I wanted you to start your own thread on the SSM forum so that I could keep up with you, separate from KEBall's thread. It was just a convenience deal.
All the best,
-NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
I am just now getting to read part of your previous thread.
I don't now exactly where you are in your marriage right now, but I want to reiterate;
Your wife needs to be the one that moves out if she demands separation, NOT YOU. Why in the world would you move out when she is the one breaking marriage vows.
Again, I have not read everything, but I will, hopefully by tomorrow.
If the affair is still on, and if you have not done so already, you need to take all of your evidence and expose the affair to the other man's wife. Absolutely Do NOT announce that you plan to do this. Just do it.
An affair is a fantasy, many of them fold immediately upon exposure. Your wife will get mad at you when you expose her fantasy.
-NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
Hi Nopkins, Keb is a good May-un, and I think we are united as LDHs to convince our near WAWs to change their minds. (besides, he seems to have a knack for attracting the ladies ) I truly appreciate that you are reading my threads. Believe me, I'm NOT movig out. The job I spoke of was for a couple of weeks, working in my art, with someone who far exceends my marketing capabilities. When I gave up my art, W gave up on me, believing that the years we spent were wasted. Despite my fears, I do think it could be a positive experience overall.
Part of the problem with Keb & I is that we seem to let fear and our past experiences dictate our present and future. W will do what she will do. I can't even wish to control her. If she is in a PA, it will be short lived, (unless it is with someone different than I suspect) If she is in an EA with suspected OM, there is nothing I can do about it besides continuing to show her my love in ways that she allows, improving my shortcomings, my health, and my net worth, (those d*mn attorneys ) I feel so bad about being an LDH and sending her to the state she is in . I am willing and able to meet her needs at this point forward, but she seems to be keeping something up her sleeve. Keb & I are both sweet and loveable, but our W's want passion. I reckon I need to learn myself a thing or two about football (er, season's over) or hockey (er, no season). No, what we need is to get over our hangups and hope that we get a second chance to let our passion out of the cage we were forced to put it in so long ago.
I did tell OM's W of the evidence, well, actually, OM's W's suspicions caused me to discover the evidence, leading to her confrontation with her H, which led to OM telling my W about her evidence, which led to my W cancelling our online access to cell bill. Get it? I don't Thanks again for the help.
I see that you are working with a coach via phone. I don't want to interfere, especially if it is working for you.
I do want to leave you with a few truths about affairs. They may sting a bit.
A person involved in an affair has chosen to 'cheat'. That is a conscious decision to deceive, and lie. Therefore, all cheaters are liars. You simply can't have one without the other.
You DO need to be concerned about your finances. You need to directly ask for a complete accounting of all the household funds. I don't care who makes more. The whole missing check/timing/separate account deal sets all my flags off. If you find a discrepancy, then you will need to withhold your funds until you two can establish a common account, used only for household bills and other joint items. If you have a joint credit card, cancel it. It is a very good idea to go ahead and separate your finances. If you don't do this, it may very well jump up and bite you later. You may find that money has already been funneled to an attorney.
Your wife's moral base has shifted. This will directly affect her perception of you, and everyone else. Her mistrust of basically everything, will increase.
Anything that your wife tells you is now suspect. She has proven that she can not be trusted. Do NOT trust her. I am not being mean to her, it is a by-product of her bad choices.
Don't leave your home for an extended time. You may return home to find your goods bagged and packed, sitting on the lawn for you, and the locks on the house changed.
Contact an attorney. You simply must protect your interests, and learn what your options are. Do not believe that your wife has not already done so. It is likely that she has.
Don't sign anything.
Don't do things that would facilitate her affair.
A wayward spouse's cry for a 'need for space' is just a way to have unfettered time for the other person.
You can not recover your marriage as long as there is a third party involved. ALL contact with the other person must end before your marital recovery can start.
ANY contact with the other person effectively resets recovery to zero.
The affair is NOT YOUR FAULT. I know that you have contributed to the state of your marriage, however, the decision to have an affair is WHOLLY the responsibility of your wife. If you are feeling at fault, STOP.
-- Here are some positive things you can do to improve you, and the way your wife perceives you.
Clean yourself up. Smile a lot, smell good, look good. If you are a bit pudgy, start working out, even if it is only push-ups in the basement.
From this point on, you simply must be the 'man of steel'. Men of steel are tender and caring, but they are NEVER touchy/grabby/feely or needy. Men of steel don't dote.
