I am 35, H is 37, known each other 17 years, a couple for 9 years, married for 5 years, have 2 boys together, plus he has 2 kids from previous and I have 1 child from previous.

Early November he told me he was feeling pressure from life with responsibilities and whatnot and needed some time to think. He took most of a weekend alone, it was our youngests B-day and he was there for that.

As the days went on and we talked more it became "I love you but I'm not in love with you". However, he maintains that I am his best friend, great mother, and great wife. Those "special" feelings were gone and he didn't know if they could return. (This is the point when I found this site and bought "His Needs, Her Needs")

I started using my newfound knowledge and applying it, but said he wasn't ready...seemed forced. He feels all this stuff should come naturally. It helped me none the less.

Next it was that he had a crush, then it was he loves us both....each makes him happy in different ways.

Worst part is who it is. She works for him, but before he hired her in his office she was our Nanny for 1 year. She is 19 years old.

Making a very long story short, he is currently on the 3rd time of "breaking it off". He says they both agree that it is wrong, the timing would never be right, and she's young enough to still need running and jumping. This time it may be true, because the constant IMing and cell calls have all but stopped (as far as I can tell....and it was obvious while it was happening). Since they both have feelings for one another, he couldn't "crush her like a bug", so he'd explain that's why he was still in cell contact with her. I told him it would never end that way, because he's still emotionaly available to her.

The last 2 days were great, he asked me to sleep on the couch with him last night. Today he said it was nice spending time with me again. Tonight he's at a party and I'm home with the boys. He sent me a sweet e-mail before he left and has already called once. He still maintains it's weird right now and still doesn't know for sure if he wants to repair our relationship.

I have followed the book, I try to be compassionate without being a doormat, because I see my role in his seeking needs outside the marriage.

My problem is still being so obsessed with the OW. I constantly check his cell when he's not paying attention and drive myself nuts with wondering and thinking. I know he doesn't deserve my trust, but he has not lied to me once throughout this entire ordeal. He says work is awkward but not an issue. I think one of them has to go, but with him being the boss it's a whole other issue!!!

Any feedback?!?

Welcome to marriagebuilders. It is a great place to be. For your marriage to be rebuilt, she has to go. As long as there is contact he will not regain his feelings for you.

The board is slower on weekends so you might want to post under General Questions.

My advice is to stay in Plan A for now. I'm sure your husband will be back to the marriage. Right now he is still in his fantasy fog.

I absolutely agree. From my own experience, your WH cannot get her out of his system if he is still seeing her at work. It all adds to his confusion. She is so young. With any luck she will come to her senses. You really need to enforce the 'no contact' policy. It just won't work otherwise. TT

You sound very much like me. I just cannot get this OW out of my head. I am obsessed with seeking revenge on her (not assault or anything like that). I want to see her marriage collapse. I told her husband about what was going on and he didn't believe me. In fact, they had me charged with uttering death threats which did not happen at all. My husband was with me when I was on the phone explaining everything to her husband.

Now I will have a large legal bill, possibly a criminal record and I still can't shake her from my head. I can't contact them now but I just keep waiting to hear bad news about them.

After speaking with my husband, he has assured me he made a mistake not only in making "friends" (there was no physical contact) with this woman but now he sees what chaos she is capable of to save her own a**. She will lie through her teeth, talk out of both sides of her mouth and is making it sound like my husband is obsessed with her when we know it is the other way around.

She was constantly contacting him at work after he told her that this was not going any further. But once she had charges pressed against me he told me a lot of other information to prove that she is capable of pure destruction.

Why can I not stop thinking about her? Is it to avoid thinking about my husband maybe?

Thank you all for your words of support. I've been reading more and more and understand the process involved here.....but it's so hard to actually live it. It breaks my heart daily. I am in the middle of plan A, but don't know how long I can do it, and plan B scares the crap out of me. I know it should be done, but I just can't do it.

Damn his fog. I wish I had a remote control so I could either go back and meet his needs before this happened, or at least fast forward to whatever the outcome will be.

I knew life wouldn't be fair, but this is by far the worst pain I have ever felt. I am not the same person anymore.

HN/HN is a great book, but not the one you need right now. "Surviving an Affair" is the one you need.

