"I disagree with nearly every piece of advice given the past few days."
LOL, I guess I didn't do a very good job mimicking your approach.
With regard to Harley's comments about how painful an A is, I will have to disagree right back. First, Harley defines an A as the person MUST have BOTH emotional attachment and the act of sex. He specifically says that having just sex (kinda like LFL, although I still don't think what she did was an A due to her separation) or just having an emotional attachment is NOT an A in his book. He says it takes both for the damage to have the level of severity that he goes on and talks about. He specifically mentions how just have the P or the E is MUCH MUCH (emphasis mine LOL) to deal with, so I would assume he is implying that the pain is not as great.
Of course, that is Harley painting a broad picture. Heather's H may not respond in the same general way that Harley notes most SO's do. We always have to remember that books will tend to give us only the most common scenarios. So it may be that Heather's H feels as much pain as someone raped or abused. I don't know.
But on the other side of the coin, Harley really doesn't address much the pain of the offender (unless he does it in SAA which I haven't read yet). I have often wondered why I didn't "go all the way" in my A, and by the same token neither did Heather. I don't remember enough of the details for her, but the opportunity was definitely there for me. After much soul searching, I truly believe that the reason I didn't was because of the pain. I had dengue fever of the soul my friend during the whole affair. I felt like my heart broke every morning when I awoke because of the knowledge of what I was doing. By the time I revealed the affair, it was in a million pieces, and still hasn't completely recovered.
I definitely don't want to diminish the pain of the offended, that was not my aim. What I was trying to argue against was Heather diminishing her own pain and assuming this subservient role, i.e. your pain is SOOO much worse than mine that mine is irrelevant, I'll do anything you say and forget about my feelings. It seems like Heather (and myself) can get that way sometimes. Maybe its just me and I was projecting on Heather.
I would like to say I do agree with the idea that she needs to babystep it back. I think her H wanting hot sex is actually more troubling in light of the fact that he doesn't want simple affection. There really should be atmosphere of basic affection in play BEFORE sexual activity occurs. Otherwise a prostitute-mark environment is created. Only by baby stepping her way back into a normal affectionate R can this be broken. Of course, that's JHMO.
Chrome
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
Here is just part of what he says about an H who is still angry with his wife 10 years later:
Using resentment as a way to control and punish a spouse
I'm convinced that what's kept the resentment of S.R.'s husband alive for so many years is that he has found it to be an effective way to control and punish her whenever she doesn't do what he wants. Whenever they have a fight, he brings it up, and it causes her such guilt that it gives him a decided advantage in winning the argument.
By this time, I don't believe that her affair is the problem that she thinks it is. Instead, it is an issue that her husband is using to get the upper hand in his relationship with her. It probably shows up the most whenever she has been reluctant to have sex with him. It throws her off balance whenever he mentions it, and makes her feel guilty, wanting to make it up to him somehow. He may also bring it up whenever she is winning in a power struggle he is having with her.
What she describes to me in her letter is abuse, pure and simple. There is no excuse for the way her husband keeps bringing up her moment of weakness she experienced years ago. He is disrespectful and abusive.
I suggest that she look him right in the eye and say to him, "Listen Buster, do you love me? Do you want me to love you? Do you want to spend the rest of your life with me? If the answers to any of those questions is 'yes' you sure are going about it the wrong way. You are not doing things that I admire, you're doing things that I find disgusting!"
What if he says, "Fine, then lets just get a divorce and end it all."
To that I would say, "It's up to you. I married you for life, but if you want a divorce, it's your call. If you want to be in a love relationship with me, however, you're going to have to treat me much better than you have been treating me. You must never again bring up my affair, and if you are upset with me, you will have to treat me with respect until we can solve the problem. If you are upset with our sexual relationship, I want us to discuss it as adults and solve it with mutual respect. I refuse to be treated like this, especially by the man I love."
If you read the entire article, you'll see that he talks a lot about resentment being because a S goes back and forth between their lover and their S before deciding to try to save the M. Maybe reading his advice can help you gain some perspective.
Heather, your situation was the topic of a very long conversation for the NOPs last night.
