Need some help!!!

[jtish7234]

Its hard to tell lately if I am in denial about everything that is going on. He keeps making it a point when I see him, to tell me that he has moved on and that I should do the same. He doesn't feel that he can get over what he has done to our marriage and his feelings for me. There is a huge part of me that feels that my H and I can work on our M and be so much happier. For some reason it took his affair for me to snap out of my depression, and start to realize how much I love my H, but in his eyes it was too little too late. There are so many things that would be easy fixes to do, and others like the OW issue that would be harder.

The hard part for me to understand is the things that I always told him that I wanted for our relationship or what was lacking, he is now doing with the OW. I wanted more snuggling and more romance, heck I wanted him to pay attention to me like he used too. But he based his happiness in our M around sex, and I was the one with a LD to have sex. Which was mainly due to being pregnant, being depressed, and the birth control that I was on.

He truely is one of my only friends, which is sad. But I lost contact with most of my friends from High School when we moved. I am slowly starting to reconnect with some of them. GAL!!

Then there is another part of me, that feels this Divorce may be good. And I only say that is because my H has alot of issues from his childhood and has anger management issues, not to mention that his own parents divorce (which is going on right now too) that he needs to deal with. Which he is starting to do, I just hope he continues to do so. His anger is one of the main things that pushed me away and made me put up my guard around him. The slightest thing would set him off. And he claims that it only happens when he is around his mother and myself. I know for my part, it usually happened when I would disagree or point out something wrong to him. But most of the time he was misunderstanding what I was trying to get accross.

This situation has showed me that I can stand up for myself and that no matter what happens I will continue to show my boys how much I love them. So for now, I am keeping my heart open to what may or may not happen. I find the strength to keep my love for my husband alive thanks in part to my boys.

[TrentC]

I have some thoughts after reading through your situation.

1) If you can't get the book back, don't sweat it. WAS's are rarely interested in working on the relationship, so it's unlikely that he'll ever crack it open.

2) The first thing that you need to come to terms with is that you cannot control his behavior. However, you can influence his behavior by how you interact with him.

A good book for you to look at is The Solo Partner by Phil Deluca; it discusses much of the same stuff as DB and DR, and also covers topics like emotional reactivity (here is a good article by Scott Ginsberg on the subject) and detachment (here is a Livestrong.com article on detachment). If you can work on detaching and overcoming emotional reactivity, you have the tools to defuse the negative interaction that currently exists.

3) Work on yourself. Many people are unwilling or unable to change until their life is in crisis. You should take advantage of this to really look at yourself and decide who you are and what is important to you.

The easiest way to start this is to read, read, read. 1000ships collected a whole bunch of good articles by James J. Messina, the author of "Developing Detachment" above, in this thread.

Good books:
The Solo Partner by Phil Deluca (mentioned above)
Getting Back Together by Bettie Youngs and Masa Goetz
His Needs, Her Needs by Willard Harley
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
Codependent No More by Melody Beattie
For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men by Shaunti Feldhahn
(She and her husband Jeff wrote a companion book, For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women)

[TrentC]

He keeps making it a point when I see him, to tell me that he has moved on and that I should do the same. He doesn't feel that he can get over what he has done to our marriage and his feelings for me.

This is typical WAS script. He's trying to justify to you and to himself what he is doing to the relationship.

There is a huge part of me that feels that my H and I can work on our M and be so much happier. For some reason it took his affair for me to snap out of my depression, and start to realize how much I love my H, but in his eyes it was too little too late.

It was the same for me; the left-behind spouses often feel like they were blindsided. There can be any number of reasons why this is; maybe we were that blind to the problems. Maybe the walkaway spouses weren't as good at communicating their feelings as they thought they were.

There are so many things that would be easy fixes to do, and others like the OW issue that would be harder.

Well, yes. As long as there is an OW, you can't work on your relationship because you don't really have one any more. There are very different opinions on how to handle unfaithful spouses on this board. Think long and hard before you take anyone's advice on it, because you are just as likely to ruin any chances of reconciliation as you are going to "bust" the affair.

The hard part for me to understand is the things that I always told him that I wanted for our relationship or what was lacking, he is now doing with the OW. I wanted more snuggling and more romance, heck I wanted him to pay attention to me like he used too. But he based his happiness in our M around sex, and I was the one with a LD to have sex. Which was mainly due to being pregnant, being depressed, and the birth control that I was on.

