This all sounds really encouraging, Pius!

Yes, it is amazing! You would not think people would feel like this, but we see it here so very often!

You and she are going to love each other all the better after full recovery.

Believe it or not Dr. Harley has a test that measures the feeling of romantic love - people who implement these concepts in their marriage fall more and more in love with each other. When he counsels a couple he gives them this test every month and he can literally watch the "scores" rise over time.

Pius,

Could you give an update? Our D-Days are pretty close and I was following your story while I was going through my mess. Did the house sell? Any more dates? Intimacy from WW?

MadMindMonkey, glad to give an update. Yes I've followed your story also. I've noticed we are close in age, our DDays are pretty close, and even the dates of our marriages are pretty close. I was married just after Christmas 1997.

I wish I could report a lot of progress, but unfortunately not. Definitely nothing resembling intimacy - WW is still sleeping in the girls' room. We went out to dinner last Saturday but she wouldn't even look at me. She never really initiates conversation with me either. As the title of my thread says, she is just completely withdrawn. Our house still hasn't sold yet either. At least we had someone come out today to take a look at it, and I think someone else is supposed to come tomorrow. I'm feeling pretty down now, to be perfectly frank. I guess I just need to hang in there.

Pius,

I'd love to see you stay positive throughout this withdrawal stage. If you're going to have any hope of salvaging this thing you'll need to establish habits/behaviors that are attractive to your W.

You say you're feeling down ... I'm just hoping it is not coming out in your interactions with her.

Be the lighthouse. Show her what life with you can be.

If you ever need inspiration read the extremely long thread of MyWifeILove. It was bumped recently and I added a response to it on 9/26. It is a truly remarkable and inspirational story of what he went through. His resolve is beyond compare. Hopefully from his story you�ll gain inspiration, strength and knowledge on what you can do to recover your M.

I have a feeling you are not going to see much progress until you are moved out of there. I would seriously consider renting your house out if it doesn't sell soon.

Do you have spy resources in place? Is she still in touch with the OM?

Pius, what is her biggest complaint about you?

Here is that thread: MyWifeILove's Thread

I spent a few days reading through it myself recently. It helped me understand and put together some things I had read on here but did not fully grasp. Things like



and


These are golden nuggets of advice from MrAlias! I think reading through that story might help you see the depth behind what those two statements really mean.

MrAlias, usually I'm able to hide my down moods from my wife but occasionally I let them slip. Yesterday we kind of got into a fight about it. But today we went out on a date to dinner at a Japanese steakhouse, and I think we did better. My emotions are just on a rollercoaster, as are hers. I'm just going to try to do the best I can.

Melody, I think finding renters for our house could be as hard as selling it. Also, the stupid government shutdown may slow things down for a while until it is resolved. We are in the DC metro area and almost everyone who has a good job around here is associated with government in one way or the other. Even I am facing furlough next week so that is something I have to deal with. Since I'm a contractor I won't end up getting retroactive pay like the federal employees will.

As far as I can tell, she is not in touch with POSOM. One of the things we fought about was that she unilaterally decided to get her phone back without consulting me. At least this time she doesn't have a passcode on it and said I could look at it. That is another source of frustration though - I tried to put spyware on it. But the spyware I was going to put on it requires jailbreaking the phone, and there doesn't seem to be a good jailbreak out there for iOS 7. The website I tried to get the jailbreak from advertised something for iOS 7, but once you paid for it, it only had options available up to iOS 6.1.2. In the past I also bought a car GPS but I had problems with that too. So basically all my attempts at spying have failed. At least WW isn't going out in the evenings though, so if she is seeing the POSOM it would have to be during the day and she would have to figure out something to do with our two year old. This is still not impossible, of course, but harder than it was before at least.

As for her biggest complaint about me - I've been trying to figure that out. I've practically begged her to give me suggestions/complaints as to how to be a better husband, but she just won't do it. Unfortunately she seems very fatalistic about the fact that she doesn't love me. We are actually going to counseling - I know you guys don't approve of that - and our counselor brought up "Surviving An Affair" and the love bank concept. However, as she has with me, my wife expressed skepticism to the counselor also as to whether it would work. She also told the counselor she was very depressed, and though she was aware of what my needs are, she is just so inward-focused that she cannot bring herself to meet them. She thinks I want her to be the "perfect wife" and she just can't stomach that now. She was also asked about the antidepressants she is on. She's currently on Prozac, and has had issues with depression even before the affair. She thought that some of her prior antidepressants may have suppressed her feelings of guilt which facillitated the behavior.

My dear friend Pius, you must never fight with your wife! Fighting is like a nuclear war - there are no winners. Even if you feel bad about something, don't fight about it. Have you read Love Busters?

Japanese Steakhouses are a wonderful place to go. One of mine and Prisca's first dates was to one - we ate there to celebrate when we learned Prisca was pregnant with our first child - and then it became a tradition for each child thereafter.

