It'll be great if we can see a victory on a thread every once in a while.
I've noted your "attitude adjustments" and "over-exposure" points. Allen may chime in here with something but other than her mom, I think I've done what I should. It wasn't perfect but I did "put it out there".
I'll read the detaching thread tonoght if D goes to bed at a decent hour.
And so I have to resign myself to the fact my wife is gonna go wild and do this guy 19 ways to Sunday BECAUSE SHE CAN.
Then, I DO WHAT IS RIGHT FOR ME, and show her what an ADULT looks like.
And it alllllllll sucks.
Yes it does, QS264, I have been reading a couple of you guys up here when I have time.
All I can say is that all this dulls with time, unless of course you keep feeding the monster and it will consume you for the rest of your life. Time will make it better but you have to DO the right things now.
Listen, I did not DO the right things in my sitch when they needed to be done and I am the one that made my sitch longer and much more difficult, not her.
Damn it is hard to type that but it is the truth. I am still in the trenches but it does get easier if you let it.
Formerly "missherlove"
Me49 XW49 M17 T19 S16 D20
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
Look you guys are in this action oriented mode, I get it. Your M is broken there's someone in the house (OP) you want to get them out and fix the freaking hole they crawl in through, right? Get the shot gun, shoot the SOB, get some wood, patch the hole???? Right.....Wrong!!!!!
But I will tell you something that could get you started that is sorta action oriented, that I recomended to someone else today. Sorry, no GPS, no voice activated recorders, no shot guns, no hammers and nails. Sorry, tip the hat to Tim the Tool Man ERR ERR.
I would like you to start thinking about something and write down what you come up with.
If I were to sit down with your wives/(husband Sunny D )and were to ask her what her marital complaints were/are about you, What would she say?
Be honest, don't defend yourself. After you write them down re-read what you wrote and rate them two different ways.
First rate them in the order that she would rate them #1 would be her greatest complaint about you, #2 would be her second greatest complaint and so on.
Second, rate them in the order that they "sting" you....#1 would be the complaint that you feel you are most guilty of , #2 the next one and so on. You get it right? Now add the 2 scores for the complaints.
The lowest scoring complaints need to be looked at first. Don't beat yourself up over this exercise, this is just to identify things that need to be looked at in YOU.
This is part of making YOU a better YOU. Look at this time as a Gift from your Wives/Husband. This is time that you are going to use to grow and improve yourself.
Formerly "missherlove"
Me49 XW49 M17 T19 S16 D20
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
I don't necessarily disagree with you, but I do think you should give it some internal, set amount of time in YOUR mind. 3 months perhaps?
Some do six, others a year or even two; I personally could have NEVER abided that long. I chose three, and told my wife only that "I hope you'll hurry up and do the right thing, because what's left of my love for you is running out every day you carry on this affair and lie to me and everyone else about it."
Puppy
I am putting Puppy’s quote in here since his advice thus far has been invaluable he also knows that from here on out it is a TIME thing.
Before you start communicating time tables and boundaries and the like to your wayward W, I would caution you to consider how long you will stand. If you say 3 months and 3 months comes and goes and you are still standing, it will weaken your position. . . .
I advocate INTERNAL deadlines, and there's a reason why I used that word "internal" in my post to CD. The problem is, if you tell your wayward spouse that you will wait until, say, October 31st, then you've just basically given your tacit approval for them to carry out their affair until then, and then -- on October 30th -- you'll find that they come to you, full of contition and remorse, BEGGING you to take them back and promising you the moon and the stars.
It's like telling the terrorists that you're going to pull the troops out on January 1st -- they'll just wait you out.
Other than that very important point, I'm actually not really that different from MHL's and TG's advice. If you go back a couple of pages, you'll see that I was basically telling CD the same thing: "no 2x4s; time to focus on CD."
My views on exposure are a little different than Allen's. I'm generally only in favor of exposing to a very close circle, each of whom you're either entirely sure or almost entirely sure will be supportive of the marriage.
Look you guys are in this action oriented mode, I get it. Your M is broken there's someone in the house (OP) you want to get them out and fix the freaking hole they crawl in through, right? Get the shot gun, shoot the SOB, get some wood, patch the hole???? Right.....Wrong!!!!!
But I will tell you something that could get you started that is sorta action oriented, that I recomended to someone else today. Sorry, no GPS, no voice activated recorders, no shot guns, no hammers and nails. Sorry, tip the hat to Tim the Tool Man ERR ERR.
I would like you to start thinking about something and write down what you come up with.
If I were to sit down with your wives/(husband Sunny D )and were to ask her what her marital complaints were/are about you, What would she say?
Be honest, don't defend yourself. After you write them down re-read what you wrote and rate them two different ways.
First rate them in the order that she would rate them #1 would be her greatest complaint about you, #2 would be her second greatest complaint and so on.
Second, rate them in the order that they "sting" you....#1 would be the complaint that you feel you are most guilty of , #2 the next one and so on. You get it right? Now add the 2 scores for the complaints.
The lowest scoring complaints need to be looked at first. Don't beat yourself up over this exercise, this is just to identify things that need to be looked at in YOU.
This is part of making YOU a better YOU. Look at this time as a Gift from your Wives/Husband. This is time that you are going to use to grow and improve yourself.
This is a great exercise. I agree with it.
But do it to make you a better CD, CD -- don't think she's going to be emotionally open to your "changes" right now, because she's not. Not while she's still addicted to her OM.
See, everyone (esp. over on MLC) thinks I'm a pro-exposure, bust-the-affair, don't-work-on-yourself guy. I'm not. I'm a HYBRID guy. I think you need to SIMULTANEOUSLY work on yourself (on those changes that you genuinely believe need work, not some re-writing of marital history complaints of a wayward spouse), while you play legal hardball and EITHER:
a) aggressively affair-bust ("2a"); or
b) Set them free ("2b").
For the record, this is my stance, from my own personal archives, originally a "P.S." to my own sitch story:
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.
Puppy, I have read what you post up ^^^^^ there before and in the words of Paul Harvey "Thats the Rest of the Story" and I think that is the formula that will probably work for most people.
It is just getting your head wrapped around the time thing that gets missed, and potentially can sabotage the great work you have done.
CD has done things practically perfect from what I have seen and it is time to move to phase 2 if you will, while maintaining the work you/he started....ala the hybrid approach.
Last edited by missherlove; 07/29/1001:40 AM.
Formerly "missherlove"
Me49 XW49 M17 T19 S16 D20
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
)and were to ask her what her marital complaints were/are about you, What would she say?