I also posted this e-mail on the Emotional needs pages, under "Do I have to go back to being a doormat"? But I really need help! Has anyone else gone through this?<P>I have been reading these pages since August, when I was desperate for help and looked up marriage counseling on the net, since my husband wouldn’t pay for counseling. I have only posted once or twice, but have never shared my situation. Although for months I have been reading all of yours, and feel like I could tell you anything. When I read your stories, I know that I am not alone and that my marriage is not the only one of its kind. In fact, it’s pretty common – my story is long, but I could be married to Sad Wing’s wife, who shows affection for another right in front of his face, or any one of you whose husband has his secrets, doesn’t like to talk much, uses sex until he’s satisfied and then rolls over and goes to sleep, etc, etc, etc. <P>I know that I am not perfect, and I have done my share of LB-ing, but I realize that my marriage is in jeopardy and am trying to fix it, while my husband says that I am the only one with the problem and that he is “fine”, so if it’s going to get fixed I need to change. He says that I knew what he was like when I married him so I should just live with it. But after 7 1/2 years of being a one-sided Giver and having my husband almost always use his Taker, I’m really tired. I think I got tired two years ago of feeling like the “doormat/housemaid/whore”, and let my guard down, and quit giving so much, so my husband went and found someone who would. He never slept with her, but he did kiss her and gives her all the affection and spoken affirmation and laughter and fun that I long for, and I get the “honey I’m home from work but I’m tired so don’t ask me any questions, just feed me, give me a foot rub, and have sex with me before bed.”<P>Maybe I should give you some background – I hesitate because I don’t want to bore you, but I feel that you must know so that you get the full picture. Then in the future I won’t post so long. <P>The girl my husband had an EA with is his secretary. I say “is”, because she still works for us. We are ministers, and we live overseas and run a school. Our secretary is married, was one of our graduates who was raised out in the country and had never had a job before, so we were able to train her up to run our offices the way we wanted them run. When she took over the offices, she did such a great job that I was no longer needed to be in the office every day. When that happened, I still liked knowing what was going on at school because that’s my whole reason for living in this nation – our purpose for being here. After awhile my husband started saying that it wasn’t necessary for me to know everything that was going on at the office, because he lived it all day long and it was too much work to have to come home and relive it again by telling me. But then he started talking “business” with his secretary but would not tell me. Not by accident, but on purpose. To make a long story short, I noticed major flirting going on, mentioned it just about once a week, was told over and over again that nothing was going on, had huge fights about it, and when we were home for Christmas last year we almost split up because he felt “accused”, and said some horrible. horrible things to me. (I read his e-mails to her – at first I wasn’t snooping because they were from us to her, and we shared the laptop, but then they starting being from him to her, which got my curiosity and I continued reading them. I felt that they were inappropriate, too personal, and not professional at all, and I told him so.) This went on for months, and then my husband went on a trip for three weeks to preach in the Far East. He wrote very nice e-mails to me, how much he loved me and was thinking about me, but then I found one in the trash on her computer that changed our lives. It was all about how much he wanted her “right now”, fantasized about her, blah, blah, blah. I was so mad and hurt that I just shook uncontrollably. She was still at the office so I confronted her immediately. It turns out that they had kissed once, discussed it, and decided that the flirting had to stop, because it was wrong and neither of them wanted to hurt me. They decided this right before his trip, but I guess he was so involved emotionally with her that he couldn’t end it, and he wrote that e-mail to her. I discussed everything with my husband, and found out that he feels like his needs haven’t been met for about two years (I was so dead inside emotionally that sex turned into once a week and “dutiful”, not “enthusiastic”). He turned to her because she supported him, didn’t complain about anything, and basically did her job very well and put lots of deposits in his love bank. <P>Of course after that e-mail was etched into my brain, my trust and respect for him was completely lost, and he would have to regain it. He felt that after two weeks of accounting for his whereabouts, that the trust should have been regained and I shouldn’t question him anymore. She still works for us, as “he cannot run his ministry without her”, so he won’t fire her. (I always thought it was “our” ministry, but ever since then it’s been “his” ministry, which ultimately it belongs to the Lord anyway). I live life now on a “need to know” basis, and if I ask too many questions he feels like I am just “checking up on him” and being too nosy. I have LB-ed many times about this whole situation, because one of the promises he made to me after finding out about the affair was that he would not have any more meetings with her in his office with the door completely shut. (Several staff members asked her what they did in there all the time with the door closed. Another staff member asked if I was blind. So even though it has not been made public, no one else knows about it, one girl who works in the same office as our secretary suspected something and our associate asked a few questions.) But now that it’s a new school year, I guess that promise doesn’t mean anything so the door gets shut again. I don’t see the flirting that I saw before, but they are close friends and laugh and joke a lot. He goes to the same gym where she does aerobics, and even though they don’t go together, they are often there at the same time and it bothers me that he is with her all day at school and then in the evening he gets to see her walk around in a tight little aerobics outfit. I am not allowed to go workout with him for two reasons – one, he wants to work out alone and to have me as a workout partner would not challenge him in his workouts. And two, it makes him feel like I’m checking up on him when I’m there.” He hates to be watched because he has felt “watched” for the past year. So I don’t go, but the other night I needed to get a hold of him for an emergency, and he doesn’t have his phone on him when he works out. So I drove up to the gym to get him and there she was, standing there talking to him about her shopping trip she went on after school. I LB-ed big time – I just looked at her and said “aren’t you supposed to be in aerobics?” And then stood between her and my husband to talk to my husband. When I act that way, my husband then feels like he has to be overly nice to her to make up for the “b” that his wife was to her. I feel betrayed, because she and I have talked about how it makes me feel – she knows I don’t like the office door closed, she tells me to my face that if it had been her husband who flirted and