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You know what? Maybe the door will be open one day, maybe it won't be. She doesn't need to know you are leaving the door open. If she wants in, she will try.


Last edited by Cadet; 07/07/17 04:02 AM. Reason: Start a new thread message
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Originally Posted By: Coconut
I think the biggest issue your having/will have is that your still trying to work on the M. Your going to MC while she's actively in an A, and your basically labeling yourself as plan B.

Don't think of it as go NC or I'm done with this M. It should be more the mindset of you are in an A, I'm done with this M. Maybe in the distant future, if she ends with OM, and doesn't get another, you MAY consider getting back together, but for now I'm done and just worrying about me. (read TXHubby's recent thread on staying M)

The problem with trying to work on the M while she is in the A is that there will never be any real closure. You will likely resent that she didn't suffer any consequences if you get back together (you where there for her as soon as OM was gone), and neither of you will look back on your willingness to just take her right back and find much self respect in that.

I wish you the best, I just think you need to distance yourself from her for a while, the longer the better, whether she ends it with OM or not.


I'm going to refer back to a post I made to you about two weeks ago, which kind of goes right along with Sandi2 saying that you don't know what stage you are in, which is the exact trap I got stuck in...

There needs to be real closure on the affair, and what you are posting reads to me more like there has either been a "postpone while under the microscope" or may even still be actively going on further underground.

She needs to want you back, and I think that will be delayed as long as you are always there for her. One thing that I find in common with those who go the route similar to the one you're on, is that they never feel like their WW had to work to earn them back. Years of piecing go by and they still have that feeling, like they never stood up for themselves, their self worth, and took her back as soon as she broke down because she regretted what she had done..

But it's not necessarily a healthy way to start over, it creates even more resentment because they analyzed every action she did for so long, and so they didn't just have to work past the A, but had to work past on this day you did this to me, and on that you day I couldn't believe you did that..

Lets say you continue on your current path for another year, and during that entire year she secretly continues her A with OM, then in a year he gets tired of her and dumps her, and she then breaks down to you and wants to get back together with you... would you take her back if you knew she was seeing him for that year? would you require that she tell you everything that went on in that year, would you question every little thing she did or said for that year? Do you think feeling betrayed like that would help you put in the work for a healthy R?


M - 9 1/2 years
5/5/16 - Bomb drop - 3 week EA
10/31/16 - We sold house
01/10/18 - D Finalized
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So she joins me at MY watering hole, after I go out. Looking like a million dollars. If she isn't the hottest 49 year old woman in this state I don't know who is


Every LBH's W on this board has the hottest woman on the planet. Just ask Coconut about his. wink

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She just kills it. Why, why why why why?


I don't understand the question.

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With WW sitting across from me, laughing, talking, swaying... and occasionally dropping some kind of hint about how she wasn't attracted to me.


She doesn't have to look below your waiste to know she is turning you on. Thus the punches about her having no attraction for you (which was mean). After all, her purpose was to temp check. Obviously, she did a good job!

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Originally Posted By: hoosjim

My LIFE can be great. I am doing so much, and learning so much, and remembering how to feel FULFILLED and AMAZING... and I can't get past the image of her blue eyes looking at me across the table. And the smell of her perfume, and the sound of her laugh. Damn the woman!


Originally Posted by Holding

I don't have much to add except sympathy. It blows that she shows up and acts like this to you. I'd love to hear a female perspective on why she would do this.


Some women find it to be a lot of fun to tease, especially in public when the man knows it can't turn into more (having sex). She feels safe b/c it's a public setting, and she can play and tease his attraction for her..........and know he can't throw her down on the floor and have his way with ner. She knew what she was doing, and she taunted him by reminding him how she was not attracted to him. That was cruel. What he should have done was to walk out and leave her hot body and blue eyes sitting alone. (Actually, when she left him to spend 30 min on the phone, was when he should have walked out). This was just another side of bad behavior. As noted, when they were alone in bed.....the scene quickly changed before he could even touch her.

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She just really made a connection with him. Yes, granted because of her wayward mindset, but... I think this is a sitch where it will be much less likely for W to take a look at what she's doing and say "this is incredibly destructive and I need to stop." She thinks she's in a love affair (though, TBH, I have never heard her say the word "love") and wants to run away with this guy (or at least that's what she said two and a half weeks ago talking to him).


In most every case, the OM is a moral lowlife. B/c of her wayward mindset, she overlooks the important points......and she confuses his inappropriate behavior as him being a "bad boy", and it turns her on. He often is the opposite of her H.......and her own former standard of values. That's what I'm trying to explain about the wayward mindset. It all goes against who and what she once was.....(unless you M a wayward woman). Her H could say or do some of the same things to her.....and she would not be turned on, like she is when it's from the OM. That often is mind blowing for the H, but he is trying to make sense out of a woman's illogical mindset.

