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DDay 2 was January so I know it's still very early on the toad to R. We are in house seperated .
I am working on myself in IC , reading everything I can to help WH heal , and really trying for the first time in a long time .
I'm aware it may e too late . BH says he isn't sure what he wants . Needs 6 months to decide . I thought this seemed fair .
Here is where my problem comes in . He has been texting OW. Joined a dating site but shut it down but continues to text OW . I know I have no right to say anything after what I hve done , but can't seem to get past this .
It's making it impossible for me to stay positive and work toward R when I know he is spending day and night texting away.
How do I go out of my way for him when I know instead of working on himself in a positive way he is turning into Madhatter ??

I have tried talking to him about this and he says he hasn't done anything yet but his choice . We are seperated and he can do what he wants . Says I can do but I'm choosing to change and do right thing . However it's very hard when I see what he is doing .

(((sosorrymom)))

I am sorry for the trials and struggles your marriage is in right now. BS here, but was so very very very tempted to choose the route your husband has. That is, to live on the wild side and distance myself from my wife. I did some boundary shifting but firmed them up before they failed completely. Closest call for me was when I allowed a cute young girl to feel my gotee at a professional conference hospitality function....a line I never crossed pre-A. I lacked many boundaries in my M pre-A...but opposite-sex interactions was something I had boundaries on. They served me well....but I did move them a bit after DD.....something I thought I would NEVER do.

Adultery is crazy making shit. That was from our ffirst MC.

I know I have no right to say anything after what I hve done ,

Gently.....this is a false assumption. You absolutely have a right to protect yourself from known, harmful behaviors. I submit you also have a role to help protect your husband/marriage....knowing you cant force your husband to do anything. Your husband has the right to his feelings....but he has a responsiblity to handle those feelings in mature, responsible ways. It appears he is not being responsible.

IF your affair was a deal breaker for him....he needs to decide that BEFORE chasing and engaging other women. Just because he has been badly and deeply hurt....he needs to fully understand his choices are his to make. His consequences of his choices are his to own.

NOTE: I submit NOW is not the time for him to decide on if your affair was a deal breaker....far too emotionally charged. Took me 6 months just to find real anger...a secondary emotion. Was almost a year before I could say conclusively that my wifes affair was a deal breaker. IF I had relations of any sort of any depth with another women...I don't see how that would do anything but confuse the issue. KWIM?

You hurt your husband, but you did not force him to seek other women.

You have pain in your past, but your husband did not force you to choose an affair.

Certainly we can influence each other. Actually, we vowed to interact with our spouses. The problem arises when we choose to interact with other people in ways that we vowed to only interact with our spouses.

Please.....you have value. You have a right to protect that value. Your husband has value....what he is choosing right now feels good to him, but it too is destructive in nature. You know this first hand. I see how destructive it was for my wife to choose something that felt soooo good.

Acting on feelings is a very dangerous thing.

Feelings are indicators, not dictators. Giving them the power of dictatorship often has horribly destructive results.

Your husband is in pain. He is reaching for things to help ease that pain. Unfortunately, he is reaching for something that will cause him MORE pain in the near future. I know...because when I let that cute young girl touch my gotee and flatter me with kind words it felt soooooo goood......but I felt sooooo sick to my stomach within 5 minutes of leaving that hospitality gathering. I shutter now to think how much worse I would have felt had I hung out, drunk a little more, continued my playful banter....and let boundaries crumble.....resulting in me having a RA.

We are seperated and he can do what he wants .

Nope. Wrong.

Separation after adultery is a valid option and path to healing. But it is not a petulant child type of action.

The action of separation after adultery has rules and regulations that are agreed to up front (and preferreably in writing). My wife and I looked into this. I visited with my IC on it. Read how to do it in healthy ways.

This idea that "we are now single and can live as such" is simply wrong.

Some basic, jointly agreed to boundaries are necessary for healthy separation.

A primary rule is not dating outside of your M....period.

However it's very hard when I see what he is doing .

Totally understandable...you have witnessed and experienced first hand what relationships outside of marriage can and will do to the M and, more personally...to the person choosing adultery.

Your husband is still married....any relationship with another woman is infidelity. Any sexual relationship with another woman is adultery. It matters not how much pain he is in, how little sex you two are having with each other, how often he says he loves you or you love him. Still married.

Dang....I am going on a ramble here.

I am so sorry for your pain. Post often. Lots of great, wise people on SI.

I will say a specific prayer for you both.

God is with us all.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 8:32 AM, April 22nd (Tuesday)]

If your husband choose infidelity or adultery.....you, too, will have to make the choice of if his choices are a deal breaker for YOU.

Don't loose site of the fact that you have choices too. I sense you think yourself as choice-less.

I get that your choices have eroded your self-esteem considerably...that you feel like you have very little self worth.

IC helped me....as did reading, lots of reading....prayer....and SI interactions.

I get really wordy when I feel anxious.....thus my long post to you guys.

My heart hurts for the pain you both are in.

21 months out here...I have seen my wife struggle hard....certainly felt and experienced pain and struggle within me like none-other.

I can very much relate to what your husband is feeling....and the choices he is contemplating.

This journey is uncommmonly hard WITHOUT two spouses choosing such destructive actions. I pray he finds the courage and strength to sit with his feelings and refrain from reaching any further in destructive directions.

What I have found is that I had hidden pain from my past....NOT tied to my relationship with my wife. I was unaware of this pain until the pain of my wifes affair found and attached itself to that hidden pain. It makes for quite a shit-storm....but it also helps heal parts of me that have been seeping wounds for decades.

It is tough but rewarding work.

