Been lurking for a while as my wife comes here, dont know if she posts, dont much care right now.

Wife cheated about 2 years ago and frankly never seemed too remorseful about it. I have tried to work it out I guess to be fair so has she. She has never explained the why of her affair when I asked except to say it started at a work sundowner and one thing led to another.

I have read here and elsewhere that somewhere somehow both of us must have been in the least inattentive to each other for this to have happened. But I can't think of any period like that, I thought we were a happy family with 2 kids. I have asked again & again if I had let her down or not given her love or commitment and she always says I have done so. Then I ask again why and she shrugs her shoulders and cries.

I just cannot work it out and it has been eating away at my love for her since I first knew. Dspite the initial anger I have really tried not to be a SOB about it and to remain calm when we discuss it.

If it was this only I guess I could work myself around to accepting that I will never know, but unfortunately it is not just that.

Well to get down to brass tacks, the big problem is that I think I just do not love her anymore. Dont hate her but I dont love her. I think.
Been through the pain and hurt, thats over for the most part I think.
I find myself very resentful so it may be that which I am feeling. To add to the problems both our children, girl 17 & boy 16 are aware of the affair and both at times almost seem to hate their Mum.
I am getting therapy, wife goes sometimes but doesn't seem to think it will make a difference in the end, I would like the kids to go but the older girl especially just glares at her mum and says 'she caused all this she should go' . A lot of this has got to a head the last week and frankly I'm at a loss of what to do or suggest.

I dont think it matters who is right or wrong now, way too late for that, we need something to defuse the anger even though I feel bit like I couldn't give a damn what she does, our kids deserve better from both of us I think.

I've read the stuff about plan A & B but think we may be past that

So any suggestions anyone??

Welcome to marriage builders. You can get over this, and have a better marriage than ever. Of course you don't feel like you love her. You have been struck to the core. But feelings for her can come back.

Please change to the general questions forum. Weekends are exceeding slow here, and you will get more input there.

Stick with us, and at least consider the option that you could have a much better marriage, and fall deeply in love with your wife again.

Have you read "Survivng an Affair"? Have you taken the Emotional Needs Questionaire? (ENQ) - See the link at the bottom of the page

My wife was very much like yours, and teh ENQ was the key to unlocking about 50% of the "Why" question. The other half we got at by reading "Torn Asunder", by Carder together, discussing it, and going throught he exercises.

<small>[ August 08, 2004, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: johnh39 ]</small>

Johnh39

I did suggest this Quest after I found she was visiting this site. She responded with what good would it do .................. sorry frustration levels went up again.

I guess there is no harm asking again is there?

Just feels like I am talking to a brick wall. I think she is looking for some magic bullet to make everything right again.

To re-iterate: Did you read "Surviving an Affair", together, and discuss what Harley says?

Is your counselor any good?

I am not sure you are really past Plan A and Plan B. Yes, timewise, it seems you are past the optimal time, but it does not seem like your wife is committed to your marriage - she is not willing to do the work that is required to make it work. BUT - this might be entirely due to guilt. Her question about "What good would it do?" suggests that. She can never erase what she has done, she can never justify it, she can never make it go away. Perhaps she has not accepted the forgiveness you offered. Perhaps she cannot forgive herself.

If that is anywhere near the truth, then she needs Christ, not a counselor.

But, you doing a good Plan A would probably go a long way toward making her feel forgiven.

Another possible source of the "what good would it do" attitude might be some articles I have referenced in my signature line. They are very real warnings about the dangers of incompetent marriage counselors. However, they also tell how to spot good counselors and avoid bad ones. I commend them for your reading pleasure.

I understand that you are frustrated and resentful. But, if you had truly lost ALL hope, I doubt you would be here. I admire your perseverence, and I hope that what I have written or linked is helpful.

A2,
The way you describe your W, it sounds to me as if she’s a woman racked with ambivalence. And don’t get me wrong, I am in no way approving of what she did but it sounds to me like she’s in a place right now where she feels that no matter what she does, she’ll never get the “Scarlet Letter” off her fore head.

You say that you’ve tried to make it work, but have you honestly done everything in your power to really do that? Have you insisted that you two get with a professional marriage councilor to discuss the issue and really understand what happened? Because if you haven’t I think that’s what you need to do. That’s where you’ll get the answers to all the questions you still have and resolve the feeling that haven’t as yet been discussed never mind put behind you.

