Thanks for the reminder not to listen to the "little voice" and that my H is in the trouble he's in because of that little voice.
I am going home on Wed. (my daughter is missing H and I don't want the amount of time I took her away to reflect negatively on me in any future custody hearing). I think I've decided to go home for a week and then come back and visit my mom for another week. I can't commit to staying at my house idefinitely yet as it's not mentally healthy for me to be there, and luckily I don't have to because of summer vacation! (I'm a teacher).
Not sure how things will go between my H and me while I'm home.
a. List all the things you WILL DO b. List all the thigns you WON'T DO
When you GET there your head will be a mess and you will be glad you planned ahead and put at least a rough list togehter...
My advice is to take a friend there with you... Keep your H on the defensive... As long as your friend is there he isn't gonig to initiate any conversations that turn into a fight... And that's very likley what he's gonna try to do if you let him
Allen - I'm so glad you brought up the do/don't list. It was harder to complete than I expected. I've been stewing on it for several days and I've finally hit what I think is a good starting place (and of course I've got an 8 hour drive tomorrow to stew some more) . . .
I tried to write the list right off the bat, but found it paralyzing. So, I started with some "givens," or things to consider when writing the do/don't list. Here they are:
Given: H thinks I'm a negative person (can't remember if I went into this here but I took a new job this year that was AWFUL - daily turmoil - and I didn't manage my emotions related to it well).
Given: I have a hard time acting rationally when: a) I feel lonely because my daughter is gone and I have no one else; 2) My H rejects me (even if it's indirect rejection); 3) I am imagining what my H is doing with OW.
Given: H thinks I'm controlling.
Given: There is a need to stop the negative interaction cycle between my H and myself (he acts poorly so I react poorly and then he again acts poorly . . . ). My counselor/coach suggested trying to get to some "side by side" activity centered around my daughter where we can interact positively. At the same time, I need to protect myself from additional hurt.
So, given those details, here is my do/don't list:
Do: 1. Let H know I'm willing to listen to what he has to say, but that he needs to write it in email. I'm working out the wording of this but I think it will go something like "I'm very hurt right now so I'm sure you can understand emotions are running high. I think our conversation would be most productive if we emailed it to each other and took the heat off of the conversation." [Other suggested wording is appreciated, anyone!]
2. Lots of Self-Care/GALing: excercise daily, meet up w/ work friends on weekend, shop, go to movies by myself if necessary. I am working on calendaring out things to do the whole time I'm back home because the down time is when I usually go off the deep end and don't behave in the way I want to behave.
3. Be pleasant and cordial to H. I need to be considerate of his needs while not going overboard. I won't wait on him or make him special meals, but I won't be outright rude or cold.
DON'T: 1. Initiate any R conversation with H.
2. Don't try to control what he does with daughter. [After much thought I don't think he'll take her anywhere near OW. If he is still seeing her, he is currently covering his tracks really well - don't think he'd blow it by taking our daughter to her. That would really complicate things with his parents, even if he doesn't care about complications with me.]
3. Allow him as much access to daughter as he wants. I want to be able to claim that I was reasonable and accomodating if we end up in a custody hearing. I also think time with her has the potential to soften him, especially after he didn't see her for 10 days. Time with her will also take away time from OW, which has the potential to make OW jealous and complicate their relationship. I also want to be able to take her away for the 4th of July weekend as our wedding anniversary will occur over that weekend and I don't want to be home at that time (for my own mental sanity).
4. Don't say anything cynical or sarcastic about the A. On a related note, don't engage in bitter or resentful behavior.
That does it - feedback and suggestions are welcomed!
DO 1. Be cold.. be as indifferent and disspassionate as you can be... think mr spock 2. IF he tries to get you to talk WALK AWAY 3. Tell him if he has anything to say, write it down and that you don't want to hear a peep out of him... and repeat that until he gets it.. say NOTHIGN ELSE... no yelling "You hurt me so much" etc... NONE OF THAT
Don't 1. Be rude... No, no insults, no threats, no yelling, no arm waving 2. No favors... no cooking, no laundry, do NOTHING for him... act independent 3. Do not ACCEPT him doing anything for YOU right now either.. he will try to BUY your forgiveness by making dinner and crap... to soften HIS guilt... refuse anything he tries to do... you need to make his guilt eat him alive for him to grow up 4. Don't talk about anything.. SILENT TREATMENT until HE ENDS the AFFAIR.. PERIOD.. ZERO convo from you... Women KNOW how to convey disapproval without talking... use that... 5. Dont' let him near your daughter.. he's an addict... you need to SHUT him OUT of the family financially, practically, AND EMOTIONALLY until he ENDS the AFFAIR...
