ILBY & EA-- help!

[Caligirl]

Has he always said rude things ? He may not even realize they come off that way .

[Newbie20]

May, I just have to say. I read your whole thread and I think you're amazing. You could write the book on how to do DB right. What you have had to endure is beyond what I could. My god, a 33 year old AP .... I know with certainty that I would have walked away and probably trashed a few personal effects on the way out the door. Then tortured myself for weeks.. But I don't have two kids. If anyone makes this work, you will. I want to offer you my best wishes for this holiday. You're on the right track in my opinion.

[may22]

May, I just have to say. I read your whole thread and I think you're amazing. You could write the book on how to do DB right. What you have had to endure is beyond what I could. My god, a 33 year old AP .... I know with certainty that I would have walked away and probably trashed a few personal effects on the way out the door. Then tortured myself for weeks.. But I don't have two kids. If anyone makes this work, you will. I want to offer you my best wishes for this holiday. You're on the right track in my opinion.

Wow, thank you KC... that is really nice of you to say and so encouraging. Though there are definitely folks on this board who are dealing with way worse. The kids are a big part of why I'm working through this (and to be honest if we didn't have kids I don't know if we would have gotten into our current sitch... we absolutely neglected each other for the kids once they came along). And, if the AP lived here I think I would also have trashed some personal effects and done things I regret

Has he always said rude things ? He may not even realize they come off that way .

Yup. This is definitely one of his issues... with everyone, not just with me. But he also is the worst apologizer in the world (he might say second worst after me)-- has the hardest time admitting a mistake or saying sorry. So the fact that he has been able to apologize and repair after being a jerk is a big deal. Not sure how much of that is DBing (I have definitely been working hard on setting a good example here) or his IC, or both.. but it is a big improvement from the past for sure.

[may22]

So I'll pose the same question to you: Do you want him back in the MB if he doesn't want to be there??

"We did have a weird middle of the night exchange when he hugged me and we started to have sex, stopped, and he said he didn't feel like he had been "invited" back into our bed because we'd never talked about it. I definitely know he isn't comfortable being physical, at least when he thinks about it, and I think if I pushed him to think about it too much he might want to move back out. I basically never said a word."

Because this makes me think that you do.

Which is very odd considering your "feral cat" analogy. "He is a feral cat, that gets scared away, so I force him to sleep in the same bed as me!" ????

I really feel that LBSs, and it seems LBWs struggle with this more than LBHs, struggle the most with continuing to want certain things because it makes them "feel" better. As if living in a state of denial is better than knowing the truth, and dealing with the truth. We've had lots of LBWs here that act of fear. "If I don't say I love you first then I feel that he won't think I love him!" "If I kick him out of the MBR, aren't I pushing him into the arms of the OW?" "If I don't continue to be a W to him, I am afraid that he will look for someone else that will!"

Fact: He fired you as his W on bomb day.
Fact: The best way to show him what that means is to STOP acting like his W.
Fact: Pressure and pursuit almost ALWAYS results in producing what you fear most.

Hi Steve,
thanks for posting... moved it to my thread so I didn't hijack someone else's. I do want to clarify that I didn't force him to do anything-- I told him one time only I wasn't comfortable with the kids finding out that he was sleeping in the office, and he said maybe it was good for them to understand that Rs were work and things weren't always perfect. I didn't argue, validated (he had a point) and just said I wasn't sure I was ready for them knowing. That was the last time we talked about it and a few weeks later he just got back into the MB after a trip and that was that.

I think his comment about not being "invited" back into the bed was weird. H is not someone you can force into anything and he made his own choice to come back. I just didn't question it, say anything about it to him, basically kept my mouth shut and pretended to not really notice. That being said, I'm pretty sure he isn't back because he wants to R with me or sleep with me-- my guess is that he kind of feels the same way about not necessarily being ready to take this potential S/D thing to the next level by the kids finding out. I do think if I said anything to him about being back in the MB and acting like I thought it meant something like he was in love with me again, or wanted to R, he would run the other way (like a feral cat).