As for your children, they’ll take their cue from you. If you’re only going through the motions in this marriage, tolerating your W rather then really understanding her and deciding to love her, then what are the kids suppose to think? How are they suppose to act?

I don’t know if you still love your W or not and I don’t think that you really know at this point either, but here’s what I do know. If the situation continues as it is, nothing good will come of it in the end. Unless you stand up now, confront the problems and insist that things change for the better then you’re right. You might as well take a walk; because running away from the marriage is what you’ve seemed to be doing thus far anyway.

Sorry to be so frank.

Coach

John39

we do have a therapist who specialises in relationships, pro marriage as well, not in favour of divorce at all. I can't make my wife go, I want too you understand, but she is very reluctant. She had gone a few times and the sessions she attended were for herself only and both of us after to set some boundaries , no swearing at each other , not denigrate that sort of thing.
Not sure what was said at the session but she didn't like it. This therapist does not lecture but does ask some VERY hard questions. Not confronting but makes you really to start thinking.
As for the books, they are not easily available in Australia, but i have ordered some, I'm prepared to try most suggestions.
Plan A, read it again, it does seem to be very much what the therapist has me doing. I may not have been as disciplined as it seems you need to be though. I think I might have avoided a few things I should not have stood still for, but thats water under the bridge now.
Well I will try to get her back to counselling or ask her to choose someone else she thinks we both can work with. I’m willing hope I can persuade her its worth it.

Have I done everything coach?? Probably not . Have I tried all that I knew?? I think yes. Have I failed in some areas?? I’m sure of it. Perhaps she doesn’t feel safe to tell me the details. I have to say if your kids were so angry with you, as well as a husband even if he was trying to be really open, would you feel safe?? I’m not sure I would be now that I’m thinking about it a lot.

The counselling issue as I said above is very professional, but perhaps its not what she wants, I’ll try to get her to see what she wants here can’t hurt can it. Do I insist she goes then?

Running away?? Didn’t look at it that way but you are right. I guess I have thrown my hands up and said have it your way, just worn down by the frustration I suppose.
The kids attitude does worry me. I feel they have been drawn into this when really they are not ready for this sort of thing. Not adults yet. I don’t want them to take sides, they will regret it in the long term and so will all our family.
I wonder if this is why she is so pessimistic about our recovery? Does she think the kids will only hate her more? Which I am sure they don't really, they are scared and angry.... well I will try anything right now. can't keep going on like this. DO you think she could be so scared of loosing them completely that she wont discuss anything?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> DO you think she could be so scared of losing them completely that she wont discuss anything? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Certainly possible. Sometimes the only way out is through a wall of fire, and it is only after you pass through that you find it is only an inch thick, and the alternative is death by suffocation. But, we fear the fire, and it is an entirely rational fear.

Your wife's actions remind me of my wife's, and your frustration reminds me of my own, though our paths are not by any means identical. I am not a counselor, but let me share what I think I see as common points, and what I/we have done that has helped, and let me know if that resonates at all.

First, this excerpt: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I...read here and elsewhere that somewhere somehow both of us must have been in the least inattentive to each other for this to have happened. But I can't think of any period like that, I thought we were a happy family with 2 kids. I have asked again & again if I had let her down or not given her love or commitment and she always says I have done so. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">just SCREAMED at me, because it was so close to my experience. Before and during her affair, my wife called me "The Greatest Husband in the World". I was actually exceedingly unhappy with our relationship, but always blamed my unhappiness and depression on other circumstances in our lives, not on our relationship, so I thought we had a pretty good marriage, too, even if I never would have even thought of calling her "The Greatest Wife in the World".

Then she told me about her affair.

