She's forcing you to accept an open marriage... You are just commanding a reasonable level of respect from your partner.
Good call Ken, that's an excellent response.
You know an excellent response when all your wife can offer is silence.. you KNOW you hit a nerve there.. excellent work Ken. I am very proud of you.
Note : People having affairs almost ALWAYS accuse their partner's of being control freaks.. its classic script, Ignore it. You aren't doing anything unreasonable here.. your wife is cheating on you and you are protecting yourself and your kids.
The fact is, your wife is controlling things by lying to you. People lie, misinform, and withold information to keep people from making a fully informed decision about their marriage and their lives. Your wife didn't want you to know about her affair because she didn't want you to ask her to end it.. so she controlled you by lying to you... and then controlled you by being warm and nice while cheating on you in secret...
Your wife's been unfairly controlling your marriage for a long time Ken... if anyone has demonstrated an excessive amount of control over the marriage right now its your wife. She's lying, she's pursuing another man in secret, and she won't even talk to a counselor.
She's controlling her marriage right into a ditch... not you.
Is she objecting to family therapy completely or just the therapist you have selected?
You can always invite her to select an alternative one if its someone specific, but I suspect she's just being stubborn.
The thing is ken, you've been mr nice guy for so long I don't think she actually believes you will push her into separation... she doesn't think you have it in you...
She's likley shocked you have been asserting yourself as much as you have been.. its your 180 ken, keep it up.
If she tells you that you are throwing her out, you tell her she's welcome to come back any time she wants to explore rebuilding the marriage with a therapist, but OM is NOT welcome into your home through the internet, telephone, and certainly not the front door.
Tell her she's welcome back any moment, but your household is OM FREE... its HER choice... rebuild a marriage like an adult, or pursue a self-destructive children's fantasy...
I know that I'm supposed to avoid R talk, but is it possible that my case is an exception to the rule? Because as you say, she IS controlling our relationship right into a ditch. A normal unhappy spouse would either fix things or leave, but she is using me.
I could say to her, "What could I do that would be less controlling? Would you be better off single? What am I doing that is making me impossible to live with? [she would likely say - not allowing her to talk to OM. She also doesn't want me to say that she is having an affair or talk to her family about it if she leaves] Then I say, "What would you do if you were in my situation?"
I told her, "Expecting your spouse to not have an affair is not being controlling. It's a expectation that any normal person who gets married would and should expect."
My wife is asking for a divorce and I don't completely understand why.
You aren't forcing her out if you are inviting the non-cheating wife back in...
This is sort of like an exorcism :
Out with the bad, in with the good.
You aren't just tossing her out because she cheated, you are asking her to come BACK when she STOPS...
Look at it like a time out you might give a child... you aren't throwing the child out as much as you are restricting their access to you and their family while they are being destructive.
As long as you keep inviting her to family therapy, warning her infidelity harms children, and that divorce harms children, and lastly that you want to work on your marriage with a FT, SHE is LEAVING then... you are giving her all these options if she wants to stay and making things inviting as possible.
if she rejects all of the family therapy, the warnigns about harming children, etc and remains separated then she is choosing to separate and do harm to everyone around her... which you are acting to minimize...
She is welcome back at any time.. so its not a throw out.. its a TIME OUT.
IN the context of repairing a marriage no. In the context of providing an offset to the destructive influences of the OP, yes.
While OP and their bad influences continue to seduce a WS, you have your work cut out for you.
Some FT can be very persuasive and getting a WS in the door to hear an alternative view can be effective by at least having a chance to put a doubt in the mind of the WS.
Phil McGraw did an excellent affair intervention last October - you can read the story here :
McGraw did make a significant dent. He did NOT dispell the addiction, but I think he did give the WS some things to think about... granted this was in front of her entire family and the public... this is why exposure has such a powerful effect.
Hope you're doing OK today, and sorry for the brief hijack of your thread.
Originally Posted By: Allen A
IN the context of repairing a marriage no. In the context of providing an offset to the destructive influences of the OP, yes.
While OP and their bad influences continue to seduce a WS, you have your work cut out for you.
Some FT can be very persuasive and getting a WS in the door to hear an alternative view can be effective by at least having a chance to put a doubt in the mind of the WS.
Thanks Allen. Maybe I will give it a go. Or do you think it is too late in my sitch? Shoud've been done in the beginning. Not after they've been living in fantasyland for 3 months.
I have been contemplating seeing a local solution based therapist in the last few days, now that my finances are more sorted I might be able to afford it. I wonder if inviting the WAW again in the 'pretence' of finding out exactly where my mistakes fell in the demise of our marriage for moving on purposes would do any good. She'd probably still say no I suppose, but maybe it would put a bit more pressure on their relationship if she were spending an hr a week with me too.
She's merely avoided the sMIL attempts to spell out the ridiculousness of her behaviour in the last few weeks, fobbed her off with no mention of any OW and merely "I shouldn't have got married." I suspect she knows what she has done is wrong, but feels it wasn't an affair as they allegedly didn't actually sleep together until 2 or 3 weeks after she asked me to leave because the R between us was over. I'd give anything to have her listen properly to someone explaining how damaging EAs are, and how easily they become PAs, and that the grass is NOT greener with a manipulative, serial predator with nothing in common with her.
Reality is that which, if you don't believe in it, doesn't go away.
UPDATE: This morning, I handed my wife some paperwork for a temporary separation order. She responded by saying, "You can't kick me out." I said, "With a temporary separation order, one of us has to leave. Since you are the one having an affair, it will be you."
She took the papers and hid them. I said, "Don't worry about those papers. I'm going to do divorce papers instead. I'll have them ready for you when you get back from shopping." (I was thinking of backing down later and saying that I have to do it on a weekday with my lawyer.)
She didn't say anything. A little while later, I said, "There is one way we could work this out peacefully. You could stop talking to the OM for 3 months (she wouldn't agree to 6 months) and then if it doesn't work out, we can have a peaceful divorce like you want." (As if that exists.)
She agreed! She's willing to sit down with me and send him a letter of NC. I told her, "If you break that agreement, the deal's off. There will be a big ugly divorce and I will fight for the kids." (I don't think I will really do that, but it gave me leverage. Me fighting for the custody of the kids is the one thing she is most afraid of.
I know this is not ideal, but I think I need to take what I can get. I know that three months for me cannot compare to 10 months of a relationship with the OM, but I'm at my wits end. She won't leave, and this is the closest we can come to reconciliation.
My wife is asking for a divorce and I don't completely understand why.
