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Its healthy to get angry when someone treats you badly. There is nothing wrong with what you are feeling.

My IC told me to feel the feelings, you don't necessarily have to respond to them. But you have to let yourself feel them and deal with them in your head.

At least she is answering your questions honestly. It has to hurt like hell, but she is being honest. I personally wouldn't ask questions that I wasn't prepared for the answer to feel like a knife through the heart. Just be prepared for the answer when you ask a question.

Your doing fine. If you truly want R she has a lot of work to do, and you are going to hurt a lot.

Keep taking care of yourself.

As others have mentioned, Barry, pick up Married Mans Sex Life Primer. It'll help you understand what your wife felt like she was missing. Do something for yourself, please.

It's OK to be angry; your wife did a horrible thing to you and your family. More specifically, it's OK to be angry at your wife. You'll eventually need to work through that emotion anyway, so embracing it when you feel it should help you heal. That said, having an IC to work through that anger (and all the other emotions you'll cycle through) is a good idea. Please take care of yourself; your kids need you.

Barry, Read this thread. That WW is 100 times better and she is facing much more consequences. If you want to R at least file for D like in that thread to shock her in to reality. This will show her that you are also " incredibly confident". And think when she get 'bored' again and find a nothing to do job.

"incredibly confident " My 'ss. This is how women of no substance see jerks

Being intimate is no problem if you are in a mind set where you do not care whether it is R or D. As the male it may also give you some satisfaction.

"Maybe it's just because I provide her financial support, she had me to provide her financial support and OM to fuck and love" do not simply obsess, ask her

No Soliciting

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:47 AM, February 25th (Saturday)]

Barry you are eating that giant shit sandwich she rammed in your mouth to keep your family together. That is very honorable and something only a strong responsible man can accomplish. Yes it is disgusting and makes you want to vomit but you are going to do it because you are an awesome dad to your kids.

Hang in there, time will heal you as long as your wife works hard to fix herself and the damage she has caused. Sending you strength Barry you are doing great!!

Angry is good. I was wondering if you'd ever get there.

Had she been a homemaker? Was this her first job? Basically as a way to supplement your income?

In your opinion, was the other man viable as a partner for her? Could he provide her the lifestyle she's accustomed?

How do you think finances (and his lack thereof) plays into the "in love with him, but wants to stay with you?"

How much do the kids play into her staying with you?

How much do her loving you to stay with you?

How about reputation?

Do you dare ask her those questions?

Also, how much is she being "brutally honest" vs "honestly brutal?" I mean, it seems she doesn't have much tact or polish to tell you the way she feels. There's a nicer way to say it. It's like hitting you over your head with a sledge hammer.

I think a large part of the cheating was her de-valuing your contribution to her life. Taking you for granted. I am getting concerned she still seems to take you for granted,to have seemingly no appreciation not only for what you bring to her and this family, but you still being there putting up with her cruelty.

How does she sleep at night? Peaceful? How about her days, how does she keep herself occupied? Does she seem bothered by the situation, or close to the old "normal?"

Chapmtl wrote, Barry, you will one day start to get MAD. Mad at yourself and at her for putting you through this and for continuing to accept being treated this way. That's when you will start to heal and take proper action in a healthy manner. (Mad does not mean violent or mean, it means waking up).

Barry22 from your last post, I'm just starting to get angry. The full story of her escapades are just disgusting.

Barry, please look over the 2 above posts, mad, or angry in this instance to you means the same thing, the term “In A fog”, both you and your wife are both in a fog, the difference is that you are now coming out of yours, waking up as Chapmtl says.

Your wife will not why! Because she does not want to, you on the other hand are starting to see this, and how futile your delusions were, in hoping you could sort this, save your marriage, shortly you will realise even more that trying to mend/fix your marriage is never going to happen, and realise what you have to do now, is only look after yourself and the children, forget about your wife, she is not the woman you married, she is not the mother of your children you thought she was, sadly she does not exist anymore.

Get a lawyer find out where you stand, what you need to do to safeguard you and the kids, start D proceedings, look ahead and see that there is a better future for you and the children away from your wife who does not exist anymore, make that change from wife too soon to be ex-wife (STBEW), if you take the B out of that term, what is left, that’s right leave her to it, it’s what she deserves for the pain and suffering she has left all the rest of you in, make it better for you and the kids.