The MB and what it means for sex is also a difficult issue with us, because I was the one who didn't want to have sex with him for a long long time-- and he came to the conclusion that I wasn't sexually attracted to him anymore. He told me I 'broke him' sexually (this is probably a year before he started the EA and six months before the ILYB BD). I guess I didn't really act like his W for a long time, in one way that was really important to him. He said he couldn't imagine being in a sexual relationship with me again because he'd always imagine I was pretending just to stay together. So partially I do feel like sleeping in the same bed and giving some opportunities for sex to arise naturally is not a bad thing... though after that last interlude I've decided I'm not interested in sex again until he's ready to reconcile. (He thinks I fired him as an H years ago by refusing sex for all that time.)

But to your question-- do I want him in the MB if he doesn't want to be there-- I feel like you could expand that question to do I want him in the house if he doesn't want to be there, and do I want to be married to him if he doesn't want to be my H in a full MR-- and I have a couple of answers to that. In the near term, I feel like I am really hoping that he'll be ready to R without needing to take it to another level (like him moving out), so that people don't need to know, including the children.

I struggle somewhat with this because I also feel like reading through here maybe the fastest/most likely road to R would be kicking him to the curb and letting him see what life really is like without me. However, if I can avoid that and all that entails, from explaining to family/friends to hurting the kids, I would far prefer to do that. If it takes longer that way but the children stay out of it, I am OK with it taking longer. So, by him staying in the house, staying in the MB, our R better in most ways EXCEPT we aren't having sex because of him, not me-- I am OK with letting him still have some parts of me as a W. I don't think I'm fully ready to stand behind the LRT in any case.

And also...I truly don't know if I would want to stay married to him if this is as good as it is going to get. I am 100% holding onto hope that he'll want to R and we will build a new, sexual/intimate MR together-- but to be perfectly honest? I probably would be OK with how it is in order to keep the kids in a 2 parent household and to get to keep them 100 percent of the time. Splitting custody of the children terrifies me and I would honestly do just about anything to keep that from happening, as long as we can keep the 'best friends/co-parents' kind of R that we do now. We aren't fighting, when we do we can repair way more easily than we used to-- we just aren't having sex and he isn't "in love" with me anymore. So maybe I don't have the right attitude or mindset yet to be a good DB-er... but that is where I am.

[may22]

Sorry... to add on-- Steve (or other vets) what are your thoughts? Am I hopeless? I am having a hard time separating what I might want/deserve as a woman from her H vs what I want as a mom for my kids.

I have lost 15 lbs and have regained a lot of confidence in my body and appearance, which is helping me a lot regardless of anything to do with him. But I do know that he thinks choosing to stay means I "win" (or at least he's said that). He also thinks that emotional intimacy = R talks, and since I've been avoiding them like the plague the last couple of months he thinks I'm just trying to pretend this never happened and want to go back to how it was.

[SteveLW]

Hi Steve,
thanks for posting... moved it to my thread so I didn't hijack someone else's. I do want to clarify that I didn't force him to do anything-- I told him one time only I wasn't comfortable with the kids finding out that he was sleeping in the office, and he said maybe it was good for them to understand that Rs were work and things weren't always perfect. I didn't argue, validated (he had a point) and just said I wasn't sure I was ready for them knowing. That was the last time we talked about it and a few weeks later he just got back into the MB after a trip and that was that.

Understood. My comment about wanting him back in the MBR if he doesn't want to be there was more about your attitude toward him being in there rather than how he actually ended up back in there. So many LBWs want things like having him move back home, or back into the MBR, even if it is begrudging on the WAH's part. It as if LBWs want to feel better with surface things regardless of the reality. That was all I was trying to get you and the other LBW to see.

I think his comment about not being "invited" back into the bed was weird. H is not someone you can force into anything and he made his own choice to come back. I just didn't question it, say anything about it to him, basically kept my mouth shut and pretended to not really notice. That being said, I'm pretty sure he isn't back because he wants to R with me or sleep with me-- my guess is that he kind of feels the same way about not necessarily being ready to take this potential S/D thing to the next level by the kids finding out. I do think if I said anything to him about being back in the MB and acting like I thought it meant something like he was in love with me again, or wanted to R, he would run the other way (like a feral cat).

