I needed to read every last email between OW and my FWH was when I still did not have the complete truth and was trying to find it. My gut instinct told me that things did not make sense and that there was more to the story. Once I had the truth, my need to read their fog babble was gone.

Has your WH answered all your questions and taken a poly to prove to you that he has given you the truth?

Frau, once you have the basic information about the affair, it should be dropped. The subject should not be brought up again. I would go with him and together, delete all reminders of the affair and don't ever bring it up again. Every time you bring it up, you are bringing the tragedy of the past into the present. This is a lovebuster to him and a trigger to him. Stop doing this.

If you will stop doing this, and focus on creating a romantic, passionate marriage your resentment will fade. But keeping the affair on the front burner makes your marriage a very unpleasant place for you both.

If you have romantic, fun marriage, maybe he will feel more like making you tea. In the meantime, I would stop demanding that he make you tea.

Do you have the book, Surviving an Affair, and are you using the program? Are you scheduling 20-25 hours per week of UA time?

When he is in love with you, then showing care for you will come naturally. But it has to be in ways that he enjoys. Instead of pushing him to show care in ways that are not enjoyable to him, why not focus on setting the stage to create romantic love in your marriage?

Thank you for your answers.

BrainHurts and pokerface, I have many times asked him to try and remember and tell me what happened. His answer is always the same, that he can't remember. Even when I found what he wrote in an email and asked him a specific question about it, he more often than not would answer that he couldn't remember. So most of his answers are that he can't remember but can't be sure. I find that very frustrating but I actually believe that it is true that he doesn't remember much unless he has something to trigger a memory.

He has memory loss from a medical problem so it wouldn't be worth giving him a polygraph. As most things are in the distant past, he also mixes things up. But there is an element of him not wanting to bring things up too. I don't know where is memory loss ends and his "let sleeping dogs lie" starts.

LifetimeLearner, we are not 'in love' all the time yet, but I was doing much better until recently when the discovery of his dishonesty over the CD started my new search. We both love each other but have yet to get the 'in love' feeling consistently. H is much further along recovery road than me though because he has little neglect and resentment from the past.

I think that is part of my problem. I resent it that he got to do his trips and activities in the past when I stayed behind babysitting. He explains his correspondence affairs because of us not being close, yet I tried so hard to get him to spend time with me or open up. It was him not letting me in. He wasn't telling me about his needs not being met, so how could I meet them? He took on more and more work or took up new hobbies which all took time away from being with me. He also didn't support me much with the kids. I did everything, as he had so little time, so there is resentment there too. (especially as I now know he had time to spare to write emails ...)

My rational mind tells me to move on as I can't change the past, but my emotional mind says that if I do that, he gets away with it all and now has a lovely new life with me fulfilling his needs. I know I need to follow my rational mind but it's very hard ignoring my Taker whispering in my ear.

2 weeks ago I gave in to the urge to compile a calendar for one year of when he received and wrote emails to his 2 OW friends. It wasn't until I saw the frequent dots on the calendar page that I realised not only how often his mind must have been thinking of them but also how much time it would have taken to write all those letters. When he started up the correspondence with OW No 2, he wrote in one of his emails that it had taken 3! hours and was past midnight. Time he could have spent with me. It didn't help reading him saying that he had often thought of her or that he didn't realise how he missed their contact until he started it again.

For a few days recently I was occupied looking up my old diary to see what went on on the days he wrote or received emails, especially ones where he expressed his attraction to her. Thankfully that urge has now past. It got boring in the end and I wondered why I had needed to do it. When I look at old photos, I wonder if he thought about the OW friends or not at that time. It seems like so much is "contaminated".

You are right in that wether he makes me a cup of tea or not is not an issue when I feel positive about him (I haven't demanded or nagged him about it, just in a friendly way let him know that it's one way he can deposit love units.) It's only an issue now because of recent continued LB either from me uncovering stuff from the past or of IB like him buying stuff without my approval. He did soften my heart when I found he'd put a flower from the garden next to my tea cup when I got home He's getting better and that deposits LU.

