The rewriting has really made me feel hopeless as well. It dims any glimmer of hope you thought you had in the relationship. But take it from me, as I've messed up plenty. At least in my experience, you get smacked with the rewriting (and other pitfalls) when you initiate conversation about the R with WW. For those in our situations, it's best to back way off and at all cost stop initiating attempted heart to hearts or R/M talk. WW only use this to defend their decisions and fuel their A.
Good luck. Welcome to the board but sorry for your circumstances. Hang in there. And learn from me - take it slow. Speak with genuine actions, not words. You can do it sadpand!
Me: 30 W: 25 D4, D1 Undiscovered EA/PA since 6/2014 BD: 2/6/15 Living together - in limbo
A couple of questions. What practical consequences has your W felt as a consequence of having the A? I sense that her home life with you has remained much unchanged. Are you sharing the marital bed still, and ML?
If so, you may want to think about whether you continuing to meet her practical, financial and emotional needs is what you want going forwards. It can perpetuate the A, as reality can take longer to seep in for the WAS. They can continue to have cake and eat it...
Also, the 'hardly looking at each other' whilst she is at home worries me. And you may want to try and change the dynamic here. MWD recommends an upbeat, distantly pleasant (neighbourly), busy demeanour when around the WAS. Did you say you read the books DR/DB, without looking back?
Also, is OM currently still M and living with someone else? Sorry for the intrusive Qs - and feel free not to answer - but the more we know, the more we can help..
T 13 M 7 Me 48 H 46 SS 15 BD 7.14 PA D final 5.16 (H filed)
We receive & we lose, and must try to achieve gratitude & embrace with whole hearts whatever of life that remains after the losses - Dubus
It took me way too long to really get this, but eventually W and I stopped having R talks. They didn't do any good, they stressed us out and made us angry at each other. We were both afraid that stopping R talks was "sweeping under the rug", but the reality is we were just beating a dead horse (to use two clichés in the same sentence). We confine our R talks largely to our MC sessions now. Things in the house aren't exactly warm yet, but we get along better because it has reduced the stress level for both of us.
That said, I don't believe that MC is worth your time as long as she is in an active A. The high she's getting from the A is still too strong. As Toots said above, she needs to start feeling the consequences of her actions. That distantly pleasant, busy, "I'm fine without you" demeanor is important here. I'd also recommend starting to remove her means of support, emotional and financial. It's her choice whether she wants to have an A or not, but there's no reason you have to finance it.
My W's A was brief, so I never got to the point of removing her from my cell plan, but I should have. One thing I did do early on was remove some of her emotional safety net. I made it clear to her that if she left me for OM, that he'd better be everything she wanted, because I would no longer be an option if things between them didn't work out. I meant it. I said that to her knowing that the vast majority of relationships that begin as affairs don't last.
When she wakes up from her fog, if she comes back to you and sincerely wants to recommit to your M, that's the time to start MC.
Last edited by Rzrback; 03/06/1502:48 PM.
Ex Rzrback Me 43 Her 44 D11, D15 T21, M19 BD 9/9/2014 Piecing
Sometimes if you want to see a change for the better, you have to take things into your own hands - Clint Eastwood
Ah, yes, more background. As far as I can tell there have been no practical consequences of the A. She has not lost her job, and she has told her friends (and the AP) as well as her immediate family that the divorce is a certainty, but nobody except us, the OM, the MC, and my parents know that she has been having an A. We are still sleeping in the same bed but there is no physical contact (it's a king-size bed). I no longer share dinner with her when she is at home, and she no longer wakes me up to talk to me in the morning, because she's busy online with OM the whole time. I'm not unpleasant to her when she is around, and when she engages conversation I respond, but I don't make it a point to begin or to continue a conversation, which means (because she's mainly focused on him, fixated on her computer screen) we barely even look at each other.
I did read DR/DB but I'd better re-read them.
He's her co-worker. She got to know him just as he was ending a 6-year relationship (She helped him move out). They began their affair by sending each other incredibly explicit sext fantasies about what they would want to do to each other. From the moment I found out, she refused to give him up, saying that because she'd spent the last seven years following me from place to place (true) and never found any real close friends in any of those places (also true) it was monstrously unfair for me to ask her to give him up now that she finally found a dear friend she could really relate to. No matter how it hurt me, she kept refusing to abandon him ("He cried when I suggested it... 'how can I lose my best friend?'").
But she adamantly refused to acknowledge that what she did was wrong. Ever. She still, to this day, denies that what she did and what she is doing is an affair. She denies that the sexting was an affair ("we were just playing a game, trying to embarrass each other"); she denies that her making out with him while I was out of town was an affair ("We didn't 'do anything'"). She didn't think that what she'd done was a PA, and she insisted that I should be okay with her wanting to keep pursuing a PA, because, as she told me, "I'm actually 'polyamorous'." (About which even the polyamorist-promoting websites and blogs say "no, that's BS, you're having an A.")