His comment about being invited or not is typical WAS stuff. They make the decision to leave the MBR. They make the decision to start ending the marriage. And then put the onus on the LBS. It is pure excuses. "Well, she never invited me back." Yet she (the LBW) nevert asked him to leave in the first place! And this paragraph is why I said in the other thread "he returned when he wanted to". Because whether that was because he didn't want to affect the kids, or whether it was to sleep next to his W, or because the mattress is better. He did it because he wanted to! My comment about him returning because he wanted to was for the other LBW in that thread. Because she was looking for a magic bullet to get her WAH to return the MBR. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way.

Newcomers always ask: When will my WAS want to R? The answer is the same. It will happen when THEY decide THEY want to R. As you stated above, you can't force anyone. But the LBS's attitude should still be that you don't want the WAS to R, or to move back home, or return the MBR until THEY want to. Otherwise it is toothless and means nothing.

The MB and what it means for sex is also a difficult issue with us, because I was the one who didn't want to have sex with him for a long long time-- and he came to the conclusion that I wasn't sexually attracted to him anymore. He told me I 'broke him' sexually (this is probably a year before he started the EA and six months before the ILYB BD). I guess I didn't really act like his W for a long time, in one way that was really important to him. He said he couldn't imagine being in a sexual relationship with me again because he'd always imagine I was pretending just to stay together. So partially I do feel like sleeping in the same bed and giving some opportunities for sex to arise naturally is not a bad thing... though after that last interlude I've decided I'm not interested in sex again until he's ready to reconcile. (He thinks I fired him as an H years ago by refusing sex for all that time.)

I can relate to your H a lot on this. I had EAs when my W didn't want to have sex with me for many years. Even recently she admitted that she has sex with me for me. It is difficult for a man's ego to have a W that doesn't want or desire him sexually. After all, that is the part of the relationship that really sets it apart from all the other women that a man knows in life. Of all the women at church, at work, at the grocery store, etc, the thing that delineates my relationship with my W more than any other factor is that fact that we get naked and sexually intimate with one another. When a W stops doing that with her H, that special nature of their R goes away in his mind. And you the W starts to become not much different than all those other women mentioned above. And in fact a lot of sex-starved husbands start to treat their wives no different than those other women. I know that's what I did.

I think you have a unique opportunity in your sitch. To turn it around by bringing that special nature back to your MR. Our typical advice to LBS is to NOT initiate sex. But that is primarily to LBSs that were in sexually healthy Rs, and primarily to LBHs because they can get their jewels crushed quickly by being turned down. I think if you tried initiating with your H. and then continued do so occasionally, it could really turn the dynamic of your MR around and move you quicker in to Ring. I must caution, if you choose that path go into it with NO EXPECTATIONS. Including potentially being turned down. Brace yourself for it. However, I can tell you that if my W initiated with me (and she did as we started to R if you read my threads), there is no way I would turn her down. I say this because I know how your H feels. He has been so rejected, so beaten down sexually, that he is unlikely to ever initiate again. But I also know how I feel sleeping in bed next to my hot W! That I would kill for her to reach over....start stroking my back, or chest, and slowly move that hand down......while she leans over and passionately kisses me. So maybe explore that sometime but do so with your feelings clearly held in check.

One huge caveat: Only do that if you are 100%, not 99.999999999%, sure that he is not in a PA. If there is any doubt you must protect your health. A LBS should never ever have sex with a spouse in a PA due to disease.

But to your question-- do I want him in the MB if he doesn't want to be there-- I feel like you could expand that question to do I want him in the house if he doesn't want to be there, and do I want to be married to him if he doesn't want to be my H in a full MR-- and I have a couple of answers to that. In the near term, I feel like I am really hoping that he'll be ready to R without needing to take it to another level (like him moving out), so that people don't need to know, including the children.

Very astute! This is 100% true that this thinking can be applied to all those other areas. And I agree with you that the best path forward is for you to be patience, give him time and space, and let him come back to the MR without it going to the next level first. It is a much easier path to R if the problems are only known to the two of you. Every person that knows about your sitch is another obstacle in your H's way. This is why I implore LBS to not discuss their sitch with family and friends. I know in my sitch the one thing that really helped my W come back to the MR was that no one else knew about what she was doing. In fact, I believe she would have used friends and family knowing as an excuse to never comeback to the MR.

