Hi

I am planning on giving this plan B letter to my wh after the weekend. As you can see from my signature, he has been sitting on the fence for a while. He moved home last week saying it was mutual as ow wanted him to move quicker with things and he was not moving at all and didnt know if he wanted to. He told me he had decided he loved me more and I do believe him. OW left us mostly alone for a week and it was good and I was hopeful for recovery. Earlier this week, ow announces she may be pregnant. She hasnt missed a period yet and hasnt taken a test. She may be but it may be a lie. Since she told H she has been in persistant contact and v controlling to the extent of h promising not to have sex with me. H is v confused and scared but is now lying to me about contact even when caught almost red handed. He admits to deep feelings and is becomming withdrawn to me and is seeming to think he has to accept his fate - he believes she must be pregnant as she says she has been suffering symptoms (even after a week?). I feel now is the time for plan B. H needs to get off the fence and committ. This will really hurt him as he relies on me so much without realising it often. I dont want to hurt him but cant cope with my hurt for much longer. I know my letter is probably too long, but would really appreciate your thoughts on it.

Dear Wh
This is the most difficult thing I have ever had to do in my life. I want you to know that I love you very much and I always have. The best moment of my life happened when I met you. As soon as we met, I knew you were the only man for me and that I wanted you to be the person I married and live my life with. I have always dreamed of growing old with you. You are my best friend, my lover and my life. When I married you, I married you for life.
I know that over the years, we have had our ups and downs and that I have hurt you very badly in the past. I never wanted to but somehow got stuck in a trap of my own making and didn’t know how to get out. I know I passed a lot of the blame for my actions on to you and that I hurt you deeply. I am so sorry. It was the knowledge of your love for me that helped me through one of the worst times of my life. I knew you loved me deeply and I knew you always would and that was so powerful for me. I was guilty when I returned home of not explaining myself and letting you know that you were not to blame, that it was an insecurity in me that drove me to hurt you and myself. Again, I am sorry. I would dearly love to explain this all to you so you can understand why it happened and that you were not to blame. If you ever want me to, I will explain what I can so we can learn from it and put it behind us for good.
I still want to remain married to you and want to be the wife you have always wanted me to be and dreamt of me being. I want you to be the husband to me you have always wanted to be and I have dreamt of you being. I want our marriage to be even better than all the best times we have had together and we have had lots of wonderful times together. I know it can be so strong as a result of this if we both decide we want it to be.
From the moment we met, we were inseparable, people used to say we were joined at the hip; we were. When we were apart, we would speak for hours on the phone to each other. I don’t think a day has gone by in the last 14 years when we have not spoken at length. I love talking to you, hearing your thoughts and being with you.
I understand that I have played a significant role in allowing your feelings of resentment in our marriage to surface and overpower the feelings of love you have for me. I know you were feeling alone and felt that I did not love you. I know you felt we had grown apart and I know you were always anxious that I would leave you again. I am sorry that I did not see what you were going through, that in us taking over the business I allowed myself to get wrapped up in my own problems and worries and ignored your problems and worries. I should have shared them with you and been there to share in your problems and worries. Together we could have helped each other so much.
I hope that over the past few months I have demonstrated my commitment to you and our marriage. I want our marriage to work, I want to continue to make the changes to myself that will allow me to become more the wife you need. I love and respect you so much and I know you love me. It is so sad that our level of communication was so sour that whilst we both wanted the same things from each other, we were convinced that the other didn’t want it and therefore didn’t provide it.
I want to be there for you always. I want to help you with your worries and I want you to help me with mine. I want to share my innermost thoughts with you; I want to share my life with you.
Right now, I find myself very much alone and so hurt by what you are doing that I cannot carry on as I have been before whilst keeping my love for you alive. Your continuing actions and continuing involvement with Ow are tearing me apart from the inside and I am becoming numb with the pain. I have felt so many times in the past few months that you were coming back to me and wanted to work with me to save our marriage, but now I just think you will continually move from one of us to the other without committing. I can’t allow myself to continue getting my hopes for our recovery up only to have them betrayed a few days or weeks later. You have never told me what Ow provides for you that I am unable to fulfil so I will never understand this affair. I know that Ow has told you that I am controlling and that I tell you what to do. If I have been guilty of this, again I am sorry. All I have ever wanted is to be an equal part of our relationship with you, I have never wanted to force you to do anything you did not want to do. This is why I have tried to distance myself from you and have limited any contact I have had with you while you have been living with Ow. I would have hoped that Ow would have been able to show me the respect I have continually shown her and you by leaving us alone to try and recover during the times you chose to come home to me.