kissed another girl, she would have “killed her”, and couldn’t understand why I forgave her. But then she turns around and asks for rides from my husband, shuts that office door, wears tight and short clothing, etc, etc, etc., with no regard to how she knows it must make me feel. I told this to my husband and he said that once he told her not to worry about how I feel. He actually told her that “she’s his secretary and bosses and secretaries have to be close to get any work done, and she works for him and not his wife, so as long as he’s happy, don’t worry about me getting mad.” Of course I feel that this is disloyal to me, because he has done this several times – if I call and ask him to call me back about something, she’ll give him the message and if he doesn’t feel like calling me back he’ll tell her no, it’s not necessary. He did this twice – once when we were supposed to go look at land we were thinking of buying to build our home on. He needed her to interpret for the realtor, and didn’t want to take me because “what would it look like if he took an entourage”. So he took her to look at land for us, instead of his own wife! She knew I wanted to go along, but by blowing me off he’s showing her clearly that he doesn’t put me first in our marriage and that my feelings don’t matter to him. If I ever confront him about anything at all that concerns her, he takes her side, even though most people would not. He feels this need to “protect her” or something, and it’s getting very old. <P>We celebrated Thanksgiving dinner with our staff on Friday, and after dinner we all sat around and socialized, but sure enough, the two of them ended up on the couch together for about an hour, looking at photographs together, laughing, joking, he was eating off of her plate, etc. They weren’t touching but there was always only about a half an inch between them. It makes me wonder what other people were thinking of all this. (they are together all the time, but since our secretary is 10 years younger and married herself, they think it’s “cute”. She gives him attitude, and the rest of the staff jokes that she’s good for him because she “puts him in his place”. I sat with them for awhile, but after I became invisible, I got up and started cleaning up. I was the hostess, so I needed to be the hostess instead of “guarding” my husband. In previous years she would have jumped up and helped me, but since all this happened there has been more than one occasion where she’s sat and chatted with my husband instead of even offering to help with the cleanup. My husband can’t even see how this would bother me.<P>I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. (Oh – my husband does some investing that he wants to be something that is just “his”, so I’m not supposed to know about it. He doesn’t tell me anything, and even though I know everything about our stateside bank account, he has an account here that up until last year I was allowed to see. Now I’m not allowed to see it because the interest and profits, etc. from his investments all go into this account, and if I was to see it, I would know too much. So I am no longer allowed to see this account, but our secretary is. I asked why she was allowed to see our personal bank account and I’m not, and he said because “she’s not “looking” for anything”. If I know my husband, I don’t think that he’s hiding anything, he’s just exercising his “right to privacy” and wanting to have something that I don’t know about. Of course that bothers me, but what can I do about it. I can’t force him to let me see it. And if I go behind his back and ask her for the password, he would be furious! <BR>I know threats don’t work and you should always do what you say you are going to do, but I have told him several times this year that I won’t live this year like we have for the past year, so if things don’t change I will just go home. He things that if I left he would still make it as a minister, and that as long as I kept my mouth shut (he knows if I told anyone anything, it would ruin his ministry, because ministers can’t behave that way!), he would still do just fine without me. He’s sorry I’m not happy, but doesn’t think that there is anything he can do to change that. I have read and printed out all the pages on “setting boundaries” which really helped me, but I am having a hard time differentiating between setting boundaries on myself to not overreact to things, and being quiet and being the doormat. I have been quiet and been the doormat for years, and my mother-in-law once told me at the beginning of our marriage that how things were done in the beginning of our marriage would set precedent for the rest of our lives. (All the way through our dating I felt that I was the chaser and he was being pursued. – I was head over heals in love with him, and although he loves me, I don’t know that he’s ever been “in love” with me with a passion. His mom says he talks about how wonderful I am behind my back, but I don’t hear it ever – all I hear is about how wonderful his secretary is. And he tells her that to her face. She doesn’t get much affection from her own husband, and she told me once that my husband is fulfilling a need in her that she doesn’t get at home. She was envious of me because if he would say those wonderful things to her, think of what he must say to his wife! No such thing!!!<P>Last year he took his secretary and my secretary each out for a shopping day by themselves. I thought it was inappropriate and wanted to go along. He wouldn’t allow it. He wanted to do it again this year but I asked him not to, and he didn’t, (I said if he wanted to take the two of them together that would be fine, but that I didn’t want him to take them alone.) I found out yesterday that without telling me he gave each of them money to go out and get themselves something that they need for Christmas. I think that’s great, I would have totally encouraged that, but he kept it secret and wouldn’t tell me because he thought I would have been mad. The only thing that made me mad was the fact that now he’s resorted to keeping secrets from me, and he’s doing this “the presents are from me, not us” thing. He always wants to look like the “great boss”, but for some reason doesn’t want to show the girls that he’s in unity and has a relationship with his wife, so he goes out and does these things alone. When he talks about his life and ministry, he says “I” and “mine”, not “we” and “ours”. His parents noticed it in the summer and confronted him on it, but it didn’t help. I’m beginning to feel like chopped liver!<P>I know I need to “Plan A” big time. I’ve tried over and over and I last about two weeks and blow up about something. My h says that each time I do I rip out his heart, and he doesn’t know where he stands anymore. But my heart being ripped out is usually the cause of the blow up. It’s one step forward, two steps backwards. It’s a big circle and I don’t know if I’m strong enough anymore, that’s why I am turning to you. I just don’t know what to do anymore! I told him something that I read here – that I would make him fall in love with me again, and make him want to be my best friend again, that he wouldn’t have to do any work at all, just respond. (I was told he’s too busy to put any effort into his marriage). He seemed to like that, but now what? He fell in love with a doormat. Do I have to resort to being a doormat again to make him fall back in love with me again???????<BR>
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<P>Jim