Well I should clarify, that when I separated from my husband, I was not in the midst of an affair, so there was no other person to get the kids mixed up with. And in my case, I think my leaving him sent my ex-h into a sort of tail-spin MLC...and what happened as a result of that was that HE walked away from our son. That was an unexpected development, for sure!
Even at my foggiest, I did not put my affair ahead of my kids. So maybe I am not a good voice for people who do like what your H is doing. It just doesn't resonate with me at all on any level.
Which is not to say I am a more moral person than anyone else. Just that for whatever reason, thankfully I was spared of the type of fog that causes people to abandon their children.
My kids were 14 and 19 when we separated. The 19 year old was on her on in college. The 14 year old is the one my ex-h abandoned in the midst of our separation. It was as if our son looked too much like me and my ex-h didn't want to even see his face. I'm just speculating based on what it felt like, not on anything my ex-h said.
IMO, if a parent is going to leave the marriage and immediately introduce a new partner to their children, then they are really F-ing things up! Can I ask, is your H a child of divorce himself? The reason I ask this is that it seems from what I have seen and gone through, that adult children of divorce are more sensitive to their own children if they come to a divorce themselves. But adult children whose parents were never divorced don't seem to "get" what dragging a child through this stuff does.
I could write for pages on my opinions about the children going through these circumstances...my heart goes out to you and I hope somehow he will get some sense into his head. Again, were his parents divorced?
no. his parents aren't divorced but he is adopted. They are afraid to say anything to him as he may decide to not see them anymore. His father did have an affair and wanted to bring the OW to live with them!!
They are also dysfunctional themselves as they had to get a dog, just to have something to talk about. These are the exact things my FMIL has said to me.
My S16 says for all practical purposes he doesn't have a Dad and doesn't want to have much of anything to do with him, though I do have ex taking him to school since there is a conflict with my girl's bus schedule and the time the High School starts. S13 feels as if he is forced to go, which he basically is. Even when he is sick, ex won't let him stay home because it is his time. I even had a time where s13 was not feeling well at his dad's but ex didn't bother to give him anything to help him feel better. He waited until he got home and then started telling me what to do for him. I kid you not.
kat
Me-53(and learning!) S24, S21, D18, D17 Just keep swimming, Just keep swimming. Dory
Thank you so much for starting this affair. I do not know how much you know about my sitch. Long story short, DH started an affair while we were separated due to military obligations. When i found out he said he wanted to try to work things out when he got home. Two weeks after he got home he said he wanted a D, two weeks after that he was out of the house after a horrific fight over the fact that D17 was devastated by what was happening.
SH has been deployed since Sept. I do not know the status of his R with the OW, but am operating under the assumption that he is still in constant communication with her--at least via email. He will be back from deployment in a few weeks. I want to bust the A and save my marriage. I have been GAL and really found me over the past few months. what do I do when he gets home? How do I handle him possibly wanting to stay at the house so he can spend more time with the kids when he gets home?
Living God's blessings with grace and dignity~ SMW
M40/H36 T16/M14 4K B2/08 S4/08 current
Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. I Corinthians 13:7
Do you think its unreasonable and/or humiliating, considering my sitch, to require my WAH to have a polygraph as a requirement for moving forward in our marraige?
DQ, I would love to get your response to the following article. How would you have responded to this type of approach while you were actively still in your affair?
thanks,
Puppy
While Your Spouse Decides By Michele Weiner-Davis
Perhaps you are someone whose spouse is in the midst of an affair and it is making you crazy. You feel like giving up on your marriage. Worse yet, you feel like being hurtful. Don't do anything you will regret in the long run. You came to this website because you want to save your marriage. Remember that. You need to stay focused on your goal, even if it's hard. On rough days, refer to what David, a Divorce Busting® family member, taught us about how he won back his wife. He now lives ecstatically ever after.
Michele-
I decided, early in my separation, that my wife was my best friend....ever. I resolved to NEVER allow the separation to hinder my friendship with her. I acted, from the very beginning, as a friend. I helped her move out by moving all of her stuff downstairs to help her to save money with the moving people. I loaned her money to help her get her new place. More than anything, I stuck by her when her parents were in the hospital (during March, as you remembered) and supported her space, as a single woman (her stupid boyfriend actually got jealous about her spending so much time with her sick parents). I tried very hard to not allow my pain, over her choice to leave me, to be reflected in my face, mannerisms or with respect to how I treated her. I gave her space and respected her choice to enter into a relationship with someone else. I never said anything bad about her boyfriend and was always there when he couldn’t or wouldn’t be there. We did have one big argument, but even the bad feelings associated with that argument went away. I attribute this to our friendship. Whenever anyone asks me how to act after they have been left by their partner, I have one answer...act like a friend. Perhaps all that will survive is friendship, but by preserving a friendship, you always leave the door open to something more. My wife's boyfriend began getting jealous towards the end of their relationship. He forbid her to see me (which, of course, didn't go over well at all with her). This guy was the one carrying on a romance with my wife, but he was jealous of our friendship. True, unconditional friendship is very powerful. I believe, if more people just concentrated on saving the friendship, in the true manner of a friend (along with making changes in themselves), most would have their lovers back in their arms so soon it would make them dizzy.
