<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Marshall59 ]</p>

Marshall59

I'm a newbie and a BS, so no expert advice here but.... My $0.02 would be throw it out!!! I've learned to understand- what you have gone through as an addiction. Thus would you send an alcoholic a bottle of scotch? Another alcoholic may. Would you send a smoker a carton of butts? Another lonely smoker may. Would you send a heroin addict a sample of what they have sworn to give up? Temptation is looking you in the eye. Be your strongest at your weakest moment. Please. Please. Please. Don't keep the gift, don't give the gift away. Destroy it before you destroy yourself and your spouse. Hang in there.
Forgiver.

Marshall59,<p>I am sorry this happened to you. It does seem to have sabotaged much of what you have worked on. But it can be a short-lived rebound.<p>The principle of ‘radical honesty’ means that you need to tell your wife about the gift. By doing that you will take a lot of its power over you away. I would then suggest that you and your wife throw it away together.<p>I would also suggest that you send the OW a standard MB no-contact letter. Again this is something you do with your wife. Keeping things in the open with your wife will have the incredible power to defuse them.<p>If she continues to contact you after that, it becomes an issue of stalking.

how about.....SENDING IT BACK?? with a note that says.....thanks but no thanks? please respect my wishes by staying away from me and my family?<p>call it DONE!<p>Mercy
WS

I say send it back with the no contact letter signed by you and your wife!

Yeah,
I say take it home, show it to your wife, tell your wife how you are feeling and try to get your wife to help you sort out your feelings, if she is willing, then let HER send it back to the OW with a reply of her choosing...

Show it to your wife.<p>Send it back with a no contact letter UNLESS your wife disagrees.<p>I can't change jobs
Can't or won't? Would you change jobs to save your marriage?
I don't think it is something you need to do at this point unless you work with the ow.<p>[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Chris (CA123) ]</p>

It needs to go back from the both of you showing a united front.

<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Marshall59 ]</p>

If you AND YOUR WIFE show the OW that you MEAN NO CONTACT... your wife WILL KNOW the truth! <p>You are in withdrawl and don't see how your lying is going to blow up in your face. I KNOW, because I WAS THERE! I've been on both sides of the fence, so I know how you BOTH feel.<p>Next time the OW calls, tell her you will file a complaint with your employer... for harrassment.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Marshall59:
<strong>If I tell my wife about the gift, she will believe that I am back with the ow. I am not.<p>I can't change jobs, because I cant get another job here that pays what I am making. The OW doesnt work with me, but she calls.</strong><hr></blockquote><p>Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!<p>SHE CALLS????? Do you take her calls? ARE YOU in communication with the OW? What's up with that? Does your wife have some reason to believe that you are?<p>You need to make arrangements at your work so that you don't speak with the OW...ever. Either have you secretary screen your calls, or let them all go into voice mail or just plain and simply HANG UP when you hear the OW's voice....YOU have to be resolved not to open up any avenue with the OW.<p>Something smells fishy to me. Why would you wife automatically assume you and the OW were back together....are you giving her reason to think this?<p>Also, you MUST tell you wife about the gift. Preface it with telling her you want to be totally honest with her and not hide anything. Let her know that while it may hurt her for a moment, you are TOTALL COMMITTED to the recovery. Let her make the decision on what to do with it or how to respond. YOU must stand together with your WIFE before either of you can show a UNITED front to the OW!!!<p>So what's the scoop?? Just curious...how long have you been in recovery?<p>Aloha,
Ms.O

<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Marshall59 ]</p>

Hi Marshall,<p>I am going to share my thoughts with you as a woman who has been in your wife's place. You already been given the correct advice many times. You just don't want to hear it!<p>Tell your wife IMMEDIATELY about the gift AND the phone calls. I promise you that the OW will make SURE that your wife finds out about the gift if you don't tell her. NOTHING is worse for recovery than keeping secrets like this. The truth WILL come out. It is better to come from you. Explain to your wife that you thought refusing to accept the calls would end things, but that the OW has escalated her attempts to maintain contact by sending you a gift. Give the gift to your wife, and you and your wife reach an agreement about how to respond.<p>PLEASE DO THIS ASAP. You are making a BIG mistake by keeping this from your wife. I have been there and I KNOW that you do not want to give the OW this power over your wife. You must protect your wife, and the ONLY way to do it is to be completely 100% truthful with her. PLEASE BELIEVE ME.<p>Peppermint

<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Marshall59 ]</p>

I hope you follow the advice that you asked for!! Please tell your wife the truth and send the gift back.

