still trying to hold on to what she says isn't there but i'm hopeful something may change. still feel like a chump. ask her what can i do to give her hope she doesn't know-says be creative-i've already doubled up on my house cleaning chores and as always have spent plenty of time with kids. i work days, she nights-see each other for about an hour once a day and she says i do nothing but annoy her when i try to talk about our situation. been in therapy with her for about 15 months and 3 months ago she had an affair- while i thought we were doing better she was doing someone else- became pregnant from it- i have been snipped- and lost it before she attended her scheduled appointment for early termination. i forgave all of this because of a previous indiscretion on my part that i confessed to her. now she has been in contact with a lawyer and says there's nothing to work out, it's over but still will tell me she'll try to search herself for another week even though she's sure nothing will change. i can't let go and i don't know what to do. feel like a failure. what type of creative things might i try to make her see things in a different light? any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. and any feedback or advice.

I know exactly what you are going through. Eventhough there has been no affair that I am aware about my w did and is doing the same thing. It is like she woke up and decided to not to be married eventhough we know that is not how things are. I too tried everything that w said was the problem. The house, time w/kids, having fun, etc.I put in a lot of time and energy into the "So called problems" but to no avail. You said you been married 7 years? I have been married 15 w/3 boys. It's realy hard to think that she could not consider the kids, am I right? I can tell that the best thing you can do is to not beg her to work it out. Don't try to paint this picture of what the marriage can be like. Don't use guilt, eventhough it may be true. Don't use scare tactics or degrade her either. I have tried all of this and it only made things worse. If you are like me, one day you are hurting and want some kind of releif in the form of hope from your wife, but when wife tells you what you don't want to hear you get mad. At this point you use guilt, anger, threats, degrading; if you leave the children will resent you, or you will struggle on your own. I did these things, and day after day my feelings would change. I would go from hurt to mad. As long as I was mad I didn't want her either, but then comes the next day, hurting and begging her to work it out only to be told that she never sees loving me again. I have learned a lot from this site, I have always heard people say how helpful it is to have a support group and now that I am going through this I totally understand. My recent approach is to be nice to her no matter what, this way no matter what happens we still need to be freinds for the kids sake. I know this sounds hard but with Gods help it can be done. Sure you will have bad days where you hurt and want to beg or hurt her but resist it, it will be a releif for you and her. It is not about things that you have doubled up on around the house that is the problem, rather it is her own self that is unhappy, you are merrly a target of that unhappiness. Not that you haven't done anything wrong, it takes 2, but you are not the one giving up on the marriage. Only your w is responsible for her happiness, not you eventhough you can add to someones happiness you cannot make them happy. I know it is hard but try to think about a life away from your wife. Make plans if the worst happens and don't forget the pain you are suffering, she may change her mind if not now maybe later and you don't want to do to her what she is doing to you now, shutting you out. If the time comes that she wants you back, consider her hurt as well as your own, but for now set her free, let her go down the road she has chosen. If she is for you, she will come back. I hope that what I have said helps, I don't wish this on anybody. Herbie out, love to all.

quick update, she has told me that there is om at work she has liked since last summer. confessed she kissed him while at work. i'm still holding on and now she tells me she thinks she might be in love with him? how does this happen where a woman who is supposedly working on her marriage in therapy just happens to somehow start to have feelings for om and falls in love with om even though she only sees him at work and has busy job? how do you get to know a person well enough to believe your in love with them when your'e supposed to be working? says she will try to sort out her feelings and figure out if marriage is worth fighting for still, but how can she concentrate on what she must do when there's new situation that could be better (for her) on her mind the whole time? how can i make her see that 4 little ones depend on her to make the right choice? she says there's nothing inside her for me outside of friendship but i think she's rebelling against me for all my past sins. not treating her right or whatever. i know i haven't been the best husband to her in the past but i believe that if we followed the suggestions found in this site we could rebuild was has been lost. i'm optimistic and she's not sure she'd be willing to do anything. says she's confused. my heart is breaking while i wait and i am pretty sure iv'e already lost her to om.

