Pops,<p>Please remember that anything I say is in reference to my A and things may be different in your situation. <p>you wrote:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>i will always wonder what happened and where i failed.<hr></blockquote><p>Up until a few months ago even I would not have been able to tell you why I had an A. It was not until I found this site and my H and I completed the EN questionaire that I truly understood.Before things turned bad for us he was only meeting one of my top 5 ENs, that of Family Commitment. It turns out that I had been meeting most of his ENs at the time.(before the A not during) Does that mean I blame him for my A? No, absolutely not. I am the one who made that choice. Unfortunately I was not equipped with the information and skills required to save a marriage at that time. I now know how wrong I was. I made a mistake because I did not know how else to handle the situation. But as we all know, ignorance is no excuse so as I see it I am the one who failed. And I have told my H many times, during and after the A, that he is not to blame for what happened. <p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>the first issue i would like to address is the issue that you didn't give your h an ultimatum. not true. <hr></blockquote><p>This is a very touchy one for me. I was the one who ended the A, and I found out I was pregnant afterward. It's been said that I have put my D first but I did not do anymore for her than I did for my other kids. I gave her a chance at life and to grow up in a safe and loving environment. I'm sure it has a lot to do with maternal feelings and being a woman, but I could not have an abortion. I researched it quite a bit, both the physical as well as emotional aspects of it. I spoke with a few women whom I knew had had abortions and in the end I knew it was something I could not do. In this day in age I could not have gone with adoption either. I would have obsessed over it for the rest of my life wondering if she were safe and happy. When I made these decisions I did consider her to be MY child, no one elses. I was the only one who would have to live with those decisions had I chosen either one so I made the only decisions that I could live with. Both these things I feel would have had a very adverse effect on my attitude towards saving my marriage. Therefore I made the decisions I did in the hopes of still having a chance at saving my marriage. My H then had a choice to make. Granted not a very easy one but he had to weigh the pros and cons just as I did when I made my decisions about the baby. I don't think he would have chosen to stay if he thought there was no hope. I have to let you know that right from the beginning when he found out that I was pregnant he told me that he would stand by me no matter what I decided to do. I did not keep this baby because she was a reminder of the OM, or because she was part of him or any other reason having to do with him. I was not trying to hold on to something. As I said, when I made these decisions I considered her mine and only mine. My H knows that I consider him to be her daddy. He may not be her bio father but he is her daddy. I've said it before, anyone can be a father but it takes someone special to be a dad.<p>
When I say I want it back I am not refering to the marriage itself but more to the love, caring , friendship and honesty that we did have at one time. We are not all the way there yet but things do get better all the time. At least we are moveing in the right direction. I still feel the invisable wall between us sometimes but I feel it less and less. This is going to take time and hard work but it is so worth it.<p>The first few months after the baby was born were rough. My H was great with the baby. Very loving, caring and affectionate. It was me he had a problem with. He was lovebusting on me big time. I understood him feeling that way but it was not doing us any good. I finally told him I was moving out but that I was not going to the OM, that was definately over and I did not want to be with him, instead I would be getting my own place. I told him if he needed time to see that I was not going to end up with the OM if I left that was fine but I could not stay with him unless we were both going to work on our marriage because I could not do it alone. We ended up talking for 3 days and things got so much better after that. I think that even though the A had been over for about a year at that point that he still had his doubts. We have also been putting the information available on this site to great use. I don't know how much you and FH talk, not so much about the A but about how you feel about each other. I have been trying to let my H know how I feel about HIM in order to help with any feelings of insecurity or doubt. I know his trust in me is much better. He knows where I am and what I'm doing at all times. He does not check up on me nearly as much as he did at first so I think he is doing better in that area.<p>
Financially things are a little tough right now but we have been worse off. I was given 3 baby showers so we did not need to buy much for the baby at all. And now the $90 a week covers her basic living expenses. We do have to add a bedroom on the house this spring as we only have two but that was something we had been talking about doing for years anyway. We will turn the two old large bedrooms into three smaller ones so that the kids each have thier own room. My husband is a carpenter so this helps alot. I have more than carried my wieght financially through out this marriage and have made great sacrifices to do so so I don't think this a big area of concern. As far as visitation, we have actually come to appreciate it. It gives us the time to do things you just can't do with a baby around. While she was on a visit Saturday my H and I took the boys bowling and out to lunch. <p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>we have failed to be man enough to keep our w's happy and they felt the need to search out for sexual satisfaction elsewhere <hr></blockquote><p>Please Pops... don't feel this way. In my situation (and I think it's probably the same with most married women) the A was 99% emotional and 1% sexual. I was not looking for SF. And to be absolutly totally honest with you, the OM did not even compare to my H in that department. But that was not what I was looking for so it was not that important. It was the emotional aspect that had me hooked.