Agree with you on that one. I was developing a weird numbness in my hands, arms, and leg. Multiple sclerosis? Carpel-Tunnel syndrome?

Cleared up as soon as he moved out. That alone would have been a sound reason to have him out.

Well, if Mr. Pepper had moved out and started shacking up with OW ... he would have to crawl back to me in his boxers, over flaming razor blades, balancing tea cups on his head, and presenting me with a diamond tiara, held between his teeth!

Plan A or Plan B .... do yourself a favor. Raise your level of self-worth to where it is measured in a way so YOU admire and YOU respect yourself.

What good is a husband returning to you if it costs you your self respect?

That phrase: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be married?" .... Does not, IMHO, apply to you right now in this situation.

If Plan A upholds YOU, elevates YOU, enriches YOU .... then Plan A girl.

If plan A feels degrading, or otherwise lowers your view of yourself, then go to plan B.

Give this guy a little more of a challenge here.

Do something for yourself that you have been delaying for some reason or another. Stop trying to draw him back. You think he cannot/willnot return to you, his wife, but will stagger off to yet another OW once this affair flames out? ........ and what is attractive about that?

Pepper

Nothing is attractive about that. He has an enormous number of unattractive sides. As my Love Bank begins to resemble the deficit of a small third world country, I don't see much point -- or possibility -- of getting him back.

Perhaps I'm blind, but I don't see Plan A as eroding my self-worth. I guess I feel I'm doing this for me. I'm making sure I've done everything I could -- even if it's self-abnegating.

This is a man who doesn't want challenges. That's why he left.

One thought I had, and perhaps it's wimpy: suppose I ask HIM if there's any possibility of recovery, in his opinion, and say if he feels that there is no chance for us, then I want NC? Put the ball in his court. If he's willing to write it off forever, so will I!

<small>[ March 29, 2003, 01:56 AM: Message edited by: A.M.Martin ]</small>

This may be due to the fact that I'm really tired right now, but, I was wondering..... is it possible there is something "wrong" with your husband? A psychological or chemical problem?

Is your husband especially immature or especially self-absorbed?

What is his personality like .... when he's at his best?

P

Immature and self-absorbed pretty much hits it on the nose.

May be chemical problems. He's been diagnosed as clinically depressed. He takes prozac. I'm not sure that's the problem. He does have stuff seriously wrong, I think, that has escaped diagnosis. Who knows what it is. Lots and lots of deep-seated anger coming from somewhere. I've tried to be sympathetic. But I feel I've become a part-time researcher on all of his problems.

Oscar Wilde: "Youth comes and goes, but immaturity can stay with you forever."

A.M.Martin,

Look for what you want not what he wants. Anyway pain is a given but misery is optional.

I suggest you to get conseling with MB, your H has much personal issues and you do too.

JMVHO -rh-

He won't do MC anymore. Doesn't want the effort -- wants OW instead, who represents no effort.

Sounds like the verdict from all of you is: Drop the siller bugger.

Maybe you're right. The next voice we hear could be a lawyer's.

Pepper -- At his best, surprisingly gentle and warm and funny...affectionate even. Kind of like a little kid peeking through some dark clouds. But boy...the clouds. Days of irritability. Anger.

Sounds like one of my children!

"Kind of like a little kid peeking through the dark clouds."

Does this sound like husband material to you?

If this is your husband, AT HIS BEST ... then what you have is an attractive little boy, perhaps he is not capable of being a married man?
Pepper

You don't have to despise or hate him for this marriage to fail. In fact you can still love him, and this may not be a good match. Who he is, his limitations, FOR SURE are not about you. Perhaps he's given you the very best he had to give! Would that "best of him" sustain you and be comfortable for you to return to?

Here's another probe. In your happiest times married, did you buy his clothes for him?

Pepper

I changed my mind!

<small>[ March 29, 2003, 09:44 AM: Message edited by: Pepperband ]</small>

No. Didn't buy clothes for him. Except for birthdays, etc.

Emotionally, he's probably not marriage material. But he did take care of bills, finances, running of the household -- things that are sorely missed here now! He is responsible on that level.

And he has many lovely qualities, in addition to 10,000 devils.

Redhat: What I "want" is my marriage back (although I have grave doubts about that). But I don't "want" is to pour my time and energy down a rathole. If he wants to close the door forever, and say so now, I'll cut my losses. The smallest sign of hope and I'm willing to make some efforts to keep things alive. I thought I would put the ball in his court and see if I can budge him out of his passivity.

It's very significant that midlife crisis Wife #2 was the eternal love of his life, someone he would wait for forever, someone he would be united with in heaven. Well, Wife #2 is available again, and he doesn't have a single thought about her. When this man moves on, it's with total amnesia.