I'm going to add more emphasis to this because my H did exactly what you're doing over and over again. Telling me there was no contact, and then I find out there's contact. This pattern AFTER D-day is what is destroying our M, NOT the A for the 9 months before D-day. I am a hair's breadth away from asking him to leave because of this very thing of keeping stuff from me. If you don't want to lose your W, then you'd better come clean IMMEDIATELY, the sooner the better. Each minute that you delay is a nail in the coffin of your M.<p>I've said it on here before, but I'll say it again: When you were carrying on the A without your W's knowledge, you were stabbing her in the back. When you do this sort of thing AFTER D-day, you are stabbing her in the front, straight in the heart. It is like reliving the nightmare every single time you withhold ANYTHING!!! It is adding yet more injury to injury, not just insult to injury. This type of thing will keep the wounds open and hemorrhaging until all feeling for you is bled out of her.<p>As I told my H, I want to know anything and everything about ANY contact as if I was there myself. Even if it was he just saw her from across the parking lot. Even if they just passed each other without saying a word. Even if she talked to him and he ignored her. I wanted him to call me immediately and give me a play-by-play narrative of what happened as if I was right there seeing it and experiencing it myself.<p>They worked together on graveyard shift, and I took the phone to bed with me to show I was SERIOUS about this. I also told him that I would do whatever it took for him to meet this need for me, up to and including going down there myself and sitting at HER station all night if I had to.<p>So, I cannot stress the importance of this for the BS strongly enough. Hope I made my point. [img]images/icons/wink.gif" border="0[/img]
PLEASE be an open book for your W and restore the dignity that was stolen from her.<p>Oh yeah, and about the gift, if you haven't sent the OW the no-contact letter from SAA, you definitely need to do that, but I think that after you give the gift to your W, she should dispose of it as she sees fit (fire maybe [img]images/icons/cool.gif" border="0[/img] , whatever makes her feel better).<p>I definitely would not send the gift back to the OW or acknowledge it at all, not give her any recognition, attention, validation, or reinforcement for what she did at all.<p>And you should have your secretary make the OW aware that she has been instructed to refuse her calls. If she somehow gets past your secretary, and you hear her voice, HANG UP, do not say a word. On top of this being the way to rebuild your M, it is the only merciful thing to do for someone having a hard time letting go. Put up a brick wall and keep it there, for you, for your W, and even for the OW.<p>[ January 22, 2002: Message edited by: Conqueror ]</p>

Wow.....what happened to Marshall59? Did we strick a nerve or something?<p>O well......

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Ms.O:
<strong>Wow.....what happened to Marshall59? Did we strick a nerve or something?<p>O well......</strong><hr></blockquote><p>You ddin't strike a nerve. Erasing the notes was part of my clensing process. I would ave deleted the whole thread if I could have. See my thread "Affair is Finally Over"

Erasing the notes was part of my clensing process. I would ave deleted the whole thread if I could have. See my thread "Affair is Finally Over"
Guess what? Doing what you did (writing down & lining through everything) is a good process to help cleanse BUT it is not that simple to undo everything.<p>You're wife was not a part of this portion of your life. She has stuff to deal with and questions that will need answered.<p>Are you just going to tell her, "Sorry. I erased everything (in my mind) that occurred. I have nothing to tell."<p>Even though you "erased" it all, it is still in you mind & thoughts, else you wouldn't be here.<p>So what did you do with the present?<p>[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Chris (CA123) ]</p>

Still haven't brought myself to tell wife about present. She will go ballistic. She already wonders about every phone call to house where the is nobody on the other end, even months after my last real contact with OW