Im no angel, I broke off from my OW a year ago and in the process lost a friend but I knew W was uncomfortable deep down so I respected her feelings. I put W first.
Max
Hi GB,
Thanks for your reply.
In answer to your questions...
That's a bit confusing...Why didn't you put your wife first BEFORE you cheated on her. Unless you have been in an A you will never understand the reasons.Also you didn't "lose a friend" you lost a woman with low self esteem that was willing to degrade herself and fool around with a married man. Wrong reply. People who get involved in A are not all stereo typed low self esteemed trash. Not all are mindless over sexed rabbits. Each A tells a different story and i do not condone it nor the actions or reasons of those who are involved. I therefore do not judge. Just feel the guilt as partaker and pain as LBS. I will not say victim in my case. It also appears you rationalize and justify your affair based on the speculation that you think your wife cheated on you first years prior. wrong again. I never justified my A and never will. If you read my post I admitted it was wrong and why I got involved. Never justified or rationalized it as a 3rd person. When you get involved in an A you do rationalize and justify based on the sentiments then. Otherwise you would not do it. You GB are judging the actions and creation of an affair based on the misconception that the parties involved are rational people. We/They arent. That is something DB promotes here, to understand that a WS is not the person you knew once. That person just flew out the window so applying logical remedies is useless. Hence applying special rules and actions for WS. I call it infidelity logic. It appears the truth might have helped you avoid falling into infidelity yourself. No, a great many things needed to be in place for me to avoid falling myself. Emotional matureness, understanding her feelings, understanding my own, knowing thanks to DB what I know now. I never started the A thinking it was OK because I thought she had or had not. It was due to emotional weakness and ignorance on my part.
I can understand now why your experience with infidelity discounts honesty and the truth; however, in my decade long recovery along with the 100's of couples my wife and I have helped address this issue in real life the full truth was/is ground zero starting point of recovery (or a healthy divorce with full knowledge). Infidelity attacks the weakest part of a marriage which is trust and love and hard to defend against. If we are attacked we go on the defensive. If someone insults us we retaliate. How many times have we been attacked by our s and gain strength from it for next time?. With infidelity we are neither directly attacked nor hurt. We are defenseless against a non aggresive indirect action and the pain it causes. Our instincts do not know how to cope. As all of this goes on without our direct involvement and we are merely emotional bystanders, so too are we in its reconstruction (IMHO). We therefore have to develop a superior feeling of trust and inner strength to see it through. In these situations the LBS has not partaken but suffers the full brunt of emotional consequences in its development and reconstruction.
His wife is much more likely to NEVER give him the full truth AND he is much more likely to believe the truth that he investigates on his own than, after 3 years of this crap, believe what his wayward wife decides to share with him. During A's the WS give so much crap and lies, even after getting caught that there is no point pursuing this matter. I understand the situation from both perspectives. The need to know and the need to hide. I know I will never give full details and I know I will never get them. I only wanted to know she did it. I know why I did. Thanks to that and being here I had a picture of how our R developed and ended up like this. I learnt from it and now apply my knowledge to solve it. As for what you are referring to as snooping, I can understand it and think some verification IS required so as to ascertain where you are in order to how to deal with it. Once you have passed this point there is no point re-verifying, it just drains you. I had to prove to my W each accusation as she denied it. I was upset she denied everything but also understood she would. I just wanted her to know i knew it was happening.
I understand you may be able to say "bygones" and decide to just try to recover your marriage with your wife after you both ran around cheating on each other. It's convenient for both of you to ignore the facts but that's like buying a good looking house that you know is resting on a sinking cracked foundation. Eventually the house will collapse. Wrong again. I said bygones because dwelling on the past to create hate and hurt is not a way and much less forward. I also understood that my M & R as I understood it was over. I told my W this feeling and that if we were to move ahead we needed to build a new R and in time M. I do not know where I implied we applied convenience to ignore anything. We are both sad and hurt that this happened in our own ways. We are also doing wht we know how to correct what was wrong and choose a different approach to what we had up until now. To put it into perspective.. We are looking to have a roof over our heads over a solid foundation somewhere different to the old house and hope in time it will be a house and eventually a home.
Further, getting your wife to respect you will never happen while she's having an affair. I agree on the whole but also believe there are grades of respect. The spouse that hides the affair like a covert op and the spouse that blatanty carries it out infront of LBS and even openly discusses an open M. Having an A does not mean you have an open and shut case of disrespect for your S. When I started I never intended on hurting her and it was never about her. it was about me and my unmet feelings. I knew it was wrong and hid it for selfish reasons obviously but also because knew it would hurt her and she would never understand it. Respect is about valuing and I valued my W deep down. Both as a WH and LBH. The problem was it was buried under a pile of other emotions. The affair ending is step one of recovery. 100% agree You also will never get respect by being disrespectful. i agree on that too. If and when he finds out the entire truth he should respectfully confront her with the truth, indicate clearly that he is devastated, indicate calmly that he has no desire to remain in a open marriage and demand she end her affair. After this many years, he can probably then ask HER to move out if she refuses. Most betrayed husband's might fare better if they could actually reasonably and calmly deliver an ultimatum and stick to it but few really can or do and the situations is so dynamic that I don't find advising it worthwhile. Instead you demand it and if she says, "or what" the betrayed husband says "I'm not sure - but I'm not going to be rubbing your feet for now and I'm not going to be enabling this betrayal any further and then I don't know yet". It's better than an ultimatum, followed quickly by a backtrack. In my experience, the guys that can MAKE their wives dump the OM and return to the marriage aren't posting on a forum for help (and it usually involves a threat of violence -which is not a truly productive way to restore a loving marriage). I agree that with whatever you do you see it through. Bluffing undermines authority and respect. Ultimatums to me are the LRT. When all else faled. Why do you think these guys are posting then?
