FEAR has you in it grips.....Everything you are doing is done out of fear......understandable.....your world has been rocked and is crumbling around you. My world came tumbling down too.
It was the best thing that ever happened to me EVER.
Did you ever build a sandcastle at the beach and the tide started to come in and started to wash some of the castle away???
What would you do??? You would work on it a little harder and a little faster...right? Maybe just maybe you could build it high enough or big enough or fast enough
to keep it from crumbling down and washing away. It is wasted time and energy right??? Your better off starting over and moving back away from the waves and the water and start over.
Your H is the Waves of Water tearing down a marriage you are desperately trying to save. Why???
Do you want the old marriage back? One that could be washed away just as soon as the next wave comes in.....
You get the picture......you know what, you got to cry and morn your marriage. I mean you got to cry a lot and hurt a lot....I did. I do not know another way to get through it, I tried to GAL and failed, I tried again and failed, and again and failed, and over and over and over.........
until I was tired........and DONE.
There is no doubt in my mind that the techniques in Michelle's book work, however you have to be ready to really implement them or be one heck of an actress in the process.
I have seen my own STBXW start to respond now that I have really dropped the rope.....for real. I can tell you that it took me over a year to get to the place where I could really let go.
I hope it does not take you that long......nor anyone else, however you really do have to turn away from your marriage completely and before there is any hope of saving it, or should I say any hope of building a new one.
Sooooo, I am an action oriented person and I always wanted someone to tell me what to do when I came here.....sorta like a playbook.....after all that is what DR is.....right????
Only thing is we got to warm up, get all the gear on the field, got to practice before we can "run any plays" from the playbook.....
Make sense????
Soooo, first thing you need to do is conquer that fear..... What are you afraid of.....
write all the things down......it might look like this.... H won't come back might lose the house H will come back but leave again kids won't have a father kids will turn out scarred for life I will never find anyone else
and so on......write all that down and put the biggest fear up top.
The other thing you need to do is STOP BEING around your H. Told you this one long ago. Also, let him get his own food, and you do not owe him anything because he is paying for the bills that support you and the kids. You are actually making him feel better about his decision to carry on this affair by pandering to him.........
I am not telling you to be rude, by no means.
But a simple statement....."Husband, I am not comfortable with you in the house at all, while you are engaged in this ongoing affair, please do not come back until it is over."
This will be the hardest thing to do, but it is what has to be done. I know the thought here is that you will be keeping the kids from seeing their father.......
NOT TRUE
Their father is keeping himself from seeing them. If he wants to see them end the affair and then you guys can talk about it.
Let me tell you about my situation......I kicked my wife out of the house.....literally....now at the time I was in a fit of rage and afterwards I regretted it.......
BUT
It was the best thing I could have done........the only problem is that I would let her come back to the house to and spend time in the house with the kids while I left......even her counselor supported this........I was a fool. She continued to have other multiple affairs while living out of the house in her rented room while telling me and the kids that we were working on the marriage.
She was going to have those affairs no matter what......this I realized later......just like your H is going to continue to see his XW......nothing will stop it.
However, he has to give up his life of comfort to carry on this ongoing affair. It is not your fault because you will not be disrespected in your own house!!!!!
Again, I am not advocating being rude to him, in fact this is the most loving thing you can do. Until you completely pull back from him he will not be ready nor you to implement any of the techniques in MWD's book. Trust me.
Until he sees the price of his affair he will continue to sample the merchandise.......My wife continued to see her #1OM for almost a year until the relationship finally fell apart in August of this year.....at that point it was too late. She could not face the utter shame of trying to return to the marriage she gave up for what was ultimately a doomed relationship from the beginning.
If I had shown her the true cost and the reality of her choices earlier in my situation she might have been able to bring herself to face her actions.......now over a year later she feels there has been too much water under the bridge.....and guess what?????
In our sitch there has been. My example to you here is that your non action now will prolong his doomed relationship, and trust me.....it is doomed. His XW knows it is, blow the fantasy away and there will be hope.
Once he is out of the house you will find a peace and calm like you have not had in a while. This will not come for a while and in the beginning the peace and calm will just come for visits but eventually what will happen is that peace and calm will come to stay permanently in you.
Barb, Remember the sandcastle above....you have to rebuild your sandcastle......YOUR sandcastle....not your husbands our even yours together. That is the problem.....we lose ourselves in our marriages and forget what it is like to be an individual again. The individual you were before would not stand for this.........where did she go?????
Ask yourself this......
If you had just started dating your husband say just a couple of weeks into the beginning of a relationship and he was dating his XW on the side just to see if it would work, would you continue to go out with him?
Easy answer....right????
What is the difference now????
You bought a house together???? You have 2 beautiful kids???? What else, you have been together for 11 years????
What else?????? Debt??, cars???
None of those things, even the kids are worth staying in a relationship where one person is doing what he is continuing to do........it is however worth starting over with him.....
if he stops.
Big "IF"......huh?????
and you have no control over it.
How long are you going to wait before you start to turn from the storm he has created around himself???
It gets better, I promise.
Cheers
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.
