Read SAA first.

I am reading it now.

It is really hitting home. I am already wanting my wife to read this, is there any point in asking her to read it?

Not until she stops being wayward, but if she ever gets out of the Fog, then yes it will be good for her to read it.

my H and I read it together during FR, and he totally has zero recall of ever reading it. All that it seemed to do was teach him to anticipate my actions so that he could continue to gaslight me lol. But it DID teach me how to have a calm plan, and that was worth its weight in gold.

AFTER my H truly went NC�now that's a different story. Ten-fold! Second time through, he kept saying WOW, I wish we had known all of this before.

This shows how thick the fog can be....

My FWH doesn't even recall that we read SAA together, while we were in our FR....

My H recalls very little from post-D-day and the FR. Actually, he doesn't recall much from during the affair, either. He was one messed up dude.

AM

We could all improve. You can definitely strive to be a better husband but be careful not to let her spin this too much. She already has her parents convinced you suck as a husband.

Yes. be good to her but for heaven's sake you've got to be tough as well and this begins with exposure. Don't put it off. Seriously. Time is of the essence and the holidays are an excellent time to drop the bomb.

Tip toeing around a wayward wife is not the way to get things back on track. Blinding truth/reality is.

The reality is she is going to have to have hope of a different M if she is going to buy into a future with you.

Part of Plan A is to show her that you can stop all your LB's, be willing to meet her needs.

By focusing on yourself, hopefully she can see that you can change to be a great husband to her. Her feeling for the OM have to die first before she can fall back in love with you.

Most women can only love 1 man at a time.

I wouldn't introduce SAA to her yet.

Have you exposed yet?

RE: exposure plan

I have informed a very close 1st cousin of hers and have been gathering OM's contacts. I plan on a more direct exposure to that part of her family. The cousin confirmed the fact that the parents actually encouraged the original relationship when he was 34 and she was 17. It really makes me sick to think about that. Again, though the pattern of non-confrontation by anyone in her "support circle" holds. No one seems willing to approach her, regardless of their feelings about all this.

I now have email addresses and phone numbers for them. Unfortunately, because of the complicated, foreign nature of his name (spelled many different ways), its impossible for me to tell exactly what relation the relatives are.

I just have to call, I guess? I really feel a need to confront him, for my own sake.

From what she says, and how she's acting, and cross referencing phone records, her last contact with him was on 12/3. Things have been much more pleasant at home, but she has still not taken any EPs to prevent future contact.

She came clean during our first joint MC session. We go back on Friday.

My LB is way in the red. I keep thinking of how good a fresh start, out of her town would be.

Do not confront OM until you have completed exposure. If you do, OM will tell everyone else lies about what you are doing. Read through Exposure 101 again and make sure you have a plan in place and that you expose first.

I didn't think of that. That makes sense. I am nervous about calling random people, asking how they are related to OM. I have emails for some of them, that are associated with the restaurant he owns.

Hey Folks,

I thought I would post an update, since its been quite a while.

I never did contact/expose to anyone on OM's side. As far as I know via snooping and from WW, NC has been in place since 12/3. I did not want to contact OM or his family and then run the risk of OM contacting WW again. Plus, from what I understand most of them do not speak any English. So, for better or worse that's what happened.

I exposed on her side to family and friends. Unfortunately, no one has approached her or talked to her at all. I guess that's just the way it works around here. Many of the people I told have been very supportive of me and the potential of us, which was positive. Many also said that I deserve so much more out of life, which I do believe is true.

In the meantime, we've both taken psych evaluations. My suspicion that she was a narcissist, or at least has tendencies was confirmed. She was not diagnosed with full NPD, but has tendencies way above the "normal" threshold. I know what Dr. Harley's feelings are about this with regards to a wayward spouse in the middle of an affair, but I can promise you that those tendencies transcend the affair period. She has cheated on every guy she's ever dated. Most of the time she's done it with the same OM as this latest episode. In fact, I have come to understand from her trickle truth and friends from her past that basically there was only a short period of our relationship that she wasn't cheating on me. Combine all of this with a diagnosed dependency on a particular recreational drug and its a sad story. Oh yeah, she's also smoking cigarettes again, which I really don't like.

My test revealed a high level of histrionic, ptsd, clinical depression, anti-social behavior, and anxiety. I can tell you that's about the polar opposite of how any one would have described me, including myself, before this all went down. The psychologist interpreted this as my reaction to what has happened.

