I think my wife loves me and wants to stay married to me. I feel the same about her, but I cannot sacrifice my happiness for her anymore. If she is unable to change her actions and meet all my needs, as much as it hurts to think about, I will have to leave her.

lost in tx – no matter what happened last night, I know you are going through a difficult time. It seems you are committed to saving your marriage. Make sure your husband sees that. Good luck!

I can relate 100% to you all's situation. In my case I found out by spying on my wife. I do not think she would have told me voluntarily. As a matter of interest, I am in my 4th month of recovery and she still has yet to tell me some of the details of her A to help me in my total recovery. I have asked for this and it is like pulling teeth. We have been attending a marriage counselor for the past two months and it has helped her realize she needs to be part of the healing process to help me. She has changed some things to gain my love for her again since the A had dulled my feelings towards her not to mention my TRUST. The problem is that the other man works in the same place and she depends on him for certain support work. I feel this is similar to what you experienced. She has told me that this was an EA, but I think there may have been some physical contact based on the voice recordings I made. I have demanded that any conversation between them be limited to business only and I think the affair is over for various reasons. I have also spoken to the OM as you did. The problem you will have like me is rebuilding that trust that has been torn. I am a very patient guy but these have been the worst four months of my life. Although we have taken a lot of time off together to rebuild our love, the rebuilding process is a very slow process and anything can set you back in time; a very trying thing for anyone. We have kids and marital assets that we have build over the years and all this deserves a second chance to keep this marriage in place. However, it is very trying and at times you feel like you may be going backwards and wishing that you want out and try this again with someone else but being more wiser as to not make the same mistakes again. I do love my wife a lot...we have been through many experiences together that are hard to push off to one side. But like your wife, she can be very cold and distant, not showing the affection we deserve as dedicated husbands. And the question you will have to ask yourself, can you live with this day in day out for better or for worse knowing that there may be regressions down the path of recovery. As our MC mentioned to us in one of our sessions, once the oneness of the marriage has been broken, you can get very close to what you had at one time with a lot of work but it will be difficult to experience what you had before, assuming it was good then. In time, you will start to heal but there will be flash backs and you might re-hash the issue again, even years later. I have risen to the challenge but I do expect my wife to be committed to this marriage. If not, we are wasting time and effort on the wrong person and sometimes you just have to cut it and move on. Niether of us can change our spouses way of being and sometimes it takes time to realize just that for in my case 20 plus years. If what you have is not to your liking, you got to do what is best for you. But give it some time before you make that choice, besides you have already spent a few years of your life with her so what's another few months unless it is a living hell. Give it a chance and see what happens, no regrets.

Never_Give_up – Thanks for your comments. It sounds like the rebuilding process takes a very long time.

Every day is a struggle for me. She is not easy to be around. She doesn’t show any love or concern for me or my feelings. She’s always critical of me. She doesn’t touch me or kiss me anymore. She is really treating me like ****, like I’m the one who cheated on her. I don’t understand why she isn’t trying harder. She made plans to go out with her girlfriends on Saturday night. She doesn’t even want to spend time with me or talk with me. When we do talk, she just talks about herself and her problems. How she’s having a difficult time at work. It’s always about her! She acts so selfish. If she realizes how hurt I am, she doesn’t show that she cares.

Is this normal? Or is she just a cold-hearted ***** that I should let go? It’s been a month now since I found out. I do love her, so I’m going to give it another month or two before I make any decisions. In the meantime, she is definitely not making me happy. I wonder if she ever will.

When does this rollercoaster end? She’s been treating me badly for days and just when I start to think she’s not worth it anymore, she starts being nicer to me. Last night she leaned against me while watching TV and said “Goodnight, I love you” when we went to bed. She kissed me goodbye this morning.

I do not have much trust in her. Now, I don’t even trust my own feelings for her. I’m afraid to love her.

