Dear Conqueror,<P>You are going to have to get to the bottom of this. I have been/am there too so I know how hard it is. For some reason WS`s turn into blithering idiots when it comes to hiding things surrounding their A`s even though the BS`s know what they are up too.<P>Because of this we BS`s imagine even worse scenarios than what actually exists, in some cases though, not all. It does sound like your H is still hiding things. You need to suck it up and find out the facts. <P>That is the best hope to save your marriage, all the facts on the table. You can only forgive what you know about.

My hands are tied because I promised H I wouldn't do anything in regard to OW without his okay.<P>He's shutting me out again. Our insurance doesn't cover marriage counseling, but the intake person said that even though just one of us could be the official client, the therapist could talk to both of us as part of the individual therapy. So when I asked him if he was going to the first appointment with me tomorrow, he said the therapy was just for me and that he was only supposed to be brought in when necessary. I then suggested that he get his own therapist to help him figure out why he keeps betraying me by continuing to work with OW, and I also said I imagined that if he didn't come with me to my therapist, she would probably be trying to help me figure out why I tolerate the continued betrayal. He's been the Iceman ever since.<P>Anytime I've mentioned the A or its sequelae (my current gynecological problems), he punishes me like this. He hasn't met my ENs in years, but I did not have an A, yet I am the one who continues to be punished. All my family and friends want me out of this abusive relationship.<P>When I suspected he was having an A and read everything on this site, that was when I thought maybe I could forgive him and try to rebuild the marriage. I thought that if we followed Harley's guidelines, we'd have a chance of saving our marriage. I shared all that with him when he wanted to reconcile, and he promised to do "anything".<P>Since then (D-day almost 1 mo. ago), he has reneged on that promise and outright states he is going to do it HIS way and is NOT going to follow anyone's script, including mine. He has refused to read SAA, and when he reluctantly let me read Chapter 5 to him, he was offended because he didn't think any of it applied to him, that HE is different, he can handle working with OW.<P>I have been hanging on trying to see signs of improvement, progress, or hope, but he has just gotten worse over the past month, and I have just gotten more depressed.<P>My last hope was that he would hear from the counselor what he refuses to hear from me, but now that is dashed. I figure the individual counseling will be another stressor for me because it will probably be just another person trying to get me to see what H is doing to me and how hopeless it is.<P>I'm still not ready to throw in the towel, but the thought of going through the next 5 months as I have the last 1 month is just overwhelming. Since he has not ended the A properly, I have constant anxiety about sexual issues and the need to protect myself. Do I just insist on condoms and try to get through it?<P>I am right back where I was before the A. Just shutting up about how I feel because he simply DOES NOT CARE. I feel like I am just serving a prison sentence and I'm just hanging on until my release. It no longer feels like I'm saving my marriage. It feels like I'm just going through the motions so that I can look back and feel that I did everything I could for my children's sake, but deep down I already feel that it is hopeless, that he will never change.<P>I read HNHN before this marriage and applied it through most of the marriage. I feel like I plan A'ed or close to it for nearly the entire marriage until I started suspecting he was having an A, then I detached. I guess after this many years, I am tired of plan A. My main hope was that after the A he would finally wake up, see that our marriage was in trouble and actually do some of the work himself for a change. No such thing.<P>Everything is just the same as it always has been. I'm expected to meet his needs and my own as well. It really gets old after 10 years.<P>Conqueror

Dear Conqueror,<P>I can understand how you are feeling. Years of trying to do the right thing and make the marriage work and accepting things that you KNOW are unacceptable. <P>The situation with my 2nd H has been the same. He did have an A but that was only one small part of the problem. He had an addiction to pot which led him to do some very stupid things. He tried to grow a field of it with his pot buddy friend a couple of years ago. I found out about it and hit the roof. That was the limit for me. He left the field for his buddy to tend alone but would not stop seeing this idiot friend nor would he bar him from coming to our home. This situation was completely unacceptable to me but my hand were tied. My H was also very angry with me and also an iceman.<P>It funny how when a spouse is caught doing something completely over the top how they can turn it all around and make it about YOU.<P>My H also refused to aknowledge his part of the marital demise and refused to seek help. I was the one with the problem in his opinion. <P>Conqueror, I was feeling just like you are now at the end of last summer. I had to make the decision that things were going to change one way or another. I had had enough. I wasn`t going to continue my marriage according to my H`s rules and hope that one day he would see the light. There had to be some sort of catalyst. I made the firm decision that we both had to drastically change or the marriage was over. I had my bags packed and at the door more than once. Fortunately my H realised that this time I meant business. Years of threatening and pleading were over. I was ready to act. <P>We are still working out problems now but things are much better now than they were throughout the first eight years of our marriage. My has has stopped the pot and now is in AA. He now realises the friendships with other women are totally unacceptable. We`ve had several setbacks along the way but at least we are on the right track now, I think. <P>I think my H thought that I was committed to our marriage that although I was extremely unhappy I would end up putting up with any crap he dished out and I did for the longest time. <P>When my H`s A came out last summer he did wake up a bit but not completely. I had to take a hard line and keep pushing. I know what I need for a happy marriage and he will have to do his part too for it to work. <P>When the A came out my H did change some things and thought that he had done enough and hoped that I did too. I`m having to foster the changes slowly one by one. For each thing he changes I give him something in return, sort of trying to make him see the advantage to changing. I hope what I am saying makes sense here. I have also had to give him some ultimatims. <P>I guess what I am tryng to say here is that you have to decide once and for all what you will put up with and what you won`t and then you have to prove to your H that marriage to you can be a wonderful thing. You want a great marriage or you want out.