Our day to day has improved a good bit. However, it only falls apart if I show any emotion besides happiness and contentment. If I ever display any negative emotion, she starts out with concern, which then turns to anger and usually leads to a threat of moving out. I am careful not to tell her not to leave anymore. She can see that it hurts me, but that I am willing to let her go.

On top of all of this, we're back to little to no sex, with her claim that she's not where she needs to be in terms of attraction to me. We are both in shape and good looking, so this is pretty disappointing.

So, tonight we meet with the counselor and the psychologist that gave us the tests. This was the psychologist's idea, so I don't know exactly what to expect this evening. I think she is wanting to push for some action one way or the other since we hadn't seen the counselor for 4 weeks while waiting on WW to answer a few preliminary questions about goals, life and marital, via email.

Basically, WW's claim is that she wants to be a good wife, doesn't want to lose me, and wants to make me happy, but that she does not possess the skills to help me process what has happened. She also claims that she cannot control the things that she says and does while angry, which unfortunately is where she gets quickly during any sort of serious relationship conversation.

She had me print out a whole lot of the forms and concepts from Marriage Builders, only to decide a couple weeks later that she was just too overwhelmed with information to complete any of the forms. So, that's been dropped as well. She's willing to go to church and maybe join a marital support group, if the church is in the next big town and not her home town church. She's willing to go to weekly therapy. She's willing to "cut back" more on the recreational drug use.

Its really not looking good for this marriage. I have been spending a lot more time thinking about how much happier I could be if we just throw in the towel, clean up the mess, and move on.

Because the program is not being followed, you are in a false recovery. When the steps are followed and put into place extraordinary precautions, 20 hours of UA time, radical honesty, and POJA, the love bank will fill and marital bliss will take place.

Does your counselor teach MB? If not, why are you going to him or her?

Theses tests diagnose personal problems, but they don't prescribe good medicine for your marriage. Your wife's claim that she is too overwhelmed to go over the MB materials is her way of saying that she doesn't believe in it or that this marriage isn't her first priority. You both need to get the program started and keep to it if you want start recovering your marriage.

Agreed. The marriage is definitely not her first priority. We are likely in a false recovery. We are not using any of the concepts, as I stated.

The counselor does not teach MB, I introduced her to it. We are going to her because this is someone WW had used in the past to address anxiety and was comfortable with seeing her for the marital stuff.

Why not do counseling with Steve Harley?

I will bring it up tonight.

You've pretty much done the complete opposite of the MB program and everything people would recommend you to not do. Are you willing to try something that goes against your natural instinct? Because your natural instinct has been to avoid conflict and pacify a woman who is taking advantage of the fact that you aren't going to leave her, no matter how much she disrespects you. I know you said you would - but - actions speak louder than words.

A "narcissist" who is not formally diagnosed by a team of licensed psychologists/psychiatrists is called a selfish person, not a narcissist!! I really do worry about you, because you make it SO EASY for her to avoid responsibility by coming up with so many excuses for her.

Well, I can tell you haven't read many or any of my other posts, but I'll bite...

What would you suggest I do that's against my natural instinct?

I thought I had been doing a pretty good plan A, aside from having a sort of lopsided exposure.

I am not trying to make excuses, I'm saying, according to her she's trying her best, and it is simply not enough. I am trying to come to terms with the fact that its unlikely that things are going to work, given her lack of effort. So, to me the next step is separation, which is a prerequisite to divorce in this state. 12 months, with or without infidelity.

I didn't come up with the label of narcissist, I posted what the psychologist said about her test results, that she has strong narcissistic tendencies. You can call it whatever you like, she is definitely selfish.

What is your advice here? Give it to me, I can take it. I am out of ideas.

I did read your thread.

Your natural instincts here have been to avoid conflict. You did not expose to OM's side, which is CRITICAL here. He was a 34 year old man preying on a 17 year old girl, you could scare him off permanently by exposing him for the creep that he is. You didn't do it because you wanted to calm any possible storm that could come out of it, but this is exactly how these affairs keep dragging on.

She is using drugs. She is refusing to consider MB materials (do you realize her pattern of letting the storm "blow over" - giving you crumbs to make you think there is a slight chance of hope when she actually has no intention). She is exhibiting independent behaviour. She has cheated on you for most of your marriage and no kids... I don't think Dr. Harley would advise anything here except separation and Plan B. This is simply just the same marriage limping along.

Thank you for that. Its definitely worth thinking about.

I hadn't before thought about "giving you crumbs" before. Very interesting.

I really appreciate your comments, and to be clear, I think you're right.

If you have any more, or anything specific I should not avoid mentioning tonight, I would very much appreciate it.