I found that when I didn't know what to expect the best thing to expect is nothing. That way, I cannot be disappointed, but it is possible to be pleasantly surprised.
I find that reaction is always bad. Maybe just a choice of words, but you did use that one. I try (and it is often a struggle) to "Listen, Consider, and Respond" rather than reacting. Reacting implies to me that my actions are directly motivated by the situation, meaning the situation is controlling me. I'm am therefore out of control.
You were right in what I meant when I used the word REACT. I know that I do react and that my emotions will take over when I am around my H. I am trying very hard to not do that. The one thing that is positive about my "reactions" is that my H should really have no thoughts that what I am trying to do, what I say, how I act is anything but honest. I know that he still questions my intentions but how he can doubt my honesty, is completely beyond me. I am working until the time I see him tomorrow. I am worried that I won't be able to find my calmness. I will try my hardest to take your advice and "Listen, Consider and Respond". I know that it will be difficult but I just have to take myself back to that rational, calm place in my head and I'm hoping that things work out. I just hope that the threat that I know I will want to utter if he decides to continue to not be honest about the OW is well placed. I just don't know where to place it....in the conversation or in the back of my mind.
Until the, I will try to expect nothing, including the truth. If he decides to step up and be courageous - it will be a pleasant surprise, but I know that considering the "new him", which does not seem to include honesty, it's not likely to happen. Is it a bad thing that I have OW's home number in my pocket?
Me: 38 H: 41 D13 D10 S7 M: 15 years T: 17 years Discovery of EA: 10/07 Suspected PA Trial separation: 1/31/08
Is it a bad thing that I have OW's home number in my pocket?
There is not necessarily anything wrong with HAVING something (as long as it's legal...). The problem comes when you use it in a bad way.
Before you ever take any action, consider your goals. If you believe the action will bring you closer to those goals, try it. If it will push you farther away, best not do it. Always do more of what works, less of what does not.
It's a fabulous mantra and makes perfect sense. This is what I don't know ... If he chooses not to be honest and continues with OW in his fantasy world and I am tempted to shake up his reality a bit by contacting OW's H, will it bring me closer to my goal, which is to get some M repairing happening? I don't know if it will or not. I want to believe that it would give him less hope in an unrealistic relationship (with OW, in soooo many ways) and give him a reason to consider staying and giving our M a real chance.
Zebra, I appreciate your input so much and am hopeful that our M can take a turn for the better, at any pace, as yours has. You have done a great job and you must have the patience of Job!
Me: 38 H: 41 D13 D10 S7 M: 15 years T: 17 years Discovery of EA: 10/07 Suspected PA Trial separation: 1/31/08
If he chooses not to be honest and continues with OW in his fantasy world and I am tempted to shake up his reality a bit by contacting OW's H, will it bring me closer to my goal, which is to get some M repairing happening?
So, you're back to the original topic of this thread. I just re-read the thread, and I see a very different woman talking now than the one who started.
First of all, I have to ask how you will know if he is being honest? You cannot prove he is not lying, you cannot prove a negative. You cannot prove that he IS lying unless you snoop, and I believe that's a bad idea... It's so much easier and less stressful to give him the benefit of the doubt and take what he says at face value. Only if you snoop will you be able to catch him in a lie, and for your best peace of mind, I recommend you do not snoop (that's a different topic...)
I know how you feel. My first thread on this board was about outing my W and her PA to her family. OM was already divorced, so there was no one there to tell. How I wished he had a W so I could make someone feel as violated as I did. But that was my first post, like you, my first thread. You might like to take a look at it, especially the advice I got from gbon. I believe it's referenced a few posts back in this thread... Eventually, W told her brother, and he was very judgemental with her. To this day, their relationship is somewhat strained by his reaction. So, in that regard, the affair will always color their relationship and ours.
Over time, I learned the concept of doing what works, and doing things that bring me closer to my goals. I realize now that even if OM had a W, outing the A to her would not have brought me closer to my goals of having the PA end and saving my marriage, at least not in the near term. Knowing what I do now, I don't think it's a good idea. Consider this... OW's H may already know. He may not care. He may be somewhere on this board! Or, he may react by throwing her out. If that happens, where do you think she will go? You will then have 2 scared and angry people who think the world is against them with no friends who understand but each other. You may in fact drive her closer to your H, into a situation that is the last thing you want. Consider your goals, and consider whether your actions will bring you closer to them or drive you away...
From what you've written, is sounds like he still considers himself married, and it doesn't seem like he is eager to divorce. I think I said before, he is very confused, probably in a lot of confused pain. This will all take time, and as long as you don't drive him away, you have a good chance of success. Be strong, avoid any temptation to control, and keep sight of your goals. Maybe you should write you goals and post them on your 'fridge to remind you and help keep you on track.
