SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I admit that I am still infatuated with the other guy...

Then there are the kids and I don't care what anyone says they do matter. I don't want them living their teen years with half a mother and half a father... My son and daughter are the most important people in the world to me...

and they do matter in all this. He is their father and therefore essential to be in these years of their life full time. I believe there are things that, especially boys, need their fathers for.

Please, please, please stop.

Be infatuated with your children. Prove that (as quoted above) My son and daughter are the most important people in the world to me. Again, be infatuated with them. Then learn to be infatuated with their father.

I am going to have to leave my wife because she's so "infatuated" with OM that she won't stop driving by his house. Every day. For no reason other than "infatuation."

My daughter is not by blood, but she's lived with me since she was 6. She's 17 now. She is MY DAUGHTER. And I am HER FATHER. It is real. And it is about to end. Because my wife won't stop. For something that is not real.

I know this. Daughter knows this. Guess who doesn't know?

Mom.

Prove (your words) what matters, what's important, what's essential.

Please, please, please stop. Save your family.

I can't save ours. My daughter can't save ours.

Don't be us.

Save yours.

I'm going to be blunt. I'm breaking this down to the lowest common denominators.

You have 2 choices. Stop it or Divorce. That's it. Bottom line. No in between.

I don't say this to be cruel. But I'm a BS that's suffered through multiple DDays. I am NOT OK. I struggle daily. I have PTST. I've been to ER several times because I thought I was having a heart attack. Not a day has passed in 2 years where I haven't cried. I am on Rx. A part of me died on every freaking DDay.

I stand up and sparkle through sheer fucking grit. Because my WH had that same attitude. I am awesomeAF yet a shell of my former self.

Every thought of your AP is another shot to your WH and family - weather they know it or not - you are killing them slowly.

You have a chance to not make the mistakes of those before you. BS and WS alike are making the same plea to you. You see, we all know how this plays out. Your situation is not special, not unique and not anything anyone hasn't done before. The endings are never good. I don't want to see your story have a horrific ending.

I don't want to have to read your post when you are desolate because your BS finally couldn't take it anymore. I don't want you to have to stand over your BS in a freaking ER with him full of monitors and tubes because he thinks he's dying. I don't want you to have to hear him cry in the bathroom because it is the only place where he can have 5 min. to himself. I don't want him to have to be on Rx because the pain is just too crushing. I don't want him to have every freaking step zap him of all his energy. I don't want him to stare in a mirror and think "no wonder". I don't want him to question that everything he sees really isn't reality. I don't want his heart to go out of control when you are on your phone or a moment late. I don't want him to be another me!

STOP! Or...let them go.

You established no contact after d-day, correct? Now om is seeking you out again and you are tempted.

Re-establish no contact. If it is broken again by him, get a restraining order. Or jump right to the restraining order.

When your wound looks infected, you don't just wash it out with water. You get strong antibiotics to kill the infection. Hell, before antibiotics, they used to amputate limbs to save the body. Still do in rare cases.

You need stronger medicine. I am not saying the internal dialogue does not need working on. But ending the actual dialogue will go a long way to helping. It is something you can do in a very concrete weigh when you are sober minded and fully resisting temptation. Do it for all the reasons you described in this thread. Take the bold action and just make it happen.

If this had been a physical assault on you, the restraining order would be there, right? View it for what it literally is... an attempt to destroy your marriage and family. Take action!

[This message edited by Trdd at 7:51 AM, August 27th (Tuesday)]

What are you infatuated about the OM for? Deal with that first. Break that down.

Because your husband seems to be doing well by SI standards, your wayward brain is going to have an easier time minimizing how much work you need to do and how "all in" you need to be. I get this, because this was my BH, or so I thought. We rugswept my A after six months of processing. I recently found old emails from that era, and he was like you describe your husband -- hurt and angry, but also reasonable, still committed, still in love with me. We had work to do, but wasn't a deal breaker. And so I felt safe about pushing the envelope, staying in contact with OM (instead of going underground, I openly played the "just friends" card), getting ego kibbles from knowing that OM was still waiting desperately in the wings.

I misread what was going on inside my BH's head, the level of darkness that was torturing him. He knew, as yours apparently does, that R was conditional on my end. I gave the same message that I've seen you give repeatedly: if I've fucked this up irretrievably, I get it, it's my fault, I'm so sorry, I understand. But there's a limited amount of this I'm willing to endure, so at a certain point, we need to move forward with a plan or cut bait. And he bowed to that, which allowed me to think, "if contact with OM was unforgivable, he wouldn't have forgiven me, so that's empirical proof that what I'm doing isn't so bad that I have to deprive myself of my addiction."

