On the 29th (so that will be DD+18d) I am going away (Abroad) for the long weekend with some male friends (who don't know about A). When this was arranged I'm sure WS would have instantly thought about spending the weekend with the OM. DD+1 or 2 she told me that she was worried about me going away because of a revenge A or ONS. I reassured her. She asked about the trip again, asked if I was still going, I said I was unless she strongly objected, and she said no and that it would probably be good for me.
Now I know this is a no win situation for her (whatever she had said I'd have had issues), but now I'm worrying about what she will be up to while I'm away. How can I trust her for three nights??
What can I do? Should I cancel last minute? That would really let my friend down (tickets already paid for).
This is one of those situations where no one can tell you the right answer. I know at your stage, my gut reaction would've been to cancell. This early on there is no trust. You won't know what she is up to and probably won't believe anything she tells you when you return.
On the other hand, you need to take care of you. You need to think about what you need and a little male-bonding may be just what the doctor ordered. This could be a golden opportunity to get a break from the home drama at an early stage. Often, new BS don't have an outlet like this and wish they did.
Only you can decide if you can go and enjoy yourself and take care of yourself. Or if you will be constantly worrying while you are gone and not able to relax and enjoy your friends company.
Either way, it is the right decision. You do what you need to and nothing more.
Trinity
P.S. Put money and others impressions aside as you decide. You need to focus on you. Real friend will understand and money is only money.
She did initially offer to stay at her parents if it would make me feel better (they are out of London - so "safe"), however she has to be in london for a charity run on sunday.
I'm just trying to think of things we could do/arrange that would help reassure me.
A part of me basically thinks that we can't be together 24-7, and given how well she lied before, if she really wanted to have an affair she could have one under my nose - just by being late home from work, or phoning in sick or anything. In which case why do I think me going away is any different?
I suppose what I really want is her to propose some comforts to me. Some things she'll do - a bit like the parents offer.
Also, and I'm ashamed as I write this, I'm scared of the revenge A. A lads weekend away in a european city. I want to believe I couldn't ever do that, but she never thought she'd do it either? And why is it fair that she gets all the fun? She had more partners than me before we were married anyway. Maybe I shouldn't go for that reason? What if I got drunk and was stupid out of anger/spite? I could destroy everything. Would I trust me if I was in her position? And what if she decides she can't trust me so goes back to her OM? What if what if what if...
This is all about accountability. Is there no friend (preferably female) that she could be with, or be in contact with, while you are away, whom she could be accountable to? It's a bit like an alcoholic having an accountability partner who will help keep them on the rails.
I don't know how feasible this is for you and your W - it all depends on who knows about the A in your circle of good friends, and how prepared they are to help.
This is one of the reasons I mentioned good friends on my initial post to you - they are the people whom you can lean on to help you get through this.
Maybe she should forego the run in London this time - this close to D-Day, surely the priority should be your M, and how reassured you are as a BS?
Dave
This message has been edited by shoozul on Jun 18, 2007 7:27 AM This message has been edited by shoozul on Jun 18, 2007 7:26 AM
I hate to say it but I don't think asking her to back out of the run is possible - it would flare up something terrible.
She doesn't really have many female friends, no-one springs to mind that could do this for us. At the moment we've kept this whole thing to ourselves.
One massive problem is that she doesn't believe that things will improve. She tells me things like "if I always let you see everything then you will get used to it and always expect it" and sees all actions as indicative of how the future will be forever. I think she expects things to improve too soon.
Also she is dealing with her depression. Which makes it very hard for me.
Did I mention that she is going on this run with an ex of hers? Yeah, make something of that for an easy target. Of course if I mentioned anything she would flip and say that we can't rebuilt my marriage if I'm paranoid of all men, or if I don't let her do anything etc. etc.
No. There are not massive sacrifices on the table here. In her mind the marriage isn't worth saving if I won't ever trust her again, and because I don't trust her now, that means I won't ever. FUBAR.
Maybe I just do nothing, wait and see what happens, come home, challange her, knowing her if anything happened guilt would bring it out eventually, and then leave her. Via the balcony. Woo.