faust,
She probably has been involved emotionally(EA) with this guy for some time and is just lying to you about the time frame. <p>The same thing happened in my case. I caught w and om talking on phone 2 days after EA turned to a PA. The best time frame I can put on the EA is 3 months. They worked at the same hospital, but different depts. I understand they started out just having coffee together. Other people she worked with told me they never suspected anything. She told me that they hugged one night and she knew she had found her soulmate.<p>After discovery she said we should do counseling but that om and her would give us respective spouses the summer to see if the marriages were worth saving. She was back seeing the guy the next week. The counseling never had a chance while she was seeing om at work.<p>That is what you are up against. She still sees the om at work. HE represents what is in the future for her, you represent the past and all she can see now is how "bad" it was.<p>You have to decide whether to Plan A or go to Plan B and let om assume all the responsibilities of meeting her EN.

another quick update- iv'e taken the tour of this site, actually after i read the basic concepts- even printed a fair amount of them to share with W and see if she thought it would be worth trying. to no avail of course, she's unwilling to do anything other than continue with her EA. i'm still very new to the site and am still picking up on the lingo and abbreviations. suggested plan A to her and got nowhere- again she's not willing to do that. asked her when was the last time she prayed and suggested she pray for willingness but i dont think she will. her response was yesterday and when i asked what she prayed for she said none of your business (probably for me to just give up and go away). i want to implement plan B but she wont leave the house and i don't want to be away from the children but i know i must avoid contact with her while she's having the A. trying all i can to make her see that we should work it out and she just says there's nothing inside of her that she can find to even give her glimmer of anything that she wants to be with me. all she can see is that she loves me like she would any other friend??? and she's sure she never really loved me the right way or as a wife should. i think she's lying to herself to compensate for her own guilt and justify what she is doing. but none of what i think means much at this point. still holding on to what is not there.

Frank,
You are lovebusting (LB) with out knowing it. By trying to educate/teach your wife, she will see you as either controling or treating her like an idiot.<p>Plan A is you changing the way you behave around her. The changes have to be permament too. There is something in your makeup that your wife dislikes and is what has driven her away. You need to determine what that is and correct it.<p>Plan A is to allow the wayword spouse (WS) to feel safe and comfortable about returning home. If you are threatening,preachy, angry, etc. she will not feel safe and it will, in her mind, justify her relationship with the om.<p>Plan A isn't easy, but that is where you have to start. Don't worry about Plan B, its too early for that right now.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by faust2112:
<strong>".. all she can see is that she loves me like she would any other friend??? and she's sure she never really loved me the right way or as a wife should. i think she's lying to herself to compensate for her own guilt and justify what she is doing. but none of what i think means much at this point. still holding on to what is not there."</strong><hr></blockquote><p>Sounds a lot like the stereotypical 'fogese' line "I love you but I'm not in love with you".<p>RWD has given you the essence of some of the MB principles, but there are more that you have to be aware of.<p>You must accept the fact that you can not force or even persuade her to give your marriage a chance to be repaired because, for the moment, her affair has totally consumed her and does not care what you think or feel about what she is doing to you and your marriage. Begging, pleading, threatening will not make her stop her affair. <p>Keep this in mind at all times. Affairs are nothing more than pure fantasy for the wayward spouse. The experts, like the Harley's, state that they can have a shelf life of anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. The problem is that the betrayed spouse is so desperate to recover his/her spouse's love that his/her emotional reactions often tend to prolong the affair by pushing the wayward spouse towards the other person at a time when the affair might be on its final days.<p>If you want to try the MB way, the ideal would be to counsel with the Harley's, if you have the dough. But if you don't have the money,then buy and read the Harley books 'Surviving an affair' 'Love busters' and 'His needs Her needs' before you try to implement any of the plans with only the information from the MB concepts page.<p>But don't think that following the MB path is an easy one because it is one of the most excruciatingly painful ones to achieve marital recovery. Make no mistake, you will be in an almost constant emotional roller coaster ride that will test your love for your wayward spouse and MAY, in the end, not be enough to save your marriage. Just read many of the stories in this and the other boards and you will see what I'm talking about.<p>While there is no guarantee that MB principles will save your marriage and reignite your wife's love for you, you can count on the fact that (even if your marriage dies) you will come out of the experience a much, much better person and that your wife will probably be doomed to repeat her failures in her future relationships.<p>Whatever you decide, I wish you and yours the very best and keep us posted.<p>Joe<p>[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: TooMuchCoffeeMan ]</p>