I struggle somewhat with this because I also feel like reading through here maybe the fastest/most likely road to R would be kicking him to the curb and letting him see what life really is like without me. However, if I can avoid that and all that entails, from explaining to family/friends to hurting the kids, I would far prefer to do that. If it takes longer that way but the children stay out of it, I am OK with it taking longer. So, by him staying in the house, staying in the MB, our R better in most ways EXCEPT we aren't having sex because of him, not me-- I am OK with letting him still have some parts of me as a W. I don't think I'm fully ready to stand behind the LRT in any case.

LRT and "going dark" is often one of the most misunderstood parts of DBing. LRT and going dark are for very specific circumstances. When a WAS has moved out, moved on, maybe even involved with another person. Not for sitches like yours where the LBS is still in the house, and has recently come back to he MBR! However, you can improve your situation through solid DBing actions: GAL. 180s. Detaching (google "self-differentiation in marriage" for a better understanding of detachment). Giving him time and space. Learning how to properly validate his feelings. But also having an "whatever" attitude (this comes with detachment). Your goal is to get to a place where he could come to you and confess having an orgy with 100 women, and you would go: "Oh, ok." and go back to whatever you were doing with out a reaction. That is tough to get to, but that is the type of attitude you need to take with him.

And also...I truly don't know if I would want to stay married to him if this is as good as it is going to get. I am 100% holding onto hope that he'll want to R and we will build a new, sexual/intimate MR together-- but to be perfectly honest? I probably would be OK with how it is in order to keep the kids in a 2 parent household and to get to keep them 100 percent of the time. Splitting custody of the children terrifies me and I would honestly do just about anything to keep that from happening, as long as we can keep the 'best friends/co-parents' kind of R that we do now. We aren't fighting, when we do we can repair way more easily than we used to-- we just aren't having sex and he isn't "in love" with me anymore. So maybe I don't have the right attitude or mindset yet to be a good DB-er... but that is where I am.

Limbo is tough. Limbo is hard. Limbo stinks. But look at limbo as the gift of time! We see a lot of LBSs here. The ones whose WAS is sprinting towards separation and D beg for more time. The ones that are stuck in what feels like endless limbo want something, anything to go faster (usually until it switches to sprinting towards separation and D). So don't look at limbo as being so terrible, because it could get worse and he could quickly go to the next level.

Lots of LBS have questions like: when will I know when it is time to move on? When will I know when they want to R? When will -insert question here-. All I can tel you is that you will know. We have a saying "When they want to R, you will know. When they don't, you will be confused." And if limbo goes on long enough, eventually you will have had a enough and you will know it is time to move things forward yourself. So don't dwell on the whens and ifs, dwell on the moment at hand and what is the best way to handle what you are dealing with at that moment from a DBing standpoint! And when in doubt, come here to get advice.

may I feel pretty good about your sitch, assuming he is not in a PA. EAs either become PAs or they die out. If he is in a PA this greatly complicates things and greatly changes the things you should be doing. (For instance, you SHOULD ask him to leave the MBR in that case, etc).

Keep on DBing!

[wooba]

may22, I finally finished reading your entire thread. I must say that you're doing an awesome job.....you're lucky that your H is still in the house, but I can imagine that only makes detaching that much harder when he's around all the time.

I am in a similar situation and can resonate with you on a lot of your views. Esp the bit about kids. Other than a few close friends, we have yet to tell our parents/our kids about what we're going through. And it gets so hard sometimes keep up the front.

sex is also an issue for us, and my H admitted to me that he's still hurt by my past rejections and he doesn't know whether coming back will change anything. He thinks that if he comes back, slowly with time, everything is just going to go back to the way it was (him feeling rejected all the time).

anyways, I just wanted to tell you that I admire your composure in all of this, esp with EA happening...I don't know how you do it!!!

[wooba]

We've had lots of LBWs here that act of fear. "If I don't say I love you first then I feel that he won't think I love him!" "If I kick him out of the MBR, aren't I pushing him into the arms of the OW?" "If I don't continue to be a W to him, I am afraid that he will look for someone else that will!"