I believe you when you said both in October and January that you wanted to come home because you loved me and you wanted our marriage to work. Your actions, especially in December and January when we were intimate and were spending so much time together showed me how much you cared but that you were feeling insecure about the changes you saw in me and needed to know they were real. My changes were and are real. I have learnt so much over the last few months and I will continue to learn. I hope that you will be able to benefit from these changes. I loved spending Christmas together and hope we will be able to spend many more Christmas’s together. I was so happy when you asked me not to go away and to spend the time with you. I hope that you will find those feelings in your heart again and ask me once more to spend the rest of my life with you. When we started to come together, I felt like you were having an affair with me not Ow. That was very painful for me and I cannot go there again. I know you were being honest with me during this time and I valued that honesty, I hope you can continue to be honest with me in the future.
I know that Ow announcing last week that she may be pregnant has come as a shock to you. It has to me as well. I want you to understand that I truly mean it that we can still recover our life together even if she is pregnant. It is not a case of compromise as far as I am concerned. I love you despite everything and I still want to be with you. If Ow is pregnant, our marriage can survive and can be stronger than it ever has been. I do not and will not carry any resentment towards you even if she has a child.
In order to protect myself from any further pain caused by the contact with Ow, I am going to have to ask something of you that I hate doing. I am going to have to ask you to leave. I realise that this means that I am pushing you to Ow and that will probably make her happy, but I have to try and protect myself now. I do not want you to contact me in any way and I will not be able to help you in the business anymore. I would ask that you change the days you go to the climbing wall and do not go to the club. I will not get involved in your shooting club. I will speak to some friends and ask them to act as a go between for us and also to help with financial separation. I will let you know when I have spoken to them.
I realise that I am to some degrees hitting you when you are down and I am sorry if you feel that way. I know you have been miserable and so sad over the last few months. I have been so worried about you; I want you to be happy, you deserve it. In all our life together I have never seen you depressed, yet you seem to be depressed almost all the time now it seems since you told me about the affair. I know you are scared about the future and don’t know what you want out of life anymore. I hope you will start to look within yourself and fight for the life you want to live. I want to help you all I can and I want to be there for you everyday, but I can’t anymore unless you truly commit to me, it just hurts too much. I wake up every day and want to cry, I hurt so much. I have tried to push away my feelings and concentrate on helping you and trying to make you feel better, but it is just getting too much for me. I feel that I am relied on in the bad times and am never allowed to see you in the good. I do not want to hurt you, just protect myself whilst you are still emotionally involved with Ow. I hope you understand.
If you decide to make a future with Ow, you will be a father to ow child and will live the life of a father. If you chose to live on your own or with me, you have the freedom to choose whatever life you want. No-one can make you happy, but you. I was happy being with you and being your wife. It is up to you to choose the happiness you deserve. I know that I risk loosing you forever, but I cannot continue to see you without putting pressure on you to make a decision. If you choose to come back and work on our marriage, I want to know that you have done it because you love me, not because you have felt pressured into doing it. I hope that you will be honest with yourself, with me and with Ow.
If you decide to end all contact with Ow, I hope you will contact me and will want to discuss how we can move forward together, but until then, please do not contact me. If the affair ends and you are no longer in contact with Ow, I would love to be able to discuss our recovery and reconciliation. I have learnt that there are ways to do this that can create a marriage that was better than we ever had before and can be what we always wanted. I do not want to go back to the way things were before and I don’t think you do either. It will not be easy, but it can be done if we both want it. If Ow is pregnant and does have a child, then I will support you in all ways. I realise that we will have a financial commitment to the child and that you may wish to be in contact with the child although there can be no contact with Ow other than that to do with the child. Any such contact can be with me supporting you throughout. This will not be an issue for me and I will support you whatever you decide if there is a child involved.
If you do decide to end the affair and contact with Ow, I cannot guarantee our marriage will last, but I know that when we work together we are good and feel so right. I am committed to you and our marriage, but it takes both of us, I cannot do it alone. I know you are very confused right now and are probably overwhelmed with emotions. I feel so much for you as I know this is very difficult. You are at a crossroads in your life. Some decisions are tough and are scary, but no-one said life would be a breeze and we would be happy all the time. That’s what makes the easy times so wonderful.
I cannot change the past, but I have learnt from my mistakes and I am sincerely sorry. You know I have changed, you said you have noticed the changes in me. I am making them permanent and improving my life and myself. I want us to be able to rebuild our marriage. I want us to be able to meet each other’s needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other again. We need to build a new lifestyle in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never again be a reason for us to separate. I want to be your best friend again, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you as my best friend.
Please remember that I am writing this with love and am not trying to hurt you.
All my love
LH

<small>[ January 24, 2003, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: Losing_hope ]</small>

LH - before getting to comments on your letter, do you think he will leave just because you ask him to?