She attempted to answer my "Why?" questions, but her answers didn't make any sense to me. But I had heard this marriage guy on the radio who seemed pretty astute, and who had written a book about affairs. I really believe God directed me to buy that book. It was "Surviving an Affair". There was a lot in it that made sense to both of us, but the thing that gave us our first real "Aha!" experience was taking the Emotional Needs Questionnaire (which is why I asked if you had taken it.) The issue was that although my wife knew I loved her, and although our marriage was better than her parent's marriage, by her judgement, and therefore pretty good, she didn't FEEL like I loved her. When we read about Emotional Needs, and filled out and discussed the questionnaire, the reason for that became obvious. The reasons for my unhappiness became obvious, as well. We were both doing a very good job on each others not-very-important emotional needs, and were oblivious to each others most important emotional needs. That can happen when two conflict avoiders marry. We always avoided conflict over those things that were unsatisfactory in our marriage, so they never changed. While that did not completely explain "Why?", it explained a lot, and helped us clarify what we wanted our marriage to be, as well as giving us some practical help on how to get there.

Even if you are not a conflict avoider, your wife sounds like one, so it may be that she has never told you what she really needs from you. If she was like my wife, she may not have told herself. The ENQ helped my wife recognize and tell me what she needed.

The other thing that really reminds me of my own experience is your frustration over the lack of answers. I think my situation is a lot better than yours because my wife really tried pretty hard to give them to me, and eventually, I got a lot of answers (though I had to learn to listen differently...). But, there were and are some things she just doesn't seem to be able to face. The problem is that you can't FORCE someone to open up to you. But, if they feel safe enough, loved enough and accepted enough, it may become possible at some time in the future. Or may not. You can't make it happen. You can only make it safe enough to let it happen.

I'm not sure that getting an answer to "Why?" is completely necessary, however. The biggest problem with not knowing "Why?" is that if you are not sure why someone did something, you can't trust them not to do it again. I've got an excerpt from a previous post that addresses that issue: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> …I knew that people who get divorced once are likely to get divorced again, and usually for the same reasons, and I did not want to find myself in the same place some years down the road. But, I was not sure I could overcome the pain, I had no idea how to re-establish trust, I frankly didn’t know if I could forgive her, and I had no desire at all to go back to the way things were, because frankly they were pretty miserable (even pre-A) for me

So, the first thing I did was go to God and repent of a couple of habitual “minor” (in my eyes) sins, so there would be nothing between God and I that would get in the way of our communication. I spent many hours in prayer asking God to show me my sin. I think at some level I thought the A was my fault. While I no longer think that, that time of humbling myself before God was really crucial to our recovery. Because, I HAD sinned, and had gotten so distant from God that I was unaware of many of my sins, so He did show me. As I agonized over what my wife did to me, it became clear that I had done almost identical things to God. That helped keep me from self-righteousness and arrogance which are poison to any recovery. Also, if I expected Him to forgive me, I had to forgive her. That got me a long way down the forgiveness road, but forgiveness and reconciliation are two separate things. The pain and trust issues remained barriers to reconciliation. It turns out the pain fades with time, if the actions that produced it are not repeated. That leaves trust, and trusting that the actions will not be repeated, as the sole barrier to reconciliation.

As far as I can discern there is really only one approach to re-establishing trust, and a couple of well-established ways to get there. In both cases, the bottom line is: believe their actions, not their words, at least until you have seen a consistent pattern of their words and actions being aligned for a period of many months. That necessarily means you have to be more involved in their lives so that you have the ability to verify that their actions and words are cohesive.

The path to get there, according to Willard Harley, is to have no secrets from each other, and to use the Policy of Joint Agreement (POJA) in all your decisions. Once you see your spouse consistently use the POJA, and the two of you have learned to understand each other and communicate with each other well enough to implement it, you will trust them when they are out of sight, too. Perhaps ironically, one thing that will convince you of your spouse's honesty is if they tell you things they know will hurt, instead of lying or keeping silent to "protect" you. So this process will likely not be painless, especially since, if you are like most couples, it will require learning a new way to communicate. Change is hard.

A second path, promoted by Carder in “Torn Asunder” (and the younger Harleys, too, I think), is for the WS to really dig in to the "WHY?" of the affair, and in gaining that self-understanding, communicate to you both why it happened, and how they will change their behavior in ways that you can verify and that will prevent them from having another.

Of course, these two paths are not mutually exclusive. I view them as complementary, and think “Surviving an Affair”, by Harley is extremely helpful in figuring out important parts of the why, at least as far as the answer involves unmet Emotional Needs, and it almost always does, especially for a woman who has an affair.