H4U,

She is acting the same way that my wife has been acting, and it has been 5 months. I think that it is a pretty typical part of the fog. At least it helps me to cope thinking of it that way.
Remember that the road to recovery, and recovery itself WILL NOT BE EASY! Even when she comes around and starts to work on the marriage (Which I believe eventually, if you are persistent, she will come around) there will be days when you both will want to throw in the towel! But you can't give up. It may seem like the easy way out, but if you stop to think about it I think you will see that it is not.
These are the things that I try to keep in mind when I get discouraged (which is often). If you prepare yourself now for a difficult journey, it may make the travel less treacherous, at least for your heart.
Hopefully the fog will lift and she will see her way clear to return to her commitments.

Keep your head up and try not to get too discouraged by all of this, it is a pattern that seems to be common in most WS's.

Take care,

r0uter

<small>[ July 11, 2003, 07:56 AM: Message edited by: r0uter ]</small>

Unbelievable! She tells me she doesn’t trust me and I have to tell her everything to regain her trust. How ironic. I thought she was the one who couldn’t be trusted.

She has a huge amount of anger against my family. I regret them knowing now, but I needed to talk to them at the time. She tries to turn everything around on me. Now, I’m the one who can’t be trusted. I’m the one who made a bad choice. She even asked me to say sorry. I’m still waiting for her to ask for my forgiveness.

She is still in denial of the magnitude of her betrayal and is redirecting blame to you and your family in order to avoid confronting the ugly truth. This follows the mindset that a foggy WS has that convinces him/her that the affair is not wrong because it's a product of love, and love can never be wrong <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> . D-day not always signifies the end of the A inside the mind of the WS.

H4U,

From your posts I strongly suspect you haven't read what Coffeeman as offered you to read. Please do this. Do you know what Plan A is? If so, while in Plan A, you can in a non-lovebusting way, express to your W how her actions are making your feel.

You can express them firmly, clearly, and with the caveat that they are making you consider divorce more. You may or may not want to say the later, but simply expressing " I feel that you don't want..." will get the point across.

However, you should do some serious reading about dealing with this. You are only one month into this, and it is very likely your W is suffering from withdrawal from the OM. Her statements sound right out of the text book. You would do well to read about withdrawal and the symptoms.

If this is to work, you must be very patient, you must be honest with her "radical honesty" is crucial, not "radial meanness". And you must set your boundaries in a clear, concise, and loving way.

Tough stuff, but it can and has been done. Now please go read the articles that Coffeeman has bookmarked. They will help you.

God Bless,

JL

Hope4us-

D-day for me was the EXACT same day as yours. My WW still has contact with the OM via phone and email and instant messenger and it absolutely kills me. She is basically in a place where she is deciding what she wants to do, which calls for Plan B, but I am so scared to implement it after what I thought was a good Plan A. She tells me she loves me, we have physical and emotional contact....she spent five nights with a friend this past week to 'think and figure it all out' which she was not able to finish. She is back home now, and it hurts like hell. I, like you, feel like a fool sometimes for wanting to save this thing when she still behaves as she does....all I can say is that I am with you and plugging away at the whole deal. She is getting counseling starting tomorrow, and i have made a marriage counseling appt for both of us as well. Good luck my friend, sorry that we share this common date, as it is the worst. We WILL be OK.

-Floored32

Hope - just wanted to let you know that you and your W are in my thoughts. I pray that her withdrawal will end soon. I can't imagine what that would have done to my H if I were still in withdrawal (he asked me today how I knew I wasn't - I said I had already been through it...true). I wish she would post here, as that was ultimately what made me realize I was in w/d (at the end, granted, but still).

Of course, you know I don't have advice - maybe my H will (mjr2003), but I did want you to know you are in my prayers, as you have provided me with a great amount of support and encouragement, even in spite of your situation. Thank you.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Just Learning:
<strong>
From your posts I strongly suspect you haven't read what Coffeeman as offered you to read. Please do this. Do you know what Plan A is? If so, while in Plan A, you can in a non-lovebusting way, express to your W how her actions are making your feel.
</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I thought Plan A was a way to end the affair? In my W’s case, the affair ended on D-day. She absolutely does not want to have any contact with the OM. He is a contractor that works at my wife’s company. In the past month, he has taken 2 weeks off. The past 2 weeks, he has avoided my W. No emails, no phone calls. My wife has also avoided him. She’s gotten out of meetings, so she won’t have to see him. At least, this is what she has told me. I’ve already contacted his boss and informed him of the situation. His boss called me this morning to tell me they are going to transfer him to a different contract within the next few weeks.

