Is she cheating??? Please respond!!

[sandycay]

Your mistake is thinking that you are enabling her to do something by your words or actions. She is doing what she wants and is trying to steer her belief (by getting negative reactions from you) that this marriage can't work. Your not going to convince her with words.

Your not going to "win" her back.... everyone whose spouses really came back on this board was because the spouses wanted to. Not because they "made"" the spouse see the error of their ways and guilted them back.

The only thing you can try to do is to not push her further away by engaging in her emotions. I told you in my former post how I responded. Reread

You say "
"we're both obviously not communicating well about this, so let's just give each other the benifit of the doubt and not blame one another,"

To much talk here reread what to say. Zip your lips.

Initially, I did all this to ""win" my husband back. Isn't that what we are all here for? Eventually as I got on my with my life and started excepting my fate, I started doing it because it hurt less. I mean every time we would discuss the R, it gave him another opportunity to convince himself why it wouldn't work. I put it in my mind the more he heard himself say it the more he would believe it so I didn't want to talk about it with him anymore.

Here is a nugget that someone gave me, and I can't remeber if I read it or not but I wrote it down and it became my mantra. Because, I am a woman who will talk anything to death and felt of course my situation was different and I can explain to my husband why he should feel differently than he does.

WRITE THIS DOWN, Tattoo it on your rear, whatever it takes to understand.

Before you speak, and I suggest you never answer quickly when talking to her, ask yourself:

IS WHAT I'M ABOUT TO SAY GOING TO GET ME CLOSER TO MY GOAL?

After, really reading what people where telling me here and reading the DB book the answer was 99% NO. So Zip your lip, even if you are right. My H was truly gone or so I thought you could have knocked me over with a feather when he called me in the middle of the night out of the blue. No one could have convinced me he was contemplating coming back. His world seemed to me like Disney World. See kids when you want, recreate when you want, sleep when you want. That's what he wanted me to see, in reality it was the Tower of Terror! But, I wasn't along for the ride.... I got off.... I let him be and was nice and detached. It was hard and I guess I finally got in the mode because it hurt being to close to the situation. It was better to not know at that point. The devil is in the details, ya know.

I totally agree with Puppy regarding the OM. He doesn't give a poop about your family. Your issue isn't with him, it's with her. It won't change anything for the positive.

Here's one more nugget that I started using on him.

"I need to think about what you are saying, can I get back to you on that?" I would say that as a stall tactic and he was always suprised by it but it worked when I wasn't sure what to say.

For instance: His parents reside on a sailboat out of country and they were coming up to see us...(this is during our seperation with no hope of reconcillation") well he called to ask if his parents could stay at the house. Normally, I would have said Yes, because my relationship with them is good, I would get to see him alot, and my kids would get a good visit with them, as we had not seen them in 3 years. But I said "hhmm let me think about that and I'll get back to you"" Now mind you , he had a two bedroom apartment and there was room for them there. So, I thought about and decided no they can't stay here, because it confused me to be around him in a "family" way and I told his mother that and you know what I told him that too later and they both understood. I did what was best for me, which was ultimately best for my kids. I would have been on pins and needles the whole time and wouldn't enjoy the visit. I did offer for them stay here for a couple of the days they were in town but was clear activities could not include H and I together because it was just to hard on me.

I stood up for myself with boundaries. They were hard to enforce as I was scared to death it was going to push him away..Guess what? He was already gone...so I needed to protect my feelings and emotions. I believe he respected me for these actions. Although, at times he didn't like them...and I don't blame him....he was paying for a house he had no access to etc.. etc. I wouldn't have been happy either but I am a now and forever believer that YOU CAN'T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS. Your either in or your out.