MelodyLane, I had dropped looking at old emails and tried hard not to mention the A anymore but the recent events have made me suspicious again and I looked into old records again which bring the past back and uncover more things where H hasn't been honest, mostly by omission.

Since then I've also become insecure about him meeting women. The day after I found the porn CD I was feeling low and told him I needed his care and for him to text me. When he didn't text much, I asked later if he had been busy. Not at all, he said, it was just that his coworker talked so much. I was hurt. Could he not ask her to stop a minute so he could text me? So the next question is, who is this coworker?

My H works in a mobile unit and has a different coworker (mostly females) scheduled to go with him for 2 days/week. The two work in close quarters in the unit and are alone if no clients come. There are always different ones and not often the same ones.

One day a week he works alone. This last week I have felt really unsettled thinking about him either with a female coworker or wondering who the clients are that he sees regularly. So I went out to the unit last week on the day he works alone. I was very surprised when a family walked in and the woman started talking enthusiastically with my H. Even after my H introduced me as his wife, she ignored me and continued to talk exclusively to him with enthusiasm and too much intimacy. It sent my alarm bells ringing. Her own H told her off at one stage for her talking but it made no difference.

After talking about it with my H he said that at first he enjoyed talking to her but that she now irritates him as she blocks other clients from using the unit or getting his attention. He says he tries now to mostly talk to her husband. My H thinks my fear of the female coworkers (like when he didn't text that day) is unfounded as he thinks there would be more threat from regular clientele, as they are more interesting. Well, that's small consolation for me. He says he tries not to get too friendly with anyone though.

It took ages for him to get a job so we can't afford for him to stop working at this one.
I'm about to cycle to one of his unit stops this afternoon and check on his coworker and the clientele there. I can't hang around for that long though as his coworker will wonder why I'm there. It feels like a waste of my time doing that and I should use my time better getting work done at home. Yet when my head is full of our relationship stuff, I find little motivation for anything. I've always liked gardening but now it feels like I've wasted my life away with that. Instead I should have got a degree and a job. I don't get much admiration from people for having looked after my kids well and homeschooled my youngest (without any help from H I might add). I feel a bit like I'm having a mid life crisis. Quite a bit of my dissatisfaction stems from not knowing what to do with myself to be happy now. Thinking about having to take a job is scary yet I know it's what I need.

Frau, it sounds like his job is triggering you and causing you to worry. I see quite a few red flags here and wonder if your husband is not in the habit of flirting or trolling for women? The fact that he works alone with women all week is very alarming and would unnerve any rational person. Especially a person with your husbands poor boundaries.

Is he ever out of town overnight?

My suggestion would be for him to look for a job that complements your marriage instead of harms it.


His response is not only profoundly disrespectful but it does not solve the problem. IT makes it worse. You should be very worried. I understand now why you can't move forward. ALL of the conditions that led to his affairs are still in place. If you want to move forward, that has to change.

Listen to what Melody just said.

You instinctively do not feel at ease with the females at his job situation, so the 2 of you need to come to a POJA to come up with solutions, which does probably mean for him to find a different job.

In the mean time, why don't you make lunch and desert a couple of times per week and meet him where he works. Make it a nice regular habit and enjoy your time together.

LTL

MelodyLane and LearnedtooLate, thank you for your feedback.

Yes, his job is not ideal but he applied for jobs all year before he got this one. It's hard to get into jobs when you're near 60 and it would be very very difficult for him to get a different one. Also, there is a chance that he can change within the org. Already, starting soon, he will work one afternoon in a different place instead of the unit, where he will be busy with fast changing clients. So no small talk. I will also encourage him to get more of the work he can do from home but it's hard to get business. That's why he got this mobile job.

He is not the kind of man to flirt and troll for women. He is more shy by nature.