The main problem with my W is that she seems to be in denial about how badly she has hurt me. And she does not seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to help me get past this hurt. She is starting to show me she loves me (a little). She holds my hand or arm when we are out and she does tell me she loves me and puts her arm around me in bed.

I feel she wants to love me, but is not totally in love with me. Because of what has happened, I am not totally in love with her anymore either. I miss that feeling. I miss feeling completely in love and completed loved. I don’t feel special anymore. I look at her and she is a stranger to me. I don’t really know her. I feel very disconnected and alone.

<small>[ July 14, 2003, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: hope4us ]</small>

Although, she has committed to no contact with OM, I feel she is still in love with him. I feel she loved him more than she ever loved me. I feel that eventually she would have left me for him. I don’t know why she wants to stay married to me now. I feel like her second choice. I feel she is with me because she has no one else. I feel she married me for the wrong reasons, for financial stability, for social acceptance, family acceptance (her family loves me). I married her because I loved her and thought she loved me. That’s it.

My pain has changed. It is no longer a sharp pain, but now a dull ache that will not go away. My heart aches.

Hope - Please, please, please don't feel that way. There is something about you that she chose. It's funny because in a situation like this, you each had a choice to make. She for choosing you over OM, and you for choosing her over the easy way out (another girl, divorce, revenge A).

Have you guys had a chance to discuss what you think in your M led to her being vulnerable to the A? Once you identify that, you should be able to start talking about your R and remember the things which brought you together in the first place. Do you really think it was about money? Maybe part of it was, but if it was ALL about money, she could have pulled an Anna Nicole and found a 98 year old oil tycoon, and inherited everything!

No, there was something in you - about you that she loved. Maybe it's hard to see that right now. My H and I found that we are very different people now then we were when we fell in love (I talk as if I know anything....). But we also found that in spite of all that has happened, we still want to have that feeling. Granted, we are far from it, but in the end,it's what we want. And again, like I said we are different people. The same "old" love that you once had for each other is not there anymore. You can't say you love her the same way.....after all, she had an A.

So you have to rediscover your love for each other. M and I want to love each other so much right now....but we have to get to know each other first. We have started talking again - for hours. Something we hadn't done in years. In fact, he said to me the other day "I don't think we ever would have talked like this again, had we not had this experience."

Really wierd, I know, but I feel like I am closer to him now than I ever was. Yet we both still have feelings like yours - does the other one really want me? Is this just for convenience? (You have no idea how much you hit home with me). But in the end, the answer is that you BOTH chose....

Remember that, and try to get to know each other again. That's the part I look forward to most...noone says that you will end up together...but if you do, you will most certainly know that it was true.

Last night, backing out of the driveway, I ran over my cat and killed him by accident. My God, I was freaking out so badly! I watched him convulse and felt so helpless. I didn’t know what to do to help him. I touched him to see if he was still alive and there was no response. I wrapped him in a towel and picked him up and put him into a box. As I washed the blood off the driveway, I couldn’t help but think I am in a living hell. I am destined to live a life of pain and suffering and I don’t even know what I did to deserve this!

When my W got home, I told her what happened and she started crying. This cat was just a kitten when we started dating 5 years ago. I started sobbing after seeing her tears. I told her my life is hell and she said “No it’s not, I love you.” I said, “Do you, do you really?”

After we took his body to the vet, I told her I knew she was planning on leaving me to be with OM. She said if I was going to leave you, I would have left by now. That’s all a lie! His contract was ending in 2 months and they both planned on leaving their marriages at that time. I don’t know what to believe anymore. She kept saying “I’m sorry for everything. I took you for granted; I even took our pets for granted. I’ve been a horrible person and didn’t take care of you; didn’t take care of anything. I lost myself. I still need to figure myself, to find myself again.”

I don’t know where this is taking me. I think she does have a lot of issues to work out for herself. Where does that leave me? The guy she can always depend on when she needs me? What about me? I don’t know if she’ll be there for me when I really need her. At one time she was, but things have changed too much. Things have changed forever. I have no direction anymore.

