Post deleted by RavenWW

Hey....hang loose, Sunday's are slow. There will be lots of help coming tomorrow.

Post deleted by RavenWW

Here are some things off of other posts that you can start doing. Replace he with "me" as in you....These are things that the WS should do to help the BS.

In order for your marriage to successfully survive these are some things that your spouse must do:

1. He must be totally honest with you about everything
2. He must answer every question that you ask truthfully and fully.
3. He must do everything in his power to prove to you that you are the one that he wants to be with.
4. He must prove his love to you...he must be patient, gentle, compassionate and understanding.
5. He must feel your pain.
6. He must fully understand the devastation that he caused you.
7. He must accept full responsibility for his actions.
8. He must stop all contact with OP and not try to protect them.
9. He must reassure you that it is OK to ask questions.
10. He must reassure you that you will not drive him away by doing the things that are necessary to heal.
11. He must recognize when your struggling or experiencing a trigger and comfort you.
12. He must be able to tell you how sorry he is and show you.
13. He must re-enforce to you, that you are not responsible.
14. He must put his own feelings of guilt and shame aside and help you heal first.
15. He must reconnect emotionally, mentally, and physically with you and stay connected.
16. He must work on rebuilding trust. No secrets. No privacy.
17. He must be willing to seek counseling.
18. He must learn what is and is not acceptable when communicating with the opposite sex...he must establish boundaries and not cross them.

Raven,

Welcome, and sorry you have to be here.

I am a BS, and understand the pain your H is in. But, I wondered about some things in your post that worried me about him.

He gave YOU the "I love you but not in love with you" speech, and he has been distant, and he has limited your ability to know what's been going on in his life?

Is HE involved with someone else? Have you considered that? I ask because the if signs were there before your A started then it might be possible, and I wondered because of his behavior.

Was he like this before your d-day?



I would say you need to be in Plan A, where you focus on figuring out his ENs and meeting them. Showing him the best you that you can. And working on your changes, that is a great place to start.

Are you two in MC?

The "pros" will come along soon. I'm more of a lurker, but I just wanted to get things rolling for you.
SB

Welcome to MB Raven. There have been lots and lots of waywards spouses who post here. Once monday comes around, I'm sure you'll get some folks to chime in who have been in your spot. Seven children huh? Wow what ages? How did you ever find time for gaming?

You seem to be doing well with transparency and accountability. How are you doing with stopping the love busters and filling needs? Even if he won't fill out the forms....surely after being married to this guy for a while....you know basically what makes him tick and what turns him off.

If you're at a loss....choose admiration....almost every man I know responds well to that need. If you've been depressed....how are you doing with the attractive spouse and domestic support needs? If you haven't worked....is financial support possibly important? Just start going through....because ALL the needs on that list are important to everyone....it's just the order that's different.

Keep posting, filling in details and asking specific questions.

This is *exactly* what I thought when I first read the post as well.

Hi Raven and welcome...

Never fear, there are FWW's here, I am one of them and from on online EA no less...

I have a question about the timeframe...when did the EA take place? How long has H known about it? Could it be possible that his blow up and susequent further detachment (separating accounts, etc.) was because he knew about the EA but kept it to himself?

I thought that when he said "good for you" when you threw out your clothes was a really good sign...I, like you, have had problems with looking to my H for approval etc. and am learning that I need to find these things for myself. Being confident in yourself is definitely attractive, so good for you for working on that!

Like the others, I think it's possible if the above scenario I posed at the beginning isn't the case, that your H may be involved in some sort of inappropriate relationship himself. He's definitely showing the signs.

The good news for you is, if that is true, you are already making the effort to meet his EN's and make improvements yourself (kind of a pre-emptive plan A!).

Have you come right out and asked him about any other relationships? What exactly is his response?

As for the spying, I know there are some programs that can actually be sent via email and then install automatically on the computer that the message is read from.

Also, I think starfish is right on about the admiration need.

keep posting...I have learned so much here, and my FBH is pretty much on top of the world right now (couldn't be happier, lucky to have me he says...yay, go me!). Not too long ago, our story wasn't much different from yours.

good luck and keep posting.

-mom

Post deleted by RavenWW

Post deleted by RavenWW

Raven-

It's interesting...your post could almost have been written by my FWW...3 years ago.

So with that said, I've got to agree with the question you've been asked by others...do you think he might have started an A himself?

His actions have some definite red flags in them for sure.

Raven:

Welcome to our crazy little club here.

