Spacecase's Book List - Recommended Reading:<p>My "Affair Bibles" (please don't take offense, The Bible is THE BIBLE, and will always be first. Albeit, in my case, the Old Testament, 5 Books of Moses, Torah, whatever you choose to call it.)<p>1. Surviving an Affair - Harley/Chalmers - Clearly the definitive guidebook to sanity and hope during these turbulent times, and a must-read for anyone on these boards.<p>2. The Divorce Remedy - Weiner-Davis - A close second to SAA, very similar approaches and methods, less structure to the program.<p>3. After the Affair - Abrahms-Spring - Apart from the attempt to connect EVERYTHING to childhood experiences, a very thorough and complete guide with tremendous insight for all involved in an A.<p>Indispensable References<p>1. His Needs-Her Needs - Harley
2. Give & Take - Harley
3. Surviving Infidelity - Subotnik/Harris
4. Divorce Busting - Weiner-Davis<p>Other Books of Value

1. Fighting for Your Marriage - Markman/Stanley/Blumberg
2. Difficult Conversations - Stone/Patton/Heen
3. Conscious Loving - Handricks/Hendricks
4. Change your Life & Everyone in it - Weiner-Davis
5. Money Demons - Forward
6. Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus – Gray (In fact, the whole Venus & Mars series is great)<p>Some I did not like<p>1. When your Lover is Liar - Forward - Very valuable IF you're a betrayed woman (Most of the premises are based on real/perceived gender stereotypes, and for men it's too difficult to discern which could also apply to lying women.)<p>2. Affairs: Emergency Tactics - Rhodes - Very shallow. Only discusses 3 types of As, and attempts to make everything fit within those 3. If yours is precisely one of these, there could be some value to it, but in general, there's much better stuff out there.<p>3. Infidelity - Gough - Again, pretty shallow, author has been a WS and BS, hard to tell what's her personal experience/perception and what's more researched and solid.<p>4. Infidelity: A survival Guide - Lusterman - Way too textbook to be practical, much more of a study of the psychology of affairs. Of value if you're into in-depth psychoanalysis of affairs.<p>5. There were others here, but they were SO bad (IMHO) that they went right back to Half.com for sale!<p>On my reading list<p>1. Private Lies - Pittman
2. Torn Asunder - Carter
3. How Could You Do That?! - Schlessinger
4. Love Must Be Tough - Straight Talk - Dobson<p>Other recommendations from the board?<p>[ May 04, 2002: Message edited by: Spacecase ]<p>[ May 04, 2002: Message edited by: Spacecase ]</p>

A quick update for those of you following the Spacecase saga...<p>My WW returned from her one-week "get-away" to NY and FL today, in a wonderful mood...we chatted about her trip, our friends, news, etc. all the way back from the airport, I told her I'd missed her, and was very glad to have her back.<p>She was quite happy to have seen all our old friends, and was happy to have gotten away for a few days. Eventually she said she'd missed me as well, and very uncharacteristically, she wanted to make love...so we did...it was better than it has been for some time...<p>As you'll recall, I was having trouble with this trip b/c I believed she was going to get away from our friends for a day to go and see the OM, but as far as I can tell, she did not. I'm not positive she did not, but it appears not.<p>Also, since she'd said she wanted to get away, I told her I would only call her if I needed to (kids and her works stuff) and I stood by that; I only called her once during the 8 days she was gone; I think this helped her feel I trusted her a bit more, and probably relieved some of the pressure she's felt from before when I was snooping, spying, recording...so I hope she felt good about this. She'd call me twice a day, to check on her work stuff I was taking care of, and on the kids, so that was nice.<p>Also, I asked her what she'd thought about the "Basic Principles" I'd given her to read, and she said "there is some very good stuff there", so I took it to mean she didn't totally reject them...which is positive.<p>Then I told her about my conversation with Steve Harley, and that he was helping me become a better husband, etc. and that he'd asked me to invite her to speak to him, and she accepted pretty gladly, so I set up a call for her on Monday....we shall see what transpires then.<p>Steve and I will hook up again on Tuesday, so I'll probably have his feedback on their conversation then.<p>At least everything seems to be going according to plan, no LBs, no agression, she's happy, so I think we're looking good. I have faith that Steve will "work his magic" and hopefully, we can start down the path I've been hoping for...<p>Comments? Observations? Thanks!!!

[img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] <p>I'll try to be back with more... but I at least wanted to give you that. <p> [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] I think it all sounds good!

SC:<p>Sounds like good news! And I KNOW you're a pretty good judge of character now, so I think you can probably believe that your W didn't see OM while in Fla. Best news is that she's willing to talk to SH.<p>My W should just be finishing with her IC session about now. I hope it goes well. She's been complaining about them being a waste of time, still. I know she knows I don't think they waste MY time, and I've got 3 C's!<p>Talk to you soon,

Thanks 2Long; yes, I think things may be going in the right direction for me. I'm eager to see what happens w/Steve and her...then I'll feel more secure (or not) about it!<p>Hope things with your son went well.<p>Cheers!

Glad to hear the good news, keep plugging away.<p>Jack

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Faith1:
<strong><p> [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] I think it all sounds good!</strong><hr></blockquote><p>Thanks Faith! [img]images/icons/tongue.gif" border="0[/img]

SC:<p>Son thing got postponed to Friday.

hey SC,<p>What happened with her counseling with SH???<p>Any comments from her?

Conan!<p>Haven't heard from you in a while (probably only a couple days, but since D-day time has been rather hard to figure out!). Start a new thread and tell us how you're doing!