Regards bje49

There are three pieces to this:

1) Yours

2) Hers

3) The marriage

1) You need to reclaim yourself from her and the broken marriage. Your marriage is gone. It exists only on paper. It may one day exist in the future, but there is no way of knowing now if you can find it again with her, so for now, get healthy. You thinking you need her to love you is the sign you are are unhealthy. You only need YOU to love you. You are the victim of an abusive spouse who's head is up her a**. She fell for another man and thought she was entitlted to keep you while indulging her feelings and body with him. NO!!!! She does not. Any more than you are entitled to slap her when you get angry or rape someone when you are horny. There is a boundary there that she should have known NOT to cross. Cheating on your spouse is a form of ABUSE. You should not have to EXPLAIN that to her.

Who cares how she feels about him?? She is in love/lust with a porn fantasy, not a real man or a real relationship. YOU TWO had a real relationship and she risked it and took a wreaking ball to it to satisfy her selfish urges. Would YOU ever do that? No you would not.

But you would do ANYTHING to please her and win her back, huh? Why??? Are you so low in value you need to woo someone who kicked you in the teeth, publicly??, with others knowing she was, but not you? Kept in the dark, while she acted single while receiving the benefits of marriage???? Emotional safety, steady sex, and financial support. But also felt entitled to play with forbidden sex behind your back.

2) Hers: she is a broken human being in need of deep and intense therapy to realize what a selfish, entitled human being she became to be able to do this to you. She needs to work on this or SHE WILL NEVER BE A SAFE PARTNER to you or ANYONE!!! She is damaged goods. Not sure how she got that way. NOT YOUR problem. YOU are your problem. She is hers. You are NOT to try and be her therapist, or her best friend, or her husband, or anything. You are her victim. Act like it. Let her get help and stay out of her way or she will KEEP HURTING YOU.

3) The marriage: it's over. The bond is broken, the magic is over and she is not like a stranger to you. The wife you thought she was is gone. She destroyed her from within. She only looks like her, but her character, what you thought she was and was not capable of is not longer there. She's your ex and the AP's ex.

When she has healed and you have healed and are well along in that journey, minimum one year, THEN AND ONLY THEN, can you consider offering her reconciliation with tough boundaries and strict rules and a long probation period of zero secrets, NO CHEATING, NO CONTACT WHATSOEVER WITH THIS AP P.O.S., for you to consider not divorcing her.

Come back here and be accountable and we are there 1000% for you.

Well this sucks. My wife told me she doesn't think she's in love with me anymore out of nowhere. So 2017 has brought me my wife sleeping with another man, and her telling me she doesn't think she loves me anymore after all these great years of marriage. I suspect she is talking to OM again. She was doing a complete 180 and now this. Just feel like my whole world has been shattered.

Out of nowhere?

Is there some recent behavior that changed?

Did she just approach you and tell you that unprompted?

Why do you suspect she's been talking with other man? Just her recent change in behavior?

[This message edited by wk55hn at 12:39 AM, March 1st (Wednesday)]

I don't even know what to think anymore. She said she just doesn't feel in love with me, but thinks that can change. She suggested going on a vacation together. She said she's not talking to him at all.

Barry your thread is over 20 pages. Have you exposed to family and friends? She was bidding her time I think. Don't let her beat you to the filing of the divorce.

So are you just on the bottom of the roller coaster? Or has the roller coaster stopped at the bottom?

It just seems a continued ongoing situation. She was completely contented in her marriage and life with you until she met the other man and had chemistry, and she got those "in love"

A few posts I think you've said she says she's not "in love" with me and then say she doesn't "love" me. You do know that "in love with you" is a very distinct thing than "loves you." I am guessing she says she "loves you" but she is not "in love" with you. Which is stated in at least every other cheating story here.

I strongly believe she is not working at all to fix this. I strongly believe she is just sitting and waiting for it to subside and change on her own, meanwhile I strongly suspect she spends a lot of time thinking about other man, maybe even stalking him online, looking at his social media, or friends/coworkers of his, looking for any tidbits.

I think these things because of what you post. The same old stuff every time, nothing about what she is doing to change things. And the main thing I guess she is doing is planning a vacation. While she thinks and pines away about other man. And hopes she starts to rekindle that feeling with you soon. It just won't work that way. She is NOT going to feel "in love" with you until she finally drops the other man mentally.

You posted that she says she wants to stay in the marriage, but you never post anything that she does to show that. Reading any books on infidelity, how to help your spouse after an affair, not just friends, etc.? Basically, in my opinion, she is doing nothing to get what she says she wants - the marriage.