<p>I now have the information and skills I need to get this marriage back on track and so does my H. We are BOTH making the effort as it is something that can not be done alone. If all the feelings you are having right now are stopping you from trying 100% you need to resolve them one way or another. If you need something from FH you need to let her know. I only know that things won't get better unless you are both giving it your all. It sounds like a very big concern of yours is what people think. What they think about you now or what they think about your "dysfunctional" family. You are wasting way too much energy on worrying about what other people think. I know, I've been there. My H has never worried about what other people think about anything. He spent many many years trying to get me into that line of thinking. It took me a long time but it is so much less stressful if you can actually do it. I don't know how long you and FH have been in recovery but please don't give up until you can honestly say that you have given it your all.<p>[ March 11, 2002: Message edited by: want it back ]</p>

wib,,, i know your reference is to your own personal affair as is mine. as far as similarities. i also understand that although each persons situation is different it just seems that from your posts yours and mine seem to running more closer to the same circumstances then any others i have read here. i do not mean to argue with you but rather hoped that i my learn from you what fh is feeling and possibly give you some insight as to what may be somewhere in your h's thoughts.<p>i have not bee able to figure out the cut and paste stuff so i will do the best i can. <p>i feel there were some emotional needs that i obviously was not meeting for fh. my feeling of why this affair happened was due to fh's feeling trapped fornearly 20 years raising kids and all of a sudden she was out in the adult work place and she was unaware (a little naive)to the way morality has changed. also she was having some trouble with getting older and and her own self worth. these things coupled with what you said about niether of us having the tools we needed to save aour marriage. i saw what was happening with her and the om and begged her to get help before it got out of hand and she refused asking me to trust her. i even convinced her to speak with a marriage counselor together and his advice was for me to back off and trust her. although it was very hard to back off when all the signs pointed toward her ever increasing emotional closeness to the om i tried to trust that she would make the right choices. well she didn't and here we are. wonder if i could sue the counselor for bad advice? (i know that won't be possible) <p>the issue of ultimatum i understand is touchy with you as it is for me. what i am trying to say here is that once you made the decision to keep your baby did your husband have any other choice then to try to except it if he felt he loved you and did not want to divorce you. fine line? most likely. but probably more likely depends on which side you are standing. any way the point i wanted to get across is that from your h's point of view he may see that he had no choice. might be a topic for along talk if the 2 of you haven't hit this subject yet.<p>as for who ende the affair in my case it ws fh. she only ended it after she had become pregnant. so i have my doubts as to why she is back. she says she figured out what she was screwing up. yet when i look at how it supposidly happened she realized that the sexual part was not right and that she needed to work on her marriage but did not start doing that until i finally cornered her and actually had to drag the fact of her pregnancy out of her. remember i have shared 6 births with this woman and probably knew more about her monthly cycle's timing then she did. and i knew she was 2 months late. she had found out about her condition and went to the om with whom they had tried to abort, which she obviously couldn't do. then they had even made plans for how he would support his daughter and whether he would be able to take her to guatamala to see his parents or not. sorry i'm rambling. the point was (i think) that i can understand the difficulty a woman has with abortion and adoption and i have always thought that adoption would be more difficult then abortion. just my opinion.<p>one of the problems i am having that may be similar to your h's is that as your screen name means you want the love, caring friendship, closeness, etc. back in your marriage. for me i feel i love fh but i don't have those desires to do all the little things for her anymore. you know the things like bringing her a fresh towel when she gets out of the shower just because, bringing her flowers for no reason, picking up something at the grocery store that she may pass on, etc.. those are the feelings that i want back in my life. <p>another question is how is your h with you and d when you are out in public? i still have a hard time with this one. it is not caring what others think but rather the fact that i don't fel the bond towards grace that i think i should. maybe it's a fear of allowing myself to get close to her knowing she will eventually know her bio father also. it is not a fear of my ability to to be a good daddy to her. i have 7 kids (the oldest from a relationship prior to meeting fh). <p>as for the sexual and emotional percentages of an affair i understand that with most women it is more emotional then sexual. this however is another area in which a man can feel that he failed. remember that men in general express emotion though sex. also think about the fact that he is i am out busting my hump to provide for my family and give them a nice home. i also take time off work to watch the kids when fh needs to run errands where children would be in the way. i haven't worked more then one weekend a year for the last 21 years of marriage as i always figured that was family time. i have always been very active in our kids activities as my father could never make any of my little league games or football games because he had to work. fh said i gave to much time to the kids and not enough to her. we talked about this subject many times. we would also go out to dinner and a movie at least 2 out every 3 weeks without the kids and were able to sneak away for a night or 2 alone every 7 - 8 months. when i refered to busting my hump it was because i am not a white shirt worker but instead run my own hands-on drywall contracting business. as you mentioined your husband is a carpenter you know that his work is very physical. i am not complaining in any way about my job it has provided for all my families necessities and allowed me great freedoms to spend time with my family.<p>well i have to go will write more later.<p>