No talking No funding his cell phone or internet No dinner with you and daughter No sleeping in marital bed for you either
Be ABSENT from the HOME as much as you can and take your daughter WITH YOU - show him how emtpy his home is because of what he's doing
If you have to be at home, take a friend with you to stay there and run interference... make sure they are FULLY INFORMED on what's going on so they can bust his balls if he tries anything
My dear your husband's an addict, util he ACTS RESPONSIBLY I don't reccomend you involve him in marriage or family at all...
And NO SLEEPING in the SAME BED...
YOU take a spare bed or hte couch.. got it?
THIS strategy outlined above sends a VERY CLEAR MESSAGE yours doesn't...
This is a poker game my dear, you NEVER show your cards until your opponent reveals what they have to you... you should be a CLOSED BOOK of silence until HE ENDS IT and MEANS IT
More to come later, but this should be your first few days of strategy : SILENCE and DISTANCE... show him what DIVORCE FEELS LIKE while he has a CHANCE to SAVE the MARRAIGE
YOur strategy is far too supplicating and pursuing... He will just take advantage of it
Hit him hard with a wall of silence for at least three days
Allen - As soon as I posted this, I had second thoughts. My gut tells me not to go home yet. I don't have to report to work again until the end of August. But, I'm a tad bit worried about the legal repurcussions of being gone too long with my daughter. If I refuse to give him access to my daughter, is it a) bad for me in a divorce proceeding; and b) bad for her in that she loses her dad?
We are in a no fault divorce state, so if we do divorce, he will likely get access to her. My first choice would be to move out of area, but my guess is that the "best interest of the child" rule would prevent me from doing so. My mom's current H had an ex-wife who cheated on him - courts treated it as any other divorce and he actually got the short end of the stick. He pays child support through the nose and she gets the kids the majority of the time. I haven't consulted a lawyer yet, but my sense is that if I block his access to her that I will put myself in a compromising position and that I won't actually be replicating a divorce-like scenario.
You know what - at the core of the discrepancy between what I posted and what Allen posted is my confliction over how to proceed. I have a counselor/coach who's advocating the "nice" approach on the grounds that I have to give him a reason to choose me - says this is not the same as condoning the affair and that now that I've exposed to family, the family will be enough negative pressure. Says with family's disapproval of A and my playing nice, that will help push/pull him back to me. She says that if I am cold, etc., that will just reinforce his opinion that I'm a negative person. So that is in one of my ears. I also need to say that I've recently discovered beyondaffairs.com and the story/articles on that site seem to support what my counselor is telling me.
Then, I come onto this forum and hear a different story - and pieces of advice from this site have been VERY useful. The idea of exposing was certainly from here and quite useful (even though at this point I haven't exposed everywhere - the notable "saved" card is the work exposure). I read about people who tried the nice approach for long periods of time and found it useless - which makes me worried about the "catching flies with honey" approach above.
So, in the end, I'm toggling between two approaches here and I have no idea what will work. So, I guess I try to blend them and hope for the best - not necessarily the best strategy, but then again, I'm learning this game for the first time.
Mel, I used a db coach too.. the affair did NOT even take a dent from the little bo peep approach...
Read Ken's story on here, or more recent TWolf, he used a db coach and the MWD technique and his wife continued to cheat on him for a YEAR... eventually moving out and filing for divorce... NOW that he's combatting the affair DIRECTLY using a more aggressive approach and handling this as an addiction his WIFE is now telling the divorce judge SHE needs more time and has second thoughts...
Going soft on cheating isnt' getting a very good track record on this forum or from the experts in that area... it just results in the WS playing both sides of the fence and the LBS - YOU - getting more ILL and MISERABLE by the DAY
Once I started playing hard ball THAT's when things improved
MWD is NOT an infidelity expert... many infidleity experts treat infidelity as an ADDICTION.. and you have to play hard ball with an addict...