Also, you never post much about your discussions with her, just short statements like you posted before. Not that you just don't post what the discussions are, just that there are any discussions at all. About what she is planning to do about her problem - she feels not in love with you, and she wants to stay married. What is she doing about that other than nothing. Waiting. Very probably pining for other man most of the day. I heard the phrase here, "the grass is greener where you water it." I think she's still watering in other man's lawn, not in yours.

I think the vacation is a terrible idea. It is a mental problem. Not a location problem. I am starting to believe she wants you to do the "pick me" dance and woo her back.

What do you think? About her putting some water in your lawn to green it up? About wanting you to take her on a vacation and woo her back? On her pining and maybe friend/coworker-stalking other man and maybe contacting other man?

Are you going to try to investigate if she is in contact with him?

it seems to me she is manipulating you Barry. She cheats on you and now she says, "I'm not in love with you anymore, but I think that can change." The implication is, "if you work hard Barry, if you woo me, treat me nice, and give me breakfast in bed, I might fall in love with you again. maybe... if you work real hard."

do you see that? She's turning it around. She's making *you* work to make her fall in love with *you*.

She's got you wrapped around her finger. Do you like that?

If I were in your shoes and she told me that, I probably would have said, "really? That's good to know, because not only am I not in love with you, I flat out DON'T love you. I'm not even sure I like you. You're dishonest, disloyal, disrespectful, frankly unlovable. I like women with integrity. You fail that requirement miserably. But you know what? If you work real hard to please me. If you stop lying and being disrespectful and lazy, I might be able to love YOU."

But it's up to you Barry. It looks to me like you're on your knees begging her to love you. Personally, I think you need to let her know that you really don't love her anymore. But that maybe if she starts acting like an honorable wife, you might feel differently.

As you have no doubt figured out, being a doormat hasn't helped much.

good luck friend.

Set her free. File for divorce asap and hand her the papers and tell her you want her to be happy. You can stop the divorce at any time. You have to risk the marriage to save it. That is the only option you have. The alternative is to stay and be miserable playing the pick me dance.

File for divorce hand her the papers tell your kids and her family. Time for her to grow the hell up and stop with this fantasy bullshit. She is a grown woman a married mom with 3 kids, not some teenager playing spinning the bottle and truth or dare at drinking parties. Time to get tough Barry. I'm so sorry this is still a crisis for you.

Filing for D snapped my wife out of the fog. I too got the ILYNILWY line and she also said like your wife is saying that she is not sure if she can get the in love back. Well aftet I filed all of a sudden she is in love with me again, but it was too late I cant forgive her now.

[This message edited by soulhurt at 10:06 AM, March 1st (Wednesday)]

Well this sucks. My wife told me she doesn't think she's in love with me anymore out of nowhere. So 2017 has brought me my wife sleeping with another man, and her telling me she doesn't think she loves me anymore after all these great years of marriage. I suspect she is talking to OM again. She was doing a complete 180 and now this. Just feel like my whole world has been shattered.

She said she just doesn't feel in love with me, but thinks that can change. She suggested going on a vacation together. She said she's not talking to him at all.

Barry,

I am very sorry to read what your wife has put you through recently. Her behaviour and actions have been terrible, and they still are. I am not saying anything that you aren’t already aware of, but at some point you need to wake up, smell the coffee, and start thinking about what part of your wife’s actions with the OM in the workplace, at the drunken BJ ‘dare’ party, etc, is acceptable or satisfactory to you?

For the longest time, it seems that things have hinged on what she wants, what she feels, what she likes or does not like. My question at this point is simple: Why? You have every reason to throw her out – her family are disgusted by what she has done – and yet you find yourself at a point where she is picking and choosing whether or not she can find it in her heart to love you. How does that work? The person in your marriage who needs to be assessing a partner’s actions and whether they are still loveable is YOU, not her. You are the wronged party, you are having to take one punch to the gut after another, and now you are supposed to be booking vacations so that she can judge whether you are worthy of love?

Barry, the issue here is whether SHE is worthy of YOUR love, not the other way round. And you need to make that clear to her. You have not cheated on her, you have not played drunken games with your workmates – she has. So the question is, why is she in the driving seat? She should be working her tail off to get back into the marriage, be proving no contact, etc, and all she is doing is messing you around. What you want is something stable to work with, and you are not going to get that as long as she is calling the shots, and telling you she may love, but she isn’t sure, but she might not, but maybe she could, but then again maybe not, but who knows…

How long is that going to go on for? Let’s say you do go on a vacation, and you spend all day every day buying her gifts, treating her to things, and doing back-flips trying to prove she ought to love you more than the guy at work, and at the end of it all she says she is still not sure, still has feelings for the OM, etc. What then? You aren’t even sure if she has broken contact with the OM. And yet she is in the driving seat, doing what she wants, and suggesting vacations, even though she thinks she doesn’t love you.