pops

Pops<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> . my feeling of why this affair happened was due to fh's feeling trapped fornearly 20 years raising kids and all of a sudden she was out in the adult work place and she was unaware (a little naive)to the way morality has changed. also she was having some trouble with getting older and and her own self worth. these things coupled with what you said about niether of us having the tools we needed to save aour marriage. i saw what was happening with her and the om and begged her to get help before it got out of hand and she refused asking me to trust her. i even convinced her to speak with a marriage counselor together and his advice was for me to back off and trust her. although it was very hard to back off when all the signs pointed toward her ever increasing emotional closeness to the om i tried to trust that she would make the right choices. well she didn't and here we are. wonder if i could sue the counselor for bad advice? (i know that won't be possible)
<hr></blockquote><p>After reading this I don't see how you can possibly feel that you failed in any way. I can understand all the new adjustments that fh was making and I understand all too well the feelings of low self esteem. In my situation I was the one who wanted to get counseling before anything had happened but my H thought we could work it out ourselves. Maybe that made me think he was taking me for granted or something, I don't know. Point is, that it seems like you did everything you possibly could at the time. Understand that the A had to do with FH's feelings about HERSELF not you. If that had to do with some of her ENs not being met then it is something that can definatly be fixed.<p>
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> she only ended it after she had become pregnant. so i have my doubts as to why she is back. she says she figured out what she was screwing up. <hr></blockquote><p>Even though I had ended the A before I knew I was pregnant it still made me realize more than anything what I stood to lose. It's almost like a wake up call. I'm sure FH was scared to death which may have affected her decision making at the time. I myself could not stand to keep it to myself and told my H about 1/2 hour after I took the home test. I did not tell the OM until about a month after that.<p>
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> one of the problems i am having that may be similar to your h's is that as your screen name means you want the love, caring friendship, closeness, etc. back in your marriage. for me i feel i love fh but i don't have those desires to do all the little things for her anymore. you know the things like bringing her a fresh towel when she gets out of the shower just because, bringing her flowers for no reason, picking up something at the grocery store that she may pass on, etc.. those are the feelings that i want back in my life.<hr></blockquote><p>Well this I'm not sure about. I can't say that my H has actually ever done all those nice little things for me before so I don't really expect them now. There was quite a while though when he would tell me that he just didn't feel like he could be himself around me because being himself didn't stop me from having an A. I could see the difference in him at those times and he was not himself. I wanted him to be comfortable enough to be himself around me again and he is now. He's not afraid anymore and I don't know if it's because enough time has passed or if it's because I tried so hard to get back to my old self and he saw that or what.<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> another question is how is your h with you and d when you are out in public? i still have a hard time with this one. it is not caring what others think but rather the fact that i don't fel the bond towards grace that i think i should. maybe it's a fear of allowing myself to get close to her knowing she will eventually know her bio father also. it is not a fear of my ability to to be a good daddy to her. i have 7 kids (the oldest from a relationship prior to meeting fh). <hr></blockquote><p>My H is very good with her in public. He insists on carrying her everywhere we go, to the mall etc. We went to a fair this past summer and ran into all kinds of people we know, some only he knew, and he would introduce her as his daughter. Just about everyone knows that she is not his and he knows they know, yet he still acts as if she is his. He does not seem to be uncomfortable at all in those situations. But like I said before, he really is one of those people who could care less what other people think about him. He told me the other night all on his own that he loves her the same as he does the boys. What is it exactly that worries you about Grace maybe knowing her bio father someday? Surely that will not take away from the love she feels for you. Children love unconditionally and I read somewhere that babies automatically will love anyone whom they can sense loves them. If she does someday know her bio dad she will still love you and think of you as daddy if you will let her have that chance. Something I just want you to think about. If FH is aware of your relunctance to accept Grace I know that it is bothering her something fierce. While I was pregnant my H was very indifferent. He did not go to any appointments with me as he had for the boys. I felt alone, ashamed and was sure he was doing it just to punish me. Those were the not so good times. How you feel about Grace is directly and personally affecting FH I can assure you.<p>
Drywall, huh? We got a few walls going up in a couple months. Are you busy? [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img]

wib,,, thanks for the reply. you made some very good points. i will write later as we are in the middle of prepping the house for my oldest daughters wedding in 2 weeks. two down and six to go.<p> i'm never to busy to turn down work. especially if i can arrange it to include a small vacation. we live in southern california. how about yourselves?

