Hello. New to MB. DH and I been married for 9 years. His 2nd, my only. The last 8 years have been w/out much emotional support on DH's behalf despite my begging for help. He works 24 hr. shifts on a rotating basis. Both of our families are at least an hour away. His family resents/disapproves/actively tries to hurt me. Mine is needy (85 yo mom and a sister with a terminal illness). We moved to a new city to be between work places, and I lost contact with a good support group of friends. I have worked full time as a teacher while raising our two boys (8 and 6). Due to DH's schedule, I am alone with the boys for at least 24 hours every weekend and several nights a week. I have been a part-time single mom in this marriage. I am tired. I am lost. Schedules prevent me from being the woman I was when we married: I earned my MA and had plans for a Ph.D., rode a motorcycle across country and owned my own house. Now, I have no ability to take a class, exercise on a regular basis or generally do much of anything except care for my babies, my students or my mom/sister.

A year ago in Feb, my DH told me he'd visited a sex worker 4 mos. previous to his admission. He had become very withdrawn for the year previous to this admission, and would respond to my gentle questioning with, "Nothing, I'm fine." He decided to see a therapist. I got checked for STDs. Lovely Valentine's Day present! DH has been working with the therapist. He is on anti-depressive meds, and the therapist has become our marriage counselor. I go, but I am loosing faith and hope. I am bitter and out of love with my husband. I deeply care for him because he's a great care-taker of our house, is the father of my children, and loves me---just not in the ways I desperately need (Conversation/affection/recreation).

I try to tell him what I need, but we are stuck in a broken record. His answer for my need to talk with adults and exercise is to hire a sitter for me to go out once a week (alone 1/2 of the time due to schedules), or leave as soon as he gets home to go to the gym. The therapist fears that DH lacks the ability to meet my EN. She asked if I could get some of my needs met by others---even before finding MB, I told her and him that I feared affair.(No one on the horizon. My job as a classroom teacher keeps me very isolated.)Evenings when DH is home, after the kids go to bed, he spends time with screens. I sit in the same room, but no undivided attention. I ask for it, but then we devolve into a mostly one-sided awkward conversation.

I believe I have the tools to save my marriage with MB, but I'm not sure I have the will to do so. I can barely care for myself (with all the other demands placed on me), let alone have the clarity or time to build a sense of being loved from my DH. And what if he's not able? What if I'll never feel loved by my spouse? When it's my turn, I don't want to find sitters for our 'date nights' that have us staring at each other with not much positive to say. I am bitter and hurt by the lack of help or love from his family in raising our boys, exhausted from his schedule (he just received a promotion), and deeply, deeply isolated and lonely.

Any advice will be gratefully accepted. If anything, perhaps I can finally have some adult conversation!

Thanks

Hi 2inand2out! Welcome to Marriage Builders. You are in the right place to find the solution to your problem. Please take the time to read through the links in the "start here first" thread at the top. Those links will give you some idea why your marriage is in the mess it is. I can see right away what the problem is. And I say this as someone who will be married for 14 years in April and we are still in love due to this program.

As it is now you are headed towards divorce. The reason is because your marriage is the lowest priority in your lives. It is like owning a house. If you make no repairs on the house in 10 years, it falls into disrepair and the people can't stand to live there any more. In your situation, all of the things that would lead to a happy marriage have not been done. In order to have a romantic marriage, a couple must spend 15+ hours per week meeting each others needs and when that is not done, the couple falls out of love. That is what has happened here.

If you will follow this program, you can fall back in love. I know you don't feel like that can ever happen, but it will happen if you do these things. Feelings follow actions.

A couple of things that alarm me in your post:


The point of meeting your needs is to create a loving marriage. Obviously that will not achieve that goal if you do it outside of marriage. And typically, when one need is met outside of marriage the others are soon to follow. You are correct, that is how affairs start.

I don't get the sense that your counselor knows how this all works and that would be the rule rather than the exception when it comes to counselors.


One of the first things we would look at would be his career. His career does not complement your marriage and he will either have to get a job that does, or end up divorced.

Couples that are not in love do feel awkward at first when they go out on date nights. It is much like quitting smoking. When you first start, it is painful, but after awhile it becomes natural.

Please read the material, especially this article and then come back and we can discuss: How to Create Your Own Plan to Resolve Conflicts and Restore Love to Your Marriage

If your husband is visiting prostitutes then you are at serious health risk.

Prostitutes, like other vices, are available everywhere.
You must remove the conditions that make it possible for him to hire prostitutes.
Basically, he probably needs to spend his entire day with you and you cant be separated.

