I believe I will hold off on the therapist request until H indicates in some way that he is interested in working on the R.
One thing I will say is that your M will not be reconciled until the affair stops and he looks inward.
There are different schools of thought on that as you might expect.
Everyone is going to give you advice based on their own experience and what they believe works.
You will find what works for you.
I confronted my W about the A. So she knew that I knew.
You will never get a confession on this BTW.
Exposing? Depends what you want.
If you want your spouse to come back because they feel shame and remorse and you pick back up where you left off in a dyfunctional relationship...
That may get you that result or they truly come back because they want to. Many outcomes are possible and none guaranteed.
None.
If you want to reconcile just remember each person you tell is a hill that has to be climbed by your H on the way back. Some say they deserve it. BUT they will have a lot of guilt if and when they decide to come back. Just keep that in mind.
Me? I believe this tragedy has given me time and opportunity to work on myself and what I brought to the demise of my M.
It allowed me to regain faith in myself and that I decide when and if I take my spouse back. The best thing for that to happen is if they come to there own decisions based on the same process of looking inside...
THAT is what I believe. Everything else is just tactics until the two people recognize that the old M is dead and decide to make a new one by making real and purposeful changes.
That takes time.
The hard part is you only control your side of the equation.
It is also the good part when you understand that.
So
Focus on YOU.
My advice is to protect yourself legally, financially, emotionally and any other way he can hurt you.
Detach from the emotion of the situation.
My goal is to some day be the person my dog thinks I am
^^^ SPOT ON, GREAT ADVICE. Read that a few times over
M39 W41 Two children WAW bomb dropped 11/7/09 Piecing Aug 10 - Nov 10 No longer piecing...Nov 10 Separation Jan 11 EA ends again Feb 11 Piecing attempt #2, Mar 11
So he's cheated on you before, can't hold a job, cheats on you again, blames it all on you, and you don't believe that telling people the truth about what he's doing will help -- it will only make it worse?
I'll try to keep it short, but just to clarify...
Yes, my H did cheat on me about 6 years ago. The cheating occured while we were seperated. I didn't know it then, but he left me over an EA. He decided he was a failure as a husband, so he better leave me before he hurt me. His logic, not mine BTW. He confessed 2 PA that happened durring our seperation (I didn't know about either of them before he confessed), changed jobs to avoid OW, recommitted to the marriage, and did a very good job of letting me know where he was and who he was with up till May of this year, when A LOT of stress added up and left both of us disconnected and exhausted.
On the job losses... The first was a change in bosses at a job H LOVED. New boss wanted a friend to have H's job and made life very difficult for H. H decided to transfer to a lower position in a different city after his boss doctored some hiring papers to make it look like H had disregarded company policy. I have had this story verified by other people BTW, not only from H. The second job he lost was for a small retailer. The whole company shut down overnight. Failed to pay 3 weeks of wages and the final month of health benefits. That was when we went on food stamps for a while. Durring this whole time, H worked between 2 and 4 part time jobs. He was never 'unemployed,' but the job losses were devistating for him. It was after the 2nd job loss that he started to withdraw from family activities.
As far as him lying about me, no, I wouldn't say he did that. Exagurated about a lot of things, oh h*!! yes. But no outright lies, and I believe that he had convinced himself that everything he said was true and acurate. I may not be a perfect housekeeper, but I do well enough to starve out the roaches that lived here before we moved in. Even his claim about me not allowing him to parent was part like that. I had asked and asked him to do more with us. Eventually, I sort of gave up and figured he would join us when he was ready to. Instead he thought I didn't want him arround, conveniently forgetting how hard I had tried to get him to do stuff together as a family.
As far as telling people the truth, nope I don't think it will help in this case. H walked out of the house because he considered our marriage to be already over. However, because so many people already believe he is having an affair, H is not going to be able to keep his EA (or possible PA) a secret from his closest family and friends. He has been careless, thinking he was already gone, and too many people know or at least think they know what he has done. He will have to deal with a lot of shame regardless of his decision to stay or go. It has to be his decision though, not mine. And it will be the natural consequences of his actions he will have to deal with, not a punishment dealt out by me.