Jim, you are afraid she has truly fallen in love with this guy. You think your stitch is exceptional. Everyone feels that way about their own. B/c it is so personal and painful it's hard to see it as an observer. So many things you describe in your W are exactly the way I was. I did not want to see the bad in the OM. He made me feel beautiful, smart, sexy, etc. I wanted to hang on to the thrill I felt with him. I had been neglected for years, too. I had so much resentment it would have taken a wrecking ball to make a dent. And pride.......my gosh, I had so much stubborn pride! Yet, in spite of all this that was going against the M, I was able (with a lot of help) to come back off the ledge, end my A, and work on my M. I don't think the WW necessarily sees how destructive her behavior is....until she starts experiencing consequences. She's like a rebellious teenager who won't change until she has consequences for her decisions. So far, I have not seen any consequences for her behavior. Just like that night in the bar when she was spending so much time texting (which I thoroughly despise and think is totally disrespectful to the person/people you are with at the time). You could have set a small boundary then and said, "I have decided that from now on when a lady is with me, that I will not wait around while she spends time on her cell phone".

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she is not all hot and bothered to just sleep around with anyone.


Loopholes.

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She pretty much feels, to all appearances, that OM is her "soul mate" and ticket to happiness.


Yes, I did too.

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So im conflicted. The better part of me wants to stick to my guns on this boundary, demand some sort of tangible/concrete accountability from her if she wants to keep trying and, if she doesn't or if I otherwise feel I can't trust her, completely drop the rope (with or without separation, I can see the arguments on both sides, there).


This is where she has you over a barrel. You don't know if she is in or out. You say she is apparently "making this effort". What effort? To be with you once in awhile, when it suits her? You have taken down your sources of intel......and you assume she has cut contact? In the meantime, she is a lot more married to the BFF than she is to you! If you told her tonight to chose BFF or you......she would pick the BFF! Look, she comes back from a holiday vacation with her family, only to want to straightway leave for more days away, only this time it's with BFF? That smells of rotten fish to me. Does she have a job, or any responsibilities? Tell me that every wife & mother takes a few days out of nearly every week, or even every month, to be away with some BFF......and I will tell you that you are deceiving yourself. That woman is cheating on you! She is not serious about ending her A, and she's not working on her M. She is playing you.

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OTOH, if she is willing to try to explore our relationship (and, right now, that would not be for "love" but just because of the family, the kids, and because she'd think it was the "right" thing to do and that Maybe, even though she doubts the likelihood of it, we could eventually rekindle something romantic), then part of me's thinking I SHOULD be open to spending some time with her, etc, etc, at least in the sense suggested by GaBulldog.


What you have failed to recognize...... maybe due to how it was countering most of the 37 rules, is that his nuances was more like an attack by trying to delibertly shred what I had stated in the 37 rules, and I felt it was done in retaliation to some previous head-butting. Remember, the 37 rules are simply bullets points, and I have had to give further explainations for several people who did not understand. No problem doin it. Anyway, I did not succumb to the temptation to respond to the "nuances", b/c I felt it was bait he had purposely set (due to the timing in which it occurred and previous encounters). Anyway, I have tried to stay away from further unpleasant dealings, but since you've pulled this up, I feel I need to respond to you feeling conflicted. It would have served a much better purpose if the "nuances" had been presented as stand alone guidelines instead of confusing newcomers, the way it has you. They could be guidelines during the time NC was established and the WW is going through withdrawals. (I read them only once, but from what I recall, that is the only time they would work with a wayward). I fully agree about spending time together, once it is established that she has ended the A and is in NC and is willing to do the right thing about her MR. The key word is if she is "willing" to do the right thing........and if she is, then you would probably be in the piecing stage. You are not in piecing, Jim. You are in limbo! You are trying your best to find a loophole that grants you permission to forget about your boundary and stay where you are........b/c that's where you want to be. When you get fed up enough.......you will be like Txhubby and no hole in Texas would be large enough to keep you with her bad behavior. She would either prove her loyalty to you, or you would be gone. Why is that so complicated? B/c you've made it complicated. You want to see things from her that is not really happening.

I even encouraged you to see what the MC could do b/c she sounded promising, only to see that she tells you that at the next session she is going to get a commitment from your W or know where she stands. Next session comes, and you go home, no better off. She has not stuck by all those big claims she made before you invested in those meetings. mad If anything, waiting around (which is code for putting up with WW cr@p) has made things worse, b/c WW sees you tolerating her A. MC has done nothing to change this fact, as far as I can see.

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The nuances even allowed for "nights out" at noisy bars just to get out of the house and ease the pressure without any R talk. Idunno... Alot of that kind of made sense to read, but...