She denies now that all the time she spends with him is an EA; she denies that her kissing and snuggling with him is a PA. I believe she still thinks that I don't know that they tell each other "I love you", because she hides the chat screen whenever I come near her computer.
So from the start of the A, she has always been worried that she'd lose *him*, and told herself that she'd be willing to lose me. Now that I understand that affairs are addiction, I can see that in those first couple of weeks, when she actually considered giving him up but utterly fell apart when she did, I should have recognized this as withdrawal instead of thinking that it would be the kind thing to allow him to be her friend. (Hindsight and all.)
As for financial needs... when we moved to a new place 2.5 years ago, I had actually put my career on hold so that she could establish herself, and I have not yet found a new job (I have a highly specialized skill set, and my job search really should be international and not local). So the one income we have is hers. The most critical part of my GAL is to GAJ.
An ironic point is that, two weeks ago, as I was investigating the divorce process in our state, I discovered that many employers have strict rules against their employees having affairs. Fearful for her job (our only income), but not wanting her to know that I was looking into divorce law, I called her workplace HR.. anonymously, I thought, not thinking that I was calling from my own caller-identifiable phone. I was relieved to learn that the workplace had no such rule. But the receptionist is W's friend, and asked W why I had called HR. W then flew into an incensed rage-- she assumed I was trying to get her fired, and I didn't argue, assuming that she'd never believe me-- said that she was now committed to D, and began PA with the OM that night ("if you don't care about me, then I don't have to care about you").
So the OM is living alone, caught on the rebound, and perfectly happy to have this willing love partner with no strings attached.
Hi Sadpand. Your situation is so painfully similar to mine I'm thinking my W wrote your story as some bizarre revenge scheme. Let me relay what obstacles I had and still trying to overcome.
Don't snoop. Don't engage in trying to find out what they are talking about or about the status of the A. That info is like cocaine. At first you think it's great but after a short time it makes you do crazy things and you still want more.
Threats, guilt, bargaining will not end her A. The urge is strong. Impossibly strong. I fail sometimes. We can't control our WAW. You may read the words and agree, but emotionally accepting this is another story.
180 needs time. You may have changed and wonder why after only 2 weeks not even a hint on her part. Resentment will happen, be easy on yourself.
Setting boundaries and consequences. I struggled with this. The forum tried numerous times to help me. I still am struggling. Read the definitions on boundaries it helped. Believe it or not, boundaries may seem like common sense, but it wasn't to me. Consequences. Starsky, Sandi, and others tried and tried to make me understand what those were. I said I was confused. I wasn't confused. I was afraid to implement the consequences for fear of losing my W. I was in denial about consequences. I'm still not there yet. Still working through the fear. My mantra, it's not confusion... it's fear and denial.
What helped me.
1) Disengaging from the situation to clear my head. Not talking. Spending time alone and digesting. I was afraid to disengage, still am.
2) Reading NMMNG. Not saying it's for everyone. But it hurt reading it. I'm now piecing together a plan to help myself.
3) Headspace. Not a cure all but I can't imagine a day without it.
4) Practice self compassion. Sometimes you have to forgive yourself for being angry. Start again.
What to watch out for.
Small pieces of hope the WAW sends out. Tactics to hurt you. Tactics to get you to care about her situation. things to confuse you and to string you along. It's not as obvious as you may think.
Pent up emotion. Don't deny them. But don't let them take over. Headspace helped me. But there are days...
Denial. If denial was easy to spot, we wouldn't be victims of it. Sometimes I felt as if, hey, she can leave I'm over her. And boy was it not true.
Thank you TenBook.. I'm glad to hear what you have to share.
I keep thinking about threats and guilt and bargaining, and telling myself that it won't do any good, but I still wish that it would, so I keep thinking about it. I also am afraid to disengage (although I am trying).
Thank you for the further encouragement not to snoop. I had resolved not to after learning that she had been texting him love messages during our counseling session (because of course I know exactly what it will say, and seeing it for real will only make me unhappy) but my resolve was still shaky because I still imagined some "benefit" to knowing. It's important to know that there is no good outcome to snooping and plenty of bad.
Maybe I'm not paying enough attention to boundaries and consequences. Perhaps I'm not sure of what is actually in my power to enact. What boundaries have you set, and what consequences were you in denial about? I'm not sure I know what my boundaries are.. or should be.
Oh, those small pieces of hope. When she touches me on the shoulder for the first time in three days. When she voluntarily shared with me what she laughed at online. But she clearly now appears to think of herself as being "with him" and of me as just a leftover to be ignored. There is no contact and no connection except when she double-checks that I won't have the car when she needs it to go out with him.
You can't "wake" someone up. Sometimes, it takes a disaster for someone to realize what they have fully done. ie the LBS who realizes they needed to change. Or the WAS who realizes that D or A wasn't the solution they thought it would be.