Fact: He fired you as his W on bomb day.
Fact: The best way to show him what that means is to STOP acting like his W.
Fact: Pressure and pursuit almost ALWAYS results in producing what you fear most.

Steve85, I have to admit that sometimes it is hard for me to read your comments because they are so direct and no sugarcoating.....but I needed to hear this today. Thank you. Still trying to wrap my brain around this.

Your goal is to get to a place where he could come to you and confess having an orgy with 100 women, and you would go: "Oh, ok." and go back to whatever you were doing with out a reaction.

LOL. This is gold. I'd love to get to that state of mind. What if the H takes my non-reaction as a sign that I don't care/love anymore? I feel like this goes back to what you said above about LBW and fear. I'm still trying to understand what you wrote there.

All I can tel you is that you will know. We have a saying "When they want to R, you will know. When they don't, you will be confused." And if limbo goes on long enough, eventually you will have had a enough and you will know it is time to move things forward yourself. So don't dwell on the whens and ifs, dwell on the moment at hand and what is the best way to handle what you are dealing with at that moment from a DBing standpoint! And when in doubt, come here to get advice.

And this. If I could print anything out and stick it to my frig it'd be this. Thank you.

[KristinG]

Hey May! I haven't dropped you a line in a while so I thought I would check in. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. It sounds like you are doing great. H is definitely playing the blame shifting game (probably due to a guilty conscience) with the "I wasn't invited back into the MB". Take it in stride. If you could emotionally handle the rejection, the advice about initiating might be good in your case - as long as there isn't a PA. Stay strong and keep the focus girl! As far as your kiddos go, as hard as it is, try not to think of the future and what-ifs. Just keep being a great mom and take it one day at a time.

Hugs!

KG

[may22]

Steve,
This Thanksgiving I'm grateful to YOU and to the rest of this board-- truly sanity-saving. I don't know where I'd be without this outlet and advice, and really appreciate your thoughts on my sitch.

I can relate to your H a lot on this. I had EAs when my W didn't want to have sex with me for many years. Even recently she admitted that she has sex with me for me. It is difficult for a man's ego to have a W that doesn't want or desire him sexually. After all, that is the part of the relationship that really sets it apart from all the other women that a man knows in life. Of all the women at church, at work, at the grocery store, etc, the thing that delineates my relationship with my W more than any other factor is that fact that we get naked and sexually intimate with one another. When a W stops doing that with her H, that special nature of their R goes away in his mind. And you the W starts to become not much different than all those other women mentioned above. And in fact a lot of sex-starved husbands start to treat their wives no different than those other women. I know that's what I did.

I think you have a unique opportunity in your sitch. To turn it around by bringing that special nature back to your MR. Our typical advice to LBS is to NOT initiate sex. But that is primarily to LBSs that were in sexually healthy Rs, and primarily to LBHs because they can get their jewels crushed quickly by being turned down. I think if you tried initiating with your H. and then continued do so occasionally, it could really turn the dynamic of your MR around and move you quicker in to Ring. I must caution, if you choose that path go into it with NO EXPECTATIONS. Including potentially being turned down. Brace yourself for it. However, I can tell you that if my W initiated with me (and she did as we started to R if you read my threads), there is no way I would turn her down. I say this because I know how your H feels. He has been so rejected, so beaten down sexually, that he is unlikely to ever initiate again. But I also know how I feel sleeping in bed next to my hot W! That I would kill for her to reach over....start stroking my back, or chest, and slowly move that hand down......while she leans over and passionately kisses me. So maybe explore that sometime but do so with your feelings clearly held in check.

One huge caveat: Only do that if you are 100%, not 99.999999999%, sure that he is not in a PA. If there is any doubt you must protect your health. A LBS should never ever have sex with a spouse in a PA due to disease.

