As you (and all of us) know, it is very unusual for a therapist to consider an extramarital affair to be "great." Because he has been dishonest with you before, I would consider the fact that he is probably maintaining some consistency...
Oh, of course, besides manipulating the therapist, he could have lied to me, hadn't thought of that! I am so gullible sometimes! He loves to tell me outrageous stuff sometimes and see how long I will believe him for, and I usually will for a while! I just never understand why people don't tell each other the truth and esp. your own spouse which is I know terribly naive of me!
It's been pretty quiet here at my house: H is still maintaining his manic schedule: working, seeing the OW, and working on the house, sleeping only 5 or 6 hours a night. How long can he maintain that I wonder? I spend 60-65 hours a week homeschooling the kids, cleaning, cooking, paying the bills, being a sahm mom. My H says I get room and board for this like that is some wonderful payment from him (he's a lawyer) and seems to see me now as an employee rather than a wife. He seems to be bothered when I take a few hours off during the weekend when he is home (mentioned something about that this past weekend b/c he is working his manic schedule compared to me) although I feel 60-65 hours of work for room and board (he doesn't allow me spending money) is a more than fair deal for him esp. when he is having an affair and etc. (if he was a great husband or loved me or any displays of affection I might feel like working 70 or 80 hours but sorry...)
The kids (both 8D and 14S) are going to audition for our community play in 2 weeks with me so we are practicing script reading and singing our audition songs. My 14 year old still has to pick out a song. Don't know what is good for a teenage boy though...Everytime I try to read a script I crack up, I have a hard time getting serious, and devolve into weird English accents or fake silly accents (like those old Monty Python shows if anyone remembers those) so don't think I will get a part at this point!!! But it is keeping me busy and I guess that is the point of GAL anyway.
I spend 60-65 hours a week homeschooling the kids, cleaning, cooking, paying the bills, being a sahm mom. My H says I get room and board for this like that is some wonderful payment from him (he's a lawyer) and seems to see me now as an employee rather than a wife. He seems to be bothered when I take a few hours off during the weekend when he is home
OK...now I'm mad.
A stay at home mom is a real job. And homeschooling is even tougher.
He has an affair, and resents that you take some time for yourself? Listen, you TAKE time for yourself.
He gives you no spending money? Uhhhh...honey, in case you forgot, by law 50% of all your family income and assets are yours while you are married. Most states are common property states. So he gets to f*ck another woman and puts you on a strict allowance?
He's cruel and deluded and thinks you'll take this lying down.
I suggest you see a lawyer to get information about your rights. If he divorces you, make sure you get you fair share. Rather, take him to the cleaners.
If you can't get money out of him now for your interests, if need be, stop homeschooling the kids and put them in school. Get a part-time job and do what you want with your money.
I just caught up on your thread; I'm sorry you're here. My 47 year old W had an affair with her 29 year old personal trainer last summer, so I KNOW it hurts. They say infidelity is worse than rape, and I can believe that, because it's been done by someone who supposedly LOVES us.
I'm going to get right to the point, and you may not want to hear it, but here goes: I see you asking for advice, and a lot of "what should I do?"s, but have you APPLIED any of what you've been given so far? Theoden's advice has been SPOT-ON, and I don't see you applying ANY of it.
Did you try and set a boundary with your husband about e-mailing the OW in front of you and the children?
Something else jumped out at me from your thread, when you mentioned his "anger." Your behavior suggests to me that he is abusive. Has he ever hit you? Have you ever feared for your safety with him?
If I'm all wet, just tell me, but I don't understand why you tolerate his boorish behavior. I'll leave you with this thought, which you also won't want to hear, and please know that I'm speaking this to you in "tough love":
Is this the behavior you want to model for your daughter? Is this how you want her to accept treatment from a young man someday? Is the behavior that you're tolerating (at best) or enabling (at worst) from your husband what you want your son to model? He is in his most formative years, RIGHT NOW, for how he will treat, and interact with, the opposite sex.
I'm sorry to be so blunt, Karen. I know this isn't easy.
Chocolateeyes
P.S. Get those anti-depressants. They really help, and they do take several weeks to "kick in." I only needed them for a month or two, and then I was able to stop taking them, but they really helped "even me out," and helped me be there for my kids.
M47 W47 D20, D18, S15, S11 Caught W having an Affair 5/07 Filed for D 7/07 W ended A 8/07 Began attempted reconciliation 8/07 Divorce action pending, on "stay"
Well, let me reply to your questions: My kids are autistic and dyslexic so that's why I haven't put them in school or back in school as the case may be. It was a miserable failure for my 14S. They were having me tutor him in most of his subjects and still talking about retention, he was crying each day and having stomach aches each day (but just at school) and begging to home school, they said he was "in his own world" much of the time at school, etc. , he was hating school and reading, etc. and I have a Master's degree in Education, so home schooling seemed like a good solution. My kids love home schooling now btw, we get along well, and my 14 year old is doing pretty well with most of his subjects.
I did mention the 50% of his income law when he said the "room & board comment". I have an appt. with a divorce attorney next week to protect myself and the kids next week, although I did want to play more of a defensive role up until the point where my H actually files paperwork b/c I did have hopes that he would break up with the OW at some point before October and at that point we might reconcile (with lots of marriage counseling of course). If we do divorce, he has told me he will kind of decide everything and I do want to try to prevent that of course.