The fallacy is the belief that unmet EN’s “cause” affairs. If that was the case, I would have had the affair, not my wife, because my EN’s were less well met in our marriage than hers.

Unmet EN's do not cause affairs, they cause lousy marriages. If you read Harley thoroughly and carefully, he does not say unmet EN's cause affairs, either, though it is a so common a misconception among his readers that I would say he should do some re-writing of his material. Reading SAA, it can be easy to conclude that unmet needs are the reason for affairs. Not so. Affairs are entirely the responsibility of those involved, and the reasons vary.

Our MC worked w/ Bill Harley for 8 years, and according to him, in about 80% of MEN'S affairs unmet EN's had very little to do with it. Yes, there were usually unmet EN's in their marriages, because no marriage is perfect. But, having the wife find out about and meet his most important EN's did not stop the affairs from re-kindling or stop the husband from having another. Harley is aware of this, which is why his plan for recovery is a lot more complicated than: 1.) Take the EN questionnaire. 2.) Meet your spouse’s EN's. Our MC said that in his opinion, for that 80%, if the wife had been meeting the husband's top 5 EN's PERFECTLY, the husband still would have had the affair. If you want to learn more, read "The State of Affairs", by Todd Mulliken particularly the chapter on "The Double Life Man". Though the percentage of women who have this type of affair is small, it is not zero.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">

been thinking about what you have said John39
Unhappy M before Affair...not that I knew of, not that she has said anything since dday. We spent time alone, with the kids, laughing, odd fight over usual little things, sex good & pretty often as much sought by her as by me, just nothing I can get a fix on.
Could she be that classic double life women? Maybe, well probable if she can come up with nothing.

Well the last few days have been not the best.
Tried talking again, well its like we are talking in different languages most of the time. W asked me why couldn’t I just forget it and let it go?
I said because I felt so hurt and betrayed that I no longer felt we had something special or of our own. That she had thrown it away for no reason . Are these LB’s??? But it is what I feel……….didn’t say it angrily or yelling just normal voice.
I asked again why, can she explain why …….she just went quiet again & wouldn’t look at me. Well that was during the morning so I just gave it up for the time being. I thought well when she’s ready she’ll be ready to tell me. And perhaps I might still be here. I really dont know how I feel about it all.

I walked to the shops did some of the shopping, the world does not stop to let you off does it?
Anyway met one of the ladies from the neighbourhood who was out walking and dropped in to get a drink, pleasant young woman, well 5 or 6 years younger than me, I just feel a lot older these days. Walked back chatting with her she’s waiting for her hubby to get back from an oil rig and was a bit bored I think, but the chat did both of us some good, nothing serious, the news local area stuff, waved her good bye at the corner and continued home.

Well did I walk into a storm when I entered the front door…..there stood my W arms folded literally FUMING. So I thought here we go, one of the kids had been a little **** again, like I really needed that today!!
But oh no…….she starts yelling at ME for trying to get into that ‘sl*ts’ pants, that all I want to do is [censored] around with any woman I can get my hands on etc etc ?? …I mean I couldn’t believe it ………..she has an affair, wont explain it or talk about it and I’m a [censored] now because according to her I was seducing a young woman …….in the middle of the street???????? WTF is wrong with her? I think she has gone away with the aliens………I mean she sounded so outraged !!.Unfortunately I lost my cool. I yelled back at her ‘You’re getting me mixed up with you, you F*CKED around not me and there only one sl*t around that I can see’
Really didn’t handle that well.
She just ran off crying.
I suppose I LB’ed again??? But damn it all…….I didn’t do anything , I didn’t even have a single thought about it. I haven’t asked her to beg or grovel or do anything but try to explain what went wrong.
I don’t even expect that we can fix anything right away, I jut expect some opportunity to understand it all.
Don’t know, maybe it would be better if she just left.
I just don’t understand , am I to close to all of this to clearly think it through? I want us to go to MC but she seems very reluctant.

Yikes! You must apologize for talking to your wife that way. Sounds like she cares very much for you. She is worried that you will do the same thing she did.

There is a great book called "Torn Asunder" that talks about "the message of the affair". There are many messages - and it is not always about the marriage being bad. Sometimes a person is depressed, unhappy with themselves, working through childhood issues, and on and on.