I was telling NOP about your airport/vehicle scenario and the first thing out of his mouth was, "Why hasn't she sold the vehicle?"
Well, duh. Makes perfect sense to me.
I read your earliest posts from last year out loud and very long discussion followed and here are some highlights from our conversation. Not in any particular order.
You need a plan. You need a plan so that you are moving forward rather than being in a perpetual reactive mode.
NOP's emphasis was on the need to view your marital issues as *seperate* events. I'll explain as I go.
Sell or trade the van or truck (or whatever it is) immediately. Once the vehicle is sold, apologize to your husband for not realizing how offensive it was, what it represented to him and that you are sorry for what you did in the past and that it won't happen again.
Remove his ammunition by removing the vehicle.
Stop rationalizing your betrayal. In reading your past posts, there was a tendency to say "What I did was wrong, yeah, but hubby was XYZ or doing ABC. Your choice to go outside of your marriage was your choice. Own it. What your husband was doing prior to your indiscretion was wrong, but that stands alone as a *separate* event. He is responsible for it, but his behavior didn't *cause* you to make the choice you did. You need to separate those out as two individual *wrong* things.
Your choice to go outside of your marriage cannot be justified or mitigated by your husband's actions. If any sense of "I did this but it's partly your fault because of the way you were treating me" is leaking out to your husband, he is going to continue to reject it and you.
You don't need to go all mysterious on him, nor does your desire to "get a life" mean that you ought to go where ever you want without him knowing. Continue karate, let him know where you are going, how long you will be there, that you have your cell phone or he can call the Karate center and have you paged. If you are going shopping, do the same. If he doesn't listen, don't get offended, just start putting your schedule on the fridge with corresponding telephone numbers and let him know that the info is on the fridge.
Your husband is an alcoholic. I don't think you need to keep trying to figure out whether or not he is. Anyone that has that much of a relationship with alcohol meets the criteria. You need to join an Alanon group. You need help with this in your marriage. Joining the group is for *you*. Let your husband know when and where. He may find this offensive. You aren't doing this *at* or *against* him.
You can let him know that you are doing this for you. "I have difficulty handling your drinking and want to see what I can do to handle it better." And you really are doing it for you. They will help you get past those questions I saw you repeating as variations of "why does he choose alcohol over me?" You really need this input from folks that are walking similar paths.
Strong gentleness (not grovelling) is required if you choose to enact these plans, not pissiness and not coldness.
Regarding your children. This is another place you're going to have to hitch up your big girl panties. If the kids are with hubby, stop being the shadow parent during that time. Grab a book, sewing, cross stitch puzzle - whatever - and join your family in the same room. Again, you need to integrate into your being, that your betrayal was a separate event *and has nothing to do with your mothering*.
At some point, preferably without the children present, tell him something along the lines of, "I think you are a great dad. Some dads never make time for their kids, but you've always been there for them. I know that I have hurt you with my infidelity, however, I am a good mom. We both want good for our children. Keeping that in mind, I think it is damaging to the children to be placed in a tug-of-war between us. I enjoy spending time with our children just as you do. There will be times when I want to spend quality time with them individually. I will tell you what my plans are and how we can be reached, but I am asking that you not take that as an opportunity to ask the child/children whether or not they would prefer to stay with you. I am concerned that some of these types of actions are or have the potential to alienate the children from me. I am asking that this sort of behavior stop.
If the behavior then continues, I would reiterate your concern about the children being artificially forced to choose between you and I would tell him that "If it continues, I will contact Child Services (a Child Psychologist, an attorney - fill in the blank here with an appropriate professional) and express my concerns in the effort to seek some sort of resolution that will preserve my relationship in a healthy way with our children.
From reading your past posts (just from the first couple of months, didn't have time to go through all of them) - you've been both in the marriage and within days ready to get out of the marriage. Living in that sort of indecisive limbo keeps you unbalanced and unable to be consistant. I suggest that you decide that you are going to work on this for the next year, and that at the end of that year you will take an assessment and see where things are. But for *this* time period, you are in the marriage, period.
