Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Infidelity/Extramarital Affairs/Jealousy Ignore the affair or throw him out?

I really hate myself right now. I'm wavering yet again. Sigh. After being up most of the night I came to the conclusion that my ultimate goal was to be able to say I tried everything and mean it, regardless of the outcome. If I want that to be true I need to DB and follow the DB coach's advice which entails ignoring the affair for now and not pushing him out of the house. (And I'm slowly working my way through Puppy's threads and saw that even he said you can't repair a marriage from across town.)

I was talking to a girlfriend last night who has been through a divorce so I value her take on things. She said that if I really want to save the relationship then I have to swallow my pride and be the one to put myself out there. That may entail going to marriage counseling, asking him to move back into our bedroom, telling him how I truly feel about him, etc. I'm not sure I agree with all of these tactics but it is something to think about.

If I do choose this route, it will be with a time limit. I realize the premise of DBing is to have unlimited patience but I need to draw the line somewhere. Right now I'm thinking three months tops. If there is no significant change then I will swiftly end things and move on with my life without him.

I admit that part of the reason for this plan is to abdicate responsibility for ending the relationship. If he wants out of the relationship then he needs to be the one to initiate moving out, financial settlement, etc. I do not want to make it easy for him to walk away because it shouldn't be easy to walk away. Bottom line, I want him to man up. I know I can't control his actions but I can control mine. When I'm thinking rationally, not responding emotionally, this is what I want.

I will continue to contemplate my course of action over the rest of the week and am determined to have a definite plan of action by Monday.

Please do not think I am blatantly disregarding the advice I have received here. I am perfectly willing to hear everyone say "I told you so" if/when things get worse or just don't get better. That is the choice I would be making. I spent years neglecting our relationship, I can give three more months to really work on myself and see where it goes.

Pearl,

If you put a time frame on it (and I think you should), do it for YOU, and do NOT communicate to him what it is. Just say something like "I won't wait forever," or "my patience isn't without its limits" or whatever. Because if you communicate, say, a 90-day deadline, than he's going to cake-eat for 89 days, and then PROMISE YOU THE WORLD on the 90th day to stop you from leaving.

It is true that I do not believe in separation, because:

a) it only gives the wayward spouse the time and space in which to conduct their affair, unemcumbered;

b) it greatly limits the betrayed spouse's opportunities to "live out their changes" in front of the wayward spouse, and show them the "new you";

c) historically, it's usually just a precursor to divorce.

There are exceptions, such as if physically being together in the same household is so toxic that the children are negatively effected, but for the most part, I do NOT advocate moving out, nor throwing them out.

I DO advocate telling them "I will not live in an open marriage," and "I won't wait forever." If he asks you what that means, just say "It means what it means," and don't give him any specific ultimatums or dates.

I do not think marriage counseling is going to be effective while there is an active affair going on; even Retrouvaille makes that a precondition of attendance. But that's your call.

Actually, it's ALL your call, obviously. I would contend, however, that he already knows how you truly feel, and you have already MORE than "put yourself out there." Anything further is just going to be seen as "pursuing," and even pure DB catechism says not to do that. What you CAN do is just GAL and live out the "new, confident Pearl" in front of him, daily, and show him by your mere presence that you are still in the relationship.

If you do ask him to move back into your bed, and you decide to be intimate, I would strongly encourage you to use protection.

Puppy

Thanks Puppy.

I will not tell him my timeframe. I agree with what you said about cake eating up until the last day. And that living apart would just let him be with OW without any guilt. As it is I have to hope that he feels a pang of remorse when I'm home with him and he leaves to see her. Perhaps not, but I'm sure he would not be thinking of me at all if he were living on his own.

Here's where I'm hung up. I've already told him that I do not find his affair acceptable and that I will not live in an open marriage. I suggested that if she is that important to him then perhaps we should reevaluate our living arrangements. That's an ultimatum I feel I now must follow through with otherwise there are no consequences for his actions. Am I looking at this wrong? Are there other options besides asking him to leave?

I think you can lay out some reasonable boundaries, such as:

- no texting or phoning OW from inside of our home;
- no texsting or phoning OW in front of me, even if we're out together;

Both are disrespectful.

I would also address a "curfew" time that YOU are comfortable with. You have to be careful how you phrase it, as you cannot control him, but maybe something like "If you don't feel like you can come home at a reasonable hour -- say before 1am -- tell me now, and we'll make other arrangements. I won't be disrespected in my own home by having you stay out all night, or come home at 3 in the morning. I can't stop you from having an affair, but I do have my personal boundaries, and I'm going to expect you to respect them."

Puppy

That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks again Puppy. Don't know what I'd do without your viewpoint.

I am filled with a sense of foreboding. I know he is taking OW skiing this weekend. I can no longer tell myself it's "just" an EA, I know damn well what will happen. Which makes me feel like I am free to do the same as I will be out of town on my own. This may be a point of no return and I feel helpless to stop it.

What about not having her in our home when I am away? The thought of that just disgusts me but I feel like if I tell him "don't do this" then he will turn around and do it just because I told him not to.

Yes, I would definitely add that as well.

But you do need to be fully prepared to let go.

Since you are not married it's not an "open marriage," but an open relationship. You can tell him you are not comfortable with an open relationship and move on from there. Unfortunately, if he has a strong connection going with OW, there may not be much you can do to change the situation. Think about what attracted him to you in the first place, the characteristics you had, what made him want to be with you?

Hi runningoutoftime

Yes, I saw the "marriage" typo after I posted but was too lazy to fix it. I was just cobbling together ideas I picked up from other threads. When I said it to him before I did say relationship.

Honestly, it's hard for me to even know what attracted him to me in the first place. We've always been really different people and I thought that was part of the draw but now his complaint is that we don't have anything in common. So I'm at a loss. I'm just working on trying to be the me I used to like.

Actually, thinking more about what attracted him to me in the first place puts me in an awkward position. I guess a lot of it was physical attraction. That's one of the main problems we have now, basically being in a SSR. I am a LD person and didn't want to deal with it. After the first bomb I got the SSM book and immediately started improving things in the bedroom. But all that stopped a few weeks later when I learned about BF's A. So now I can't improve that aspect of our R. Not sure how I can show that I'm open and willing to improve our sex life when I don't want to appear to approve of his cheating by ML. I feel stuck in that area so I'm just focusing on GAL.