Chocolateeyes, he has stopped emailing in front of me for the past week or so, and started a new avoidance technique with me where he just tries to stay in another part of the house from me at all times now. What part of Theoden's advice do you see me not applying b/c I have been trying to apply all of it??? (I printed it out and read it almost daily!) I have been GAL, calling my best girl friends for support, got a therapist, started Prozac Monday, going to try out for a play audition in 2 weeks (that will be at least 20 hours or so a week). I am teaching sunday school starting tomorrow. I am not following him around anymore. I stopped begging and giving him articles about reconciling. I'm not talking about the relationship, not using reasoning (realized he no longer has reasoning!)
He didn't hit me, but when I was depressed, which was over the past 2 years or so, (I stopped cooking and cleaning as much and stopped calling my friends), he would yell at me and be gone a lot (he has always been gone 70 to 80 hours a week with an addictive type personality) and insists now I was not depressed but lazy then. I think he does that to rationalize his affair. Ironically, since the affair we have actually gotten along better, he is no longer yelling, I am no longer as depressed now that I have gotten therapy and been making the changes in my life and been posting on this board (thank you all!). Hopefully the AD's will help too once they kick in!
I don't think H is a good role model right now and have told the kids that. We are going to get the kids therapy, and I do see this as a temporary situation. It's going to end by October (when my H wants to divorce), one way or the other, and I do hope they see me as the positive role model, and I think they do. My D8 has said her dad is "not nice" even at 8, I think kids can realize when parents are being negative or crazy or whatever. I also would never go back to the place where I was depressed (I didn't even realize that believe it or not) and H was yelling at me. If we do reconcile, we would do marriage counseling and I don't think either of us want to go back there. H started individual therapy for his anger last week, so he knows he has issues too. Karen43
I was referring mostly to not setting any boundaries (especially with the e-mailing in front of you), the pursuing him emotionally (and even physically), and initiating relationship talks.
I think you're doing GREAT on the GAL stuff!!!
If he stopped e-mailing in front of you, I'm glad that you no longer have to deal with that, but I think you missed an opportunity to stand up for yourself (and frankly, put the azz-hole in his place) that might have led to some significant gains in your self-esteem.
That's OK -- you're doing great, and something tells me that this guy is going to give you lots of other opportunities, sad to say. Try to think about what your "non-negotiables" are -- some boundaries that you can draw that mean a lot to you -- and draw them and learn to enforce them. It will really help your self-dignity, and it also doubles as making you more attractive.
To me, they were:
1) Not texting, or talking on cellphone, OM in front of me or the kids, or even from our house.
2) I canceled her cellphone, telling her "I'm not going to pay for a phone for you to use to carry on your affair." Withing 3 hours, she had her own, and of course she simply carried on from there, but I felt better about myself, and she told me later she respected my stand.
3) I insisted that she be honest with me, and with our adult daughters, and with her parents. If she chose to continue on in her affair, that was her decision, but even if we weren't going to make it, HONESTY would have to be the foundation of our family, and hadn't we always taught our kids that? She came clean with our daughters and our parents.
4) In addition to the cellphone, I also told her that I would continue to meet all of our family's NEEDS, financially, including hers, but I would no longer pay for anything that she used to make herself more attractive to anyone besides her husband. This included her hair (I paid for cuts, that's it -- no highlighting, coloring), her nails, sexy things from Victoria's Secret, and clothing beyond her basic needs.
5) I insisted that she answer her cellphone when it was from me or the house, as the kids might be calling (she would leave them home alone, aged 14 and 11, for 3-5 hours and not answer her phone when we would call, and I learned for a fact that many of those times she was with OM).
She respected ALL of these, even tho she continued on with her affair for another two months. I had decided that if SHE decided to be unfaithful, that I could not stop her, but I damned sure wasn't going to enable her in it, and that I needed to have my own boundaries -- areas of personal integrity -- if I was going to POSSIBLY even carry on with my life.
Being cheated upon is damaging enough on one's psyche; you can make it a little better by having some personal "boundary" victories as you work thru this, Karen.
OK, AGAIN, my H has managed to push my buttons and totally depress me. And I had been feeling, stronger, healthier, and less depressed this past week, GAL, and DBing so well I thought. It started like this: (feel free to tell me all my mistakes and what I did wrong!) I was telling my H about a conversation with my friend who I have reconnected with, who divorced but she went through marriage counseling before she did, even though she had been unhappy for 22 years, giving her H a chance to make several changes before she did so which he made no effort to do. My H then said well marriage counseling would be of no use in our case because even if I wasn't in love with the OW, I would want to date other women because we got involved too young, (he was 19 and I was 21 and we were in college). Perhaps that is a valid point of his??? However when he first got involved with the OW, he told me if he wasn't involved with the OW, he wouldn't be wanting to divorce. But I guess maybe he could have decided in the past 6 weeks that he is having so much fun dating, that he should have dated more before we started living together/married? So that devastated me! Then he tells me right away, I haven't seen the OW enough this week, (they usually see each other every night after work and Saturday morning, but had to miss one or two nights this week), so he was going to take her out tonight on a date. I think that is just really blatant behavior and a bad role model for the kids and upsetting to me of course. I asked him to try to be discreet about his affair and that I thought that the blatant dating was bad for the kids, 8D and 14S. He yelled he could date whenever he wanted to (I will be mentioning this to my divorce attorney this week though as an example of his recent poor parenting judgment though so I may have the last laugh on this one although I didn't tell him that.) I then let it go and acted like nothing had happened the next hour we were together, acted normal & even pleasant, as we took the kids to lunch. I came home and cleaned the house while he watched sports for an hour. He took a 2 hour nap and went off on his date!!! Karen43
