Thanks SusieQ, you are right. It is pointless to think about now. I just need to focus on the present and being better at Plan B Haha i feel like I'm in AA,"Hello my name is amac and it has been 1 week since my last drink, aka contact." I'm actually feeling pretty good and know it will only get better.

Don't feel bad, amac, I keep finding myself doing the same thing (trying to understand why my WW started her A, how I could have seen the warning signs about the M better, etc). I haven't been verbalizing about it on the forum as much lately, but when I see SusieQ's excellent advice to you, it hits home for me as well.

There's just no making sense of a wayward, and it's an emotional drain to even try. The more we BS keep remembering that, the less pain and stress our WS can continue to inflict on us.

What are you going to do to close your Plan B holes?

Thanks Arrba. Glad I'm not the only one doing this And yes, nothing they say makes sense, and on top of it they lie, so it is completely pointless to analyze what they say or do.

My new way of thought is that if i contact him when I have said I will not is almost (but of course not near as bad) as H contacting his affair partner when he says he will not. So in my head I have decided that I will prove to him that no contact is possible by doing exactly that to him.

In terms of stopping the contact from him, he called me from a different number and I answered assuming it was a work call, so from now on if its a number I don't know I won't answer. He wrote me a letter and left it in the mail box which I did read and then regretted and shredded, but had my IM tell him I did not read it in the slip up convo he was pretty mad about that and believes I did not read it so I think he won't waste his time on letters anymore. If he does, I think I will give it to someone else to read first and if it doesn't say he is ending the affair and agreeing to my EPs then I will tell them to trash it.

I am really nervous about filing for divorce this week. I know I have to do it because I said I would if he didn't quit his job and go to seattle, and I know now is the best time to get an agreement, but it is still hard. I do need to communicate (through my IM) about finances and I know I should get an agreement with him before the filing, because once that is done I don't know how agreeable he will be. But, he won't get paid for a couple weeks so even if I start the discussion about finances he won't be able to give me money yet. So that means pushing off the filing once again or just doing it, knowing it could hurt me financially. I think at this point I just have to do it. he has already caused me to delay it by 2 weeks already.

You should not contact him at all while in Plan B. Your attorney can send him your offer.

Not even through my sister the intermediary? Im afraid if its through my attorney is he going to be mad that I filed and would not be as agreeable.

When finances are talked about being passed through an IM, it is referring to things that pop up like new glasses needing to be purchased...that kind of thing. Not for divorce settlement negotations.

He's going to be mad regardless. Every WS hates it when they are not allowed to cake eat and get their way.

The times I can think of that we've seen other BS's come here and "negotiate" settlements with their WS either directly or through an IM are pretty ugly. The WS just ends up playing games.

I also think it's just going to futher encourage your WS not to take your Plan B seriously.

Yes, the point of hiring an attorney was so that I dont have to do the back and forth with him even if we can come to an agreement in terms of the divorce. So yes, you are right probably best not even to attempt that through the IM.

Aside from the long term agreement, since its the 1st of the month our kids daycare expenses and credit card payments are due. Do you think it would be ok to send those amounts through my IM? My attorney charges $450 an hour so the less I have to do through him the better, and these are issues that should not be contested.

Another thing I want to ask about. I gave the Plan B letter to H, but I have not sent it to OW. I admit with my repeated Plan B breaks I was afraid to do it to create more drama. Now that I will be filing for divorce this week I am tempted to send it so that she (and he) knows that the filing doesn't mean I'm done. Should I do that or not? What exactly are you supposed to say? I don't think I can bring myself to say as it says in SAA that "i will wait" because I don't know if that is true. But I want her to be afraid and know that I will always be in the picture. Also, I think I would have to email it. I did a white pages background check on her husband and got an address, but can't be sure if it is correct. I have already blocked her email so Im not worried about a response so much.

Hi Amac, I'm replying on your thread rather than on the plan B thread. It really is better if you just stop thinking about whether the fantasy has been busted up or not. Obsessing about it and waiting for tell-tale signs that all is not well in affair land will drive you crazy. The only thing you need to know is whether or not your WH is crawling back ready to do anything to save your marraige. He clearly isn't now. So everything else is irrelevant.

When I was making all the changes in my life over the past few months, I spent a lot of time reading The Art of War (there are some old threads on this site that talk about it too). It's a really useful book full of good advice for life. One of the first lessons is, as you prepare for any battle, you must first insulate yourself from defeat. I feel that this is what Plan B is really all about. It is about moving the BS to a place and set of conditions where, regardless of the outcome for your marriage, you will be just fine. It helps shift your focus away from saving the marriage and towards preparing for a brighter future, whether that means reconcilliation with your WH or not.