He did not meet his 2 OW friends through going out to work. OW no1 was the ex partner of a friend of my H's who sent him work for his publication (he worked from home then). Their correspondence then went on from there. OW no2 was an old friend who he found again through FB. He's signed off FB now. So only no 2 he actively sought out and she had been a friend from before.

When I got to the unit today, his female coworker was sitting at the opposite end of the unit. She's not the chatty kind. Very good. Felt much better about it all after that.

How should we behave with opp sex people? I ended up chatting to my dd's trainer last night. First we talked about the training but he's a talker and ended up talking about all sorts for 10 mins. It's the kind of talk my H ends up having with some clients.

Has Dr Harley written anything about this? I heard a radio show where he advises a person to stick to work related topics with a coworker. But this is meeting any opp sex people. Is it ok unless we feel an attraction of some sort?

huh?? Frau, I am very confused by your post. You told us above that:


You do understand that poor boundaries are poor boundaries, right? It applies everywhere, right? When a person has poor boundaries with members of the opposite sex, they have poor boundaries regardless of WHERE they meet the woman.

Do you know that the majority of affairs start with coworkers?


huh? They weren't friends before he met them, though. He can become friends with his coworkers just as he became friends with these women. So I have utterly no idea what the problem is then. You said above he was chatting so much with his female coworkers that he couldnt' text you and that you were insecure, and then you tell me the complete opposite so I don't believe I can possibly even understand the problem.

MelodyLane, I have thought very long about my answer but it is quite complicated and trying to formulate my answer without it becoming too long yet to include enough information so you can understand what my problem is, takes time.

I spend hours yesterday and the day before drafting my posts and got nothing else done. We are going away in 3 days for a week to see family and I still have to prepare the house for the petsitters who are coming to stay plus get the garden in a state so things don't all die while we're away etc etc.

Today is my lunch date with my H so I'm away for several hours while I see him, so I only have the weekend for all the preps.

I talked for several hours last night with my H about the issue of work and female co workers etc but it got nowhere. He just feels criticized and becomes defensive. I remained calm and tried to talk in the most concillatory way I can.

There is no easy answer as finding another work is so difficult.

Anyway, I just wanted so say that my silence is only because for lack of time. If I can, I check back in before we go, but I might not manage it.

MelodyLane,

my problem is that I'm stuck in a dilemma. I have a H who is a conflict avoider and an avoid trouble lier. In the past he engaged in IB and failed to support me with the kids. All that is a disappointment to me. Since Dday and my finding MB, we have made some changes but he continues to frustrate me. On the one hand he acknowledges that his behaviour has busted my trust. On the other, he doesn't cope with being faced with my mistrust and becomes defensive and irritated when I want to check on him by asking questions.

I don't like his work situation and when I found out that he didn't text because his colleague talked to much, my alarm was activated. When I talk to him about it, he says that the colleague was a supervisor from another unit and he couldn't just cut her off, that they mostly talked about work related issues, that they didn't sat around idly talking but did work while they talked, that his focus is on work when he is at work, which means he doesn't always think of me and that I should encourage him when he does text me, instead of cricisize him for the lack of it.

When my anxiety is aroused with something like the day he didn't text much, it becomes overwhelming, so to alleviate it, I went to check on him to try and calm my fears.

He signed on for this job a months before Dday and before we found MB. He had spent a year trying to get a job, only getting short term employment. We were just scraping by on that. We can't afford to give this job up unless he finds another job and the prospect of that is grim.

I don't like his job situation and when something happens that alerts me, my fears and the anxiety can become so bad that I need to find a way to calm myself down. I do that e.g. by telling myself that he didn't meet his OW friends while at work. Yes, I can see what you say about that but I am faced with a situation I can't change at the moment and need a way to cope with the anxiety. It looks to you like I'm contrary but I'm trying to remind myself that not every talk with a female leads to an A and that he worked for years with females without having one. No guarantee I know but I need some perspective that keeps me sane.

