Hi all!

I made a post in General questions called;

“The OW will divorce her H and wants mine. My H is confused.”

If you should want to read a more thorough explanation of what I am going through, look there. However I had a few questions in that post that I thought I should address here in the Plan A/B section and am looking for some good advice.

I have been Plan A:ing for only two weeks now.

I am not scared of losing my H anymore, and I am willing to continue plan A:ing until he comes to his decision (or go to Plan B when I´ve had enough). I have somehow found a calmness in me thanks to MB and the advice I have received here. I am calm because I am doing something, working for a cause. I am in a PLAN . I have given myself 6 months (plus minus) to prove my love to my H and to work on my own personal issues in order to improve myself as a wife, friend and person in general. I will continue to improve myself should I be forced to go in to Plan B (where I have no contact with my H).

I am certain that Plan B is the (necessary)wake up call for my H to jump into reality and for him and the OW to realize what they REALLY are facing. Reality. I cannot go there yet, since I need to find out what EN´s I have not met for my H. One of them is SF and that I am meeting (with pleasure I might add, since we have not had SF for a long time .Our sex life has taken a deeper and more passionate turn due to all of this).

I have trouble trying to find out how to ask my H what EN´s the OW is fulfilling. So I can see what else it is he is missing. I think it is on a business/professional level and I simply cannot see HOW I can get there? He is in the ever growing & changing IT business and things happen so rapidly there that I can´t keep up. The OW can because she is on my H level and working with exactly the same things!

My H´s business is his 2nd life, he lives and breathes his business. I have not taken part in that side of his life due to the fact that we have 3 small children, the day has only 24 hrs and I have not had time and the energy to be able to keep up with it. He comes home with new projects everyday? Am I supposed to educate myself in his business in order to understand him better? The OW has the biggest kick start since she has been working in the same line of business as my H for years. She is my H biggest client by the way!

How do I fulfil this EN called business support? What do I do? How in the world can I “compete” in giving him valuable advice, talking to him about his business (his other baby) with understanding? I have always said that his business was like having an extra child. But this child is “handicapped” and the only person that can give it care and love is my H. So that is why he spends so much time caring and loving it, understanding it. He is doing something he really desires and burns for. Can you see what I am up against with the OW?

By the way this is one of the reasons I´m not so scared about losing my H, because his business (his handicapped child) has been overriding our lives for so long and I have not been happy.But don´t get me wrong I still want to save this marriage because it is worth it all the same. If we ever get to the recovery stage these are issues we have to go through!

Another thing. What do you think it would do to my H if I asked him if it was O.K for me to start dating, since I needed some "care free time of my own" as this whole situation is eating me up? Not that I am even remotely interested in anyone else, but I am wondering what it would do to him psychologically if he felt that other men were interested in me, and in that way intensify his feelings that he may actually lose me? I have been asked out. Maybe I should tell him?

Is that ground I dare to tread on? Will it destroy too much in Plan A? Or is it Plan B stuff?

Can anyone tell me any concrete examples of what they are doing or have been doing in Plan A? I read an amazing thread here The Misapplication of Plan A. It is a MUST READ for everyone here. You will find it in General Questions, page 3 or 4. That thread, however, misses examples of what BS are doing in everyday life to slowly make the WS understand that us BS are willing to make changes and work on our marriages.

One more thing, what are the general opinions on confronting the OW? Or telling the other womans husband? Should I be doing that or, will that push my H and the OW more into each others arms?

By confronting the OW I am afraid my H will think, "….way to go, this is easy, now my W is talking to my lover, looks like they are going to figure it out". He can then just lay back and enjoy the show! He can then hope that either me or OW make the choices, so he does not have to lift a finger. And as I see it this is HIS CHOICE-NOT MINE. And until he has made that choice so that we can begin to recover, I should not be concentrating on anything else than "bringing him back by fulfilling his EN`s and like many put it -being a bit of a doormat!"

By the way last night I had a terrible headache so he wanted to give me a neck and back rub to make me feel better. It helps alot that he is not ignoring me in that sense.

All comments appreciated.

-queen-

If you haven't read the books Surviving an Affair and His Needs, Her Needs, I strongly suggest that you do. You are right to see this as a competition with OW. It is. Until you can get those books, read everything that you can from this site especially the stuff under Basic Concepts. This will give you a starting point. There are examples of what emotional needs men typically want. Those EN's listed are a good place to start working on improving yourself.