Good luck with your decision. I don't know what I would do in you circumstances. But in the long run, knowing what I do know, I'm glad I didn't out my W and instead let things take their course, while I did all I could to be a friend and take care of myself.
About snooping...I started that not long after I discovered the EA between my H and the OW - totally by accident. And then there was another. Again, by accident. He hasn't reacted in a way that indicates it, but it's almost like he wanted to be discovered (although not signing out of his facebook page was likely to try to avoid me seeing it when I walked in the room). I, unfortunately know more than I ever wanted to know. After confronting H with our C, and him denying it and eventually calling me crazy for saying things I knew were happening, I installed spyware to get to the bottom of it and to reassure myself that I wasn't going crazy, like he was trying to make me believe. The R H and OW have is almost entirely based on the internet. I do have some saved and printed evidence of where things were headed before he moved out. She is M with 3 kids and lives a couple of hours away on the other side of our international border. His story to me is that she is happily married and wants us to work things out. With the things I have read them say to each other, I highly doubt there's even a sliver of truth to the latter and likely little to the former. Part of what I hate about this situation, is what it's made me do. I have always been the most honest person you could meet. I learned through C this fall, that some of the M issues were based on my honesty to my H and the fact that I didn't have a good enough filter on my emotions. Even when I installed the spyware, I dropped hints all over the place (quoting things they had said, etc) so that he would call me on it and I could tell him that I knew everything. I am not good at lying and it didn't take long before I forced him to understand what I had done. It was after the evidence was confirmed in my mind that I asked him to move out, because I refused to live in the house as him while he was doing what he was doing. Am I proud, happy, content... about what I did? Absolutely not. I hate that I have gone to this place - his place - where people are not just open and honest and up front. Where there is no game-playing and snooping and deciept. I'm glad that I could verify what I suspected. It would have taken a lot longer to get to this place with him getting much more involved with OW, thinking that I knew nothing, and continuing to treat me like I didn't matter while living in the same house. I'd rather he leave for good than think he can treat me like that and get away with it scot free. I'm not sure if it's pride or just expecting to be treated decently by another person - which is what everyone deserves.
As far as knowing if what he says is true, I won't know all of it, but I will know if he chooses to admit what I already know about. It's hard to give any of what H says any creedence. A cheater is a liar. A liar is a cheater. I don't know that the trust I always had in my H will ever recover from this.
I have read your old threads and I think that I have to keep in mind how far you have come and that it is possible for things to get headed on the right track without doing anything too drastic. I'll continue to go back and read things that will keep me in a better, more positive state of mind.
As you can tell, I am all over the map and VERY nervous about the scheduled meeting tomorrow. I am flip flopping like a pancake. The good news is that my soccer team won tonight and I didn't even hurt myself!
I think that I will be in my better form tomorrow if I get some rest, so off to bed with me.
Thank you so much for your input and for getting me focused on better goals. I will work hard at figuring out what will bring me closer to my goals. Right now, I think that it has to be about being in the same room and not totally losing it. I will do as much reading as work allows me tomorrow.
K
Me: 38 H: 41 D13 D10 S7 M: 15 years T: 17 years Discovery of EA: 10/07 Suspected PA Trial separation: 1/31/08
Jen_Jam - I'm curious...while you were focusing on yourself and making yourlsef your best you, did you do anything at all in relation to you M? I am in the process of bettering myself. I started that before I jumped in with both feel to "fix" our M and before I found out about OW. I went back to work in the fall after being home since my first was born, I've lost a significant amount of weight that I've carried far too long - and continue to do so, I've started to exercise more.... That's something that makes me mad and a reason that it's been so hard to take the advice of working on yourself without wondering "what else do I have to do?!".
I appreciate the thoughts of people like you and Zebra, who have been to hell and are on their way or have made it back.
Ok - now I'm really going to bed.
Me: 38 H: 41 D13 D10 S7 M: 15 years T: 17 years Discovery of EA: 10/07 Suspected PA Trial separation: 1/31/08
Hi Kikidee - I posted on the retrouvaille topic - wanted to swing by and take a look at your sitch...
In a nutshell, I think you need to take the focus off your H, off OW, off OW's H and back to you. Even now while you are working on yourself or thinking about working on yourself you are doing it specifically to win H back. That's not going to work. Work on you to get yourself to a place of confidence, peace, and happiness. You may have lost your H and your M. You may not have. Focus on the facts. Your h lies, or has lied in the past, you can't trust him, and that's not the best example for your kids. The other fact is that you can't fix him. You can't make him stay, you can't control him, you can't affect change in him. Not directly anyway. Just focus on you - the one person you can control.
