SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I really don't feel like getting into my whole story yet. Hopefully I can just give enough details to get some helpful advice. I discovered my husband was a WH after the A had been over for about 6 months. I also found the messages indicating that it was not an EA at all. For him it was about getting sex and for her it was about getting $. (She was literally his whore. She would ask for $ and he would ask to come over. She would agree and ask how much $ he would give her.) The OW was the mother of his daughter. She is an unattractive, manipulative, drug addict, felon. She is an unfit mother that I have frequently had to buy, wrap, and deliver Christmas presents for to guarantee that her daughter doesn't come home crying that "Mommy didn't get me anything for Christmas" AGAIN. (That was the year we gave her $ but she bought God knows what instead.) Literally the only things that she has going for her is that she is thin and once pushed my husbands child out of her vagina.

Anyway, when the OW is the parent of a child, it's impossible to enforce NC. I felt much better about the situation since we moved over 1,000 miles away. Suddenly she said she was flying out to see her D today. I immediately started stressing out. Well, then she got herself arrested and missed her flight. Now I find that I am checking the jail website every few hours to see if she made bail (because I think she would flee down here and end up staying.) I'm also constantly researching the charges and hoping that she gets jail time to give us more time to work on us before she comes down here.

I trust that he won't sleep with her, but she is non-stop manipulation to get in his wallet and undermine me with her daughter. And I know that it sounds like I am not taking my step-daughter's feelings into consideration, but I am. Her mother constantly promises & disappoints, ignores, and uses her. She actually wanted to move down here and listed not going to her mom's on the PRO side of her pro/con list. I think she feels the same as I do that a long distance doting phone call is better than an in-person disappointment. We moved to a preppy area, and I don't want her to be stigmatized by a run-down druggy showing up. Also when she is around her mother, she starts acting out with stealing, lies, manipulation,inappropriate clothes, missed days of school, and lower grades.

So my question is, how do I stop obsessing about this? Also, how do you deal with the situation when NC is not possible for another 5 years? Help!!!

(((((jstsad)))))

I am sorry you are going through this. The difficulty of not being able to implement NC must be a significant challenge for you. Is your WH committed to abstaining from sex or anything else with her? It would be good to know where he stands on this so that it would give us better clarity as to what advice to give you.

One idea is to have all contact between the two of them mediated by you. You can be the arbiter of information exchanged and if your husband agrees to that, he should have no contact outside of you being involved.

As far as the obsessing goes, check out a book called The Happiness Trap. It talks about how to separate yourself from your thoughts, accept your thoughts, and recognize that they are just, in fact, thoughts.

Hang in there. I hope that you are able to heal with this open wound of having to be involved with the OW. It may be difficult to be the mediator between the two of them, but I don't presently see another way that he would be able to implement NC.

As knockeddown said, you could always act as a go-between for the two of them to facilitate NC. There is no reason, given the circumstances, that she should be contacting him directly or vice-versa. Does his DD live with you?

They have created a truly awful situation for you to deal with and having to communicate through you is a minor inconvenience by comparison. My half-brothers' mother is a psycho and all communication regarding them had to go through my mother - it worked for everyone concerned.

I agree with the previous two posters. He should never contact her outside of your presence.

He agreed to no sex between them and hadn't for a while before I found out. He has also agreed to not give her any more money after this move. His pattern since his DD was an infant was to always bail her mom out, for his DDs sake. His DD has been with him since birth. She has never spent more than 2 weeks at a time with her mother, and she only chose to stay that long because she was grounded at our house....usually it is just a day. His last conversation with her was what to tell his DD about her not showing up, and was on speaker with me listening. Perhaps that would be a way to go. The thought of talking to her directly makes me want to vomit, but maybe I can do it.

I think WH gets the impact of the A. He knows that I stopped eating and lost 25 lbs in a month. He also told me, "You are such a good person, and now you hate somebody that you don't even really know. And that's all my fault."

I should add that what made this harder was that their DD knew about the A. She lost all respect for me, her behavior was out of control, she didn't bond well with her baby sister, and our relationship was TERRIBLE. I had to sit her down and tell her that I love WH very much and that we are a family and will stay together.....but this DOES NOT mean that she should just accept this or any other bad behavior from a man. That helped, but it has been hard work improving our relationship. I'm also worried that OW will ruin that.

I'm trying to figure out exactly what I want before I discuss this with WH. WH currently has a medical condition triggered by stress. We initially talked openly but after some attacks, we tread lightly on the topic and have delayed MC until surgery (currently waiting on doctor to set a date.)

I am so sorry that you are in such a difficult situation. I am going to bet that one day your step-daughter will realize what a friend and protector she had in you. Kudos to you for being the only one acting in the best interests of this child.

Perhaps it is time for you to control the family purse strings? And for you and your WH to have some written agreements about him not spending time with OW unless you are present, and not spending money over a certain amount unless you both approve?

I do understand what you mean when you say that you are treading lightly due to your WHs medical condition because my reactions to my FWHs A were somewhat restrained by me due to his clinical depression. Only somewhat restrained in that I didn't show him all of my anger. I certainly did NOT let him use his medical condition to avoid necessary talks, or my demands concerning his actions. Really, there is no need for argument right now. Your WH needs to be completely NC with OW and if there are any arrangements to be made, you need to be the one to put them in place, as truly distasteful as this is. They obviously cannot be trusted to be alone with each other.