Wow - I will be praying for your job situation! (Not to mention for your ability to sell the house - can you knock the price down a bit?)

Regarding depression,

According to Dr. Harley (who ran a large chain of mental health clinics in Minnesota for years), the number one cause of depression in women is their relationship with their husband or boyfriend. The first solution he always tries for a depressed wife is the policy of undivided attention - get her husband to spend time in conversation and affection with her, while having a good time himself (so he'll want to keep doing it). That eliminates a lot of depression in women!

Her feelings will change after 1) withdrawal from the affair, and 2) restoration of romantic love for her. In my case, Prisca showed almost no interest in meeting my needs until she was past the romantic love threshold. To get there we had to spend a lot of enjoyable time together, and not fight at all. (Prisca showed very little interest in learning to not be disrespectful, either. As Dr. Harley frequently says, often a woman in withdrawal from her husband will come out fighting! That's why in between Withdrawal and Intimacy lies Conflict.)

Pius, are you listening to the radio show? Daily?

Markos, thanks for the suggestions! I didn't mean for my conversation with my WW on Thursday to be a fight. I simply told her that I was hurt that she couldn't even bring herself to look at me when we were at dinner the previous week, and that I was hurt that she decided to get her phone back without consulting me. I really don't think I had any love busters, I just told her how certain things that had happened had dissappointed me. However my wife is so sensitive and conflict adverse than even these things caused her to cry and to respond emotionally. So I'm in a bit of a quandary - sometimes it will be necessary for me to bring up things with her that I wish she wasn't doing or that I don't particularly think are good, but no matter how tenderly or reasonably I bring them up, she still seems to get so upset.

As for the house, we may have to lower the price somewhat, but we can't lower it too much if we want to be able to purchase the new one that we have an offer on.

As far as spending time with her, I'm able to get her to agree to go out to dinner weekly with me, but she doesn't want to agree to do much more. I've asked her if she wants to go on walks too or go to the gym with me but so far she has refused. We are able to get in a few minutes here and there of UA time when I "ambush" her on her smoking breaks on the patio. That just means when she goes out to smoke I'll go out and sit next to her and just talk to her. But obviously this and the weekly dinners are still way less than 15 hours per week, not to mention 20. I think she may have to get out of this withdrawal thing before we're able to get up to 15-20 hours. It would obviously help too when/if she ever decides to occupy the same bedroom as me, but so far she has no interest in that either.

I need to listen to the radio broadcast more - so far I admit I haven't caught it too much.

Pius, do read Love Busters. Some of the things you are saying to her are probably things she finds disrespectful. I know my wife would find "could've even bring yourself to look at me" very disrespectful (we've probably had a fight over exactly that in the past).

It's not that she's sensitive - it's that you need to learn to accommodate her by learning to not say or do things she finds disrespectful.

Don't skip that radio show, Pius! You need to sit in "class" every day to turn this around.

The smoking break conversations are probably a good idea, but a few minutes here and there don't really count as UA time. Keep doing them, though, especially if she doesn't give you any other chance.

A complaint is a love bank withdrawal - it is unpleasant. It's not a love buster, and you need to do it, but it needs to have an extraordinarily gentle touch.

Stick to the wording "it bothers me when you ..." I found that if I added any extra words, if I even just used descriptive adjectives, Prisca would tend to see me as disrespectful. And if I said anything hyperbolic, she felt it was a full blown attack! Early on my plan to avoid DJs had to include the principle that I wasn't going to exaggerate at all.

Also, state your complaint, and then move on. She will probably reject it, at least at first. Don't try to control her response or be upset by her response - you communicate the information, and she will be likely to act upon it later. But while she is emotionally upset that you made the complaint, she may try to fight with you about it, so it's important that you keep your cool, and get off of the subject as soon as possible. She may get defensive and want to argue with you about it, and an argument about whether you are right to feel bothered will be a big problem, so don't have one.

Complain about things she does - independent behavior. For things you'd like her to do, more of those will be forthcoming when she is in love with you. If you say anything about those at all, just say "I like it when you ..." and then move on.

Complaints will be a bit of a desensitization process for her. Over time when she sees that complaints from you don't lead to a fight, she will be less averse to them.

Get that house sold, my friend! Time is of the essence!

Yep.
That is extraordinary disrespectful.

Pius, you must get this resolved. Stay on this problem until you get resolution. If this is an iphone, why can't you back it up on the computer with iTunes? There is a new thread over on the operation investigate forum that has software that will retrieve deleted messages. And what about zoombak? That is a GPS unit that seems to work pretty well. The fact that she has a 2 year old with her would not stop her from seeing the OM. He can come to your house or she can take the 2 yr old with her to his house.

Also, I would propose you print out this UA schedule and ask her to go out with you 4 times a week. Think of something she really loves to do and ask her to schedule these dates. here