There is no EN called business support. As far as asking about dating, Plan A is not the place for that. Plan A is about becoming the best wife that you can be by doing a more effective job at meeting his emotional needs and by reducing any love busters that you may be doing. Asking him if you can start dating again would be a definite love buster. Remember, you are competing with OW. This is one area that you have her beat. She is actively involved with another man (her husband) while you are not. Men are funny about knowing that if they will do "it" with them, they will do "it" to them. If she will cheat on her husband with him, then the likelihood is that she is cheat on him if he ever becomes her husband.

Confronting OW is something that you posted about that your H was pleased that you didn't do. To confront the OW, you would be lighting a stick of dynamite. It could blow up in your hand. It is best to allow the affair to die a natural death. If you confront the other woman, you will possibly end the affair, but your H could possibly resent you for it or it could speed things along in the two of them getting together. You need to work on your Plan A quite a bit before that. You have time on your side in which to do that since OW hasn't even told her H yet. Use that time to your advantage. Confronting OW would take that advantage away.

The only thing that I see needs to be done is to improve your ability to meet your H's needs so that what he has with you is better than anything that he can dream of having with OW.

Every Plan A is different and it really depends upon which needs of his that you are meeting and which ones you need to improve upon. For myself, I improved on meeting his need for an attractive spouse by taking better care of myself and dressing more attractively. In doing so, I raised my own self-esteem which is an attractive quality as well. I worked on smiling and laughing more even though it was the last thing I really felt like doing which also contributes to meeting his need for an attractive spouse. A smile is one of the most attractive things that you can put on.

I also improved on meeting his need for sexual fulfillment. I'd flirt with him and tease him which is something I had stopped doing over the years. When I got up in the morning, I would put on one of his work shirts with only one button fastened. Even with my hair messed up and me in socked feet, he found this sexy. He told me that every morning when he left for work, he spent the day knowing that he left something "turned on" at home.

I had always done a good job at meeting his need for domestic support. Unfortunately, this was one of his less important needs and I was wasting my energy to work so hard to meet this need. While I continued to meet this need, I didn't mind letting this sit on the backburner and focusing my energy on making the most effective love deposits by meeting his most important needs better.

As for myself, I was doing a terrible job meeting his need for recreational companionship. As with you, I had small children and one of them is disabled so finding medically skilled babysitters was difficult. I knew that I had to find a way to improve on this so I did. I went to the trouble of finding someone who could handle my daughter's challenges while watching my other kids too. I started playing softball again even though I had begun to hate the sport since H spent so much time playing. I played on my H's company team for women. Even though it wasn't directly with my H, we often practiced against each other and he saw me often. I would make the effort to attend his games and cheer for him and he would do the same for me. I also started getting babysitters so that we could go out to dinner or dancing again. We also started going to basketball games again. These were things that we use to do, but had stopped once our daughter was born. It's good to start doing those things that you were doing with each other when you fell in love with each other. It's a place to start and you can explore new interests from there. Whatever you do, have fun at it.

Another thing that I was doing horribly on was meeting his need for appreciation. When he's doing very little to be appreciated for (like having an A and lying all the time), it was hard to show him any appreciation at all. I had to really focus on the few good things that he was doing and go from there by letting him know that I truly valued what he did and appreciated his effort. I had to remember that OW was beating me out on this one by stroking his ego every chance she got which made him feel really good to be around her. I knew that I had to do a much better job at this. I had to work very hard at this one.

At the same time, I had to try to eliminate my love busters. It's hard when you are so angry about the A and the lying that goes with it. Reducing this was critical to keeping all of the love deposits that I was busting my butt to make. This is where I spent the most effort working to improve myself as a person. I started working out to help reduce my stress and anger so that I wasn't taking it out on H. Knowing that the OW wasn't around him much and most likely wasn't doing any love busters during their time together, it was a strong motivator for improving myself. I also went on anti-d's when exercising alone wasn't enough to keep my stress and anger in check.

Since I have reached a level that I am comfortable with and have maximized the love deposits that I made with H and reduced the love busters, I moved on to Plan B. It's working so far. I hope this helps.