So... weirdly enough, after I'd posted to you (and before I read your response) the night before last, I woke up from a weird dream, kind of freaked out and think I must have woken him up too. He rolled over, asked what was up (I said I had a weird dream) and then he started kissing me, very gently and nicely, then grabbed my hand. We sat like that for a few minutes. I had previously decided I wasn't going to push the sex part since the last time didn't go so well and wanted to be sure that he was really into it, so just held his hand. I am 99% sure he was waiting to see if I would try to initiate. I didn't, he eventually let go of my hand and rolled back to his side of the bed and went to sleep.

Now I'm feeling like I should have moved forward. I just didn't want to get us into a similar conversation/situation as the last time, which turned into an R talk and he was clearly so conflicted about doing it with me. And, I thought maybe it wasn't a bad thing for him not to see me as so eager when he's fired me as a W. Hopefully it didn't just bring back all his feelings of being rejected. I don't think so, though, as I didn't actively reject him-- just responded to him in kind (kissed him back when he kissed me, entwined my hands with his when he held mine) but didn't move it forward at all.

Steve, I also really appreciate your perspective as a H who had a W who was also not so interested in sex. For many years, I really didn't think it was all that big of a deal, then (after the ILYB BD) I felt like there was something wrong with me. Now I've been reading a lot about female sexuality and desire and this is an area where I really want to work. I *want* to have a passionate and healthy sex life with my H-- I really don't want to go back to how it was before. When we've talked about it in R talks, he's angry that I ignored it as an issue for so long and now, FINALLY accept it is an issue and am ready to have sex with him now that he's no longer interested-- my coach thinks his ego is involved here somewhat too and he doesn't want to feel like he's at my beck and call now that I'm interested in sex again. I also think he's frightened that we'd just go back to how it was after a bit and since he's in this place where he's detached from me, he doesn't want to risk getting emotionally involved again only to go through this same thing down the line in a few years.

Anyway, I will read through your whole thread (have only read the beginning and more recent posts so far)... seems like there will be a lot there that will be helpful for me!!

Also, I have some recommendations of books for your wife if this is an area she also wants to better understand about herself. For me, just knowing that there isn't anything wrong with me and researchers are learning more and more now about the complexities of (and role of context in) female desire was very helpful. Previously, I'd thought that I mostly needed to "fake it til you make it" in terms of having more sex, which isn't very attractive for either party to think about.

One huge caveat: Only do that if you are 100%, not 99.999999999%, sure that he is not in a PA. If there is any doubt you must protect your health. A LBS should never ever have sex with a spouse in a PA due to disease.

I'm 99.999% positive he isn't in a PA, but don't know how I could possibly be 100%... the good thing is that she lives 5000 miles away and they've only been in the same city six or so times total in the last 11 months, when they started talking. I know he's kissed her, he said that they had kissed a couple of times and then stopped, knowing it was wrong and they couldn't take it any further. (I don't think this is because he's any kind of hero, though I NEVER would have thought he would be someone to even be in an EA let alone kiss someone else-- I think it may be more because she was the one to stop it than he was.)

I honestly don't know how much they're even talking these days and am not so sure it is as much about her as the AP for him at this point as it is the fact that he has feelings for someone else and not for his wife, which to him means the sexual/passionate connection between us is dead and impossible to bring back (which also helps him to feel less guilty).

However, in thinking through the risks, I'm willing to take that 0.000001% chance that there is a PA-- small enough risk to my health that I'm willing to take it on if this is a possible route to R.

Very astute! This is 100% true that this thinking can be applied to all those other areas. And I agree with you that the best path forward is for you to be patience, give him time and space, and let him come back to the MR without it going to the next level first. It is a much easier path to R if the problems are only known to the two of you. Every person that knows about your sitch is another obstacle in your H's way. This is why I implore LBS to not discuss their sitch with family and friends. I know in my sitch the one thing that really helped my W come back to the MR was that no one else knew about what she was doing. In fact, I believe she would have used friends and family knowing as an excuse to never comeback to the MR.

This is super helpful. I haven't told anyone which is HARD for me (except that I have all you guys here) and a couple of friends think that H is having some version of an MLC (there are also some potential MLC markers for him, including this year is the first year he's made less $$ than me, his business (sole proprietorship) isn't doing as well as it had been, and while our lives had been mostly focused on his career/schooling since we had kids, including moving across the country for his graduate degree, this past year I participated in a prestigious fellowship program and he was the spouse instead of center stage). I really toyed with saying something to my mom over Thanksgiving, but I haven't. I do think if he takes it a step further like S, I would have a really hard time not throwing him under the bus... but hopefully we don't have to go there.