Re The legal ramifications, I woudl suggest you
a. Contact a lawyer JUST to find out what your legal rights are.. it should be a free consult b. Prepare a letter to him if you are planning on staying longer that will invite him to visit his Daughter there were you are... He very likley knows you have exposed there and won't want to show his face anyways...
If you write that letter and show it to the lawyer I suspect that will prove he has been given access...
Regarding what's best for your daughter people on this forum have seen their children left in the hands of an infidelity addict and have seen their children left alone an entire afternoon with no food and even attacked by a dog resulting in stiches and hospitalization...
Addicts cannot effectively care for children...
Here, read this short ebook, this is an alternative strategy to MWD from Penny Tupy, who IS a Family THerapist and an infidleity SPECIALIST
I am not saying my way is "right", but I would suggest you consider what people on this forum who EXPERIENCE infidleity and research it OUTSIDE of just the MWD philosophy have to say... we consult infidelity EXPERTS like Tupy, Lusterman, Harley, etc... They deal with infideltiy daily and have a very successful track record
Read the ebook and decide for yourself if it makes sense...
I"m buried at work at the moment, but for whatever my opinion is worth:
I've personally enver seen the "nice them back to you" approach work -- esp. when thins have already gone legal. In fact, I've seen quite the opposite.
There's a TON of grey area in which you can be civil, courteous, respectful and kind while taking a strong stance legally, financially, and against the affair.
"I thought if I was nice to him, he would play nice legally" are FAMOUS last words. There's a reason they put that little "v" between the names of the parties!!
For more on this dilemna, ask Pearharbor and Greek. One (PH) took the strong stance; the other (Greek) had her husband (Coach) take it, and to great effect in both cases.
again, fwiw, from my personal archives about my own philosophy/experience on this whole subject:
My Story:
I actually had two main confrontations with my wife. Initially, I had suspicions, based on the way she was acting and some of the things she was googling on the computer (I had a keylogger). Naturally, she denied it -- twice.
Then one night I was out of town, at my dad's 80th birthday party, and she stayed home with the kids. I got an e-mail on my BlackBerry from my keylogger, showing that she was searching "older woman/younger man" and "sexual positions" etc. on the home computer. I felt sick to my stomach, and like an ox was standing on my chest. I couldn't breathe, and I didn't know if I should tell my folks and my siblings, or try to keep it to myself.
I was up all night, distraught, and phoned my wife and confronted her around midnight. "You're up late," I said. "Yeah, I couldn't sleep," she replied. She sounded nervous. "What are you doing?" I asked, and she could tell something was wrong. "Just on the computer," she said. "What's wrong?"
(pause)
"Look, I know all about you and (OM's first name), and it needs to stop. Immediately. This is incredibly disrespectful to me, to our marriage, and to our family." She tried to deny it at first, but I persisted (without revealing my intel), saying "Please STOP IT. We both know you're lying to me right now, and it's horribly disrespectful. If you're going to lie to me, I'm just going to hang up."
She then SORT of told me the truth, denying that it had become physical (which I later found out was also a lie).
I exposed to our adult daughters that night, via a phone call. My D-then-18 already knew, as she had suspected something and her and her best friend had followed her mother one night a couple of weeks ago, and caught her coming out of a bar with the guy, and saw them get into a car together. The poor thing had been keeping this all to herself, because she didn't want to upset her daddy. She broke down on the phone and cried, and so did I.
I told both her and her sister (D-then-20) that I loved their mother very much, did NOT want a divorce, but I also wasn't going tolerate this kind of disrespect. I WOULD NOT LIVE IN AN OPEN MARRIAGE. They both said they understood, and respected my position. D18 wanted to confront OM that next day, and I talked her down, and told them both just to wait until I got back from my trip and we could discuss it as a family.
I also exposed to my parents and siblings the next morning, as I felt I needed their support. In the ensuing couple of weeks, I gave my wife repeated chances to end the affair -- she refused 5-6x -- and then I finally exposed to her parents, OM's parents (he lived with his parents!) and their employer, on whose premises the affair was partly taking place. Since the kid was also studying to become a cop, and was going thru the Academy, I found out that there was a "public review" process and I wrote a letter to his file, exposing their affair, and opposing his candidacy to become a police officer.