Go with your friends...ask your wife what she is comfortable with...going to her parents may work and then go on her run Sunday...this is communication that you need to have...if she is fearful that she will call OM then work on a strategies that will help her thru the weekend.
This will also give you a chance to think about your marriage, you are taking care of yourself right now.
At some point you are going to have to be gone from home and hope that your wife doesn't contact the OM.. you can not be a policeman all the time.
My H had to travel for a business meeting shortly after D-day...I was a wreck, all his ONS's were when traveling and he didn't call the long term OW . I had the hotel # to call him he called me before he fell asleep and when he woke up. Our MC helped work out a plan that would make me feel comfortable.
just my thoughts
Pat
"Time is precious, but truth is more precious than time."
I like the idea of using MC to help with this actually. A fear I have with MC considering that she is also going to IC (CBT) for her depression is that it could just explode - particularly if I just open up and let everything out. Much as I might want to do that, I have to remind myself that she feels guilty enough already, and we can't fix this if I just bring up the A all the time and make her feel worse.
At least this way we can try to solve a specific problem in MC, so that we aren't going to solve the M in the first couple of sessions, but maybe we can solve this mini problem.
I'm going to go. Hopefully we'll still be together by that point.
(I nearly left her this weekend - I got as far as, I don't think this is going to work)
My wife only started using email and a cell phone a few months prior to the affair. It's almost as if the only thing stoping her from having one was these commonly used modern tools of betrayal. Since I set up the email for her, I knew her password, but I never thought to monitor her email until the very last week of the affair. Since I could sense that something was wrong, I started watching it, but she was one step ahead of me and on the day I started monitoring it, she told the OM to stop using it. Even a few hours earlier and I would have caught her.
After D-day, email was canceled, partly due to the fact that we moved and the ISP we were using was a local company. However, when we got back on-line, she used the same password again simply to make it easier for me to check her email if I wanted. My wife says that she welcomes any monitoring because there is nothing that she wants to hide, but if she did then knowing that I might see something gives her the freedom to not do something like that. She has told me that she sees it as a protective shield for her. She has also said that knowing it makes things easier for me gives her another reason to do this.
However, I'm not saying that she's under constant surveillance. She is free to spend her day doing what she needs to do, I don't check every email message that is sent to her although I did for a while, and now I rarely look at it.
It might help if you wife understood that you experienced a serious emotional trauma, and now are going through post traumatic reactions to this. Try to learn what you can about how people deal with and recover from emotional trauma. From what I understand, it is mostly a process of relearning that situations are safe and 'cues' are not predictors of what previously caused the trauma.
Openness is not such a bad thing when there is nothing to hide in the first place.
I would have LOVED to have had a weekend away so soon after Dday. You are a big boy, and you can choose not to get drunk and do something stupid that you would regret.
It sounds to me like your wife has very poor boundaries in place. She needs to understand that choosing to associate with past boyfriends is hurtful to you and puts her in a questionable position, prone to temptation.
What is more important to her--reassuring you or participating in a run with an x? I disagree with her that your marriage may be doomed because of your pain. More likely it would be doomed because of her failure to understand the importance of healthy boundaries and to enforce them.
If she has no close female friends, she needs to discover why she doesn't. Does she feel threatened by other women? In competition with them? Despised by them?
It is healthy for us to have friends of the same gender. Now is the time for her to cultivate female friendships because through them she can meet her need for socializing without jeopardizing your marriage.
She is still in a major denial state, thinking this is something you can get over quickly. Has she done any reading about affairs? Perhaps she can spend your weekend away educating herself.
Just my fairy cents' worth and sorry you are hurting,
fairyfriend
edited for typos--should know better by now not to post until I have had ample coffee!
This message has been edited by fairyfriend on Jun 18, 2007 9:08 AM
I understand perfectly, Adam. If I were you in your timeframe from Dday, I would be terrified to make that request, too, because I would be afraid that she would choose the other person and not me.
I am so sorry you have to deal with this awfulness. We understand your pain. Thank goodness we have each other here at HH. We will not judge you for your decisions. We all know the feelings of desperation, pain, anger, ambiguity, whatever! We have felt them all, too.