VioletElle, this wasn't a conscious thought process. I told myself I was being clear-sighted, but really, I was a huge mess of denial about my ongoing selfishness and its impact. I admitted I fucked up but shielded myself from the true magnitude of it. BH was not nearly as fine as I thought. I should have opened my eyes and seen that. He was suicidal. He had PTSD symptoms. He had mind movies. And these things never went away. They improved, but it was more of a white knuckle process than true healing. He's pretty good at shoving down his emotions, so he was more successful (on the surface) than many people would or could be. This was not a good thing, at all.

Everyone here is right. Go 100% in, burn down every connection to OM, no matter how hard that is, or stop cake eating and get the divorce. Your kids won't do well with it, no, but they will survive it. If you can't face that, then write a brutal NC to prevent it. Don't pretend there's a third, middle option. Whether you believe it or not, you can break your husband beyond repair if you keep playing this game. Your whole family is at risk of being traumatized by things much worse than a co-parenting arrangement.

What are you infatuated about the OM for? Deal with that first. Break that down

Stupid, immature and self destructive nonsense. I haven't spoken to him since the last no contact and I don't plan on doing so. I don't even read his texts. I know he's no knight in shining armor. Who pursues a married woman with children? It's really bad behaviour. I get people feeling lonely or thinking they have a connection with someone, but he's mistaken. He doesn't even really know me. The real me is the one at home, and not the immature projection I am with him. It's that girl who I'm in love with and not him. But I'm not 22 anymore and she isn't good for me.

How is it that he is able to text you at all? Why haven’t you blocked him?

I'm going to block him. I just don't like confrontation and was hoping he would just stop.

Why would there be confrontation if you block him? You don't get notified when someone blocks you, and you wouldn't see any messages from him if he's blocked.

Can you be more specific?

Hoping he would stop trying to contact you?

From his perspective - why should he? It's eventually worked every time before. You've made yourself a challenge to him.

You can't hold your ears until he stops singing. It doesn't work like that.

YOU have to make the conscious decision and take the action to BLOCK HIS ASS from every single attempt to contact you. Any account, email, social media, anything and everything. You don't see him if he "shows up" somewhere under the guise of "not wanting him to cause a scene". You block him from everything and anything and if he persists you get the authorities to help you.

Otherwise, you are engaging in a high stakes game of Cat and Mouse. And he enjoys playing. Frankly, from his perspective, so do you.

What does this man have to do to you and your family for you to realize what a true piece of shit that he is?

So now you're going to block him. What happens when he confronts you about it?

Why are you still letting him be a factor in your life? That also means he's a factor in your husband's life. What really should drive the nail home for you is that he's a factor in your kids lives!

After typing that, I really want to throw up for your kids and husband!

Again, when he keeps contacting you, you will cave, because you've made no real boundaries or consequences for his actions!

OH Boy! What you are writing here sounds awfully familiar to me. I'm going to put this in big general terms and hope you look at it as an overall picture and not something for you to try and poke at and discredit for one word or line. Here are my thoughts for you.

I feel like you are spinning with trying to deal with everything outside of you: your husband, your kids, the OM, your responsibilities. I bet you feel like you are a good person who just got caught up doing the wrong things because of weakness. Think about the qualities of good people: Honest, loyal, hard working, not selfish, kind, brave, compassionate...

My WH thought he was a good person and I kept asking why he thought that? What was good? It took awhile (over a year) for him to really see himself and start making changes. The good news was once he started trying to be a good person he felt so much better about himself. He didn't need the candy ego kibbles but it did take the sacrifice of his selfishness. It did require thoughtfulness and practice. It did require him to stop the defensiveness.

So my recommendation to you is start doing the right thing coming from a place of "good". Be brave. Do one today and block the OM. There is a big ole pot of gold waiting for you and you will be the person to have put each piece in there. One at a time.

Sounds to me like your version of blocking doesn't involve the pressing of a button or two but a conversation. In fact sounds like you're probably already justifying your actions to him.

There should be no conduction in either your thoughts or actions, simply do it but I just don't think you're ready to give up this infatuation despite whatever you may write here.

I just don't like confrontation

Yeah, my guess this coping skill got you to the slippery slope to begin with. Why don't you like confrontation? You don't want to be the bad guy? You want him to still like you and pine for you even though there isn't going to be a relationship? Do you get a high that he is out thinking you might be the one that got away? Because, that brings your affair to a whole new level of enjoying a chase that is clearly cruel and destructive to other people for you selfishness. You don't want to be confrontational even if your family depends upon it and it means disrespecting your husband? Not wanting to be confrontational sends a clear message to your husband. AP comes first and you come first. Family and husbands come later. Are you really infatuated or is it about the chase?

My WH thought he was a good person and I kept asking why he thought that? What was good? It took awhile (over a year) for him to really see himself and start making changes. The good news was once he started trying to be a good person he felt so much better about himself. He didn't need the candy ego kibbles but it did take the sacrifice of his selfishness. It did require thoughtfulness and practice. It did require him to stop the defensiveness.