WAT

Thats a good one. No I dont think so. I may have to be prepared to move out but that will not be ideal. He knows I cant kick him out or change the locks, he may want to stay. Last time he didnt move out entirely and refused to. I am not sure what I will do as I cant afford an appartment of my own.
LH

That's what I was afraid of.

In my view, Plan B will not work for your protection without a separation. Some have tried "in house" Plan Bs, but I do not recall a situation where this was effective. Maybe some one else does.

You may be stuck in Plan A until he makes a move and you can get a legally binding prohibition that prevents him moving back without your consent. Otherwise you would have to leave - which is rarely a good idea, based on the stories on this forum.

Perhaps others have some ideas. Please consider counseling with Steve Harley - he will have suggestions and guidance.

Nonetheless, I'll offer some suggestions on your letter. I think it's too long, too repetitive, has too much reference to OW, and tries too much to say what your H is feeling and thinking. Try this revision for size:

Dear Wh

I want you to know that I love you very much and I always have. The best moment of my life happened when I met you. As soon as we met, I knew you were the only man for me and that I wanted you to be the person I married and live my life with. I have always dreamed of growing old with you. You are my best friend, my lover and my life. When I married you, I married you for life. I know that over the years, we have had our ups and downs and that I have hurt you very badly in the past. I never wanted to but somehow I got stuck in a trap of my own making and didn't know how to get out. I know I passed a lot of the blame for my actions on to you and that I hurt you deeply. I am so sorry. It was the knowledge of your love for me that helped me through one of the worst times of my life. I knew you loved me deeply and I knew you always would and that was so powerful for me. I was guilty when I returned home of not explaining myself and letting you know that you were not to blame, that it was an insecurity in me that drove me to hurt you and myself. Again, I am sorry.

I still want to remain married to you and want to be the wife you have always wanted me to be and dreamt of me being. I hope that over the past few months I have demonstrated my commitment to you and our marriage. I want our marriage to work, I want to continue to make the changes to myself that will allow me to become more the wife you need. In December and January when we were intimate and were spending so much time together reminded me how much our relationship can mean to both of us. My changes are real and lasting. I have learnt so much over the last few months and I will continue to learn. I hope that you and I together will be able to benefit from these changes.

But right now, I find myself very much alone and so hurt by what you are doing that I cannot carry on as I have been before whilst keeping my love for you alive. Your continuing actions and continuing involvement with Ow are tearing me apart from the inside and I am becoming numb with the pain. I can't allow myself to continue getting my hopes for our recovery up only to have them betrayed a few days or weeks later. In order to protect myself from any further pain caused by the contact with Ow, I am asking you to leave. Until you end your relationship with OW and are ready to work on our marriage, I do not want you to contact me in any way. Further, I will not be able to help you in the business anymore. I would ask that you change the days you go to the climbing wall and do not go to the club. I will speak to some friends and ask them to act as a go between for us and also to help with financial separation. I will let you know when I have spoken to them.

I hope you will start to look within yourself and fight for the life you want to live. I want to help you all I can and I want to be there for you everyday, but I can't anymore unless you truly commit to me, it just hurts too much.

When you are ready to commit to our marriage, I would love to be able to discuss our recovery and reconciliation. I have learnt that there are ways to do this that can create a marriage that was better than we ever had before and can be what we always wanted. I do not want to go back to the way things were before and I don't think you do either. It will not be easy, but it can be done if we both want it. If Ow is pregnant and does have a child, then I will support you in all ways.

I cannot change the past, but I have learnt from my mistakes and I am sincerely sorry. You know I have changed, you said you have noticed the changes in me. I am making them permanent and improving my life and myself. I want us to be able to rebuild our marriage. I want us to be able to meet each other's needs and to avoid doing anything to hurt each other again. We need to build a new lifestyle in which everything we do makes us both happy. Then there will never again be a reason for us to separate. I want to be your best friend again, someone who is always there for you when you need me. And I want you as my best friend. All my love.

LH

Hope this helps.

WAT

WAT
Thank you for your comments. I will post my revised letter taking into account everyones comments from the various boards later.
I am holding off sending the letter at the moment and have a session with SH later today. I will let you know what he says about going into plan B right now.
Lh