My WH also continued email/text contact with OW after DDay and lied about it. When I found an email I was devastated he would choose to lie every time I asked if there was any contact. I did finally get access to all of his email accounts and his phone but I am not stupid he could obtain another email account or get a prepaid phone and the A could continue. Monitoring does not give me more assurance WH is not cheating. What would give me assurance is his doing the work to repair the damage and stopping the behavior that led up to the A.

One of the big things was me siding with family over situations

We definitely had this happening. This is where I needed to feel I was just as important to him as his family and my feeling did matter more. I realize this takes time because it is family.

Now, I limit my conversations with them to be more general in nature, and not about what my wife and I are going through.

This is good.

On the friend side, since I do currently have a friend that isn't a friend of the marriage.

Again, BS needs to feel more important than friends. This is something I have asked of my WH - we need friends of our marriage and not those who bash our spouses. Good friends will listen and be supportive. If you want to R and rebuild trust, the friends who are not friends of your marriage need to go.

If you want your BS to believe you want to change and you want to rebuild, you need to show it by your actions.

You are very very right. A lot of times people will say there's not an on/off switch to change something. With this, there has to be, and I need to flip it.

twodoves (my wife) makes a lot of very true comments...and I hope they help paint a bigger picture as to what I've done.

You have to set your boundaries. If they don’t come from you it is just compliance to others rules and that won’t last long.
They need to be set so that they keep YOU safe and your BS.
The only way they work is if you are MINDFULL of you, your actions and words and the actions and words of those you are interacting with.
Evaluate them on a regular basis. Do I need to adjust? Are they working for me and BS?

Some basic ones I started off with:
1. No personal information shared with anyone other than family
2. No personal contact other than a hand shake other than family
3. No text, email, phone call I would not gladly share with BS
4. No PM’s to opposite sex on SI

Simple, but not easy when you have no practice being MINDFULL of yourself and others.

Good luck

It has also helped people to put up good strong boundaries.

K

That is something that I am absolutely trying to do. Many times when I say something, it comes out wrong (though it sounds right in my head). So I have to try again, maybe even 3-4 times till I word it in a way that expresses what I'm thinking, and in a way that my BS will interpret the way I hear it in my head. And it is a hard thing to do, cause I would think everyone would love the power to say the right thing the first time.

This entire post was something that my wife and I had talked about it together, since I do need to get advice from those that have gone through this. The information is invaluable. It is my understanding that moderators do not want her posting in my threads. However, I feel that her posting gives people an opportunity to see how both of us are viewing things, and provide better, more directed feedback. I very much want her to continue posting on this thread.

We made a simple request for her to stay off your threads, her incredibly hostile PM's are uncalled for and now got her removed from the site.

If you want to talk about this further, please PM me or another moderator.

Thank you for those simple ideas. And when reading them, it really is common sense. What I feel that I should do is write out what I believe those boundaries should be, even at a basic level, and build up from them. It's absolutely another level of awareness that I need to take full/complete responsibility for. Thank you.

@Kajem

It's those little behaviors and habits that add up to making a bad choice. I'll have to see about finding that book.

If I could ask, what did your husband do in the way of boundaries? How did you two work together to develop them?

You can ask me anything, anytime - it's why I'm here!

Another similarity I forgot to mention in your my last post is that Crazz is a bigtime people pleaser. This stems from significant FOO issues, namely his father invalidating him all day long and telling him he was stupid if he was different. Crazz only felt safe when people were happy with him, and learned not only to be codependent as a result, but to lie if needed so that people were kind to him. He has a very kind heart but a lot of protective layers that made him a pretty superficial person. It is a relief to both of us when he can feel safe to just be himself, and to know that it's on him to let his guard down. The other benefit is that the more he trust his family at home to support him, the less he needs validation from the outside.

How does this work? How does he set boundaries? Well, for his personality type - he needs marching orders, or a list. He needs stimulus to remind him of the new response when presented with situations that he needs to handle with integrity rather than charm. Talking about this and/or practicing is very helpful, but it has to be in a peaceful, safe environment. Instead of sitting there berating him for letting women ask personal questions and giving them a "fun" answer, we do exercises about what to do when something like that comes up so that he can start building a new course of response.

For example - he rides his bike at lunchtime. Sometimes other athletic women want to engage him about his interests based on this, so he has a few brief responses in his pocket. "I ride with my wife and daughter on the weekend." "I have a (yada yada) bike. Please excuse me, I have to get ready for a meeting."

It's not perfect, but when he has an outline handy for good boundaries, the script replaces the panic which oftentimes leads to trying to please the other person.

It sounds convoluted, but we have to get creative to unlearn bad things that are deeply ingrained into our personalities in order to heal and grow.

I have to do this for myself, too. My relationship work involves a lot of training myself not to lash out when I'm in a panic. I've had to script some responses and breathing so I do not push Crazz away when we need to have a conversation about something that causes me distress. It's a two way street, this marriage thing, but getting the BS to a place where they feel that they are ready to work on themselves as well is really important too. It just takes months/years of truth, communication, and work on the WS's part.

Sidenote as a Member - I appreciate that you wanted your BS to be able to comment on your posts, but please trust the staff as they try to help shape this process to be the most healing for both of you. It's important that you be able to get as clear and compassionate help as you can here, so that you can be the best partner you can be for her later.

I got in trouble in Wayward Side years go because I was in too much pain, and angry, and responded poorly to people seeking guidance in here. Hopefully this makes sense. The Mods/Admins have been doing this for years and they want to see both of you succeed so they will do what they can to help protect you both.