I found that doing some volunteer work for someone who really needs the support is one of the best medicines... giving really does seem to combat internal hurt.. it suffocates it with the warmth of a day's generosity...
I"m starting to feel anger instead of depression tonight as I GALed and had a good time. Its much easier to detach when anger fuels independence, instead of depression fuelling longing.
I do remember what is was like to have an affair, although mine did not last as long, and it was not in any respect an actual relationship. I do remember it made me believe crazy things. I said things that hurt H to justify it and it really was like losing myself completely. I was not myself and was possessed in a way that was actually frightening. It actually turned quite abusive in the end, so even in that way I was fooling myself.
I'm so glad I'm finding my way back to myself. AS for H I can imagine he is running on the same illogical escape plan as I only much deeper. And I realize as long as he knows i'm sitting here waiting for him, he doesn't really have to make a choice. I made mine once he said no more. I must do the same.
I"ve taken the blame, the guilt, the punishment and felt I deserved it all because I started this with my fling. But what I didn't know was that he had been lying to me for months that another woman was behind his resistance to reconciliation. When I think of all the anger, abuse, blame, foul words, abandonment, lies I"ve put up with because I wanted so desperately for HIM TO FORGIVE ME and show MY CHANGES that i am beginning to see that was in no way the whole picture. Thank you Allen for emphasizing this with your house analogy. If he is going to run from problems by hiding in romantic fantasy, I can do nothing. It is like a drug. I know this.
And, he's doing drugs. He's been partying with his stupid baby brother etc etc etc.
So tonight I feel strong, I don't know how long it will last. But I can see clearer. I know he will not treat me with any respect or fairness as long as he is in the fantasy world. So like people here say, I have to make his choice real.
I have signed up with a DB coach, and I'm out looking for new groups, hobbies. I like the volunteer work idea too, Allen.
I know that hiding his head in the sand is a family trait for his side - they all avoid each other, are passive aggressive, arrogant, and can't relate to people well because they are so insecure/superior feeling. His father was abusive to his mother, and I have seen this part of him come out over the past year on me and even my son occasionally. So, he may never come back around and mature. His family is not like that. They are intellectually very smart, but emotionally very stunted.
I'm going to work on not taking the blame any more. I have little respect for someone who leaves his family because it doesn't feel fun anymore and treats his wife with such contempt and rudeness.
I'm back after quite a while. I took the advice of the DB coach, who said to make the most of "family time" with me, H, and S5, be a really good friend and drop the rope of any bait. We stopped going to MC for a month, but we are headed back next MOnday.
On this advice, things were more friendly for a while, and I was feeling hopeful. THen as we stayed away from MC, H started baiting me more and more. It started with constant jabs - criticisms disguised as jokes and followed up with surprise that I was "getting all upset over nothing", and it grew into hostility. I tried to tell him to stop, hung up on him, walked away, this increased the hostility. I tried to talk to him when we were calmer and weeks had passed - it quickly devolved into him accusing and blaming me of doing things I wasn't like manipulating him and making him look bad and me look like a saint, telling half truths and lies, etc. IT went nowhere.
My dilemma is this. To keep being patient and friendly, or to walk away myself and shut down. I feel like I"m doing doormat behavior here. I know I had the affair first. This was 15 months ago. I recently found out he's been seeing OW for 11 months now. I have stopped all my acting out behaviors, joined support groups, realized part of the affair was actually rape and stalking (another story), I have gone to MC, apologized, changed, owned my stuff, had empathy with his pain and lack of trust. What have I gotten? Lied to about his OW. Led on for months in MC that we were considering reconsiliation, only to be told "I'm not coming back" the day the Legal Separation papers were signed (I feel manipulated into this). I have been yelled at, criticized, teased, laughed at, put down, insulted, sworn at - every week and at times daily since the separation. I mean how much patience, calmness, friendliness, and commitment should I continue to put in?
Yesterday I found an old journal of H's. H does not keep journals. It was written when he first met OW, last July/Aug. There are lists of really fun activities to do with OW. There were lists of places to stay on a vacation he never told me about. There were lists of all his time spent with S. All hidden from me and leading me to believe now the legal separation was a way to get me to sign papers that could be used undisputed in a D (as H made sure they would be) without a fight from me (as he has told me he wanted).
I realize how I let myself be misled and lied to and I feel enraged. I want to go back to court and fight. I want to call domestic violence lawyers and fight for more custody (my state insists on 50/50 usually), I want to fight for more money. I should have fought from the start, but was playing it cool as I was owning how I had destroyed our marriage, and wanted reconsiliation. I wanted to buy myself time. And every time he said "if we reconsile" or came to MC, I had hope. It was all lies.