So my recommendation to you is start doing the right thing coming from a place of "good". Be brave. Do one today and block the OM. There is a big ole pot of gold waiting for you and you will be the person to have put each piece in there. One at a time.

This answer to me is the best piece of advice that you could get.

When we do good we feel good and when we feel good we do more good. It's a cycle. The cycle you are currently in is when you do bad you temporarily feel good but then you just feel worse so you instead go back to what made you feel good for a minute. And, it's making you chase your tail.

I can also see it in your reflections of wanting to see more romance from your husband. I don't think it's wrong to want that but the reason I believe you have reflected so much about that is you are standing there waiting to feel something, anything better than how you feel now.

My IC said that every time I held a boundary that gave me some of my power back. I think you should full out send an NC letter that you create with your husband and then block him on everything and everything. There is power in doing the right thing.

I did what you are doing for some period of time. Not contacting, but feeling out of control of the limerant feelings. Not wanting to have them, logically being able to see it was wrong and not healthy but not feeling like I could get the obsessive thoughts to stop. But, the sooner you look to yourself to get those good feelings - through clean, honest, living - doing your best every day. The sooner you will not be in this terrible cycle you have yourself in.

There is a thread in wayward right now that I keep meaning to go and comment on, but it's about being ambivalent about the marriage after an affair. I think it's extremely common that when it was a limerant affair that we reenter the marriage with ambivilance. But, just like when we had the affair, that ambivilence is not a statement of what the BS is or isn't or what they can offer in the relationship - that ambivalence is because of the stories we told ourselves to justify the affair, the getting back to reality rather than having these soaring highs and lows and the chaos that the Affair provides.

So, I said a lot of words but I think the key is in the advice given above - break the cycle by making good decisions, change the trajectory you have put your life on. I think it would be helpful for you to also evaluate your definition of love and what it means and what it should look like. Often times, I think we tell ourselves stories here as well that are counterproductive.

I don't think I'm a good person. I know I'm a bad person. I do want to change that. How I treat people, how I treat myself and everything that comes from that. I've gotten a pass for everything I've ever done since as long as I can remember. I don't know why, just the way it is. I want to change to feel better about who I am, it's not that anyone is asking me to or that I have to. The affair was just a symptom of deeper issues.

I don't want the chase anymore. I've had enough of men chasing me in my life that I'd be happy if I were never chased again. I mean that; it's just tiring and I'm sick of it. I'm done flirting, playing games and everything else. I want to be the person that he should be proud of and right now I feel like it's all a lie.

I blocked his number and I don't give an F if he comes crying about it, which I'm sure he will.

I don't want the chase anymore. I've had enough of men chasing me in my life that I'd be happy if I were never chased again. I mean that; it's just tiring and I'm sick of it. I'm done flirting, playing games and everything else. I want to be the person that he should be proud of and right now I feel like it's all a lie.

This is not a bad thing, realizing that it's all a lie. The duality of wanting to fix yourself/your marriage versus wanting the affair feelings - it's very hard to find what's genuine. I understand that. but, this paragraph - this is a good sign that you are getting disgusted with yourself. And, sometimes we can't change until the pain of not changing is greater than what we need to do.

I blocked his number and I don't give an F if he comes crying about it, which I'm sure he will.

I am confused. If he is blocked on everything how will he reach out? I really think you need to compose a strict NC letter, including the threat of getting a restraining order should he want to contact you again. He needs to see you mean business, and that you do not under any circumstances want for him to contact you again. Involve your H, have him read it before sending.

I blocked his number and I don't give an F if he comes crying about it, which I'm sure he will.

If you've blocked his number, his emails and on social media, how is he going to come crying about it?

If you're worried he's going to come to you work, notify security or reception or front desk, or whomever. If he comes to your house, don't answer the door. If he doesn't get the hint, call the cops.

You blocked him... very good!

Now, can you also do the no contact letter?

That will avoid more conflict than not telling him to leave you alone. Hopefully you will be done with him at that point.

And here is another thing to ponder. BS feel like they have lost their agency when the WS has an affair. Some men get hit particularly hard by this. When no contact is established it restores agency a bit. But if the AP then violates NC and the WS immediately tells the BS.... the BS has a chance to regain even more of the agency that was ripped from them.

A betrayed man in this situation basically feels like.... my WW is now coming to me for protection from this POSOM. That can trigger the husband in a way but it hits us instinctually... as the protector. It feels good. Then, the man gets to decide what to do. Agency is returning, see?

Some husbands will communicate NC in their own way. Others will go the restraining order route. Either way, we get some bit of control back and can do our part to protect the marriage.

So if your OM may end up persisting, use this chance to give your husband some of his agency back.

Don't you work with this guy?