I try hard not to overreact. My H has to talk to the clients and he has to be friendly. When a female client asks him e.g. about computers, a non work related topic, how does he deal with that? How do you handle small talk from clients? I ask him about his day and he tells me who and what he talks about but if I then become unhappy with how much or what he talked about with a female, he feels criticized and becomes reluctant to tell me stuff.

Today the woman, who I met the other day, who talked too enthusiastically to my H, turned up again and she asked him about computers,that's not to do with his work. There were other customers present. My H, who knows about computers, advised her about them. Should he have tried to get out of that talk somehow? I told him that it doesn't really matter what the topic is, that it's the talking itself that fosters friendships. I suspect he feels criticised by that comment. I would like to explore with him more how to handle these situation but it's not easy. He says he tries hard to keep good boundaries now but often it's tricky to try and steer the conversation into work related topics when the client or coworker are intend on talking about off work topic stuff. He feels that talking about it with me just gets him into trouble as I quote back to him what he said etc.

These kind of discussions raise potential conflicts between us and although I remain friendly, the topic itself will make him feel uncomfortable and as a conflict avoider, he will not want to engage in a conversation like that with me. He only takes part reluctantly. I can't wait for Dr Harley's new book (He wins, She wins) to arrive in the library here. I have ordered it and am first in line to read it.

So for now I have to put up with him working in the mobile unit and find a way to cope with my anxiety over the uncertainties. I have thought of finding a audio devise that would let me hear his conversations at work but have yet to find something suitable. Also, I would have to save up for it out of household money as we have always had joint bank accounts and he would see any bigger withdrawals from our accounts.

My H readily agrees that he's caused my mistrust, yet at the same time, he is not actively helping with EP. I have in the past criticised how he worded some letters to his adult children or made suggestions in other letters and now he doesn't like me reading his correspondence. I made those suggestions because his relations to his adult children aren't that good and I wanted his letters to be as helpful as possible. I try not to do that anymore but it is hard at times because his conflict avoidance makes him skirt around issues all the time which frustrate his children.

Today I discovered another possible dishonesty by omission. After Dday he showed me the link on his computer to log into his work email from home. I have his username and password. But after a while I couldn't log into it anymore. I asked him and he said it used to work but then it stopped working. The situation left me uneasy but I didn't know what to do about it. Once or twice I have checked his email at work when I came to collect him from there but that causes irritation in him, when I sort of "stub his nose into the fact that he is not trustworthy', so his irritation has the effect of putting me off checking at work.

My older daughter works in the same organisation has my H and today I asked her if she can log on from home. She can. She gave me the web address. I tried it and it works. The web address is different from the link he has on his computer but once I enter the user name and password, it takes me to the same site that the link is on his computer.

So now I ask myself if he truly doesn't know why his link doesn't work. Or even if he does not know why his link doesn't work, why did he not ask his supervisor for help? If he hasn't asked then being passive about finding out is in his favour as not being to log on prevents me from checking his work emails. Or has he asked and found out that he first needs to use a different web address but not told me?

What should I do now? It could be that he truly doesn't know how to log in. My options as I see it are: a) pretend that I don't know how to log on and from now on check on his email without him knowing. That depends on my older daughter not telling my H that I now know how to log on. My older dd is not supporting me however. She thinks it's wrong to snoop and check. She thinks it's ok to have opp sex friends or have "team building" social events. I have given her "Fall in Love, Stay in love" from Dr Harley, to read but she doesn't want to read it. She is engaged to be married next year. Maybe she doesn't want to face reality by reading the book? I don't know. I can't talk to her about anything to do with the EA or my fears. She says it shouldn't be up to me to make sure my H is behaving properly.
Anyway, option b) try and find out if H knows how to log on (but didn't tell me) by getting him to log on at work and watching what link he uses. That could mean him becoming aware that I know though.

Is it better that he thinks I don't know and I keep checking or is it better to know if he omitted to tell me how to log on and to have means to check on him?

I'm quite sure he has no email correspondence with anyone at the moment. It would just be his dislike of me reading his correspondence. His dislike of being checked. His mother used to do that and he's become an expert at avoidance and omission.