And today I see a picture posted on H's twitter of a romantic beach scene - nobody was in it, but this is a man that never went to the beach - I had to drag him there in the past, it's not his thing. It smells of woman. I can't take it, I have to stop looking at his twitter. But when he cancelled dinner tonight with S and I, I knew anyhow what that meant.
What do I do? Act on these feelings of rage I have? Calm down and continue doing what the DB coach said? Many DB friends say I need to be the WAS now, to stop the abuse, to draw a line with the OW, to take legal power back. But the coach said to create positive times together and not take the bait when he spews so our times are positive in his mind. This is terribly hard with all the criticisms, blame, insults and anger I get, as well as it is demeaning.
I still want my marriage but am unclear as to how to proceed. I need a plan. Allen, anyone, please help!
If you get spewed anything I would suggest you exit the conversation, simply saying you will not tolerate being disrespected...
Never act on rage... Always wait til you have control of your impulses to make an action. I am not saying do nothing, I am saying make calculated choices, not impulsive ones
I would need more details to comment on the legal stuff...
Stop looking at twitter, facebook, etc... If you know he's cheating and everyone else knows that's all you need as far as intel, the rest is just you being self-abusive
My advice yes is to expose what OW is doing to your marriage and your family to anyone who you feel may pressure her to back off...
Always express things in the context of destroying family, NOT your husband cheating... its ok to use the word infidelity, but don't attack your husband, attack the OW as an interloping third party only
Note : A detailed signature should help summarize your situation for other viewers and generate more opinions
I don't know who OW is, as I don't want to know. I did tell MIL that H is seeing someone else, but she has her allegance to H. However, she is the one who told me to get a bulldog lawyer and fight for as much as I can get!
I signed legal sep papers under the understanding that we would go to MC and consider reconciliation. We went and that is where he told me he is not coming back. I don't know how much I can change in a D now that it is in place - I know I can fight for "the best interests of the child" at any point and try to prove his emotional abuse.
I am a spiritual person and believe in my vows - even though I had an affair. I know, hypocritical. But now it seems he is quite cozy venting constant anger and history rewrites of blame towards me while doing fun things with her. Reading others in this forum, I've thought I should end everything with H, just stop talking to him, making dinner, spending time etc. But the DB coach said the opposite - make the most of the time, spend more, be an attractive alternative. I just don't know what to do as I suffer anxiety attacks hours up to and after visit with H knowing he will be hostile and angry.
My DB Coach told me the same thing and it made NO DIFFERENCE... MWD DB Coaches do NOT address infidelity as an addiction... they play softball...
Don't HAVE visits with him... shut him out of your life.. get an intermediary to sit with him and son and you aren't THERE... makde sure the intermediary is strong enough to resist him bullying anyone as well
I don't reccomend you do ANYTHING NICE FOR YOUR HUSABND...
Allen, I have struggled with this for a year now. I do not trust my H with my S. His verbal assaults carry on to S as well. And when the DB coach said to make the most of family time, it pulled my heart strings which were telling me to have as much family time as possible anyhow so S doesn't see two parents who can't stand to talk to one another or be in the same room together.
For these reasons, and the fact that S spends the night only once per week at dad's, I end up having at least two nights a week where we are all together from dinner until bed. H refuses to spend time with S on weekends, which is fine by me, but I do not know why he insists on staying over night here to be with S the two nights per week he doesn't have S at his place. I have asked him to stay until S is in bed and then leave, I have asked him to spend more of his time with S on weekends so as not to disrupt S's weekday routine. For some reason he stays over here. (I sleep on the couch).
I have gone through phases that once S is in bed, I retreat to my room and ignore H. At other times, esp. after the DB coach's advice, I spent time trying to hang out with H in the living room talking, having tea, watching tv, etc.
My main concern with cutting H out of my life completely is 1) the effect that will have on my little boy and 2) concern that this idicates to my H that I have given up on my M and am totally fine with him living his single life with OW and 3) I don't want him to press to take S to his apt. more nights per week as S is already showing distress at going there once per week.
Like I said, I need a plan, because playing nice, making dinners, having family outings and evening games has led to more emotional abuse towards me and our S. If separating is supposed to be a solution to the tension and pain, I don[t understand why H makes it worse when he is here than it ever was before he left.
PS are you saying that what you advocate on this board DID help your sitch?
YES. Protesting the infidelity and NOT participating in day to day niceties wtih your spouse increases teh chances of ending the affair.
Expert opinion on infidelity suggests that the affair must end before any signifiant steps to repair the marriage can ever take place.
MWD approach chooses to ignore the infidelity and work on improving the marriage despite this fact.
I reccomend a protection phase... Below is an exerpt from Penny Tupy's text that will explain to you what you are doing to damage your chances of getting things back to normal. Many many many people on this forum try db LRT for months or even a year or more (myself included) and it doens't work. You just end up with post traumatic stress disorder and seriously ILL. Once you decide to combat the infidelity with exposure and END CONTACT with your spouse you start to feel a LOT HEALTHIER and your spouse starts to MISS YOU... How can your spouse miss you with minimal contact when he sees you every week?
