How to get past the sex thing

[sage]

Sage - Can I quarrel with your advice? I guess I tend to think more like dcr, who a few posts earlier said, "For me, it was impossible to conceive of working on the marriage until the affairs were stopped", and "you should also take specific steps to assure yourself that the affair is not continuing during the healing process".

Of course you can disagree with it! It's just my 2 cents (may not even get that much on the open market) and it's given without expectation..it certainly doesn't have to be accepted!

In my perfect world, my h would have stopped his a the instant I "told" him to and would have returned to our m full force, ready to work. He didn't. Well, I don't KNOW if he continued contacting ow or not but I know for a fact that he was NOT ready to recommit to working on our m and told me so directly. It wasn't that he wanted to be with her but that he wasn't sure he wanted to be married at all.

In the early days, I was devastated by that -- the marriage builders site makes it very clear that healing won't be effective unless a is over. "After the Affair" depressed the hell out of me because it was all about how to rebuild your m based on the notion that you both wanted to ... Michele's book, OTOH, was the first one to give me hope...it let me know that DB'ing could have a positive impact for ME regardless of where H's head was at.

I don't want this to come across as weak or perverse or whatever but MY goal was keeping my H at home (no separation) because I just knew that FOR ME, it would be easier to DB if he were around. If he had moved out I think that my reaction would have been to just close the door on the R and move on. I wasn't ready to do that. I guess my point is is that a separation for us felt like it would be VERY problematic -- I think both of us get hung up in "does the other person love me" and it would be harder for us to bridge that gap from 2 separate locales. Would it have been impossible? Who knows? But I'm glad that I didn't have to find out (please note that I'm ABSOLUTELY not saying that separation is a BAD thing for all Ms. There's no question in my mind that separation could work extremely well for lots of folks). Anyway, I felt pretty strongly that forcing my hand with my H via ultimatum, etc, would be more likely to drive him away than keep him home.

Additionally, if she continues to contact the OG 12 times a day, how can she possibly ever do the work necessary to come back to the M? It would seem that my only hope would be that their R falls apart on its own, which it may not do.

Well, I agree with this obviously -- I'm not saying AT ALL that Ms should or could continue and heal with constant interaction with OP. I'm not even saying that contacting the OP is OK EVER after recommitting to a M. What my advice was suggesting was that you may not want to make that your primary focus. It's compelling to do so but as I stated before (I think) -- DB'ing takes alot of energy and focus -- focusing on M was where I thought my energy was best applied.

You know now, from the above, that I'm coming at this from a very particular slant and bias. YMMV.

Finally, I knew for myself and my h that control (MY tendancy to try to control him) and my mistrust had been an issue ALL ALONG in our M. I'm not at all proud of it but I had spent many years trying to control his behavior in an effort to make myself feel safe. I had (and actually continue to have) mistrust issues that predate (and apparently post-date!) h's a. Knowing those 2 things...it just felt like a HUGE 180 for me to try to let go of my need to control H's behavior. If you read my thread you'll find out that I struggle with this TO THIS DAY (well, up until yesterday! ) so I'm in no way suggesting that it's easy.

Oh, one more thing (so, my last "finally" was not accurate!) -- I've found for myself that when I'm busy looking for EVIDENCE of an ongoing a, I miss the EVIDENCE that h is coming around and recommitting to our m.

So...there you have it...more thoughts from Sage ...not trying to bring you to my way of looking at things, just putting my advice into context!

Sage