<small>[ March 29, 2003, 11:07 AM: Message edited by: A.M.Martin ]</small>

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by A.M.Martin:
<strong>Redhat: What I "want" is my marriage back (although I have grave doubts about that). But I don't "want" is to pour my time and energy down a rathole. If he wants to close the door forever, and say so now, I'll cut my losses. The smallest sign of hope and I'm willing to make some efforts to keep things alive. I thought I would put the ball in his court and see if I can budge him out of his passivity.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Plan B or tough love should be in place. Why ? to safe you some grieve/misery. Anything else is enablement. This is JMVHO. He has pattern and the way you describe him, he is a philanderer. It seems you are ok with his behavior it just this time, this OW is a threat to your life style. He has his own issues to sort it out.

Clinging on what he has to offer is not a plan A at all, it just a doormat. It is your life and your choice. We choose to be a doormat while we are doing plan A but according to you and his admission, there are nothing to do !.

-rh-

Yes, perhaps you're right. He's not a philanderer in the sense that he has multiple As in marriage -- but he does end each marriage with an A.

I don't think tough love will work on him. I really don't think anything will. I'm just giving it minimal energy, and moving on. It's really not in my hands now.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by A.M.Martin:
<strong>I don't think tough love will work on him. I really don't think anything will. I'm just giving it minimal energy, and moving on. It's really not in my hands now.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Tough love is for you ... for you to preserve your self dignity, for you to be able to have no doubt that you have tried your best.

Now look at my motto ... fast forward 10 years from now, are you second guessing yourself or are you sure that you will do the same thing with no regret ?.

Again it is your life ... -rh-

Thanks, redhat.

I don't know what "tough love" would mean under these circumstances. I don't see him. I have appointed an intermediary to work with financial stuff, so I won't be talking or communicating with him probably anymore by phone or email, since there will be no reason. It's very quickly become a non-relationship. Looks like he's moved on with no regrets.

I think he's got so many issues within himself that I can't deal with. They're HIS problems, and he isn't going to be working with them.

If he valued me at all this wouldn't be happening in the first place. So there's little I can appeal to in him.

He's appearing publicly with OW all over the place. Who knows? Maybe she's not the crackpot I think she is. Maybe this is "true love." Doesn't look like it -- but what do I know.

(A mutual friend contacted a mutual friend shrink to say he doesn't look okay -- a day before he moved out and A became public. Yesterday she said he still looks weird. But again, who knows? She told me I look great without him, better than I have in years.)

I don't know if I have it in me to forgive all this.

So what is there for me to do besides contact an attorney?

Fast forward ten years? There are so many variables...if he's just doing a free fall into his strange emotional hangups, maybe I'm better off bailing out. Maybe I'm better off getting a head start on the rest of my life, hard as it will be to put things together again at almost 50. If a miracle happens, I'd love to be with him. I still feel like I belong with him. I'm still his wife. But something big has got to happen.

Contacted his family yesterday, since his usual modus operandi is to let them know in passing that he's switched wives. They're sweet, sympathetic, outraged -- excellent people.

As I say, this is a non-relationship at this point. I sent a gentle email yesterday, notifying him of intermediary, and reminding him that I love him still, and saying if he felt there was no hope, please tell me so and I would cease all contact. I've heard nothing -- but that could mean he has part of him that's not convinced he's doing the right thing, or that he is about to serve me divorce papers. Or that he hasn't read his email.

I sent it because I'm not sure I'm going to be feeling that way anymore. It's time for me to forget him and move on, even though he's my husband.

Truly, I don't see anything working except divine intervention. And that's a wild card.

One thing that does seem to be driving him nuts: he keeps characterizing me as extreme, crazy, etc., and himself as the calm, rational one. Classic case of projection.

In our few interactions, the more calm, sweet, accommodating I am, the more it undercuts his paradigm that I am this crazy person who has to be worked around.

While I was crazy in January after D-Day, I've been pretty consistently reasonable, under the circumstances. His actions have been hasty and extreme. Oh well...I guess I'm still not getting through to him, and never will.

Oh well...I guess I'm still not getting through to him, and never will.
So you’re not doing Plan A, then?

Plan A is not showing your spouse what they are doing wrong and how to fix it. It is demonstrating how YOU are learning how to act/interact in positive ways that enhance a relationship

Oh yes, Chris, I am still Plan Aing my little heart out. Especially since he's projecting his own weirdness onto me. I'm sweet and reasonable, despite his treating me like I must be a madwoman.

(Why don't you check out "When OW starts to LB" for the latest?)