Our esteemed hostess has some tips on how to handle this:

http://www.divorcebusting.com/blog/11-tips-for-the-spouse-with-a-lower-sex-drive/
http://www.divorcebusting.com/blog/9-tips-for-the-spouse-with-a-higher-sex-drive/

He truely is one of my only friends, which is sad. But I lost contact with most of my friends from High School when we moved. I am slowly starting to reconnect with some of them. GAL!!

One thing that my wife said to me early on was, "being the most important person in your life meant more when I wasn't the only thing in your life".

By going out and doing things by yourself and for yourself, you make yourself an interesting and fun person to be around.

Then there is another part of me, that feels this Divorce may be good. And I only say that is because my H has alot of issues from his childhood and has anger management issues, not to mention that his own parents divorce (which is going on right now too) that he needs to deal with. Which he is starting to do, I just hope he continues to do so. His anger is one of the main things that pushed me away and made me put up my guard around him. The slightest thing would set him off. And he claims that it only happens when he is around his mother and myself. I know for my part, it usually happened when I would disagree or point out something wrong to him. But most of the time he was misunderstanding what I was trying to get accross.

You might want to head over to the Mid-Life Crisis forums and see what they have to say. Many MLC's are based on unresolved childhood issues and triggered by a catastrophic event such as the loss of a parent or family member, divorce, job loss, etc.

This situation has showed me that I can stand up for myself and that no matter what happens I will continue to show my boys how much I love them. So for now, I am keeping my heart open to what may or may not happen. I find the strength to keep my love for my husband alive thanks in part to my boys.

The best way to keep your hope and your love alive is to not succumb to anger and resentment.

[jtish7234]

Trent, you have alot of good advice. So thank you.

I have found that one of my major problems was that I used to hold on to grudes and found it very hard to forgive him, bcause in the back of my mind I felt that he was never sincere. But lately, I don't find myself doing that. I should be mad as hell that he is having an affair and wants to throw our life together away. I was at first, but now don't. Maybe its because I had an EA, but ended it and focusd on our family. I do tend to get upset and over protective when he talks about this OW moving in with him, bc we agreed that our kids wouldn't be around new people for awhile.

I look forward to getting the books that you recommened. I hope they can help me channel this effort into something positive.

When we had our boys, it always seemd that whatever my husband wanted to go out and do something he got to do it. And I had to stay home with the kids. Whenever I wanted to go out, with my best friend he would make a big deal about having to watch the kids. So I never really got to get out of the house unless I took one of them with me. So when it came to our family, I have always put them before my own needs. So right now I am having to re-discover who I am, outside of being a mom. And its hard to do, thank god I moved back in with my parents so that they are able to help me with the boys.

[jtish7234]

Well today wasn't too bad. The boys and I went to the zoo and the book store. But when one of my aunts came over, the first thing she asked was 'how are you doing?' I really hate that question, you can tell my looking at me that I am torn about what to do. I know everyone means well, but its starting to really drive me crazy, its been almost 6 months they should know the answer by now. It wouldn't be so bad, but the minute I hear that question it makes me tear up and start crying.

I got a call from the H, who thought that I should bring the boys to his parents so that they can see them. My H doesn't like to be around his parents, so he thinks that I should have to do his dirty work. I just didn't respond, he already knew I wasn't gonna go there, so why ask.

When this all started my husband and I agreed that the children would not go back to OUR house, because it would be too confusing for them. SO my H had to come to his parents house to see the boys. So from the beg of NOV 2009 till the end of Feb 2010, my H has prob spent a total of 48 hrs with our kids. He would come up Sunday morn at 10 and then leave around 4pm. But now that our house has sold and he has an appartment, he wants the boys down by him instead of my his parents. My H cannot stand to be around his parents because the tension is so bad there.

I talkd to my SIL and I asked her to teach me how to golf. She asked me why, and I told her it was something new for me to try. Besides it was one of the things that I wanted my H to do this summer, as something we could do together. But since he isn't around, the next best thing is his sister!! (she is a better golfer anyway, and she will prob have more patience.

So I am making a list of things that I want to do this summer, to help GAL. I'm gonna learn to golf and I want to take some cooking classes. I am gonna sign my boys up for swimming lessons. Not to mention I will be starting a new job. Things may stink right now, but I cannot wait for my H to get his head out of his butt. That will take awhile, I just hope that when he does he realizes what he has missed and given up.