Dr. Harley would probably encourage you to expose his sex with prostitutes and follow the recovery plan in Surviving An Affair.

Do you have that book?

Thanks for the advice, all. DH says he only visited one sex worker, but I do have worries since he's home during the week when the boys and I are at school for about 6-7 hours alone a few days a week. I try not to dwell on the negative and focus on the positive--believe the man who says he loves me. Therapist doesn't let me dwell on the cheating incident. I am a little frustrated with this since I have no one to really process this hurt with effectively. Since I can't seem to do much about it, it has become a smaller worry to me.

We have His Needs, Her Needs at home from the library, and my DH is reading it bit by bit, but he has no conversation with me about it. I will talk with him about it tomorrow night (next time I'll see him at home). I will push him to engage in MB with me. I believe I'm pushing uphill on this since he's perfectly happy with the marriage as it exists, and feels I'm just looking for a reason to be unhappy.

His Needs, Her Needs is not written for couples recovering from affairs.

The book you should be reading is Surviving an Affair by Dr Willard Harley.

Its not an issue of dwelling on the positive or negative.
The fact is, there are conditions which enable him to visit prostitutes. Those conditions must be removed.

I would also encourage you to request that he take a polygraph test and verify that he is not visiting prostitutes.

I would also encourage you to drop the therapist.
Dr Harley is a national expert in affairs and marriages and I would focus exclusively on his recovery program.

The therapist is probably trying to understand "why" your husband is wanting to visit a prostitute, while Dr Harley would urge you to focus on eliminating the conditions that make it possible for him to be around prostitutes.

Have you exposed his adultery to family and friends?

Hi 2in2out,

I read your post last night...I'm pretty sure that I read that your H cheated throughout his first marriage. Is that the case or do I have that detail mixed up with another poster?

Welcome to MB.

Nope, not me, Black Raven. 1st marriage was doomed from the start. He said he knew on their wedding day that he'd made a mistake. He toughed it out for six years. Divorce was mutually beneficial.

Jedi Knight: why should I expose his visit to a sex worker? What good does that do him, me, his job (the lion's share of our income right now--teachers are pretty hated across the country), or his already tenuous (apparently because of me) relationship with his family?

I'll track down the books that are suggested. Again, thank you for input. I need so much guidance and support.

2in2out, sweeping the affair under the rug is a surefire path to other affairs. Trust me on this. Unless he tells you the full truth and changes his life so he CANT do that again, he WILL do it again!! There are very specific steps to recover from an affair:

here

The book you need is Surviving an Affair. And here is the checklist of extraordinary precautions to avoid a repeat:

From Surviving an Affair, pg 66-67

The extraordinary precautions do more than end marriage-threatening affairs; they help a couple form the kind of relationship they always wanted.

These recommendations may seem rigid, unnecessarily confining, and even paranoid to those who have not been the victim of infidelity. But people like Sue and Jon, who have suffered unimaginable pain as a result of an affair that spun out of control, can easily see their value. For the inconvenience of following my advice, Sue would have spared herself and Jon the very worst experience of their lives.


Checklist for How Affairs Should End

_____The unfaithful spouse should reveal information about the affair to the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should make a commitment to the betrayed spouse to never see or talk to the lover OP again.

_____The unfaithful spouse should write a letter to the lover OP ending the relationship and send it with the approval of the betrayed spouse.

_____The unfaithful spouse should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from the lover OP:

_____Block potential communication with the lover OP (change e-mail address and home and cell phone numbers, and close all social networking accounts; have voice messages and mail monitored by the betrayed spouse).

_____Account for time (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

_____Account for money (betrayed spouse and wayward spouse give each other a complete account of all money spent).

_____Spend leisure time together.

_____Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

_____Avoid overnight separation.

_____Allow technical accountability.

_____ Expose affair to family members, clergy, and/or friends.

In your case, it makes no sense to send a no contact letter but almost everything else would apply. And certainly exposure would. You and your H have no reason to keep it a secret. The more people who know about it, the more people to hold him accountable and give you support.

My aunt was married to a man for decades and later found that he had a black book of escorts/ prostitutes with contact info and the sex acts they performed.
His lifestyle enabled his independent behavior.

She divorced him but later shacked up with him again because she got lonely.

Don't live your life like this.

Follow Dr Harleys program and remove all conditions that made the visits to the prostitutes possible.

I would also have a polygraph to ensure he hasn't visited more than he said he did

Have you read through this?
Start Here First-Welcome Aboard

Yes, I have, thank you! My husband has seen a few videos too. We haven't had the opportunity/made the time to watch together.