Funny you said this ^^^^^* b/c I think it was shortly after I firstI posted the rules (at that time I only had 34) when I specifically wrote the one about staying away from bars. The man that prompted me to write it, was a person much like you, Jim. He would start drinking and it led to other problems he would have been a lot better not encountering. I had also read several stories from H's who would go to bars and they would not handle temptation with women. It led to all sorts of issues, and mainly.....tearing apart their stand on cheating. I suppose this is one of the bullets I should have expanded, about going to bars without your spouse when your M is on the verge of D. To me, that makes sense! smile

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while me W has had time and opportunity enough to notice my changes and my budding new lifestyle, there has not, apparently, been enough time for her to become "attracted" to it (probably due to the dual factors of lingering feelings for OM as well as just not enough time of seeing my changes.)


For years, I preached about improving yourself and becoming an attractive man to the wife. I still preach about improving yourself and becoming an attractive man. However, I don't usually add that last part, and let me tell you why. Over the years of reading thousands of stories, just like yours, I have seen that it rarely makes a difference in the outcome of marriages with a wayward wife. I believe it definitely helps, especially if the man is GAL like crazy; being mysterious; and leaving his WW standing in her fantasy dust. I think he has to do all of those things together. There have been many broken hearts of H's who really worked hard to change old behaviors, attitudes, and bad habits. Did their WW notice? Sure did! Then she would give him another bomb drop and tell him that it had not changed her feelings and she still wanted out. frown The thing he didn't change was the dynamics in their relationship, and therefore, the respect factor had not changed for her. You see, while some may think they are on the front row showing the WW all their changes.......she is just as likely building up more disrespect if she sees him there enduring her cr@p. It was when Txhubby was walking away and not caring what she did, that really made the difference. That's when he changed the dynamics in the relationship, and hopefully, it will stick. Sure, the improvements help......but it is the respect that that trumps everything. Even if she has years of resentment, if she gains just a little bit of respect for her H.......then she can start working on letting go of the resentment. She sees strength in the man who won't take her cr@p and the one thing a WW respects is strength. See what I mean? So if the MC can't get your W to see things clearly, where she'll make the decision to do what is right and commit to working on the MR..........and you don't instigate something that causes her to respect you as a man......I don't see a lot hope for a successful MR. The A may eventually frizzle out, and she may not file for a D, and may even have sex occasionally.........but she won't feel that spark. She can't. She is designed in such a way that she can't feel sparks for a H she doesn't respect as a man. Ironic, isn't it? She can get all crazy over the scumb ball OM, and yet she can't feel that way about her own H. As perverted as it sounds, in some twisted way she imagines something in the OM that she respects in a man. Mostly, it's just the fantasy she's created about him. Here's the thing, if they got married, it would be no time until she'd detest him, b/c her feelings were built upon the lie she fed herself. Plus.......once the man becomes her husband, that places him a whole different realm. Not only does she have to respect him as a man, in order to feel in love, but she also has to respect him as the husband in the relationship. That includes his leadership, protectiveness, provisions, decision making, etc. It is a complexity that women have in their role of wife. .


It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
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Your problem, Jim, is that you don't know where you stand in your MR, and that's why you bring up all these things and say she doesn't really fit the mold.


^^^This this this this and THIS. It is quite possible (POSSIBLE, though perhaps not PROBABLE) that my W is in a bona fide state of "no contact" with OM. And forgive me, for purposes of THIS post, I DO NEED to go into what SHE is doing:

The last in-person contact MAY HAVE been nearly four weeks ago (6/10). There have been other opportunities-- most notably this weekend right here and then she had lunch with bff three weeks ago on a weekend out kind of near OM's neck of woods, BUT... for the latter I knew where she was going, she knew I knew and at that point she also knew I was wise to the whole A, so doubtful she did anything there AND she was not gone for too long.

This weekend is a bit dicier: Three hours away, at beach, trip has been planned for months so I am CERTAIN that OM knew about it and, if not outright invited to stay with them (which I doubt-- small condo with other girls in it) could easily have made plans to also be there this weekend. Also, he IS on vacation this week (I called his office-- zero risk check-in which I hoped would put my mind at ease if he was in town) though that is potentially less meaningful as a clue given that it IS July 4th week. Also, my W's bff, who socializes with OM's crowd and may (I am not certain) have a new beau who is familiar with OM's crowd and who also has been an assistant/enabler of the A particularly on "girl's weekends" is the one who set the trip up and was in CONSTANT contact (both phone and text) with bff during our family's beach getaway in first half of week. Most notably, as I mentioned, the night we went out and stayed out late together she disappeared for 35 minutes at one point "to go to the bathroom" but actually to talk to bff (or at least to talk to someone on bff's phone-- when she was gone for so long I checked the phone logs.) She did share a number of texts between her and the other girls but didn't say squadoosh about the bathroom phonecall or indeed the several other calls she had with bff when I wasn't around at beach, maintaining she "limited her responsiveness because she wanted to hang out with us." Now, she confides in bff about EVERYTHING and always has, including our MR, so it doesn't have to be anything plotful and insidious but... they were talking a LOT. She had considered (or at least so she told me) not going at all and just coming home with the family, but then got "talked into" going down. She DID come home first so she could have her own car and come home Saturday as opposed to Sunday. Anyhoo... hard to read this one and I am not doing any kind of monitoring of her. Once I found out OM is also "on vacation" my assessment of the likelihood of a meet up is that it is not a certainty but still somewhat likely (say 50-75%, just knowing OM and how relentless he is and what wife's current frame of mind is.)