[jtish7234]

Well, I've been doing my best to have limited contact with my H. Over the last week, I have had very limited contact with him: he has sent me emails and I haven't responded, he has sent voicemails and I don't return the call. He called yesterday to talk to our 3 yr old, but Nic didn't want to talk to him. I could tell that my H was bothered by that, H hasn't talkd to Nic in almost a week. Then last night, H tried takn to me on Facebook and I just signed off.

I have some question for everyone:

**What is the best way to handle questions from my 3 yr old? He keeps asking why daddy lives in an apartment? What happened to our house? Why do we live with Grandma? I do the best I can to try and change the subject and to tell him that I love him and that I will always be there for him.

**I am doing my best to detach from my H and to do limited contact. But are there times when my H may take this as I am ignoring him? May that push him away even more? I've already done enough damage in pushing him away, now I need to do damage control, not make it worse.

Well I am following thru on alot of things, and I am trying to put the boys and I first. Yesterday I signed everyone up for swimming lessons, accepted the job offer and went shopping for some new clothes. I've decided that I can no longer sit on the sidelines and watch life past me by. So from now on, I am gonna do what I can to make sure the boys and I are happy, and do what I can to preserve the love for my husband.

[jtish7234]

I need some insight! Please help.

Yesterday was a rough day. My H called around lunch time to talk to our 3 yr old. Our son said he didn't want to talk to daddy, and my H heard him say it. My H kept talkn to him and as H is talkn our son gets all sad (almost like he is gonna cry) after I hang up the phone, I can see my son in the backseat get a sad look on his face and got really upset. Then it seemed like for the rest of the day he was in the same mood, sad and grumpy. My question is do I tell my H about this or do I keep it to myself? But it makes me feel awful for my son, who talks about his daddy alot and misses him. It sucks that my husband cannot see what he is doing to our sons.

My other problem yesterday came right before I went to bed. I jumped on Facebook to play a game quick before bed, and my H came on and cornered me in a chat. He started asking about some bills, so fine I answered him. Then he proceeds to tell me that he is gonna try and get out of work early Friday night, so he can have the boys Friday night thru Sunday, since its his weekend. I told him that we need to stick to the agreement, which is Saturday morning thru Sunday mid afternoon. And I told him I don't appreciate being guilted into changing the agreement. His response to that was "unless we resonably agree to other plans I lsot a weekend and am going almost 3 weeks again without seeing them I would hope when I request stuff I don't always meet resistance. we also agreed unless reasonably agreed upon by both sometimes we will need to switch things up if this is what I am going to get every time I ask for some lee way then we will ahv eto go back to mediation."

I need some guidance on what I should do about next weekend. It seems like everytime its his weekend, he trys to find ways to change the plans. The last time it was his weekend, the boys and I were staying at a friends house on Thursday and Friday because my SIL was playing in the state tournement. So my H thought that he should get the boys Friday night, instead of waiting to get them Saturday morning. He ended up taking our 3 yr old while the 1 yr old stayd with my friend so I could go to the game.

I don't want to be a push over, but at the same time I am tired of him threatn me to go back to mediation for our visitation schedule. In our visitation schedule, my husband gave me all major holidays, and he only wants to see them every other weekend. and the week between xmas and new years, and one week in the summer.

At the same time I just want to put my family back together. What should I do?

[jtish7234]

I am trying to detach from my husband the best I can. I haven't called or text him in about a week. I have only sent email telling him I signed the boys up for swimming lessons. I am keeping my self busy. I am focusing on getting ready to start a new job. So we have been doing alot of shopping and getting the boys organized and ready to go to daycare all day.

I am trying to establish boundries with my H when it comes to the boys. I am tired of him trying to guilt me into things. I am standing up to him, I just hope that I don't get weak and back down. He knows how bad I want him to be with the boys, and he tries to use that against me to get more time with them. At the same time I don't want him to think I am doing this to hurt him, because all I want is to put my family back together. But its hard to do when my H head is in a fog.

[jtish7234]

Again today my H called to talk to our son, and it left our son feeling sad. I love how my H chooses to start a new life, and I am left to pick up the pieces for our kids. He causes all the problems and I am left to make everything better for our kids. He brags about how he gets to go golfing and kayaking when ever he wants, do whatever he wants. I wish my husband would wake up and see what he is doing to our kids.

I wish there was more I can do to make this better for my kids. All I can do is tell them is that I love them and that I will always be there for them.

[Ready2Change]

How can we help?