I haven't seen anyone yet recommend downloading the pamphlet at http://www.aftertheaffair.net. It's written for the WS to read, not the BS. From reading your posts, it seems to me that your W is not "getting it." That she's not ready to empathize with your pain and be pro-active in your healing. I think this pamphlet will help.
For us, after D-Days 1 & 2, my H continued to work with the OW. He says now that after he disclosed the A on both of those D-days, his full intention was not to return to the A. But he did, so there was a 3rd D-day when I became suspicious and discovered it was continuing. My point in saying this is that it is only NOW that I can finally see my H recognizing and being accountable for his actions. He had read books about A's, had IC and MC - but all while his A was active, so his heart wasn't really in it.
Now, he's such an open book. He WANTS me to snoop if it helps me! He encourages my looking at his cell and checking up on him, because he says he KNOWS there is nothing to hide, and he so desperately wants to restore the trust and love I once had for him. He WANTS to repair our M and the damage incurred. This has not been easy for him - introspection and accountability hurts. It's called personal growth.
You are right when you say you can't be with your wife 24/7. My H and OW conducted their A right under my nose...with great lies. HUGE lies that worked. They completely threw me off track (until January). Last summer, when I thought the A was over, I went for a month far away, thinking the separation was good, and would show him I could trust him again. HA. But the point is, whether or not I was around, the A continued. It truly had NOTHING to do with me or my actions! You cannot control someone else's decisions or actions. You can only control your own.
Go on your trip. If she chooses to continue to do things that hurt you, you will HAVE to share that with her. You are a person with feelings that have been crushed...you have had your heart broken. In order to start repairing your relationship, you will need to share - even when you're scared to. Because that's where true intimacy begins.
Peace is not just the absence of war; it's an exercise in compassion. -Dalai Lama
Coming to you from JJ
As I said earlier, you have the additional complication of dealing with someone in a depressed state. This sounds so familiar. My W wouldn't end her A at first, and said she wanted a divorce, because she couldn't see anything about our M that was good. She was so depressed (suicidal), that EVERYTHING was black! (and not just because we're goths - LOL). She saw our M (indeed, our whole relationship) as a mistake in which nothing had been right for years. She hated life, and saw no way back into our M.
It is a part of your W's depression that she wants results now, and sees this as a hopeless situation if you don't trust her immediately. She is making similar statements to my W. If her meds are working, and as the depression lifts, she should become more rational and reasonable.
It is a very difficult one. You just have to hang in there. I thought my M was over, and then things changed for the better. Dealing with depression is a rollercoaster in itself.
Dave
This message has been edited by shoozul on Jun 18, 2007 11:20 AM
At first there was no way I would leave him alone. He had to work late out of the city just a week after Dday. He gave me a land line for his office building that I could verify on the web. I called him at 7pm, 9pm, and when I couldn't sleep and woke up in the middle of the night I called at 1am. I did it because I needed the reassurance, but I also enjoyed that I was sure that his workers thought it was odd that I was calling him. Maybe they didn't even know.
If you have a land line call it whenever and let her know she should be there to answer. It may be reassuring to know she's at least at home. Just make sure that if you have a phone forwarding service you know if there is a sound that it makes when its forwarding. If there's not, I'm not sure. I don't have a land line, but I'm thinking about getting one just for this purpose.
After a couple of weeks, his face was a trigger I'd be in lala land happy as a clam then ready to scratch his eyes out of his face. I stayed at a hotel for two nights just to get some peace from that. I looked at the men looking for women ads on Craigslist - partially to try to understand his draw, partially out of minor revenge. I also ended up spending time on the phone with him. His voice is not a trigger, just his face. The OW is out of town so leaving him at home to take care of the dogs was a minor punishment and not particularly threatening to me. I just needed peace at that point more than I cared about what he was up to.
If I were in Vegas, drunk, and my friends were encouraging me to loosen up, at that time, not sure how I would have done. I'm thinking not, but it would have crossed my mind and I would have been seriously tempted when the opportunity presented itself.
At 7 days, I think I would not have gone on the trip. But, that's just me.