You need to picture yourself as the man of the hour, and learn to live it.
If you make a mess, you clean it up right then. Start immediately carrying your own weight in the relationship.
Don't talk relationship. Tell her that you have no intention of divorcing her, that you want to save the marriage. Tell her that once she has broken all contact with the other man, you will address any and all marital issues, including sex, with fierce determination. That is ALL you should tell her about the relationship.
Don't try to talk relationship or 'teach' her. She will not receive any instruction or correction from you right now.
There is a lot more, but that will get you going. Some people here may not like my strong stance on affairs. If you want to talk some more, just holler.
All the best, -NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
Csw, I wanted to jump in and say that I did not mean to imply that your sex drive caused her affair. I belatedly realized that this was how I came off, but never had another chance to get online and clarify.
Her needs were not being met and she had several choices as to what to do about it: She could have suffered quietly indefinitely, sought out another man to fill those needs, or put her whole heart and soul into fixing your R.
I believe she took the cowardly way out.
I would be a liar if I said I never fantasized about doing the same thing, in my darker moments. But it really would have been a copout wussy way to handle things, imo.
Be strong. NOP gave you some awesome advice, as usual.
I second Nop and Honey's posts. It is impossible as long as there is OM stuff going on. On the other hand you can take positive steps to GAL of your own and protect your interests. You can make it clear that you are interested in reconciliation, that you understand your part in the problems in the M but you are in no way responsible for her affair. She must own 100% responsibility for that choice. You cannot make her do that. You can show her by the positive changes that you make that you are capable of much more than you have shown in the R previously, that she may wnat to reconsider but you can't make her. Get a counselor as well as a lawyer. You need one for yourself and your own peace of mind.
I have seen a counselor several times, and he helped a good deal as far as my self image and GAL are concerned. He is also the MC we saw today. W made some interesting points in regard to my DB efforts, in particular the nonpursuit. She said she never told me not to call her, but when I called her, she said she needed space. At MC, she said that my lack of calling her made her not want to call me...
W said we are too different. I asked her to name some of the differences, because from where I sit, we are quite similar in many ways. She couldn't really name any in MC. After the session, I asked again, and she said it was the way we were brought up, with her family showing much affection and my family less so. It sounded like her C possessed her body for a moment. I said that it was because we speak different LL, but we didn't go much farther with it, as I was standing outside her car in 12°, and she was itching to go to work. We didn't set another appt, but I made it clear that another appt would be necessary.
I laid back and let C & W do the talking mostly. W said "Why do I have to go first", so I said, you are the one that said you don't know what you want, I want to work on our R..." C did most of the talking, W was hard, cold & distant. Toward the end of C, she brought up the LDH issue, dodgingly at first. I stated my case regarding the med problem, and owned up to my failure to fully disclose my emotional state at that time. OM was not discussed. She brought up her C's trial sep scenario again, but it was 5 min before the end of session. C said that it would be grist for another session to work on the details, as he knew my concerns regarding her expectation of my move out. Since that will not happen, it will need to be carefully discussed. The benifit I see from a trial sep is that it is not a legal sep, and will slow down the process. NY requires a 1 year legal sep before granting a D. If we try a 90 sep, that is a good delay. The scenario would be 30day no contact, 30 day minimal contact, 30 day free to contact at will. Doesn't make a bit of sense to me. When W finds out I'm not leaving, she will step it up a notch, I am sure.
I will make appt for lawyer today. I do have concerns regarding finances, as our debt far outweighs our savings. We will go bust for the retainer.
my question of the hour goes back to my previous thread. In an SSM sitch like this, how do I bring up the topic of my OM suspicions? I suspect that is is an EA, one that she sees as a "best friendship" and not an EA at all. If I can't convince her of any of my other feelings, how can I get her to see their R as I see it? She will immediately jump into defensive denial, and I will be farther behind than I already am.
After our session, while discussing outside, I got W to break down her wall a bit by expressing my desire to work things out, and my desire to avoid a serious explosion between us. She got teary, said shenever wanted this to happen, never wanted to hurt me..... It was good to see that she still had emotion, but it did nothing to quell my suspicions.
I get your points Nopkins, and don't want to come home to find the locks changed and the auctioneer in my shop, so I will put the opportunity on hold for as long as possible, or decline if nec.