Sorry, but your strategy just doesn't make any sense to me, and likely to other members of this forum, we see flavors of what you are doing here week after week and they don't work.
From Overcoming Infidelity : Book One
In my experience, continuing to have minimal co ntact is one of the risk ier str ategies. Unfortunately it is the one that, intuitively, seems to make the most sense. So let‘s take it apart a little and see if I can help you understand why this strategy has the power to be destructive to the go al of saving your marr iage.
Minimal co ntact that is conflicted and ad versarial does nothing to heal the relationship; it o nly ser ves to drive a bigger wedge between you and your partner. I think we‘d all agree that‘s pretty obviou s. What may no t be so obvious is that min imal adversar ial contact has po ssibly a more adverse affect on the betrayed mate than the o ne having the affair. Remember the Great Race that I mentioned earlier ? Ad versarial and co nflicted co ntact is very likely to accelerate the betrayed partner‘s readiness to throw in the towel.
Minimal co ntact that is calm and courteous, then, seems like the best po ssible solution. Instinctively and intuitively it‘s what you‘ ll be dr iven by yo ur own attachment chemistry to maintain. Do n‘t be fooled. Minimal courteous contact can be deadly. A few thing s happ en which, combined, create a dangero us biochemical time bo mb.
First, you send a lo ud and clear message to your spouse that the affair really isn‘t all that devastating to you. After all, if yo u can inter act pleasantly, then
you must be doing just fine. You must be accepting the inevitable break up of yo ur marr iage. Even if you have said so mething to the contrary, your actions are where the real message lies.
Seco nd, you derail the attachment chemistry we want to trigger in your spouse. When a relationship is threatened (even a relatio nship we claim to no longer want) the instinctive reaction is to find it suddenly more attractive. But in or der fo r this to happen there must be a perceived threat to the status quo. When you r emain in co ntact and you give the appearance of being calm and at peace, there is no perceived threat to the relatio nship.
Yes, I understand that your wayward partner says they don‘t want the marriage, or perhaps they say they need to make up their mind about it. Those kinds of statements are made within the context of having all the co ntrol over the destiny of the marr iage. Yo u‘ve already made it abundantly clear that you want to save the marriage and that yo u‘re willing to do what it takes to do so. But when you take back so me of your personal empower ment and remo ve yourself fro m a situation which you find unacceptable, yo ur partner understands at a very basic bio logical level that he or she is no lo nger in total control of the outcome. This triggers the reactio n of needing to hold o n to the marriage more rather than less.
Think about being in junior high or high school. We all had friends, or maybe you yo urself did this, who wanted to dump a bo yfr iend o r gir lfriend first œ before getting dumped. It‘s the same so rt of reactio n. We want to have the final say on the
relatio nship- it doesn‘t matter if we‘re fourteen or fifty- fo ur. Everyone wants to be the dumper and not the dumpee!
Third, yo u short circu it the dynamic of forcing the affair partners to rely entirely upon each other. In almost ever y triang le the spouse plays a certain role and the affair partner plays another. The straying mate has two people vying fo r his or her attention and do ing all they can to entice him o r her to choo se. Removing yourself fro m that dynamic now puts the burden entirely o n the shoulder s of the affair partner. Almost always he or she comes up short, but your spouse won‘t find that out until you step away entirely.
And finally, staying in min imal contact keeps you from fully detaching and healing. It keeps you stuck in that p lace of hur ting and obsessing. When the affair ends, and your spouse is ready to talk about reconciliation, you will need every ounce o f strength and calm you can muster. This isn‘t possible when you are caught in the chao s of the betraying spouse‘s affair drama.
If you are wo rr ied about giving the impressio n that you‘ve mo ved on with your life and are willing to accept the new relationship, min imal courteous co ntact is the worst thing yo u can do. Even if you made verbal or written statements to the contrary, your actions will speak volumes drowning out your words entirely. Minimal co urteo us co ntact says lo ud and clear, —I‘m fine now that yo u‘ve left, and I really don‘t find it all that distressing. In fact, I‘m quite happy to accept your new life and yo ur new partner.“
OK is their a chance that he is dart throwing and in real pain because you cheated on him.
Is their a chance that he is using the O/W to make you feel that if my love for you was not good enough for you i found some one else that would.
He has giving you so many chances, you have probley be littled him made him feel less of a man.
Him not taking your son around O/W you still have hope.
Do
Last edited by twolf; 06/28/1007:01 PM.
Me 37 Waw 32 son2 bomb 8/11/09 O/M 12/25/09 Divorce filed 8/25/09 divorce finale 6/16/10 Divorce putt on hold 6/16/10 Divorce postponed STBXW idea 8/8/10
