Still getting nowhere fast....

[lost-n-Iowa]

I took the advice that was given to me on this site, that if I allowed my H to come back that I needed to set boundries and stick to them. My boundry was that my H needed to tell the OW in front of me (either to her face on on the phone on speaker) that it was over between them and that he was wanting to make his marriage work and that she needed to stay out of out lives and not to have any contact with my H anymore. I thought the same thing that you are thinking too....that it will only push him towards her. I have learned 2 different things.....

1. Don't TELL him to do it, ask him to. My H seemed to waiver back and forth and never would do it, so I thought that meant that he was stringing her along too. In the end he finally told me that since I was telling him to do it then he just felt like doing the oppisite. Men must be wierd that way but I finally asked him.

2. When i finally asked him I did it like this, 'I would appreciate it if you would call the OW up and put her on speaker and tell her this (blah blah blah). If you are not willing to do this for me and our family and our marriage then I can not fully put my trust, respect, or faith in you and your commitment to our M. If you are not willing to do this then I believe that you have chossen her over our M and that we should proceed with the divorce.' I learned here how to stand up for what I believed in, felt strong about it, and laid my fellings out there about what I would not tolerate.

I was very worried that he would get mad at me, which he did. I was very worried that he would walk out the door and choose her over me, which he did. I was worried that he would not come back, which he did come back. And he called her in front of me and told her the things that I had said that I needed him to say to her so that we could continue to work on our M and move forward. IT WORKED!!! I feel great about it.

We have been to the MC twice now and have one more appointment before my H is to leave again and we have already set up the next one for when he isto come back. I think that we have been doing good except that we fell back into our old pattern when we got into an arguement yesterday and it rolled into today. i had found text messages fromt the OW about her wanting to talk to him and wanting to know what was going on and then the last one asked if he went back to me and if he did then he was stupid. I confronted him about it and it ended up that I that was suppose to be trusting him and that I went trough his phone and that I reallyw as not trying to work on our M if I was going to be doing that stuff. I had set the boundry when we first started talkign about getting back together and going to counceling and I never followed through with it. So I laid it on the line and kept saying the same thing. I finally said that if he woudl not do thins thenI was done. I would not try any more with him if he could not show me that he had ended it with her and that he was committed to makingour M work. Now that it has been done and I have heard it and told her myself that I appreciated that she talked to us about this and that I appreciated it if she would leave us alone so that we could work on our M and she said that she would I can aleast try to start putting some faith into the M again.