NOP pointed out that the ability to forgive varies greatly amongst people. You can read these boards and see people whose spouses left 3 years ago, yet these folks have forgiven them and are actively working at re-establishing the marriage.
Think about Bell Curves in regards to forgiveness. There are folks who can forgive immediately and completely on one end - this is a small percentage on one narrow side of the curve. The vast majority are in the middle - with the ability to forgive with variations of time and effort. Then there there are the folks in the other narrow side who find forgiveness a damn near impossibility.
And it's not because they don't want to. They don't seem to have the innate capability. So, they keep running through the same loop, they know they need to get past it, try and succeed for a time to get past it, and then it rears back up inside and they are back at the starting gate.
Which explains your husbands variations of actions & behaviors toward you over the past two years. People who have a greater capability to forgive can begin to take offense when their spouse doesn't seem to move on. You begin to think they are being purposely cruel and hard. And for some this may be true, but if their nature is to be hard and cruel, this would have shown up prior to the betrayal and would burst out in other areas in the present.
See, you think of it as "a few kisses". Your husband is probably convinced that it didn't stop there. I can tell you that I'm a stranger to you and I have a difficult time believing that it didn't go sexual. Please understand that this is not a judgement against *you* because I would have a hard time believing it of anyone. Here's why. I have run across articles & surveys that contend that the majority of dating adults have sex by the third date. And that's including starting as strangers. You and this OM weren't strangers, you were together at least 5 times by your account, so you can see you're well past the 3X rule. Secondly, people who have marital indiscretions almost always downplay what they did.
So, while you're thinking that your husband is over reacting to a few kisses, I hazard a guess that he is believes it was much more than that. And that is what he is reacting to.
Well, that's a start, but I'll stop before you start to drown...
Thank you for the concrete thoughts and suggestions. I think they will be helpful to Heather.
I have been having a lot of trouble with this sitch and I've been trying to figure out why. I guess it pushes my buttons on a number of things.
My ex-H had problems with perscription drugs and narcissistic and bipolar disorders. Heather's H's reactions and behaviors remind me a whole lot of some of the interactions we used to have and brought back the helplessness and pain that I felt. I have realized that any post that brings this time period up in me is difficult for me to give any suggestion other than a knee jerk - "run, run far away."
Also, I have trouble with the whole affair issue too. I can understand why Heather made that choice although it only complicated an already complex marital situation. I also think she has downplayed it although I hadn't wanted to point that out. My Dad had a brief affair. My parents stayed together and are very happy now. My Mother did not punish him for his indisretion nor did she shut him out BUT he did account for his whereabouts at all times, answer any questions she had AND apologize to us kids (we were mid and late teens at the time) and answer any questions we had. She didn't treat him as any less worthy and she took responsibility for her mistakes too. It was about two years before the M got back on track. She yelled, he apologized, they spoke, they retreated in silence and everything in between but they just kept working on it. The thing that worries me for Heather is that I don't see any evidence that her H is working on anything. I'm also not sure if she made herself as transparent about the whole thing and every day thereafter of the the last two years as my Dad did. I do think that is necessary for the M to make it.
The long and the short of it is that I'm not feeling very helpful and for that I'm sorry. I hate to see a M end because a stalemate has been reached and neither party can get past it. Heather, it seems you have both put out what you are willing to put out and have risked what you are willing to risk. Further movement will not happen without more risk on both of your parts. I know you are in pain and I don't believe in continued self flaggelation but I do think that more pain is necessary in order for your M to heal. You have to bear the pain of full disclosure and ownership of your actions AND you have to wait until your H is ready to hear it. If he has alcohol problems his ability to hear you is severely limited.
First, Harley defines an A as the person MUST have BOTH emotional attachment and the act of sex. He specifically says that having just sex (kinda like LFL, although I still don't think what she did was an A due to her separation) or just having an emotional attachment is NOT an A in his book. He says it takes both for the damage to have the level of severity that he goes on and talks about. He specifically mentions how just have the P or the E is MUCH MUCH (emphasis mine LOL) to deal with, so I would assume he is implying that the pain is not as great.
