If she spends time with him while I am not myself out and busy (thus leaving me alone and abandoned, especially late into the night) then I will withdraw and not engage in talking with her when she is here. Sorry to break it to you but she's not going to care.
I suppose this may seem rather like weak soup, because even if she *is* here I am alone and abandoned, but for whatever reason it doesn't feel that way. Very weak indeed.
The point of the 180 is to act AGAINST my feelings? Nope, 180's are about actions not feelings.
So there are two questions, I suppose. One is whether this boundary is a legitimate target in the first place, and another is whether it can even be set at all. IMHO, no it's not and no it can't. You can't say to W "Go out with OM, but only when I have plans.
I've been thinking that the response to the camping trip would be something like "we are still legally married, and I am not okay with my wife spending a romantic weekend alone with another man. Nor should you be.
You can go on this trip, but if you do, the papers will be filed by the time you return." Will they? If you set a boundry then you have to be prepared to back it up...to walk the talk.
Except-- isn't that a threat? No, it's a boundry if that's what you want it to be. Just make sure you're ready to back it up if you have to.
Wouldn't she just defy it and spit in my eye, even when I follow through?
This ^^ ^^ is why you have to be prepared to follow through with the consequences of boundry setting. It's not meant to be something you can have W call your bluff on.
Me 40 W 38 T 23 M 21 S21 S19 D16 S14 BD 19/12/2014 D mentioned 27/2/2015. I filed 08/04/2015, D Absolute 04/11/2015
Sadpand, I'll give you examples of two of my most important boundaries.
1) I will not live in an open marriage. I moved out as soon as my H told me he was having an A and clearly wanted to continue it
2) I cannot be friends with my H when he is having an A. H started talking to me about OW being nasty to him. I told him - H, I am not your friend and will not discuss OW with you in this way. I am your W and your A with her has betrayed our marriage vows. I stopped calling him after that.
The thing to bear in mind is that your W is probably going to continue with this behaviour for a while - WHATEVER YOU DO. So Barry is right. Be absolutely clear if you are going to follow this through. It is better to set no boundary at all than set one and not follow it through. So, if you really do plan to file if she goes on that weekend fine. But if you don't want to do it, don't say you will.
Is it viable for you to continue living together whilst she is deeply into this OM and behaving as she is?
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
I think what you are trying to do is state a boundary she will honor......without you having to take very difficult actions. It's not going to work that way.
First of all, she uses the "just friends" card when referring to OM. Therefore, don't even attempt to use words like "romantic" or even "affair", b/c she will fall back on the friends thing. She is spending inappropriate time with a man who is not her H. You do not want her going with any man on any kind of trip without you. She can call it controlling, and she will, but you don't argue with her. Controlling is not the topic. She will pull out everything she can, b/c it has worked in the past.
Withdrawing, not talking, etc., is silly to even consider as any type of consequences. That stuff means nothing to her. You have to do something that is effective! And if you don't have it in you to do........then don't call it a boundary.
If you are dependent on this R, for whatever reason, she has you in a vise. You cannot be dependent on her, do you understand? A man has nothing to use as consequences if he's totally dependent on her and the relationship. You think telling her you will go job hunting is a consequence to her A?!?
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
If you are dependent on this R, for whatever reason, she has you in a vise. You cannot be dependent on her, do you understand? A man has nothing to use as consequences if he's totally dependent on her and the relationship. You think telling her you will go job hunting is a consequence to her A?!?
The last part is really wacky, SP! Do you now see this?
Also do you realize that being unemployed lowers the respect for you in W's eyes? If not, then get busy and look for a job NOW. That should be a high priority for you.
It's painful to read what you are going through as I basically went through the exact same conversation with my WW and the forum. You can see the exchange between myself and Starsky in my previous threads. I was using my boundaries as a means to control my WW's behavior. Which is by definition, not a boundary and totally ineffective. Not only for my WW but for my own self esteem.
I'm going to go out on a limb, but I don't believe you are ready (Yet!) to implement what the real consequence we know to be is. To leave our WW's to protect our boundaries. Maybe at this point, it may not be possible.
I truly believe that we must first free ourselves of the dependance that we are responsible for developing. Only than are we ready to deal in "consequences".
In the meantime,
GAL: Get your life and self respect back. Detach: Protect yourself from your WW's hurtful behaviors. 180: Identify what you have done in the past and accept that we contributed fully to this situation. Next, become a better man.
Questions I have.
What are you doing to protect yourself from all this craziness? Which ones are aimed at her behavior and which are aimed at yours?
What are you doing now to make yourself a better man. Which of those are aimed at pleasing your WW and which ones are just for you?
Thank you all for your thoughts and concerns, and especially Toots for the examples of effective boundaries. Tenbook, you're right. I am not ready to implement those boundaries. And Sandi, I see what you mean that I shouldn't call it a boundary-- or even think that I'm capable of setting one-- unless I am prepared to do what is difficult. A few things have changed since that conversation, sort of for the better and sort of for the worse.