As to frame of mind, I will expand on the Friday counselling in a different post, BUT... while she has been distant and surly and pouty to a certain extent over past few weeks since I dropped MY bomb, she has not been the full-on emotional teenager I expected. (Idunno, maybe the previous couple of tries at NC where she DID kind of go off of the "Im trapped, I can't do this, 9-1-1" deep end was/were ACTUALLY the start of the withdrawal(?). At any rate, she is still "defending" OM's character, even in counseling, now has the "additional" doubt of WON she could have a relationship with me because she knows I don't trust her and she'd always be "second guessing" herself and wondering if she could go out with her friends and that she might not be able to "be herself" under such circumstances. And, right now, "hersfelf" at least as she puts it, involves her thinking of herself "with her girlfriends" or "on her own" more than it does with me. Finally, when we were talking about commitment to the process, and based on something that MC said I asked her if she could remain faithful to me and she said, tearfully: "i AM... but if this continues, if we stay together and things don't change between us i WONT be, i KNOW i wont be." Surprising, but, i suppose, honest words from her.

With that frame of mind, I am not sure what to think. She could easily, of course, be continuing in some sort of contact with OM, although her FB activity as fallen WAY off... sometimes no more than once a day or once every other day.. although OM is still on her "contacts" list and not, AFAIK, actually "blocked" even though she unfriended him. (She doesn't share her phone with me openly enough for me to discern all of that). He could be calling her on her work phone, as he has been wont to do in past, and bff could obviously be relaying messages. Again, I have no way of knowing. Last verified contact of ANY sort was a little over two weeks back she sent or tried to send him a card and small gift (t-shirt) for his birthday... something she had been planning to do with bff's help BEFORE i dropped bomb on 6/14, so she might have just been offloading it, IDK.

So that's the picture. If i AM legitimately at "no contact", it seems as Sandi indicates that I need to be trying to take advantage of that. And MC is cautiously of mindset that we need to be moving forward and building some positive momentum. And she (W) DOES seem interested in doing some things in terms of openness and transparency, though she always does it kind of obliquely and seems reluctant to come to me at all contritely and say "look, I know what I did was wrong... this is what I want to do to make up for it" which MC indicates is kind of important. (Though she did say, when MC asked in counseling "Yes, I know that what I did was wrong.") For instance, dinner out last week she wanted to have with bff (which I am PRETTY certain might have involved OM and some sort of birthday get-together of his friends) she waffled on back and forth and then, when I calmly voiced my concern she instantly backed off and said "yeah, I totally get that, I was thinking of not going anyway." So, are we at NC or aren't we at NC? IF we ARE at NC, then her mind/heart certainly does not seem to be into taking the next step (how could she run off with bff this weekend if so?) I just really am at a quandary as to how to handle my interactions with her, particularly when she comes home.

YES, i continue with my OWN 180 and GAL efforts, (which she HAS noticed... and maybe its just my own male vanity but i DO see her "checking me out" when she thinks I'm not looking and she HAS started noting my changes/improvements to friends (he's really getting into good shape these days and taking care of himself) rather than being so relentlessly negative) AND YES, I play it cool to a certain extent with her, but... am I still at a place where I want to drop the rope and/or keep hammering her on the transparency/openness? I really feel like I need to know if she is maintaining the NC and wish I had taken a little more effort to monitor things on this beach trip. If she is at NC, if I shut her out now seems to me could be counterproductive. Or maybe not. Thoughts please.


H53/W51, R-ing 4/'18

"Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires"-Sg.of Sg 2:7

"So oftentimes it happens,that we live our lives in chains, & we never even know we have the key"-Eagles III 1:3
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Sorry for that long book, I did not see Cadet's message to start a new thread.


It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
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Ill start a new thread. Can you respond to my latest there?


H53/W51, R-ing 4/'18

"Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires"-Sg.of Sg 2:7

"So oftentimes it happens,that we live our lives in chains, & we never even know we have the key"-Eagles III 1:3
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H53/W51, R-ing 4/'18

"Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires"-Sg.of Sg 2:7

"So oftentimes it happens,that we live our lives in chains, & we never even know we have the key"-Eagles III 1:3
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