LRT and "going dark" is often one of the most misunderstood parts of DBing. LRT and going dark are for very specific circumstances. When a WAS has moved out, moved on, maybe even involved with another person. Not for sitches like yours where the LBS is still in the house, and has recently come back to he MBR! However, you can improve your situation through solid DBing actions: GAL. 180s. Detaching (google "self-differentiation in marriage" for a better understanding of detachment). Giving him time and space. Learning how to properly validate his feelings. But also having an "whatever" attitude (this comes with detachment). Your goal is to get to a place where he could come to you and confess having an orgy with 100 women, and you would go: "Oh, ok." and go back to whatever you were doing with out a reaction. That is tough to get to, but that is the type of attitude you need to take with him.

I have a ways to go still on the detachment. Definitely see some progress from a few months ago in re-reading this thread, but I'm not to where I need to be. This week has been extra hard with all the pressure of my entire family around and trying to both make sure he feels heard/validated by me while keeping my mom happy (even when H does act somewhat like a brat) is not fun. I'm sure I haven't been the unperturbed, positive, detached person I would like to be (and like Caligirl is... she's my hero )-- now that people are starting to head back home I will need to refocus on GALing, validating, and detaching as much as I can.

Limbo is tough. Limbo is hard. Limbo stinks. But look at limbo as the gift of time! We see a lot of LBSs here. The ones whose WAS is sprinting towards separation and D beg for more time. The ones that are stuck in what feels like endless limbo want something, anything to go faster (usually until it switches to sprinting towards separation and D). So don't look at limbo as being so terrible, because it could get worse and he could quickly go to the next level.

Lots of LBS have questions like: when will I know when it is time to move on? When will I know when they want to R? When will -insert question here-. All I can tel you is that you will know. We have a saying "When they want to R, you will know. When they don't, you will be confused." And if limbo goes on long enough, eventually you will have had a enough and you will know it is time to move things forward yourself. So don't dwell on the whens and ifs, dwell on the moment at hand and what is the best way to handle what you are dealing with at that moment from a DBing standpoint! And when in doubt, come here to get advice.

may I feel pretty good about your sitch, assuming he is not in a PA. EAs either become PAs or they die out. If he is in a PA this greatly complicates things and greatly changes the things you should be doing. (For instance, you SHOULD ask him to leave the MBR in that case, etc).

Keep on DBing!

Limbo *is* awful... but you're right, not as awful as pushing him out the door. That would be worse, and keeping that in mind-- plus thinking of this limbo as the gift of time-- really helps keep me from doing anything stupid.

Again, I really don't think he is in a PA, at least currently-- my best guess is that he still feels 'in love' with her but that they're aren't in regular communication because he hasn't made any significant steps towards leaving the M with me, and I think that she gave him an ultimatum. Even the couple of evenings on his last few trips that I think he may have had dinner with her (once for sure, second time on this last trip is a maybe) I spoke with him at length pretty late before he went to bed and he wasn't trying to get off the phone, so I would be totally weirded out if he was actually with her for the whole night. And yes, of course they might have had a quickie or whatever in the hotel room or her place then went their separate ways, but why would they do that when I'm 5000 miles away and they have the freedom to do whatever they want?

If I did have proof he was in a PA (or if the AP lived here and they saw each other regularly) I know I would have a waaaay harder time dealing with all of this in the way I am now. I would definitely have kicked him out of the MB. I do feel fortunate that my sitch is not as bad as so many others, and that the circumstances are making it easier for me to handle than it could have been otherwise.

Even so, I do think the EA is on its last legs, maybe more because of her than him, but he isn't mentally disconnected from her yet and carries a lot of guilt about how he feels on top of everything else. And while things have improved, he is definitely not ready to R yet and I know I have a ways to go.

I'll keep thinking on how to initiate sex and try not to dwell too much on maybe having missed an opportunity the night before last. Any other recommendations?