Your wife may not know why it happened, but you two do need to figure it out together.

By the way, thanks for the advice on my thread.

well believer, if you think I should then I had better I suppose, I didn't really mean to say that to her, just lost it when she said that.

Just blurted it out. Opened mouth to change feet.

Therapist warned me about this but I just screwed it up. I should feel a bit depressed, I just feel...empty.

You know if she told me that she did not really know, was just honest then I could accept that we may not know for a long time if not ever, but at least we could agree to work on it & the M. As it is I just totally distrust her motives for not talking about the A.

But ok, I don't want to be one of those men whose kids saw that when the going got tough I got going. I'll apologise, though not for the thought, just for expressing it like this and in such a hurtful way. I wont put it that way I'm not sure if she is ready for that radical honesty thing right now.

oh Believer the advice, just hope you can do what is good for you.
Many thanks for your help too.

Let us know what happens when you apologize.

Hi aussie,
I, too, am a BH. I read the thread and could relate to many of the things you posted.

I am about a year from DDAy2. I'd say recovery truely started for us this past March. Prior to that there was tremendous drama around the house. Similar results to the one you and your W had. I called W the sl@! wrod several times. I guess that was my major anger stage.

My W was remoreseful and at times she wasn't. It drove me nuts.

She also refused to answer subsequent questions that came to me after the initial "true" admission on DDay2.

She had the same typical FWW attitude of just get over it. This combined with my attitude towards the 18 months of false recovery made thins tough.

I'm sorry to here that your kids know about the affair. How did that happen? Was W "in your face" with the A or did you tell them in your anger?

Are you on ADs? I know for a fact that the ADs have actually helped my attitude towards life as well as my marriage. I was asocial drinker that bgan to drink to much to numb the hurt of her A so I quit drinking in March. Seems to be a correlation betweem recovery and my attitude.

If I can ask what were the pre-A issues in your marriage and had they become resentments? Have you shared your resentments with your W? Your communication w/ the W amy not be at that point yet.

You said your W won't go to IC but you are. How about MC? In my case I was going to IC and we were going to MC, but I felt that all of the focus was on me forgiving the A and working on pre-A issues. I resented the fact that she wouldn't go to IC. The problems were 90% me and 10% her.

She didn't think she needed it yet she was the spouse with such low self esteem that she found relief w/ the OM. She was the one who was depressed b4 the A. OM was in effect the human anti-depressant medication.

Now that were are both going I feel better about the future.

Was your W's A a ONS or longer term?

Sorry about all the questions. Just trying to understand the situation.

Mac

Well I apologised for the comment. Said I didn’t have any excuse to say that to her and that it was anger, I told her I was just so frustrated that we could not seem to talk about this.
She then said we are not going to get over this are we?
I told her That’s just the problem, I don’t know WHAT to get over!! Cant you see its just like a wedge driving us apart? She just nodded and said yes, but I trying I’m really trying.
Well maybe she is in her own way. She said she was sorry for yelling at me too.
So I thought ok another try. Lets go see a MC lets find out how we allowed our M to get where it is and try to fix it, what do your think? She looked at me with those big blue eyes and just nodded. Though she was very tense about it. I suggested no one from work or who is related to the department ok? THAT seemed to lift a big weight off her.

I don’t hate her you know, I’m not that angry with her either I don’t think, just her actions & behaviour . I don’t know if I can love her like I did or if I want to stay married to her, but I will commit to trying. I care for her but don’t know if that is enough.

Mac the kids learnt of the affair when the W and I first were discussing it. I suppose we were louder than we should have been. We were not yelling but it was an emotional time of course. Being 17 & 16 the two fully understood what we were talking about . There was NO way either of us wanted them to know then or later until we had worked out what we would do. It has complicated things immensely. But we have to cope with that now.

No I’m not on AD’s, that is in fact why I went to IC, he’s a psych at work , as I thought I may need AD’s as I was feeling so down and frustrated with both my leg and M after she told me. After a 3 weeks he said his opinion was I did not need them at this time. I agree with that. I don’t feel depressed, disappointment, anger at her behaviour, frustrated at the seeming impasse, oh yeah, but not depressed.