W did suffer quietly for a long time, then she drifted, and since oct has been calling OM & avoiding me. I know that we will not gain any ground until the air is clear regarding this, but I see a very dark cloud ahead. I don't want to be a snoop, a sneak or a spy. My evidence of EA is slim to none, simply the phone bills showing 4-7 calls a day, sometimes 2Hr calls, increasing to nearly 150 calls in Feb. Now that W cancelled online bill, I won't even have that evidence.
Separation, trial or otherwise. You should be aware, that statistically, separation almost always becomes permanent. Your wife wants separation in order to have time for the other man, unfettered by YOU, and possibly time to facilitate the divorce. You have already observed that she is really not interested in counseling. Why would a separation work better?
Snooping matters only when there are secrets. A properly functioning marriage has trust and NO secrets. She has proven that she can't be trusted. In order to protect yourself and what is left of the marriage, you snoop. Since your wife will not be honest with you, this is the only mechanism you have with which you can acquire at least some truth. You have a right to know the truth, and God is not going to be mad at you :-)
Here is some basic truth for you. If you want to save your marriage, then you will have to become the man of steel, the hero, for your marriage. You will have to fight for it.
Your wife is currently feeding whatever makes her feel good. What she is doing is all about HER, not you.
The simple fact, is this. Life just fixed you a crap sandwich for lunch. You have to eat it, one way or the other. You have to face your situation and walk through it, recovered marriage, or divorce, you are still going to have to work through it. The best thing you can do right now, is to face that fact.
Get serious about being a better man, and I don't mean becoming a maid or a doormat. No doormat behavior. She needs to know that she is hurting you. I don't mean tears. I don't mean grabby/needy crap from you, but a manly response.
"Wife, your talking to the other man is hurting me and destroying our marriage. Please stop." Then walk off. No pleading. No long statements. No teaching. State the facts whenever appropriate, then shut-up.
Do you see the picture I am trying to paint, csw?
Also, you can not let your failings in the marriage be a point of negotiation, i.e, "I have failed at sex so I can not confront my wife about the affair". What you do instead is be ready to fix whatever is at issue, once NO CONTACT with the other man is established. I touched on this in my previous post to you. You can only improve YOU, when there is a third person in your marriage. You can not improve your MARRIAGE while there is a third person.
I will leave you with this. Warning, it will sting.
If your wife is now avoiding sex with you, there is a good possibility that she is having it with someone else. This is why you need to find out the truth, good or bad. You can't fight well without intelligence. Battles are won or lost on intelligence.
God bless, -NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
Good Afternoon All-- I'm not sure about posting here with this but, I've come to trust the opinions of you guys in here.
I have been talking SO big about making the changes and doing the DB stuff for these last few weeks. BUT, it turns out that I'm emotionally back to square one.
As most of you know by now, I was abused as a child and finally had the courage to talk about it last week. Since then, I have cratered emotionally. GEL has been amazing at talking me through via email but I can NOT snap out of it.
My C said yesterday that uncontrollable crying is a common side-effect of letting go. But, it feels like SO much more than that. It's like I finally let go of something terrible that happened to me only to be embroiled in this whole loss of the M thing. I can't get the thought out of my head that if I fail at this marriage, then my abusers won! I've lost everything in life.
I know it sounds so pathetic and desperate. My friends keep reminding me that I'm a good person, blah, blah, blah. I just can't work myself into feeling positive about anything (Sorry GEL--I know this morning I swore I was gonna get strong--but as the day wears on...I feel weaker and weaker).
On top of all of it, I should be elated that I've finally found something at the root of my LD. It should give me power to confront the issues of the past so that I can get moving on the future. But, if that future doesn't include my wife...
Guys, I'm really sorry for this post. I just need to release and to vent somewhere. I hate feeling like this. I've NEVER been so emotionally needy in my life. But, then, I've never lost something so important in my life because of my actions. When someone dies...that is out of your control completely. But, to hurt someone you love so totally that they just want to be away from you...that is a knife in the heart.
) I truly appreciate that you are reading my threads. Believe me, I'm NOT movig out. The job I spoke of was for a couple of weeks, working in my art, with someone who far exceends my marketing capabilities. When I gave up my art, W gave up on me, believing that the years we spent were wasted. Despite my fears, I do think it could be a positive experience overall. 
No, what we need is to get over our hangups and hope that we get a second chance to let our passion out of the cage we were forced to put it in so long ago.