I think you Husband is deep in the middle of an A.

He revealed to you who it might have been with the drunken phone call. But that's not who it is.

It's someone else. He revealed to much about her for it to be her. Unless, she was just the first.

You say you are both computer geeks and he hasn't fixed his home computer and he guards his laptop and palm pilot.

Serious Red Flags.

And rewriting history.

Another Flag.

It's time for you to do snooping 101 and smoke her out.

And then you can start working on your M.

Uhh...yep. Seems like he's shoring up his finances, you are on the account? Go to the bank and find out what's been going on, get a card, get a history of the transactions.


that he would actually say this, pretty much seals it for me...if he isn't having an A already, which it seems ever increasingly likely he is, he's emotionally blackmailing you with this statement.


I hear you there...my FBH is a big time geek as well, and does computer security for a living...I'd never get anything past him either.

LG is right. Time to find out the truth. You need information. You need to know what you are really dealing with in order to know how to proceed.

NEED SOME SPYING EXPERTS TO GIVE SOME ADVICE HERE!!

Either that, or her H wants her to believe that he's in the middle of an A.

In any case, I think she needs to snoop and confirm the truth.

There certainly doesn't seem to be much O&H going on.

Lots of good stuff written by other folks...
one thing I noticed that didnt seem to have an answer from you:



What issues does he say are there? what issues are you ignoring, from his perspective?

Post deleted by RavenWW

Post deleted by RavenWW

Well, there's part of your problem. Obviously he's using that to meet his EN for SF.

As far as looking for other evidence of an A:

Get a voice activated recorder for his car. Perhaps another one for in the house for after you go to bed or whatever makes sense.

Is there someone that he works with that you trust to tell you the truth of what's going on when he's at work? That might even 'keep an eye on him' for you?

What means of communication do you think he'd use to have and affair? As you know, they require a LOT of communication...so how would he do it?

I'm good with the spying stuff...hehe.

Post deleted by RavenWW

Post deleted by RavenWW

Well, here's my suggestion.

Tell him that you're not wanting to tell the world about' his personal stuff'. What you WANT to do is to find a way that both of you can be happy and make the marriage you've got better. You want to FIX what's been damaged.

And you can't do it on your own. You can't do it with the way things are going now. YOUR MARRIAGE NEEDS PROFESSIONAL HELP.

Tell him that you'll gladly quit 'telling the world'. What you need from him here is some professional help...ask him to start marriage counseling with you (preferably with the Harleys, or at least with someone that supports MB methodology).

Make sure he understands that you do take responsibility for what happened, and all your trying to do now is help both of you get through what's happened. Remind him how much you love him. And make sure he understands how much BOTH of you need this.

If nothing changes...nothing will change. Make sense?

If he wants things to get better, then it's going to take work on both parts to MAKE them better. They won't get better on their own. THAT method NEVER works.

Post deleted by RavenWW

Then ask him what HIS plan for actually recovering the marriage is. He's not happy, you're not happy...and he's refusing to do anything about it. If he's convinced that MC won't do it, then ask him what will?

Heck...most of us would have LOVED our WS's to take some kind of responsibility in trying to rebuild after the affair.

This is exactly what he needs to hear (even if he doesn't seem receptive to it at the time). He'll need to hear it over and over, backed up by your actions, to recover.

Owl is right, nothing will change if you BOTH don't do anything to change it.

Did you mention the possibility of him writing the NC letter, or making changes to this one himself? How did you explain the reasoning for needing this letter (concept of NC?)?

In my case, my FBH sent a NC email. I don't even know what it said and OM replied and I don't know what that said either. At the time, I was a mess and whatever hubby wanted/needed to do was fine with me. For some reason, H didn't want me to read it all, I think he was afraid it would send me back running to OM, maybe...

I do know that the email was effective...there was never contact again.

Post deleted by RavenWW

Post deleted by RavenWW

Why not tell him that you need him to give this some thought NOW? Tell him your concerns about him taking his laptop/PDA/whatever when he does this. And ask him to take that time NOW.

Now, on the other hand, remember it normally takes couples YEARS to recover from the damage of an affair. My wife and I recovered far faster than many, and it still took us about a year of MC before we felt comfortable in stopping it. He's got a lot to overcome.

Have you talked to him about his porn use? About the problems you've described to us here? Have you done an EN questionairre to figure out what his needs are, and how you can work to meet them? He does need to give you the chance TO meet them too...and once you've done your homework, you should talk with him about that if possible.