Boundaries. First, familiarize yourself with the definition. Do a search on this forum or check out NMMNG. Before I get into what a consequence is, my personal experience... was that only you can define what is a boundary is. And that definition comes through self discovery on what your needs are.
I know how that sounds. I was screaming, why doesn't anyone just tell me??
To repeat... Part of the "journey" is to get to know who you are so that you can define what is important to you. What are your needs. And as a result of this, what is your boundary.
Next, you need to self discovery and overcome fear to define what a consequence is to you.
At first my boundary list sounded like this.
No more affair. Get counselling. get trust back.
And my consequence was, okay, I'm just gonna not talk to you. I'm gonna "detach".
Today, I've evolved it to this.
My boundary is that I will not be betrayed by someone whom I promised my life to.
The consequences, I will not have a life with that person. I will not have a R with this person.
In the realm of DB. We want our WAS back. But te person who has betrayed us, that is not who we want back. They need to change themselves and realize that the LBS is the one they want.
Just like LBS. The WAS doesn't want the old LBS back. Their boundary, whatever it was, was broken by the LBS and the consequence? A or D.
Both have to change. But we as LBS can only change ourselves. That is why we do 180. And when we change ourselves we hope that the WAS decides to change themselves.
Yes, that makes perfect sense. And I can't wait around for a disaster to happen.
I look at myself and I realize that, especially during the course of the affair, I devolved into someone who wasn't desirable-- I had no life except what I shared with her, and because I still didn't (and don't) have a full-time job, that life did NOT involve trying anything new or exploring anything exciting. Just more of the same, every day. But the OM can and does pay for fun things they can see, do, and eat with each other. On the one hand, there's the moral rage of "she shouldn't need that to love me for who I am," but on the other hand, if I'm perfectly capable of that and not doing it, then I've let down both her happiness and the growth of our life together. And that will hold true no matter who I am with, so I very much need to GAL and GAJ.
She is still spending every waking hour of every day with the OM, late into the night. It would, of course, be a better world if she and I shared that time together-- if I underwent the stress of the serious job hunt and then, in the off hours, had a partner to turn to for fun and relaxation. But there was plenty of time for that, and I blew it by not really seriously searching (it's strange that I thought I was, because now that I really am trying, I see that I wasn't at all). So, because she is not only detached but disengaged from me, I can't really see how asking her to spend time with me-- or rather, to *not* spend time with him-- would accomplish anything. All I can do is strive to become (again) that person who is desirable to be with.
To which end, I really like what you've said here about "wanting back." She doesn't want me back, but she might want the person that I become. I don't want her back, but I might want a person who wouldn't betray me. Our marriage, between LBS and WAW, is dead, and their relationship is gone. Perhaps two "new" people will find each other again. Maybe.
I can see the implicit boundary that I've established (for myself) is that as long as she keeps seeing him, I will remain detached and keep searching for a job and a life. I was pleased to discover last night that if I get out and do things that have nothing to do with her or our old mutual friends, it bolsters tremendously my feelings of independence.
We have three explicit boundaries: I've asked her to not leave me abandoned overnight (again), to continue coming to weekly counseling sessions, and to leave me the car when she goes away for her 13-hour days with him. She has agreed to these with the supposed reason that doing so is "being kind" to me, but with the implicit consequence that if she does these three things, then I will leave her alone to continue her A and not "throw it back in her face", as she puts it. I'm not happy about any of this-- of course not-- but these three things so help reduce my stress and make it easier to focus, so they will do for now.
I've also been re-reading Diane Vaughn's "Uncoupling", and paying particular attention to the advisement that I should not take any friendly overtures from W as any kind of change-of-mind. If anything, W is wary of friendliness because she doesn't want to "give me the wrong idea". So... detach, detach, detach.
The story still isn't completely over, but whatever happens next depends entirely on my ability to detach, stay focused, and (re)build myself the life that doesn't need her.
Annnnnnd she's off for another 13-hour day with him. Actually, considering that he met up with her two hours ago, it looks like it's going to be a 15-hour day.
I try and fail to keep myself from thinking about all the new experiences and memories they are and have been and will be sharing and building together.. and how those could have been ours instead.
I try and fail to keep myself from imagining my fantasy in which she hears all the facts and statistics about love addiction, the failure rate of affairs, the regrets that WAWs have after divorce, and the sheer amount of money she's flushing away for the sake of her addiction, and responds "oh no, I don't want that, I'd better give him up before that happens."
I try and fail to imagine that going out to GAL is not "losing", or just pretending to have happiness, or bound to be miserable without her.
I try and fail to keep my mind OFF of these things and on my job hunt. Which knocks me on my back for hours, staring at the ceiling or into nowhere, breathing as deeply as I can, sending these thoughts around and around in a vicious circle.