I, too, have issues with people lying. It bothers me. I don't like it when others live a lie - but who am I to point that out to everyone? I blew my H's A wide open because I was hurt and I wanted to hurt him - I also wanted his A to end - and I thought that telling everyone would help that. IT DIDN'T. IT MADE IT WORSE. It made my H believe that he couldn't trust me. He couldn't confide in me. I was willing to air HIS dirty laundry to the whole world - who wants to be married to that? YUCK.
Just be conscious of the fact that your actions are visible to H. Right now I think you are running in circles frantically wringing your hands. Stop. You can't do anything to stop your H from lying, from cheating, from not being with you. You CAN make yourself happy by filling your life and the lives of your children with stability and peace.
If H were to see you right now, and see what you are doing, what would he think? Would you be someone he would be attracted to, or someone he wasn't so sure about, or someone he knew he didn't want? What happened in your M to get to this point? What is that your M is missing that H felt the need to look elsewhere? I ask this only because it may help you focus on what you can do to improve yourself.
Em
Me: 34 H: 39 M: 7 yrs H A 12/05-8/07
If what you say surprises me, I must have been assuming something else was true. - M. Wheatley
I realised that all of my R's had followed the same pattern ... I would pick a guy less dynimic than me, encourage and push him to do well, he would then I'd get left behind. I realised I wasn't being encouraging but dominerring and pushy. I realised that if I were to have a successful R with any guy in the future I had to break that pattern.
I also had a LOT of low self esteem issues. getting told "I don't love you and I'm moving out" was THE most horrid thing for that low self esteem. I realised I couldn't afford to get hurt like that again.
Working on me meant riding myself of that, it meant becoming the person I've always wanted to be - calm, friendly, open, accepting. I realised too there was nothing wrgon with my dynacism and wanting to do better, but that it would be far better to put that energy more into myself than another person. Sure, I would offer to help if I could but I learned you can't really push people to places they don't really want to go.
So working on myself was more cerebal than physical. I realised too that i had been working too hard and neglaecting my friends, so made more of an effort to see them as well.
Of course I looked for a reaction in my H, it was almost impossible not to. But he was slow to catch up. He's since told me that he had to let a lot of things just happne for himself, that there was little I could do. he went through a MLC. I had to sit back and wait.
Sure, if he'd read DR then he'd have had the tools to drag himself out a whole lot quicker, but then it wasn't up to me to force him out. I still resent a little that he didn't actively do anything to pull himself out of MLC, that he just passively sat back and waited for it to pass, but I'll have to deal with that feeling.
What else do you have to do? Oh YES YES YES I hear your anger. I felt really angry too, but letting fly at H had no effect. I did tell him I felt anger, but much much later, when he had recommitted. Well ... for just about every LBS here the situation is NOT fair. Sure, we played our parts in the M crisis, but rarely is just one side to blame. But the blame game gets nobody anywhere ... all the LBS can do is hold their hands up, accept their share of the blame and fix it. And the WAS? Oh yep, they drag their feet, it's a real waiting game. But if you can break through the negative thoughts of how unfair it is, avoid self pity, do your share of the work and accept the WAS isn't going to budge from their comfort blanket of OP/ILYBINILWY/I want a D etc etc, you can come out a stronger person.
Kiki, you have strength. You can come through this. You have a fire in you that if you can channel will be a huge help to you. Chin up lass, play the waiting game, in the meantime have a lot of fun - do whatever it takes, even if that is going out on a deserted hill and screaming your lungs out. Chin up lass!
Bomb (ILYBINILWY, don't want to be married)Sept05 Seperated Sept/Oct 05 Oct 06 - H recomitted July 11 - I am now a WAW.
Thank you for the thoughts ediemarie. All of what you say makes sense and some is actually beginning to sink in. I've read the ideas over and over here and elsewhere and it seems that the only people who have been successful in turning things around and getting to a more peaceful place have been those who have turned the focus away from the negative (read: H and/or OW) and towards to positive. I am very much on the fence about revealing some truths. If there is no advance in my H being honest with me, I feel as though I must show HIM something that will force him to admit what's going on. The only way for any healing to begin is if he is truthful. I am getting further and further away from being able to forgive. I hate to say that out loud. I didn't think I'd ever feel that way about the man I love. I keep thinking that from where things stand now, I don't think it can get any worse - so why not blow things up?
Again - I am flip-flopping all over the place and I think at this point the best thing to do would be nothing.
Still so confused.
Me: 38 H: 41 D13 D10 S7 M: 15 years T: 17 years Discovery of EA: 10/07 Suspected PA Trial separation: 1/31/08
