DB'ing while living in with a WAS/MLC husband

[LH19]

I am not offering sex to him, I am demanding sex from him.

Blue you can't demand someone to have sex with you and you shouldn't trust he is using protection. Make sure he gets tested first.

As I told him, if I am cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, handling the kids - doing the 'wife' things, then I have expectations in return. In that way, h and I were/are different, he had to be in a good space for it to happen, for me its a physical need.

Boy oh boy if a man posted this the $hit would hit the fan

He not wanting to take my propositions - is something I am used to, from before - he mentioning that he could be getting interested, to me, shows a shift. We have talked about his use of protection. tmi. I didn't realize that the #1 rules of DB is to never initiate sex.

Words absolutely mean nothing Blue. There is no shift. Luckily for you he turned you down because you would have regretted it at some point.

He sent me that email, after I made my offer, and told me that he never thought I could see past what he has done.

This is WW script for reasons not to work on the marriage. Seen here all the time.

And that act showed it could be possible.

What act?

He keeps telling me how hard a return would be, that he might not be up for working thru all that.

He's being honest you.

So me, asking to watch TV with him, is not asking for scraps to just be next to him - its strategic - its me throwing a breadcrumb, me saying lets do something 'normal' and super easy - you sit there, I sit next to you and we just watch TV. Let me show you that we can do that. Okay? We do that, and then, we try something else - I don't know, something a tad bit more higher - and see how we do at that. And keep going from there.

It's pursuit and pressure and that NEVER works and will drive him further away.

He is not an initiator. Its a big thing for him to tee up a conversation especially right now - but I see him trying to. He knows he is being an a@@hole - I could understand why he may feel ashamed to try to talk about light things when he know he is ripping my heart thru my nose - and is thinking 'why would she even want to speak to me or talk about vegetarian sausage when we both know I am being a HUGE jerk'. Its very stilted, and lasts a few mins. He is an introvert, and I can see that he takes it the wrong way when I end the conversation first (DBing).

Why are you making excuses for him?

I have been reading BluWave (she has a lot of threads - I am still in the 2017 dates) Her H did come back, only after she let the rope go. She detached. But did so, so thoroughly that she is struggling to accept him back, and on the brink of her own A.

Yep. The same thing very well may happen to you some day.

I think one can go to far in this detaching business.

This is an ABSOLUTELY FALSE statement. Anyway, on a scale of 1-10 you are a 1 in detachment.

I agree not to be in that panic state, grabbing after your spouse, begging and pleading. There is a healthy line there - and I am looking for it. Doing my best. I can see how after many years that it gets frustrating to read about us LBS, and the 'pathetic-ness' - know that you both are lifelines to logic that we just cant see or process right now, but more and more is making sense, though my execution is horrid.

You will look back many years from now and will be disappointed in your actions.

IMHO: All of the LBS that are women know exactly why we are here. We were controlling - we had a nice guy that was a doormat - it was a co-dependency that was bad for both. And he broke under our totalitarian rule.

Well demanding sex is not going to help matters.

We dug in our heels, so used to how it worked - and then one day - this nice guy decided (really had been deciding for a long time) that he was done.

Unfortunately that is what tends to happen on these boards.

My nice guy has truly transformed into a monster, he can not stand me, he see's me and is repulsed from all the memories. But I wasnt this way originally, I was sweet and loving, and waited on him, and showered him with compliments and gratitude - but somewhere along the way - and I have to say the kids were a huge part of it - they can be huge stressors with demands to be #1 - and I did that. My efforts were in this order Kid1, kid2, cat1, cat2, husband.

Even the cats where a head of him?

I am going to do my best to do whatever I can - and its touch and go right now for sure - but I want to be able to say I tried the best I could and right now I can at least say i am trying - clearly not in the most effective way - but will try to figure that out too.

Doing your best would be sticking to Sandi's 37 rules. I think you broke all 37 last night lol.

I do appreciate both of your advice and especially the way it is offered/communicated. There are 2x4s that are well delivered and I really need to process them and be open - because right now I recognize that I am being defensive. I had a happy moment and am trying to defend that, maybe wrongly so. I see this as a safe place - and do look for your experience on a daily basis.

This is a place where we are here to help. You have to have thick skin to get through this so try to remember that when we are telling you that you are absolutely making matters worse right now.

Prepare yourself for the fact that you're unlikely to ever get any remorse or any type of apology.

Realistically someone having an affair like this is usually a "last straw" versus a spur of the moment decision. In most relationships needs don't get met, resentments build up, and just pile up over time. When you're living in the same space there's a lot of motivation to compromise and keep the peace, but usually under the surface there's stuff brewing that isn't getting discussed, usually because both people convince themselves that it's just a temporary issue and will go away on its own.

An affair is escapism for sure, and its usually the result of a chance opportunity, or a thousand micro-escalations that happened without any forethought. What it's really a symptom of, however, is conflict avoidance.

For a relationship to be successful both people need to be willing to blow it up on occasion, argue it out and be prepared to walk if a compromise can't be reached. That takes a lot of strength and self-confidence. For more often people stuff it down and pave over it and eventually you're sitting on a volcano that's ready to blow. Once the volcano explodes there is no going back.

Point is, regardless of the affair one or both of you weren't happy. Usually its just a matter of timing in terms of who pulls the rip cord first.

That's why it's now important to separate the desire for the person, from the desire for resumption of control, stability, and positive validation. Your brain is telling you that getting H back will restore these things, but it won't.

So ask yourself, what do you want and why do you want it?