Hey Conan!<p>Welcome back, where have you been? I was asking about you a few days ago.<p>Her session with Steve is next Monday, so we'll have to wait and see. In the menatime, the same routine continues here...very loving, very nice, but the mystery phone calls, checking vmail multiple times, out of the house by 10AM...so I believe she's still in contact, and maybe she's believeing that this time she's got it all figured out, since I don't say anything or even appear to be concerned....not sure that's good.<p>What do you think? Maybe a bit of pressure in that area may be called for? 2Long?

SC:<p>Rats. Wrote a reply and lost it!<p>Anyway, take the advice I get so often but don't follow all that well! Be patient!<p>See what happens after she talks to S.H. next monday. Hopefully, she'll be honest with you. If not, ask S.H. yourself what to do. Maybe you should then tell her about your knowledge of continued contact. Or maybe not? I'm betting you should, similar to what ShatteredinSF did yesterday about telling his W that he knew about contact. It worked for him, at least. It's working for me, in a round about sorta way (W knows I know about contact, but I haven't snooped to get the info, it's just obvious).<p>take care,

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by 2long:
<strong>
Anyway, take the advice I get so often but don't follow all that well! Be patient!<p>See what happens after she talks to S.H. next monday. Hopefully, she'll be honest with you. If not, ask S.H. yourself what to do. Maybe you should then tell her about your knowledge of continued contact. Or maybe not? I'm betting you should, similar to what ShatteredinSF did yesterday about telling his W that he knew about contact. It worked for him, at least. It's working for me, in a round about sorta way (W knows I know about contact, but I haven't snooped to get the info, it's just obvious).<p>take care,</strong><hr></blockquote><p>I will take the advice that I so freely give out! ;-)<p>I'm not really PRESSING to let her know I know, it's just that as I wrote the post, it occured to me...perhaps allowing her the comfort of "feeling" that she's home free (because I'm pretending I'm not paying attention, saying anything, etc.) might not be such a good idea...just a thought...not a major itch!<p>Comments about this from the gallery?

(hope I'm answering the right question here... I'm sort of out of it today [img]images/icons/rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] )<p>I wouldn't apply any sort of pressure right now. Let her talk to Steve. You don't want to press anything and risk her backing out of her apppointment. Let him spend that time with her, and then you and he talk about it, k?<p>JMO<p>(was that the right question 4 which you were looking for answers?)

I agree, don't do anything before her talk with SH. It will help yo tremendously to have her go through with the appointment... in terms of SH helping you to figure out where you are at.<p>Good luck.

I'm not going to do anything to jeopardize our progress, worry not!<p>I think she's started to see that things cannot just stay the same...I don't know what she's thinking the solution might be, but she knows for sure it cannot continue as is. Or rather, she knows for sure that I don't think things can stay as is.<p>Thanks for all the support!

SC:<p>Good for you! <p>Check out my new thread on Plan A/B for an update on my sitch. Thought the defecation had hit the ventilation, but now I think we're going to be able to start a true recovery!!<p>regards,

COOLNESS 2Long!<p>On my way there!

It seems like somehow WW is just totally stuck at a place where she has felt she can hold up her defenses, no change, no progress, no indication of any willingness to take any responsibility for her issues, and somehow resolve them.<p>Whatever I say, no matter how many times and in how many ways, she just maintains in her mind what she thinks I mean, what she can use to block the conversation from any forward movement.<p>She does not want to talk, with the excuse that she wants to avoid conflict. When I say we have problems we need to work through, she interprets it as "he wants every detail of the A, again", when I ask what SHE thinks we should do to move forward, she has no answer, except to just keep trying...trying what, I'm not sure. To be nice to each other, I guess, to try to fulfill some of the ENs we did talk about...nothing more.<p>No acknowledgement of the A, or how it ended, or any desire to demonstrate trust can start to rebuild, just a blind determination to just say "it's over, that's all there is to it, we don't talk about it, it's not important".<p>Nom acknowledgement that we have to move forward, no acknowledgement that I have needs that have to be somehow accomodated. No remorse, nothing at all...just..."can't you see how I'm trying? why is it never enough?"<p>Now not even our weekly "talk" is good. "all you ever want is to talk about this". It seems my need to not ignore the problem is too much for her, not even a weeklong timeout with a weekly lunch talk about "us" is enough "backing off" for her...I'm very down...feel like it's no use...like the problems are too insurmountable...like there is just no way in the world we are ever going to get anywhere...terrible...sad, so, so sad. How could it ever get this far gone? To where almost all hope is lost?<p>My only hope now is that she somehow can agree to start and continue the C with Steve, and that he somehow can keep her on board long enough to start making some progress soon. I don't think I could bear the first anniversary of DDay without seeing that we are moving forward. I doubt I'll be able to hold on that long.

SC,
You sound so down tonight. Maybe you are going to have to let it go for awhile. (I know it's easier said than done.) But if most of your interactions are "heavy," I think it might be easy to get bogged down without feeling like there's a lot of progress.<p>Maybe you need to approach this from a different angle, with a fresh start. Instead of talking about the past, perhaps you need to make the future like you and your wife would like it to be. You can always come back to the topic of what happened, when she's ready to talk. I think that it's really easy to get obsessed with trying to get answers, while missing the main point which is to re-build your marriage. Maybe you should try really hard to let it go, and move on. Accept what she's telling you as the truth, and involve yourself in her life. Have fun with her, laugh with her, enjoy being with her. I know it's not easy to do, when you are in the depths of dispair over her betrayal, but maybe it's worth a try. What do you think?
AS