I still wonder about this...but I think my wife and I sort of made excuses to see each other under the guise of "family and business" matters. I think my wife really just wanted to have me near her as someone who wouldn’t pressure her into a "date" or sex or anything of that nature. Just someone to be nice to her, accept her and talk to her with no pressure. The way I figured, is that we had experienced the dating, sex and marriage relationship things. I sort of developed an attitude of "been there, done that". I challenged myself to be her truest and most devoted friend. The more I challenged myself and lived up to the challenge, the more inner power I gained.
Friendship........empathy, being there without criticism, being non-judgmental.....this is unconditional friendship.
Believe me, the decision to be a friend, against all odds, proved to be a major challenge. There were times when I truly thought of giving up, especially when the boyfriend arrived. Usually, I would come to this site and vent and request support and information. Michele, and the "family" here, never let me down.
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2009 Copyright - Michele Weiner-Davis. All rights reserved.
What are your thoughts on the article? I would be interested in hearing what you think too. Thanks.
This would be a good discussion to have so if others want to chime in I would be interested in hearing their thoughts...
Here are mine: H and I have maintained a certain friendship in our sitch. The first couple months all we did was fight and I was the one starting the fights and H was on the run. Once I found DB I stopped fighting and even now we can have civilized conversations. Just the other day, I was talking to H about how I am proud of myself b/c of how I have handled the situation b/c other people don't handle it so well and he said that we are civilized to each other b/c we talked about how we would be if we break up. If made me think that H thinks that I am OK with the situation. I adamently told him No I am not and that I have tons of reasons to go crazy on him but I chose to not act crazy. Anyway, it made me wonder if the friendship makes H think that I am peachy with this situation. But then again, it could just be an excuse because the number of arguments we've had over his A there should be no way that he thinks that.
But I do try to not talk to H too often or to be too close of a friend because my attitude is that he left so he shouldn't have the benefits of me. Like someone on this site said before: as long as everyone is willing to keep the triangel stable, there would be no reason for it to change. So I try distance friendship.
Hello SMW...I did read some of your earlier posts (sad m. wife, right?) I had lost track of your sitch but I am glad to get an update.
From what I remember, your H's OW is an older woman, and you are older than he is, too (but not by as much as the OW). I am just putting this into place as far as the dynamic he seems to be "chasing"....I hesitate to just say the obvious, that he has mommy issues? But tell me if that is not too far off base. So because the OW is so much older (I hope I have these details right) he might be so enmeshed within his mommy thing that he literally cannot pull himself out of it.
I think you are wise to operate under the assumption that he is in contact with her every day or as much as possible, and that he is attempting to create a new life with her (based on him asking for a D). All is not lost however, as most affairs really DO end up on some trash heap, never to be picked up again. However, that might not happen before you have given up on him. I know you have already heard all of this and its not really advice. I'm just saying from personal experience that his affair WILL END at some point, and he is going to be sad and looking for mommy again as soon as that happens.
So....this is just girlfriend to girlfriend advice now....if I were you I would refuse to be his mommy or support him in any way, including not letting him stay at the house UNLESS he declares he is done with the A and has established NC which you can verify. I know that's almost the opposite of what you want, because he has been deployed, he is your H, and you miss him terribly....you will want him home when he gets back, and you will want to be with him intimately, etc.
The problem with a cheater is that they will always eat cake as long as its offered. Its like there is a total separation and they don't even feel guilty about it. They can completely compartmentalize themselves and take all you will give them, yet still take all their affair partner will give them, and they themselves will give NEITHER of you their 100%. You will each get only about 25%. The other 50% of their effort will be devoted to their own selfishness on some level.
I know this doesn't really help you but these are my impressions.
I will come answer the other posts individually shortly....
Dug In...Here is something that it took me years to understand....people just don't realize what an EA is. Your H was probably in an EA with the gal from work he was talking to during separation, but since a lot of people just don't understand what boundaries are necessary to keep an EA from happening, they just don't understand that what they are doing is inappropriate. People with marriage issues NEED TO TALK, and they really should be talking to each other, their MC, their priest or pastor, their parents, their sibling. BUT THEY NEED TO TALK. So anytime there are marriage issues, it should be assumed that one or both partners are naturally going to seek out someone to talk to. If we end up talking to someone that is totally "safe" to the marriage, then great. But once we start talking to opposite sex friends and co-workers, we are on a slippery slope. Sadly though, as I said upfront, most people just don't realize how quickly this slope can get slippery. And so we can cut a *tiny* bit of slack for our partners when they have just been ignorant of something inappropriate.
So....for that reason....I would advise you that if everything else seems on the up and up, and there are no more weird phone calls, and he is being transparent with you otherwise, then I'd say you should try to let it go regarding the phone calls to the co-worker. BUT if he is still working with her, I would have to guess he is still talking to her.