I mainly want to stall her. This isn't because I expect something to go wrong with the A in that time (if only) but because I want to job-hunt. I went yesterday to a meetup group that was for "dating in mid-life"; everyone there was older than me, and when I had occasion to mention what I was going through the group exploded with opinions and advice, which was clearly due to their identifying with my sitch and wanting to help me avoid their mistakes. But even before that, the topic of learning from past relationships had come up, and a fellow made a comment that made me think: he said not only to seek the cause of your current breakdown, but to look back on all your failed relationships and ask if there's a pattern.
And there is a pattern. There's a blatant pattern. I had thought that my W was lured in by A because I was paying all my attention to my work (I am unemployed, but I have my own business) and not to her, and that is true, but my actions were a symptom and not a cause. The real pattern is what I thought the purpose of a relationship to be. In every one of my past relationships, I would find a woman who, through my interest or pursuit, would fall in love with me, at which point I would accept her love and let that be our relationship. Every day, in every relationship, I would marvel at the mystery of how our love kept us together, but be glad of it. And so I never did anything, nor saw the need to do anything, to build our love and our life together. In this case, job-hunting was not my top priority before now because we had enough money to get by, and we had each other, so why would it matter?
But now I see how important it is to *actively* do things together-- not just to participate sometimes in things that she might want to do, but to make suggestions, plan trips, try new things, create new shared experiences and memories. And this is the core problem right now; if she left her A, she'd be again confined to home and whatever activities we could find that happened to be free of charge. And although that can be enough for a loving couple that's determined to make it, we have lived with that mentality for all our years together (she's been wanting to go camping for at least five years now), and if there's to be a chance of her even considering reconciliation I want to be able to show her what life can be like once our salary is essentially doubled. And I can't do that hypothetically. So I need to get a job. And that takes time. Which means I need to stall.
(I think I'll write more in a separate post-- sometimes there's a hiccup with the browser form and I lose what I've written, so it's good to break it up)
You are not stalling. You are GAL and becoming someone only a fool would leave. Which means getting a job, and some outside interests. And probably working on changing your mentality and outlook a bit. I mean, I know this sounds harsh, but does "sad panda" sound like an attractive man to you? The man you'd have to be a fool to leave? Mindsets need not be fixed. Read Carol Dweck, about growth mindset and see if you can change your vision and image of yourself. ..
I know what I will need to do for her proposed camping trip. I'm not particularly happy about it, but then, I wouldn't be.
I will let her know that she can go on that camping trip if she chooses. But if she does, she must recognize that having a weekend getaway with a man who is not your husband is, legally, an adulterous action. And if this is what she wants, and she can't wait, then we can go ahead and file for divorce with grounds of adultery (and get it over with).
I sure as hell don't want to do that, but I am fully prepared to back it up. And I know it's not something she wants because then her affair will be public record, and her employer will find out about it. And I believe with the above framing she will hear that it is her action, and not my "dicking her over", that is the cause-- even though (of course... sigh) she will disclaim and deny it. But I can't help that.
(claire7, no worries about harsh-- "sad panda" is actually a South Park reference, but your point is nonetheless taken.)
The not-a-boundaries conversation that I had with her has definitely had its effect. Which has been both the effect I was expecting and not at all the effect I was expecting.
I was expecting that it would allow us to speak civilly to each other again, and bring the curtain-barrier down, and it's done that. I was also expecting that it would help me detach, and it's done that.. but I wasn't quite expecting how or why it turns out to have done that.
The forehead-slapping hindsight is that her behavior was her own 180 on me. Spending all her time out, hiding behind a curtain at home-- duh! Suckered. And yet, interestingly, once I broke through that and got her talking to me again... it made me lose interest in her. As would be predicted, wouldn't it! Granted, she's lost interest in me as well-- we did talk friendly-like with each other when she got home last night, but she stayed up late to say good night to him online, and she didn't even bother to say goodbye to me this morning. But that's okay.
So to answer Tenbook's questions:
"What are you doing to protect yourself from all this craziness? Which ones are aimed at her behavior and which are aimed at yours? ...What are you doing now to make yourself a better man. Which of those are aimed at pleasing your WW and which ones are just for you?"
I think that I have the same answer to both: making daily use of meetup.com and focusing on my job hunt. Neither of these are aimed at pleasing my wife, although (as described) I expect that getting a job could make it possible for her to see the possibilities. Could-- not will. Although I have yet to meet people whom I might think will become my friends, every time I go out I am reminded that there is (so much) more to life than her.
I think that the main thing that I am doing to please her is not overtly rebuffing or avoiding her. This weakens 180, but makes it easier to stall, because it doesn't provoke conversations about R or D.
I will "forget" that we had the not-a-boundary conversation. It's already set to be broken anyway (she said she is going out on Friday night, knowing full well that I have no plans myself). As that happens, I will simply allow myself to withdraw-- not as a "consequence" for her to be disappointed by, but for my own sanity. I realized last night that she probably won't even notice. Before, she noticed that I wasn't talking to her because I was being overtly dodgy. Last night, I saw that when she asked me about what I was up to, she stopped listening within a sentence or two (and even wandered away). I can be short, because as long as I am not evasive, she will not challenge and demand. (And even if she does, I now have a default explanation.)