Daisy,<BR>This is my 2nd marriage also, so I've been through many of the same things before. I think the reason I'm still here in spite of what my head is telling me is that I still haven't reached the point I did in my last marriage, where I just KNEW in my heart beyond a doubt it was over and time to walk away.<P>I have told people through the years who have asked for my advice on when to know it's time to divorce that because everyone's limits can be different, the only thing I was able to say with conviction was that you just KNOW when you've walked through the door of your last hope for the marriage. I remember it was like a light going on--one minute it was dark, and the next everything was bright and clear. Or like stepping through a portal into another world. You just suddenly realize you're there and you're not going back.<P>For some reason (maybe because this H actually confessed to his A and verbally expressed repentance and a desire to work on the M, which H#1 never did) I just have not stepped into that other world yet, and no matter how much I want to sometimes, it's like there's a force field preventing me and keeping me on this side of the portal.<P>When H came home (from yet again working with OW), I asked him if he was still mad at me, and he said, "I never said I was mad at you." I said, "No, you didn't, but you've been distancing." He didn't respond, but I stayed silently nearby and after about 20 minutes, he put his arms around me and we just laid there silently for about another 20 minutes.<P>This has been the pattern over the last month. We will now be close, affectionate and loving again until I blow it by mentioning my feelings. I have resolved this time to just do what I've always done in this marriage and keep my pain to myself, knowing I have a way out of it eventually.<P>It makes me sad because I feel like I'm keeping a death vigil on my marriage, just waiting and watching for it to die so I can bury it.<P>I've been thinking about giving him the LB and EN questionnaires to fill out just so I know exactly what his are right now so I can have a project to work on during the next few months. How I'll deal with the mounting resentment without letting on to him about it, I don't know.<P>I'm thinking I should save up for telephone sessions with the Harleys since they're the only therapists I know of who support this plan of action.<P>So, I begin another day still here and still trying.<P>Conqueror

Dear Conqueror,<P>I am not telling you to walk out on your marriage, what I am telling you is that in my situation I was pretty much sitting back and watching my marriage die too. I decided that it was too painful for me to continue on like that and so I made a decision. I could let die a natural death or I could tell my H we either fix things right now or we end it. <P>For my H to have had an affair obviously he wasn`t happy either. It took one of us to take a stance on this. My H didn`t want a divorce so it was a kind of relief for us both. I did have my H read some of what`s here on MB. It was hard for him to understand it though because he is french speaking and we had to use Babelfish which sucks to translate. He did get the gist though. That was our first breakthrough. <P>I tried for so long to get him to talk things out or to see a marriage counsellor but he refused. It took me telling him that I was through living like this and needed a change one way or another for him to finally get it. That`s not to say that I hadn`t said that sort of thing in the past, I had but this time I really meant it. <P>In my first marriage I had that moment when I KNEW it was over. It hasn`t been quite the same thing this time around. It`s not really that I felt the marriage was definitely over, not in the same sense that felt my first marriage was over it`s just that this time around I felt that things HAD to change, I wasn`t happy and if my H was willing to work things out then great but if not it was the end. It`s not quite the same thing as my first marriage, nothing could have saved that one.

Daisy,
I knew you weren't telling me to walk out on the marriage and were just sharing what your journey has been. I was just blathering on while I was on my pity pot.<p>I think what I'm waiting for is the strength to decide what to do. I guess it really is best to do it one day at a time. I feel better today.<p>One thing that is helping is that I'm writing down in a notebook everything I want to say or ask about the A, every trigger that comes up, anything that causes me pain, so that I can keep from talking to H about it since it does no good right now.<p>Really, I never thought I'd put up with any of this that he has dished out over the last few months, yet here I still am!<p>Conqueror

Dear Conqueror,<p>It would seem to me that you gut is telling you not to give up just yet and in my experience the gut feelings are usually right. And Dr. Phil who is a guru for me says that you have to EARN your way out of a marriage. I do think that walking away is not a good idea until you have tried EVERYTHING. <p>It`s funny how we can be so miserable in a marriage and yet still be comfortable in that misery. You know things have to change and yet you don`t act. I didn`t for 8 years. Since I don`t know you or your H I can`t really tell you how to get to the point of drastic change, it will be easier to do it though if your H really wants to stay married. Mine did so it was just a matter of me spelling it out to him. This is gonna change and this and this and this. It didn`t happen all at the same time though and I had to change some things too. I took care of what was bugging him about me right away. I lost 50 lbs in 5 months. In return he had to write a no contact letter to his EA woman, dump his pothead friends, be home on a regular basis, help me out with the kids and a bit around the house and join AA for his pot problem. ALOT I know but it has happened, if you had told me a year and a half ago that all these changes would be made I would never have believed it. But they have. I made the decision that WE weren`t going to be miserable anymore and that if we wanted to save the marriage then these things had to be done. If one of us hadn`t taken a stand we would probablly be divorced today. Leilana said something to me the other day that really rang true, the WS doesn`t have good coping skills, hence the A so it is up to us BS`s to be strong and show them the right path. <p>We are still working through some issues but we are much further ahead today, at least now there is some hope. You have to decide what you want out of life and then go for it.