thanks for the info, i can see that even just my talking to her annoys her and i wish i knew what it is in my demeanor that causes this response. BTW my real name is Perry, not Frank. iv'e only been cruising around the site for about a week but it's the first thing that has given me hope since she's started discussing D. i thought that plan A was a bit of a stretch because she really doesn't seem interested in any of the info iv'e shown her from MB. she hasn't demanded that i leave but she does want the house when the D happens. she seems content to let me stay and take care of the kids while she goes to work every evening to spend time with him. probably doesn't help that i ask her to limit her contact with him at work, huh? i just don't know what to do or how to let go so i continue to make mistakes. little background on me- when we met i was 6 months sober in AA/NA, just sex and i broke it off before we developed anything. fast forward three years and she looks me up and we get together and soon thereafter i discover that i do love her. a week later she's PG. still sober all this time and working a decent recovery program. we marry and the rest is history 'til now. one day she asks why i can't have just one drink and i try to explain but end up showing her through the course of the next few years. lost a $70,000.00 a year job and suddenly she has to work instead of stay at home with kids. since working she has become more independent and less willing to compromise anything or include me in her life. spends more time out with friends on days off than she does with the children-excuse is "i'm out when theyr'e asleep". she works graves and i'm on days so even when she gets a day off it's not the same as my days off and if wev'e planned anything she is usually too tired to do anything. wer'e supposed to attend counseling every tue. when i get home from work but this week i went in alone while she slept. i know iv'e not been an outstanding H and in many ways i don't yet know what it takes to be that but i do see where iv'e been lacking in certain areas and am trying to correct these things and am willing to change if she tells me what will help her. through all this iv'e been on and off the wagon. initially i had 14 months back in january but when she told me of the affair she had and decided to terminate it i was pretty f'ed up and went back to my favorite lover. as of today i've been sober 3 days and it was a few weeks before that when i last used. it's really hard to keep my chin up right now so i'm finding it easier to do things that i know are wrong. thanks for all your support and feedback. i look forward to spending much time here. 'til the next time.

new update. divorce imminent, she's turned EA into PA and is now playing real dirty. straight to plan C for me but i will still hang out here and use the support to get me through. thank you all for being here.

just found out tonight that she is taking children and OM to her friends house all day to hang out. son tells me she is freely kissing him in front of the children. these are people that were present at our marriage and they condone what she is doing because theyv'e all been unfaithful themselves before and they also see me as the problem/enemy. her OM called this eve. to talk to her, she was laying down sleeping on couch and i told him she wasn't here(not yet aware they spent the day together) his response was "hey mother f'er, you better watch your back." i'm going to file a restraining order against him tomorrow. shortly after he called the police show up at my house telling me a neighbor called saying there was an argument going on. she's still sleeping on the couch though and they don't know which neighbor called. nor did they want to hear my tale of how this guy is stepping way over the line here. <p>is it just me or am i getting out of a very sick relationship here? starting to see letting go will not be too hard considering what i face everyday now.<p>lawyer is calling me tomorrow or next day and we'll see if i can fight for the kids. i'm broke but i have family behind me.<p>"to thine own self be true"

new update, monday i met with lawyer and his advice was "move out". i looked for places and luckily found one that day. arranged to pay for the next day after work. she left with children to hang out with OM for the evening after we argued and i asked her to leave them at home with me and not involve them in her new R. the next day she didn't come home and i went to work. two of my children missed school and we were all supposed to go to soccer practice when i got home, didn't happen. after work i paid for the apt. and went home to collect the boys. locks were all changed and the door was not being opened for me. i peeked in the little window in the door and saw OM sitting on the couch smiling and waving at me. went to garage to use phone and when i came back to the door she had taped a restraining order that was filed the day before on it. a few bags were on the porch with some of my personal stuff, but she wont let me get anything more from the house. nor am i allowed within 50 feet of either my house or my wife. all that was yesterday and i'm glad it's behind me 'cuz it was hard!!! hangin' in there and waiting for all this to be over so i can plan C. i know i'll be a better man after all is said and done but i can't stop the evil thoughts that are plaguing me now. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] [img]images/icons/frown.gif" border="0[/img]