Pre A issues, well I didn’t know we had any. According to my W she still says we did not. How honest is that? don’t know. I have shared my frustration and resentment with her about the A and the lack of discussions on how, why and all that………….she seems to just be unable to explain or she really doesn’t know. She has only just agreed to MC. Previously when it was suggested all I got was what use would it do now.

Was your W's A a ONS or longer term?

Now THAT is just the key to my frustration Mac. I don’t know because she wont discuss it. Now that she is willing to go to MC perhaps we can.
You know the thing that niggles me, like a worm eating away inside of me, is what if I am second choice? The OM & his wife have left the state. I thought it strange at the time but now it all makes sense of course. She obviously found out and gave him an ultimatum to leave with her or leave.
Well I will have to face that wont I if it turns out like that.

aussie - check out this letter - very famous around here:

"To Whomever,

"I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to "look" at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn't mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn't he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I'm going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes.

"You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you're carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the "STUFF" to figure out OUR reality. There isn't really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don't have.

"Now let's enter my reality. Let's both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is well affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendoes of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever "feel" complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don't worry about it, it's not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what's the difference, it's not important. Then later when I'm expected to "understand" the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can't just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it.

"So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don't you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier.

"So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together. It doesn't come from jealousy, it doesn't come from spitefulness, and it doesn't come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn't it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn't it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can't and the reason I can't is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world."

(end of Joseph's Letter)

Thats very much like I feel. It is so similsr to what I have said to her over the last 6 weeks its uncanny.

I suppose it shows it is very common to feel like this, its just that it is stronger in some than others I guess.

But I know I wouldn't accept second best, I'm not the second prize in a raffle and I wont be. frankly I deserve better. Lets hope its not the case. But not going to worry too much about maybes............I have plenty to concern myself with right in front of me.

Kids are still so angry with her, that worries me a lot. What ifs are going around & around in my head even hough I try not to on this subject.

aussie - It is not that you are second best, so don't feel that way. These WS's all say and act the same way. The only difference is that your wife has had to end her fantasy, not by her choice.

But plenty here have been in your position, and now have thriving marriages. Their exWS's can't even believe they did the things they did, and said the things they said, and they are very thankful that their spouses did not give up on them. So hang in there.

Aussie: Remember what I said about making it safe for her to open up?? Your response to her accusations, though completely understandable (I may well have said the exact same thing, in your shoes) does not serve the purpose of making it safe for her to open up.

Secondly, from your description of your conversation with your neighbor, I would guess she was making you an invitation, though perhaps a subtle one. I'm guessing that all your wife had to do was look at her and she knew. Women are particulary perceptive about this, expecially if they have been there. So, just being civil to your neighbor could instill fear in your wife if this is true, which is probably what caused the explosion - not to mention that things are not all well between you two at the moment.

Gotta go now, but will write more about the "speaking two languages" issue as soon as I can - (maybe tomorrow in the PM)

hi guys

well John, I'm not real sure about the neighbour being subtle or anything, I really dont think she was beng anything else but friendly & maybe just a bit starved for adult talk. She was polite but perhaps preoccuppied so if she was thinking of anyone it wasn't me I'm sure. I certainly wasn't of her. Good God thats the last thing I would think of right now.
Of course I'm pretty much out of practice on these things and if at all possible I suppose I would like to remain so.
But maybe the W is so aware of this crap right now its like believer said, she thinks I might have an A to'get even' ?? Maybe if I was a jerk who wants 'revenge' but no just not me. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
See I can even smile about that.

You know finding a MC has been so HARD. Most are women who after talking to them I am not confident of going to, all seem so surprised we want to at least try to stay together.....divorce is so much easier, yeah but for whom???? them or us?

We finally found one who seems to support a marriage building basis, dont know if similar to here but we will see. Also cheated a bit, asked that psychiatrist at work if he knew of her, he did by rep and it was all good to his knowledge, but she doesn't pull any punches apparently.

Well I suppose we both will have to change if we are to have any chance to get past this.
Truthfully a part of me feels like saying you broke it you fix it, why do I have to do anything? Resentment? mmmmm yep I think so.

Yeah they are all so right, its SOOO much easier to throw your hands in the air and walk away, But being a dinky die Aussie I have trouble walking away from a fight, least have to have a go.