None of us come to this site wanting to get divorced. If we wanted that, we wouldn't have been trawling the internet for advice on what to do about our marriages! But once you spend time absorbing all the lessons and experience here, you start to realise that marriage is not an end in and of itself. And if you are in a bad marriage with a person who does not respect the commitment they made to you, there is nothing you can do to make a it a good marriage unless that is what your partner also wants.

You and I are stuck right now because our partners are not respecting the commitments they made to us and they are not prepared to put in the effort to make the marriage work like a marriage should. Maybe they will change and decide to do what it takes in the future, maybe the won't. But for now it doesn't matter. We need to focus on protecting ourselves and taking control of our lives, regardless of what our husband's are doing. Otherwise we will be miserable forever.

If your WH gets to the point where he is prepared to do what it takes to repair the marriage, it will be blindingly obvious. Everything else, all the emotions, drama, finding himself, pleading, profuse apologies, etc, are totally irrelevant so you should just ignore it all.

I know you are right Chalk, it is just so hard. That's my struggle - I recognize that Plan B is best for me and my children but its hard to let go of doing anything possible to save my marriage. There is so much conflicting advice out there. I am haunted by an article I read that said there are two things that make it so a wife cannot get her husband back from OW, 1) When she removes her presence from him, and 2) when he makes a commitment to her. Plan B is removing my presence and now by my filing divorce I know he will beg her to leave her husband and if she does that it will be a major commitment on both their parts. So its hard not to always second guess yourself. But I know its time to put myself and my children first, so regardless of the outcome for my marriage, Plan B is what has to happen. And I need to give it time. It's only been less then 2 months since D-Day and 1 month since separation. I know the longer I'm in Plan B the more settled my feelings will be. Thank you for sharing your perspective, I hope to get the peace that you seem to have soon.

The best and most effective way to drag the affair out for years is to allow him to have direct contact with you. That way he gets the best of both worlds while you diminish your own attractiveness. Let me assure you the OW is not competing for him. A woman who competes for a man is a big turn off. If anyone tells you that hanging around like a desperate woman is effective, just know you are speaking to someone who is clueless.

This is what Dr Bill Harley, 50 yrs experience saving marriages will say. Having been on this forum every day for 16 years I can tell you this is true.

So if you refuse to end contact with him just plan on dealing with his affair for a very long time.

Having a recovered marriage, being here every day for years and seeing how Dr Harley's principles apply on this site, and also seeing how his principles apply to everyone I know in real life, has convinced me that he knows what he is talking about! It has also convinced me that there are a lot of people who do *not* know what they are talking about. Not just lay people and bloggers, but 'professional' marriage counselors.

I read articles online all the time. People tag things on facebook about how to be happily married, how to handle an affair, and a wide variety of other stuff. I have yet to read one thing about marriage that isn't way off the mark! There is a plethora of bad information out there, I would advise you against second guessing yourself because of some article that was written by someone who clearly does not know how affairs work.

1) From his 50 years of experience working with infidelity, Dr Harley recognizes that MEN (not women) are able to love more than one woman at a time, and are content to 'cake eat' and string more than one woman along for years. So, if you do NOT remove yourself from the situation, this is your fate. Staying in the situation does not increase your chance of 'winning' because with regards to MEN in an affair, there is no competition as he will just keep both of you if you are both meeting needs for him. All that will happen is you will go crazy.

2) When he 'makes a commitment to her' which means she leaves her husband and they move in together, it puts pressure on the affair. This does not HELP the affair it helps breaking up the affair.

Have you read SAA?

I do understand that by direct contact with me he is having his cake and eating it too. So yes, I will not give him that and there will be no more direct contact from me. The temptation is even leaving me. But I do believe OW is competing for him. When we were "working on our marriage" while the affair was on going and I didn't know it and found emails that she wrote to him. Before 10 am she had written 4 emails and each like a high school girls diary "i love you i love i love" blah blah. We were taking our kids to the zoo and she wrote "think of my when you see the lions" "think of me when you see the giraffes' "think of me when your walking" she literally did everything she could to infect herself into his every thought. So does that just get old eventually?

Thanks unwritten, it does help to hear that you have seen the fruits of Dr. Harely's methods and I'm here because it does make the most sense to me. It is just hard to shift through all the stuff you hear. And I agree that if they were to move in together it would give them the dose of reality that is needed, I'm just afraid that if it goes that far even if they are unhappy they will stay together because of what they have cost each other.

Yes I have read most of it. It is hard for me to read the marriage recovery parts of it because I'm not there yet, and don't know if I ever will be there.