About 50 days in, I filed for divorce, after she repeatedly threatened to divorce ME. I felt I needed to protect myself, and decided to go for full custody of our boys.
Despite all of this, and my tightening the finances to stop paying for anything that was enabling her affair (cellphone, plastic surgery payment, haircoloring, etc.), her affair continued -- heated up -- for 60 days. I then RE-confronted her, with the "NO MORE DECEIT" confrontation (it's all in my old Chocolateeyes threads; Summer of 2007). This re-confrontation took place in her car, in a department store parking lot, when I told her one evening that "we need to talk." I had decided that while I may not be able to stop her from having an affair, I damned sure wasn't going to let her continue to LIE about it to her parents and to our adult daughters, and try to say that I was being "paranoid" and accusing HER, when everything I was claiming was 100% TRUE.
I told her at this meeting "you either tell them, or I will, and I will show them my evidence."
I gave her 5 minutes to decide.
She told them.
It took about another month before she fully ended it and begged me to take her back, but make no mistake -- that night was basically the beginning of the death of her affair. She had one backslide, about 2 weeks into no-contact/transparency, which she self-confessed, and we got thru it. After two 3-month "stays" of the divorce action, I finally withdrew it the following Spring.
We had fits and starts over the next couple of years, nearing divorce twice (even met with the mediator), ending with a mutually-agreed-upon separation this summer, where we would try to date each other, but each would date other people (she had initially INSISTED on this, and I initially said it was a DEALBREAKER. I then changed my mind, based mostly on Gucci's and Robx's stuff on here). Not two weeks into that arrangement, she called me in tears (I was on my one and only "date"), and long story short, I moved back in with her and we agreed to MC and we fully reconciled.
We've had some tough moments, but our marriage is stronger than it's ever been. The MC is fantastic (had been my wife's IC), holds our feet to the fire, and we're finally starting to deal with some of our sex-starved marriage issues and my wife's problems with intimacy. Turns out MWD's books (along with Harley, Glass and some of my other faves) were all over the MC's office! I knew I had found the right place for us. My wife and I are better friends than we have ever been, have ML more in the past 3 months than we had in the past six YEARS, and I'd say we are "Piecing" at this point, to use the DB phrase.
I hope that helps. That's an awfully long answer to a short question, but I thought I'd just put it all out there.
Puppy
I should add as a P.S.
Throughout all of these "tough stances," I maintained a "loving detachment" towards my wayward wife. Oh, we had our moments -- three or four real blow-ups -- but for the most part, we managed to keep things civil. I laid out some boundaries (no family finances used to enable your affair, no TMing or phoning OM from inside our home, no TMing or phoning OM in front of our sons, from ANYWHERE, if you're going to come home after 1am, don't bother coming home, etc.), and I must say, she respected them almost completely.
The "loving" part of "loving detachment" comes easier for you, trust me, when you maintain full intel ("snooping") and you hear and see the things that I heard and saw. But I did try to "shine a light back towards the marriage, even as I never wavered from my Main Boundary ("I will not live in an open marriage") and my sub-boundaries mentioned above. I would do occasional loving Acts of Service for my wife, such as pulling her car in the garage late at nite, or covering her with a blanket when she fell asleep on the couch, kissing her on the forehead, etc.
I believe that this "hybrid" approach -- aggressive confrontation & exposure, firm boundaries, cut off all financial enabling, strong legal stance; coupled with DBing principles such as GAL, "be the better option," 180s, etc. -- is what works best when there is active infidelity involved.
Reasonable people may disagree, but this is what worked for me, and this is also what I have seen work in my time on these boards, as well as my study of literally thousands of affairs.
Mel, its your choice but many here tried the softball approach and the affair dragged on for YEARS... it may work, but you will get very ill and very miserable in the process.. particularly if you can't hanlde rejection well... whcih I don't...
This is an addiction Mel, but the db coaches will NOT teach you that... they can ONLY endorse softball because they can only support the MWD approach for you.... WE LIVE this each day and WE can reccomend ANY approach