Regardless of your husbands choices....I pray you find the strength and courage to continue to heal yourself. It is a good sign that you recognize that you have been wounded and that you are choosing to tend to those wounds.

God is with us all.

If your husband choose infidelity or adultery.....you, too, will have to make the choice of if his choices are a deal breaker for YOU.

I don't think you have to wait for him to choose, he is already being disrespectul.

Offering to wait 6 months while he decides was a gesture of faith.

He is shitting all over that now with his actions.

You may be the WS, but with that doesn't come the right for him to disrespect you and walk all over you in his efforts to find his way.

I would leave.

(((hugs)))

Thank you blakesteele for your words .
I'm struggling with knowing I put us in this situation and also now knowing there is a right and wrong way to go about healing.
I don't want to push to hard because I know he is still hurting but also not going to let him take advantage of me either.
I'm trying to communicate in a positive way but its very hard.
I don't think he really wants to R by his actions .
He told me my actions will prove to him how I truly feel but don't. Think he realizes his will as well.

So I will continue on a path of positive healing and hope one day he can join me and if not I have to learn to deal with that too .

Financially we are stuck together for now or I think we would both choose to live seperate for a while .

It's all very painful and I know I have a long road ahead .
One day at a time ...

(((Soosorrymom)))

You are welcome.

Do you have a real life marriage friendly girl friend to confide in?

It's imperative that we all keep digging deep while reaching out. Our own twisted minds got us to where we are at....it's foolish to think it alone will get us out.

Post often. Find some female SI members who you relate to, and PM them. I have a couple male SI members I do this with. I also have a couple RL make friends too.

Peace

[This message edited by blakesteele at 1:28 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday)]

I have my sister who has been great and my support system but I think I like the idea of finding someone on the site I can PM.
Mom also suggesting medication to help me deal with highs n lows and keep me functioning smoother . I still have a house to run and 2 kids who we are trying to shelter from the storm .
Although that is going to change soon as well . Can't hide it from them much longer .

You mentioned in your profile that you detached from your marriage at some point....

This is a continual source of exploration for me/us.

I operated under the somewhat false assumption that this happened to us too.

The more accurate answer for us is more likely to be that we never really attached....really bonded.

We did the best we could but our respective FOO coping mechs and choices influenced by them effectively walled each other off from bonding in healthy, interdependent ways.

We oscilated between independence and co-dependent cycles.....

We used porn in our pre-A M...me more so than my wife, but she used it too. This was us reaching for false-intimacy. Wife reached for adultery...another false intimacy.

Saw an diagram once....bare with me as it may help you too.

Picture a box.

Upper left corner is you and your spouse acting independent.

Upper right corner is you and your spouse operating in codependent nature.

Lower left is false intimacy. (Workaholism, hobbies, adultery, porn, kid-centric marriages. volunteerism, lots of stuff here)

Lower right is mature intimacy...also referred to as interdependence.

For us.....I don't believe we ever got to mature intimacy. Further more, I don't think we ever observed or were mentored as to what mature intimacy was. We simply did not know how to do interdependence.

Now....I do think we slowly turned away from each other....almost like when we met and decided to get married we were HOPEFUL that healthy intimacy was possible with each other and were willing to take the risk of trying for it. Sadly, neither of us had the skills necessary to do this.

Over time we failed to mature our intimacy...failed to deepen that bond.

This was a result of walls and coping mechs we built and developed during our formative years.

Caution: Your affair is your shit to own....but you both had a hand in a broken marriage pre-A.

This is where I pray a specific prayer for your husband. I pray he finds the courage to admit he was hurt by your actions while being able to keep from choosing equally destructive actions.

We are all parts of broken marriages....but only some reach for adultery. We all have a role to improve ourselves, to seek our own "whys" and see what the motivations for our actions are.

The fact that your husband is apparently so aggressively seeking such known destructive actions really needs to become a source of searching for HIM. There is something broken in him that makes this an active choice....and I submit it is NOT only your affair.

I admit to you that upon my DD I increased my use of porn. Wife could care less. It was at that point that I questioned my OWN actions....why was I doing what I was doing. All of my motivations became a source of investigation for me.

I came to the very shocking very clear conclusion tthat porn was destructive to me. It hurt my relationship with God, it hurt my wife, it hurt my marriage and it was hurting my family. All of this was shocking to me...I honestly felt for decades I was a normal man. It took me a couple of months to come to the real truth. It took me another couple of months to break out of that cycle. It has taken me over a year being porn free to really embrace that I am much healthier without it.

I chose as I did NOT to save my M....I did it to save myself. I did it to stop hurting myself. In turn my relationship with God and everyone else has improved.

Some people go through this life without realizing their own destructive choices...blaming others for their hurts and pains. I hope your husband is NOT one of them. My wifes fAP is one....at least at this time. He found another willing woman within 2 months of dumping my wife.

You mentioned in your profile you maintained your fog for 4 years.....my wife was in a fog for 3-4 months. So I don't have an answer for how long a spouse should try to R a M.

I get Karma's point...that your husband is actively engaged in destructive actions. You must protect yourself and your family NOW. But not sure this means D....that will be a choice you will have to make.

Try and find ways to live in the present and find hope for the future. Don't listen to the lies that your past defines you.....that will just limit your healing and growth.

You ARE more than just your affair. I am more than just my porn use. Yes, dreadful decisions were made and they have consequences. But you living in shame and stopping short of your potential is NOT one of them....that is your choice to make.

I so feel your pain. I don't PM female SI member....keep finding ways to create new boundaries and firm up old ones.

Keep the faith.

[This message edited by blakesteele at 2:56 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday)]