A wedding, how wonderful!!! My dad had to marry off six girls!!! Poor man, 6 daughters and we only had one bathroom!! Do your other children know about the A and about Grace? If they do, how are they handling it? <p>I know from your posts that on some level you may feel like FH choose Grace over her marriage to you and that may be why you are having such a hard time completely accepting her. FH choose to be with YOU. Even though I choose to keep my D I still loved my H very very much and wanted our marriage to work very badly. It is not easy and we did have many many rough spots but things right now are the best they have been since D-day. As I said before, It is important for FH to show you that it is you she wants to be with so if there are things you need from her right now let her know. My H told me all he needed to know was that I was happy being with him and that he was making me happy. So this I try to show him everyday. <p>My gosh, Southern California!!! [img]images/icons/cool.gif" border="0[/img]
Well, we live about as far away from each other as you can get in the states. Maine. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img]

Pops, I just went back and read the few posts that FH has made. It seems as if she has truly realized her mistakes and is so sorry for what she has done. She probably carries more guilt than you can imagine. It is aslo obvious how very much she loves you and the family. I know she doesn't post anymore and I can understand why but let her know she can post to me anytime if she wants to. I know you guys can make this work. Like I said, of course it won't be easy but anything worth having never is.

wib,,, i have spoken with fh and asked her to talk to someone. she has refused to do so. she doesn't even talk to her sisters or her dad about our situation. i think she needs to talk with someone else other then me to give her a way to vent without fear of me getting upset in any way. but she is the kind that will just keep everything inside herself. this scares me as i never seem to know exactly where she is or if she will go off the deep end again. i also feel that it will keep her in a depressed state from the guilt longer. <p>mai(brrrrr)ne.. i grew up outside of philadelphia. as a kid my family traveled through the new england area. there was some beautiful country. i've been here for over 35 years now. if that drywall were to wait until maybe october when all the leaves are turning i would seriously consider making the trip. i have been wanting to go east during that time of year for many years with fh as she has never experienced what i think is the most magnificent time of year. thought it was getting close when we finally had all our little ones in school. oh well i'll just keep on dreaming.<p>good luck with the room,
pops

Pops, I can understand FH not being able to talk to her family. I have 5 sisters, 2 with whom I am very close. There was just too much said while I was going through everything and now I am just afraid to speak of anything personal with them. In any case it is you that she should be talking to. She has to not be afraid to talk to you about anything.
Sorry, we can't wait til October for that new room. We've shared our room with the baby long enough and she needs to move out now! [img]images/icons/wink.gif" border="0[/img] But I think you should still consider making that fall foliage trip with FH sometime. You might even leave Grace with someone for 3 or 4 days and make it a second honeymoon!!!

