SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hardlessons,

Marriage builders, Milton, all that stuff is great, but that wont fix YOU. The marriage wasn't the problem. You and your choices were.

Though I agree with you when you state that his choices were the problem..... I don't believe your statement about marital recovery programs is accurate.

The program My wife and I work, "Marriage Builders", DOES force me to work on me and my issues. In great depth, I might add.

nuf said!

Meph, One of the tools my wife and I implemented was to arrange an allotted time each day, for 15-50 minutes, to discuss anything affair related or triggering her.

After that allotted time we stopped those painful conversations and either cuddled, did something fun, went on a walk while holding hands or anything that would help alleviate the pain!

This time period gradually changed to three times a week, and then we changed it to one time a week.

We still have scheduled time but rarely need it now.

It helped prevent the top blowing and gave us time, scheduled time, to be open and transparent about her questions and our feelings. It also taught us to wait for that time before making comments that could cause pain.

It worked for us.

It may be a possible plan for you???

IMO, No Plan for success = no success.

Out of curiosity, are you willing to share what 12 step program you're attending.

I recently celebrated 30 years of recovery from drug addiction and alcoholism. I owe a great deal of gratitude to AA & NA for this.

Dear Card,

Thanks for the advice. Your check-in procedure sounds like a great plan for reducing steam before for the boilers blow. We've decided to do something similar. You're right that these things cannot be left to serendipity and must be scheduled and structured for a while withground rules and time limits. Something we have not been doing. I attend SAA but many of our members also have come from other fellowships including yours as many of us are involed with multiple forms of compulsive and self-destructive behavior.

There we go pretty much on schedule ... the two week melt-down. I don't know if it was the Steven Sondheim play we saw on Saturday night, the funeral we attended on Sunday or something else. She's taught me not to ask, that its her right to go off on me whenever she needs to for what ever reason. So, seemingly out of the blue my wife went off on me on Sunday night about how I wasted her whole life and why didn't I just leave her ... Well, I'm deffinitely crossing Steven Sondheim off the list. Don't ever take a betrayed spouse to see "A Little Night Music." It's not about Mozart. It's more a farcical Victorian celebration of infedelity, the music sucks and the dialog is stupid and superficial. There's not one song with a tune you can remember much less hum after two hours and forty minutes. My fault for not doing my research. We left at intermission.

[This message edited by mephistopheles at 7:34 AM, June 10th (Monday)]

Meph,

BS here, married to an SA. I'm 3 years out from discovering his two affairs; 7 months from discovering the SA (porn addiction). My SA goes to SA every week, & sees a CSAT. He hasn't had a single slip, not one.

You all seem to be able to identify the source of her triggers, but I'll tell you that sometimes she just won't know. She doesn't need you to analyze or locate the source. Just hold her & tell her you're sorry. There are days where there's a pit of anxiety in my stomach & I'm just not sure why. You have to agree that staying married to an SA is taking a leap of faith. It comes with a lot of fear over what the future will hold. In many ways it's giving control over to someone who once was very out of control. I too attend S-anon. I know that I control my own happiness & I can't control or cure my SA. But a marriage is a partnership, & like it or not, one partner's actions & mental health affects the other, & vice versa.

I don't have any answers to this really. I would hope that her meltdowns will decrease as enough time passes to let safe, secure feelings seep in & push out the uneasy "waiting for the other shoe to drop" feelings. You probably spent years developing your addictions, so expect there to be years of consequences. Continue to do everything possible to reinforce to her that you are a safe choice! And understand that it may take a long time for her to work through the stages of grief. She's grieving the marriage she thought she had, married to the man she thought you were. Hopefully you're a better man now, but you're a different man, if that makes sense.