I do plan to confront my H at some point, but I do think that there is a good chance that my H will confess any affair, EA or PA. He won't do it unless he wants to come home though. Last time we split, H confessed to 1 EA and 2 PA. I didn't know about any of them. I had suspected an EA with his best friend at the time, who I later learned had been trying to convince him to go home to his wife the entire time we were seperated.
As far as exposing, even if there is no PA, so many people believe he is involved with an OW, there might as well be. That was his doing though, not mine.
I applaud you for following your own instincts based on what you observe is working.
Affairs, suspected and real, raise a lot of strong emotions in people and that is clear from the contributions you are getting. Undoubtedly, the nice part is, they all want to help.
I believe that your decisions and approaches have given you a fighting chance to keep your marriage and even make it better. You seem to be avoiding the invariably counterproductive strategy of overpursuit and presentation of desperation or neediness (don't worry if you've slipped sometimes - no one does this perfectly). Nor have you given into your own sense of anger or vengeance and made rash decisions based on these motives.
You are on a website called "divorcebusting.com". You have indicated you want to save your marriage despite the issues and difficulties you are facing. This is what I'm trying to respect in my posts to you. I believe for people like yourself, the general approaches outlined in Divorce Remedy are the best you can find for saving and ultimately improving your marriage and protecting yourself at the same time.
I am going to highlight something in your last post I really liked:
"Tonight my H is coming over to carve pumpkins with our D3 & me. I plan to act relaxed and happy, maybe even just a little flirting. That should not be hard right now since I'm in a good mood today. I want to sit back and enjoy being a family for the evening. Most importantly I will listen, listen, and listen. H seems like he has a lot to say if I give him the chance."
And:
"My biggest goal tonight is to make our home someplace my H wants to be at more often and to create a safe place for him to open up to me."
Create saftey, listen. It's amazing what happens when you do this.
Thank you. I apreciate all of the support I have gotten here. It has given me someplace where I could go and get some badly needed feedback.
H has left for the night and I am still processing a bit, but I think everything went well. I stuck to my plan. H got off work early and was already cooking dinner when I got home. It never seemed like a good time to ask about the therapist appointment, so I didn't.
One comment H made that caught my attention was that he was upset that he wouldn't be able to come over much in the next couple weeks because of the restaurant getting ready to open. Every other time he has expressed regret it was that he doesn't get to spend as much time as he wants with our daughter, but this time it was about being at our home.
This is a big change considering that not long ago he wouldn't even say helo to me when I called to tell our D goodnight when she stayed overnight with him!
It sounds like you are doing a good job of paying attention to the small changes, both in what H does and does not do. This is wise for two reasons. First, you don't get hung up and demoralized waiting for monumental changes - which are much less likely to occur - and instead realize this is an incremental process. Thus, your yardstick of progress is much more realistic. But progress it is. Secondly, based on these observations, you can make the needed adjustments as you go along. And you are.
In addition to looking close in at the details, I would also encourage you to periodically step back and look at the trend lines, too. This is especially important if you or H have a bad day or setback - so that you can put it in the context of overall trends.
I don't think you'll regret being patient with the therapy. Right now I think you're learning some invaluable things as you step back and see what happens when you withdraw some of the initiatve and how H responds to this. Even more importantly, you are slowly rebuilding affection and warmth in your relationship. In my opinion, this sets the stage for more productive counseling. And if the press for this comes too early, it risks wiping out what you've done a really good job of building.
Finally, you seem to be doing these things a very dignified and mature way. It's nice to see.
One other change that I noticed over his last couple of visits is that H is starting to tell me where he is going. He is volunteering this information, I don't ask what he is doing unless it directly impacts my daughter or my own schedule. Last night he told me where he would be taking our daughter for a kid halloween event with her little cousins and who was throwing the Halloween parties he was going to after he passed her back to me. We are also all going together, along with her big cousins, for trick-r-treating.