want it back,
may I ask how old your child is and how long ago your d day was? And are you a young mother or older as I am? If I am asking too personal of questions, please forgive me, I am just trying to see how similar our situations are if any, and it is kind of nice to know a little about each other. Pops says I should chat with you about my feelings maybe you have felt the same way and could help me understand what I am or shall I say we are going through. my life seems to be getting more difficult lately, I feel very much alone--lonely, isolated, and unloved. I know this is my fault and i am not trying to get any kind of sympathy, i am just trying to deal with what is going on. pops is not "in love" with me anymore, he says he loves me, but I might as well be his sister. It is so hard, I love him so much, he says he wants me to show it in little things that i can do for him, he wants me to get him to fall in love with me again. How do i do this? I try to meet him when he comes home or at least find him when he does-hug or kiss him is how i greet him. I get up when he does, the other day we were grocery shopping and I was going out to the car, i paused and turned around, i had this urge to give him a kiss, i just felt so much love for him at that moment, so i walked back to him and leaned in to give him a kiss and he backed away so that i couldnt, i was so hurt, he wants me to show him affection, but i felt like he was ashamed to be with me at that moment, i felt so ugly at that moment, my heart hurt so. he wants to make love at night, but during the day its like he seperates from me. he goes out to dinner and lunch with other people but never with me anymore, his excuse is i have grace. so i dont do anything unless its a full fledge family going to carls jr or something. he looks at women all the time now, not just a little glance but he will follow them with his eyes, i hurt so much and am so depressed, i feel i could climb into bed and sleep forever, i just want the pain to go away, i am so tired of crying, i dont know how to make things better, i dont think i would ever survive without him. he says he wants our marriage but sometimes i feel he is doing this for the kids only, cause he says he would never have stayed with me if the kids had been older. so is he just staying till they are older, will i live with this fear forever? Will i ever be able to win his trust back, i am the one that ended the A and i have done changes in my life so i have no contact with the om, it has been about 10 months since there was any contact, and i hope it stays that way for the rest of my life. will he ever look at me with pride and love in his eyes, i miss that so much, i miss him so much, i want someone i can hold hands with, and kiss with and cuddle with, whether in private or public, i want our love to shine. I want people to see us and know that we truly love each other, i want my children to see that. I miss being loved. I know i have no right in wanting, i know i have done so many wrong choices. I felt i was always a good person, caring about others and their feelings, never doing anything to hurt anyone. why i took this turn in my life, to lose everything and everyone i ever loved, it was probably vanity, i was scared of being old,i had lost loved ones that i miss so dearly, i was feeling unappreciated, i didnt feel loved, i felt like i didnt matter and i was always the last person on the totum pole, i was at my lowest point and i gave in to temptation, and i will always regret it and am having a hard time even forgiving myself, knowing the deep hurt i caused to the only man i have ever truly loved. sometimes i dont know how i can truly live with myself. he says if he cant find a connection with grace, he wont be able to stay in the marriage. what about a connection with me? how do i get him to feel again, to want to stay with me and no one else, to feel secure with me, to want to grow old with me, i so want to grow old with him. he is worried about money and wants me to get child support, that scares me but i will do it for him and for grace. but i dont know if i will be able to handle visitations if the om takes his right to have them. i think it will kill me seeing my daughter leave me. i am so protective of my children, it was hard on me when they had their first sleepover, much less grace going with her bio father whom i really dont know when you get down to it and his wife, i dont know how she feels about me and if it would be taken out on my daughter, it scares me so. i do want to go back to work, but that worries pop also, cause that is how this all started, but i know in my heart i can be trusted, even though i can understand how he has fears, because i broke that trust after all these years. but he wants me to go back to work for the income and i miss it and i would feel like i am contributing to our lives if i could help financially. he needs a new truck, his is on its last leg, we have repaired it so many times, but cant afford it without more money coming in, he would like to start flying again, but again its the $'s. so i really need to go back for his help and my usefullness. gosh i know i am rambling on and probably not making any sense and jumping from one thought to another. thanks for listening. probably would be a better idea if i wrote down my thoughts first before posting.

