Lisa, Probably what I will tell you is what everyone else will tell you. You need to DB and work on yourself. No matter how hard you try, you can not change your H or his feelings. Whatever he is feeling right now, whether real or contrived, he feels that he has the right to feel that way, much like the way that you feel that your marriage is worth saving and that you love your husband no matter what. So now you have to think about you. What can you do to make yourself better, stronger, more independent, happier? I know if I didn't find this board immediately after I heard of H's affair, I may have ruined everything. I started being very businesslike and basically put my kids and myself ahead of everything else. I knew I had to be strong for them, because I really didn't know where the next few months would take me. So the boys and I did things together...even so much as washing and waxing the car!!! I began taking 4 mile walks with my sisters (which I have still continued after almost 3 years...up every morning at 5 to get the walk in before work). I made sure that my family knew that H was still the father of my children and I never wanted to hear them speak poorly of H. I was making arrangements for my H to get all pertinent information that he would need concerning school events and activities. But I also laid groundrules as to how visits would go and if there were to be a divorce I would start the proceedings. It only seemed right. He started noticing changes in me right away, and although he didn't leave as scheduled and told me at first that he was staying for the kids and that was all, he wasn't willing to give in to any feelings for me right away. So I read the DB book again and again, as well as some others such as After the Affair. I continued to work on myself, didn't force any sexual issues with him, didn't bring up his affair. Then we actually started to communicate. We would talk for hours about nothing and everything. We spent time together. He started doing things around the house again. It just all seemed to come together. His affair ended sometime in Sept. of 1999, but he didn't even mention the love word to me until January of 2000. Then it came more frequently and more easily. So I guess my best advice to you right now is to work on yourself. If you can find my old threads and the threads of Jenny Baker, you can see that sometimes these things take a lot of time to get back on track, but in both of our cases, we let the H take his time to sort through feelings while we made ourselves better for us, not for them. Good luck. Karen