A compilation of the best advice that helped us: </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> You can recover. Many people have. It isn't easy, and not everyone succeeds, but as long as you are both working on it, your chances are close to 100%. Since your spouse is continuing the affair, read What Are Plan A and Plan B? after reading the "Basic Concepts" links below. In that case, you need to start Plan A with the help of a marriage counselor (see item #2, below). There are a couple terrific posts about Plan A that are worth reading at: Plan A, Doormats and Love Busters by Zorweb and Cerri on Plan A, which will help you avoid some of the common pitfalls. Your situation is harder, but your chances of saving your marriage and actually making it better than before are still good. But, whether your spouse is "on board" or not, you should do three things:

1.) Learn. The most important and helpful single source of information for my wife and I was "Surviving an Affair" by Willard Harley (hereinafter referred to as "SAA") available at the Bookstore, Amazon.com, and bookstores all over. SAA is THE best book on the market for helping one get to the root of "the message of the affair" (BUT YOU HAVE TO DO THE QUESTIONAIRES!). It (along with the Basic Concepts section of this site) is also helpful for giving you a vision of what a great marriage should look like. The approach of SAA to this problem is that the best defense against affairs is to have a great marriage. My wife said we had a good marriage, but she still had an affair. She was kidding herself, but it was not until we read SAA and saw what a great marriage should look like that we could clearly identify the problem areas and had the tools necessary to fix them. So that you can get started right away, while waiting for SAA to arrive in the mail, read everything in the Basic Concepts section of this site. Next, read all the Q&A's on infidelity on this site. They are found at How to Survive Infidelity

The phrase "the message of the affair" is from the book "Torn Asunder", by Carder (hereinafter referred to as "TA"). I personally think this is the best book on affair recovery we have read. In particular it deals with the two different paths the recovery of the betrayed spouse (BS) and the wayward spouse (WS) need to take, and deals w/ remorse in a way that I prefer to SAA. Read it together, if your spouse is willing. If not, go through it yourself. If you or your spouse has issues with control, you might also want to read "The State of Affairs", (SOA) by Todd Mulliken, which also treats the remorse issue similarly to TA. SOA also deals with "the vision thing" for marriage, which is neglected in SAA.

2.) See a marriage counselor. This is hard. You need help. These boards are populated by amateurs. MC?s are professionals. There is a difference. They can help deal with issues the books don't cover, and customize things to your individual situation. That said, there are lots of bad MC's in the world. Read, and take to heart, How To Find A Good Marriage Counselor. You do not want an MC that is going to teach you how to live with an awful spouse, or how to adjust to divorce. Too many of them do, as is documented here: Hazardous Counseling. Reading that link may scare you off counseling, but it should give you some good ideas to ask a potential MC before you start w/ them, so you can avoid those that give you the wrong answers. You need one that is committed to helping couples have great marriages, and knows how to do that.

You are on an emotional rollercoaster right now, and there will be times that you will think it would be best to just divorce your spouse and go on with your life. Though there are no guarantees, recovery IS possible, but it takes time and effort. You will hate yourself if you don't do everything you can to make that happen. Give yourself the time you need.

3.) I understand that you may not be a person of faith, but for me, getting my spiritual life in order was crucial. As I said, this is hard. I knew I would need all the help I could get. Repenting of the habitual sins in my life let me stop pushing God away so I could hold on for dear life. I had to humble myself and ask Him what I had done wrong, and what I could do to be the husband He wanted me to be for his child, my wife. This was not about blaming myself. It was about doing what I could to do my part in having a great marriage. My wife could participate or not, but I had to know I had done everything I could do. It also helped me to let go of thinking about what SHE needed to do, since I couldn't control her, anyway.

You might also want to read through: WAT's Quick Start Guidelines for Betrayed Spouses, but keep in mind that these are the writings of amateurs. Get the books, read the articles, and see a GOOD counselor - you need the best help you can get.

Of course, that is just my opinions and what worked for me, who experienced it once, first hand. Harley, who has helped HUNDREDS of couples through this process, lays out his program in the following link: How to Survive Infidelity You will find that I mostly followed his plan. It works. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">