Please anyone reading this, do take in this message: if your marriage is in trouble, your partner WILL seek out someone to talk to! So...if your marriage is in trouble, be pro-active and make sure your partner understands who it is appropriate to talk to and who it is not appropriate to talk to. So many people just think they are talking because they are hurting, and they don't realize they are opening doors between themselves and the person they are talking to!!
DQ, thanks for the response. He does now see it as an EA and claims to be working on himself (IC, reading, MC with me). The real question I am trying to figure out is in regard to the boundary I set when I found out about OW2 last month, which was getting the polygraph.
Do you think its unreasonable and/or humiliating, considering my sitch, to require my WAH to have a polygraph as a requirement for moving forward in our marraige?
Originally Posted By: DanceQueen
Dug In...Here is something that it took me years to understand....people just don't realize what an EA is. Your H was probably in an EA with the gal from work he was talking to during separation, but since a lot of people just don't understand what boundaries are necessary to keep an EA from happening, they just don't understand that what they are doing is inappropriate. People with marriage issues NEED TO TALK, and they really should be talking to each other, their MC, their priest or pastor, their parents, their sibling. BUT THEY NEED TO TALK. So anytime there are marriage issues, it should be assumed that one or both partners are naturally going to seek out someone to talk to. If we end up talking to someone that is totally "safe" to the marriage, then great. But once we start talking to opposite sex friends and co-workers, we are on a slippery slope. Sadly though, as I said upfront, most people just don't realize how quickly this slope can get slippery. And so we can cut a *tiny* bit of slack for our partners when they have just been ignorant of something inappropriate.
So....for that reason....I would advise you that if everything else seems on the up and up, and there are no more weird phone calls, and he is being transparent with you otherwise, then I'd say you should try to let it go regarding the phone calls to the co-worker. BUT if he is still working with her, I would have to guess he is still talking to her.
Please anyone reading this, do take in this message: if your marriage is in trouble, your partner WILL seek out someone to talk to! So...if your marriage is in trouble, be pro-active and make sure your partner understands who it is appropriate to talk to and who it is not appropriate to talk to. So many people just think they are talking because they are hurting, and they don't realize they are opening doors between themselves and the person they are talking to!!
Puppy...The article is interesting and of course, I can see how it would work on some WAS's.
Here's the thing in my sitch and this might be hard for some to hear/read...
My ex-h didn't do it for me sexually, at all, ever, not even in the beginning. My A's did do it for me sexually.
So which one wins in this sitch? Friendship or sex? I hope you see where I am going with this...
Some men and women do not place that much value on fulfilling sex, and if that was me, I would have caved immediately to the unconditional friendship, because I highly value friendship, too. But in my case, I was chasing fulfilling sex. I tried chasing it with my ex-h for many many years, so please understand. I really tried to get him to understand my needs and tried to get him on board. But after so many unfulfilling years, I finally gave up and at that time I became vulnerable to any whif of possibly fulfilling sexual "fun" (not necessarily sex but at least some "fun).
So in my case, my ex-h being my friend would have even further turned me off, although I would have appreciated it and would have accepted his friendship.
Instead, what would have worked on me, and as far as I can tell this is against DB advice...but would have worked on me was if he would have pursued me, dated me, tried to initiate sex, flirted, treated me like a woman who he just met but who he is sexually interested in. In fact, I laid it out there for him when I left and said this is what I need you to do. And it was the same thing I had asked him to do all during our marriage. He said he would do it. But he literally never did.
So other guys swooped in and did it in his place. This is what I would hope all men and women will take in: THERE WILL ALWAYS BE SOMEONE ELSE AFTER YOUR SPOUSE...SO MAKE DANG SURE THAT YOU ARE PURSUING THEM HARDER THAN ANYONE ELSE!
I dated lots of guys during my separation, but I really longed for my ex-h to pursue me like that. I kept giving him chances and telling him I was slipping away. I didn't really have any romantic feelings for the guys I was dating, I was just chasing the possibilty of sexual fulfillment. But I really the whole time wanted it with my ex-h.
He never stepped up...but I understood that he hated me by this point, so he let me drift away. I get that. He didn't want to pursue me because he hated me.
However, he never pursued me from the beginning because he wasn't willing to take any risks in life at all (ie: Nice Guy).
Finally after being separated for 6 months, me begging him to pursue me and date me and have sex with me, I met my current guy, and my ex-h never had a chance after that. My current guy pursued me, and 5 years later now, he still pursues me every single day. He treats me as if there are vultures out there waiting to drag me off at every moment, and you know what? THEY ARE!! My man is smart. He knows what's up.
He wasn't very happy to be dating a married girl (as I was only separated when we met) but as soon as we became serious (after maybe 10 months of dating) I initiated the divorce. My ex-h didn't make another move toward me ever, in fact, he never spoke to me again.
Like I said, I get it. He hated me and he had every reason to.
But would I have moved back toward him romantically had he been my close friend? No. Would I have jumped his bones if he had taken me on a date, flirted with me all night, given me a couple of drinks and told me how lovely I looked? YOU BET. And if that had then turned into staying the night and a breakfast date/romp the next morning, I would have been all for that.