LIT - Thanks for your thoughts, although I’m having a difficult time processing it right now.

I guess this thread has become my own personal journal now. Oh well, I'm getting used to feeling alone.

I think my W is still hiding things from me. She won’t talk to me about her affair and it makes me think they had some secrets that she doesn’t want me to know. I suspect they were both planning on leaving their marriages to be together. When she first told me, she lied about the physical part. When I talked to him the next day, he lied about it as well. When I came home and told W that I talked to him, only then did she tell me they had sex. I think she only told me because she didn’t know if he told me.

She was willing to give me up completely. And now she wants to stay with me (maybe, not even sure). My feelings for her have changed. I will never love her the way I did before. I don’t want this kind of love. I want to love and be loved completely.

I feel the past year together has been a waste. She has destroyed our relationship. Even if we stay together, the next few years are ruined. I will never he as happy as I once was. It would be easier to leave her and find someone else to fill this hole in my heart. I am afraid of her. I’m afraid of who she has become and afraid of what she is capable of. I am afraid to love her.

dear hope4us,
i've followed your story closely, although i've never posted to you. (i tend to lurk & learn if you will).

i'm also a man that's been where you are right now and can truly empathize. however, (and there is always a however...don't you just hate it? LOL) i really think that you have to begin to do some things to change your outlook.

for me, change is most effctive when it's an intellectuale process rather then an emotional one. what i mean is, your feelings are very real but at this stage, are leading you down the manic path rather then the cool "business like" path that you need to be on. after all, you're making life changing decisions! the kind of decisions that deserve a cool thought process rather than those generated by emontions like anger and hurt.

my advice to you is to disconnect for a time. be very civil to your wife; be kind and be understanding but back off! don't expect her to be the person that you used to know because that's no longer who she is. and with all do respect, you need to grow from the experience yourself! show her that you are no longer the person you used to be either...the H that was lied to, cheated on and treated with such disdain.

look, at this point both of you need time to reflect on who you are, how you came to be where you are and who you both want to end up being. you don't want a wife who is doing you a favor by staying with you and she doesn't know what she wants right now! so why not do what you did at the very begining? get to know each other as people...learn about each other and do it with no pre-conditions other then truthfullness and mutuale respect. And define those terms for each other! then see what happens.

one last thought. what ever you decide, do it with a full heart and all that's in you. half measures won't make it. if you decide to stay and love her, then do it all the way...give yourself up to it. not easy to do, i know but to me that's what's required for you to get throught this.

good luck.
coach

I hate to be negative, but one thing she MUST realize is that unhealthy people have affairs!!! If a married man or woman is looking attractive to you and you act on it, something is WRONG with you! Why is this concept so hard to understand??? If you are unhappy in your marriage fine, there are better ways to deal with them than lying and cheating! Both of them behaved very selfishly and DAMAGED people they were supposed to "love". It sounds to me like she does need to learn to appreciate you, miss you and not take you for granted like it sound like she is...

I would like to thank everyone for your words of advice and encouragement. I have been reluctant to post in other threads mainly because I don’t feel qualified to give any advice. For anyone reading this, I do offer my encouragement and wish everyone the best.

I have come to accept that my thoughts and emotions will change every day, hour, minute. I have accepted the fact that no matter what happens, recovery and healing, whether individually or together, will be a long, difficult process. I have accepted the fact that my W and I and our love and marriage will never be the same.

I am in my 5th week of dealing with this. We’ve had 1 combined MC session and each have already had 4 IC sessions. Our next session is a combined session. Hopefully, by then we will both have a better understanding of what it is we want.

Hope4us -

Please email Penny, (info_lifeworkscoaching@yahoo.com) or visit her website, ( http://www.saveyourmarriagecentral.com ). She'll help you find a path out of this mess. Tell her Doofus sent you, and that he told you she has "magic powers".

Please do this in addition to continuing your counseling.

Someday you'll look back at all this as a growing experience. Painful, yes, but not all of life's lessons are easy.

Peace,
Doofus