Whatever you do....don't expect to confront her with anger and have her cry and cave. She will meet your upset with her own suppression over-anger which just blows it up into a completely unproductive mess. Be smart. Be intelligent. Handle the crisis in your life and marriage with manly calmness and strategic thinking instead of basal rage and/or anger. She's not your property. You are hurt but that doesn't justify yelling, punching walls, throwing things, etc (and you'll likely end up with the cops called on you and hurt any legal case as well) Here I totally disagree with you. 100%. Anger and hurt should be shown, to me it is a sign that I DO care. Your suggestion reminds me of one the issues I have with children nowadays. In my days a belt was a deterrent. A mother with a slipper was like a sniper and the line ... wait till your father gets home changed the colour of your pants. No we hear about time outs and special places and i look at the kids now and see them messed up. Since when does trying to educate your kids to become persons with integrity, dignity and honesty now have a potential to be sued by your own kids? I think the psychologists or whatever lost the plot here. In my days there was crazy and you knew to stay the hell away from crazy. Now there are unpronouncable names. Going back to your comments. I think anger and expressions of anger need to be let out and the person feel this pain. So long as no physical aggression is carried out. I consider myself a passionate person and marriages sometimes need passion in all its forms. Once again within certain constraints.
Consider this - a decade later my wife is astonished at how calm, considerate and thoughtful I was where, when looking back, she remembers how awful and hurtful she was behaving towards me. TBH that worked for you and I respect that, doesnt mean I think it works for everyone or is me. I blew a gasket when I was hurt and so did she. The thing was what happened afterwards. I then started to layout some DB. You have to understand that presuming you are an american you have that US mentality (no disrespect). That wouldnt work in other cultures. Doesnt mean your way is the only or correct way. It's a demonstration of strength in crisis. Could be. Ultimately, your wife is absolutely free to leave you and never apologize or care at all about how she treated you. True If you go nuts on her - she'll just use that to further rational and justify her abuse of you. Could be The cage door is open. You are not her keeper. I told her exactly that I had opened the cage door and she was free to choose. Stay or leave. I felt we had no future but it was up to her. You are deeply hurt and prefer she stay and actually commit to rebuilding your marriage together but you will be OK either way.... I am hurt but also tired (told her as well). Told her I wanted peaceful and happy life with or without her and if she did stay it would be from zero, reconstruct but M with different dynamics. Ones that worked. She chose to stay and has changed many things. baby steps.her, not so much. A wayward spouse's ONLY route to happiness and redemption (biblically - if you are into that stuff at all) is back through their betrayed spouse. It's really hard but in your hurt see if you can muster up some pity for them because the sinner surely doesn't recognize the consequences of their own sin. I disagree with you here and it sounds controlling and condescending. I am not a very biblical person so do not see sinners. She said that what she did was wrong. I know that what I did was wrong. I have to believe her as she has to believe me ... trust. Without it there is no future together. She does not need my forgiveness to move ahead nor I hers. We need trust in each other. To me trust at this level is like forgiveness on steriods. Much more complete. Your wife is completely lost right now and you are the only person that can help her. We are both lost on many levels. Many marriages have more issues than just A. its just that when A happens all the rest take a back seat. I need her as much as she needs me. Thats what M are all about. Teamwork. I always thought that in M the S's need to stand next to each other not behind or infront. She may resist but there in no real point to anger or yelling. She may think she's all cool (way wards are delusional) but she is truly wallowing in a pit. She is or will punish herself enough when she sees and witnesses what you have put yourself through for her (and she won't realize that until she's in love with you again, which can't happen until the affair ends and you began rebuilding your relationship). I do not know where you want to go with this. it seems logical enough. In my case my W is suffering with her own demons or problems but we have and are moving on beyond what you mention here. I am dealing with mine in my way and I let her deal with hers. I cannot fix her, she needs to do this herself. I can only standby and help her when she needs me. We both need to make this journey alone to find each other along the way. If that is how it will play out.
The whole respect thing - it's a red herring. Respect yourself by controlling yourself. Stand up for yourself and your boundaries in a firm but calm manner. You can't make anyone respect you. She'll only respect you later if you behave in a respectful manner. IMO, punishing her isn't your job. A number of points here and most I agree with as they stand to reason. About being calm. I do however disagree with making people respect you. You can. I think what you mean is that you cant force them. They must do so voluntarily. On how to get a WS to respect their LBS ... I agree in general with sandis rules and the DB techniques here, you gain respect by giving respect. Your last comment ... agreed she is doing unfortunately a great job on her own.