Barry, as long as she is deciding things, you are going to be messed around. You are the wronged party here, so what happens is also up to YOU. What you need to accept, as horrible as it is, is that there are more potential options here than your wife magically ‘seeing the light’ and returning to the marriage as a loving and faithful spouse. You can wait twenty years in limbo and still have her saying that she isn’t sure what she feels. That is no life for you.

I understand that you wish none of this had happened, and that your marriage could go back to the way it was before the affair happened. So many of us have been in that position, at the mercy of the actions of a wayward spouse who derailed a marriage, and who continues to prevaricate and flip-flop, leaving us feeling like we have no way of influence the way the future will be. That is our mistake. We always have the power to start setting ground rules and deadlines, to have our feelings and needs taken into account, to stop ourselves being messed around, but it is entirely dependent upon us realising the wisdom of the old adage: to save a marriage, we must be ready to end it.

And that is the point. It does not matter that you don’t want your marriage to end, what you have to put across to your wife is that you are not going to wait forever for her to make up her mind. That if she doesn’t love you, maybe she should be moving along. Saying that may go utterly against what you really want, and what you truly feel, but it will help to restore the balance of power in the aftermath of the affair to something that is more favourable to you.

Think about it; as things stand at the moment, your wife knows she can have an affair, perform drunken dares, do whatever she likes, and you are going to be there, 24/7, accepting her misdeeds and pleading with her to return to the marriage. Is it any wonder that she is so indecisive? She doesn’t have to make any decisions, because you are currently telling her that no matter how badly she behaves, she can walk back into the marriage if it suits her whims. Or she can continue the affair (presuming she has even stopped it, which you are not sure of). Why is she in such an enviable position of power? Why does she get to pick and choose like that? She must be loving being in that position, and it looks like she wants to drag it out for as long as possible.

You need to change this scenario. It is the first of March now. Why not give her a deadline of two weeks to figure out whether she is ready to re-commit to the marriage, or you will file for divorce by the end of the month? I know you don’t want to do that, but Barry, you need to change the balance of power here and the way things are going.

How hard should it be for her to figure out whether or not she loves you? How much of a bad guy are you? How is a joint vacation necessary to her judgement of you? Does she not know you quite well already? Will seeing you in Bermuda shorts on Miami Beach really swing the deal?

Barry, you need to take her out of the driving seat and tell her what YOU want and expect of her if YOU are going to continue the marriage after she has done it so much damage. After the way she has behaved, it is her that should be undergoing assessment of her worthiness for love, not you!

My point with all this is not to tell you to file for divorce, but rather that you need to adjust your bargaining position, and by doing that, to put yourself in a better place to actually save your marriage if that is what you want.

Your wife may have knocked you to the floor with her affair, but it is time to get back on your feet, not remain on your knees. Take a stronger stance.

Think about this, Barry: if your wife really didn’t love you and really wanted to leave, she’d have left by now. When she wanted to have an affair, she had it. If she wanted to go, she would be gone. SHE HASN’T. That gives you more leverage here than you appear to realise. You must not let yourself get sucked into a prolonged ‘pick me’ scenario, and you can prevent that by giving your wife a deadline by which she either decides to leave, or recommits to the marriage based on what you need (such as proven NC with the OM, etc). Doing that is not unreasonable, and I think it would give her the reality check that she so clearly needs.

And the bottom line, ultimately, is that if she has no heart in the marriage, no amount of wishing or joint vacations is going to restore it. Given what she has done, a lot of people would have thrown her out already. She ought to be thanking her lucky stars that you haven’t, and instead she wants you to jump through hoops for her. She needs to buck her ideas up and start making it up to you, not make you prove yourself worthy of her love. And if she can’t be bothered to do that, what is the point of you bending over backwards to accept whatever she does and whatever she wants? That is no basis for your future happiness.

She said she just doesn't feel in love with me, but thinks that can change. She suggested going on a vacation together.

Sounds like she want some "Pick Me Dance" from you and a vacation to boot. That is some first class R material you got there.

I would give her the pick me dance she wants. I would file and wish her well in her new life.

180 would be my new best friend.

She would by my ex.

C

Barry,

No thanks he can do this for you. We can only give you opinion. Will you please do something to get yourself out of infidelity today. Since she is still in a wayward mindset, you need to do something.