FH,
I am glad you decided to post. I know what it is like not to have anyone you feel like you can talk to. I am 38 yrs old, my H is 40 and our D is almost 11 mo. I have two older sons ages 12 and 13. And like you and pops we planned on no more children and were getting very comfortable in the freedom that comes without having little ones around. My A started out as an emotional one as most do and my H has known about that for close to 4 yrs now.(I told him I had feelings for another man). It ended and started up many times in the course of 3 years and he stuck with me through all the lies and pain. I finally separated from him for a week to "sort things out" and it was at that time that I realized what a mess I had made of everyones lives. I ended the A and it was a week or two after that when I found out I was pregnant. I told my H right away and I think up to that point he had not been sure if the A had ever gotten physical or not. So we really had two d-days. EA almost 4 yrs ago and PA almost 1 1/2 yrs ago. He told me he would stand by me whatever I decided to do about the baby. I looked into abortion but could not do it and explained to him why. He was very detached throughout my pregnancy. Didn't go to any Dr. appts or ultrasounds as he had for my sons. Didn't show any interest in feeling the baby kick or listening to her heartbeat. These things gave me the same feelings that you are having now. Lonely, isolated, unloved and also ashamed. He was there when she was born. It was a very scary labor. My water broke 4 wks before her due date. At the hospital they told me they were going to induce labor because I had a strep B infection and it was too dangerous to wait. The labor itself was not very long, about 3 hrs, but the baby was in distress most of the time. Very scary when the nurse runs in every 10 min. to flip you over so the baby's heartrate will come back up. During my labor I could see the genuine fear in my H's eyes. He is usually so strong, my rock, but it was clear that he was frightened for this baby. She was finally born wieghing only 4 1/2 lbs. We both held her then they wisked her away to the ICU where she spent the next 10 days. I went to see her every day for 12 hrs and it was an hour drive to the hospital. My H remarked a few times during her stay in the hospital that he was afraid she was going to forget him since he had only been able to see her a few times on the weekend. When she came home my H was fine with the baby but very distant to me. He would not go out of his way to spend time with the baby but when he did it was clear that he loved her. The next 3 or 4 months were horrible. He refused to do anything to help me as far as the baby was concerned. He told me I just wanted him to prove that he loved me by doing these things and he didn't think he had to prove anything. I wanted desperatly to have the energy to give to him, to show him I loved him, but without any help with the baby I just did not have that energy so we were in a vicsious cycle. It got to the point where I actually passed out twice from exhaustion. Things were very bad between the two of us at that point. He would come to bed at night and I would be crying and he would just roll over and go to sleep. We were not even speaking to each other unless it was necessary. I could not stay in the same house with him any longer with things the way they were. I told him I was going to move out as soon as I found a place. I think on some level he was trying to make things so bad for me to see if I would run back to the OM. I told him he could wait and see but I was not going to go back to the OM. Anyway this was the turning point. We both knew we had to do something. All he wants from me are the things you seem to be doing with pops. He wants me to be happy to see him when he gets home, give him a kiss and hug for no reason at all, tell him I love him first, things like that. It has truly made a difference. I think the main difference in your situation and mine is that pops is having a hard time accepting Grace. My H never seemed to have a problem with the baby, it was me he had the problem with so once we fixed our problem things got much better. <p>Does pops spend any time with Grace at all? Does he spend any time alone with you at all? Pops, if you are reading this too please try to do these things even if you don't feel like it. Maybe after a while it will start to get easier and maybe even enjoyable. When our D gets fussy my H will put on some soft music and dance with her around the living room and sing to her. She puts her little head down on his shoulder and "sings" with him. I swear he loves it just as much as she does. Have either of you read Surviving an Affair yet? If you haven't, I suggest it.<p>FH, even though things are much better between my H and I there are still many times when I feel the guilt and the shame of what I've done . I don't know if those feelings ever go away.<p>As far as letting the Om have visitation I guess that's a personal decision. We really didn't have a choice in the matter. If I could have I would have chosen no visitation. It's not really bad right now because she only goes 3 days a week for a few hours. No overnights yet. That is when it will get tough. Her bio dad is a good father to her and although his GF isn't crazy about me the OM says she is good with the baby. I do trust him enough to know that he wouldn't let anyone hurt her in any way. All in all I would've liked to have gone back to being just a "normal" family.<p>I wish I could tell you that you are doing something wrong or give you some other ideas on what to try but it seems you are doing for pops everything that my H wanted from me. If I'm correct, Grace is only about 3 mo. old. Maybe not enough time has gone by. I understand all the feelings of fear and desperation you are having right now as I went through them during my whole pregnancy and for 4 months after our daughter was born. They seem like a million miles away now. Please hang in there and keep doing what you're doing even though it may seem hopeless at times. I'm sure you know by now how insecure pops is feeling about himself so keep that in mind. Maybe he is looking at other women to see if it bothers you so he will know that you care.(I sure hope that's all it is pops!!!) or trying to make you feel some of the pain he has. He also may doing what I belive my H was doing which was trying to punish me for what I had done. All understandable but hard for you and I to understand when we know how sorry we are and how much we love them and how much we want our marriages to work. You sound alot like me FH. I am the type of person who feels guilty for killing a spider, I am an extremely over protective mom,(my boys would tell you that), and I never ever in a million years thought I could or would ever have an A. Please take care of yourself. Take some time for yourself even if it is just taking a bath and give this some more time. Most importantly keep the lines of communication open between you and pops.