You're spinning your wheels until you find out if he is cheating. Nothing you do matters, if he is, because he will spin the whole thing to be your fault, so he can live with his guilt. Unless you stop the affair, you are going to look more and more pathetic by trying to 'patch' things up with him, when all along, all he thinks about every day is getting to see HER.
I agree - you're just spinning your wheels until you know if he is cheating or not. Just back off from him, try not to react to his nasty attitude towards you and get the keylogger installed. Your getting a GPS too? That's good.
During this difficult time, try and remember to take care of yourself. Make him stay home and watch the baby while you go out - whether it be to the mall and buy yourself a new outfit or to the bookstore and read. Have you read the book called The Four Agreements? It is excellent and so is Dr. Wayne Dyer's Staying on the Path. They are both short reads and will help you put things into perspective. They are not books about marriage but about life and how you cannot control other people's behavior only yours and your actions.
What did the therapist have to say about his behavior? Posted via Mobile Device
Bob, the point is that, if he IS having an affair, he will hear NOTHING she says and will see NOTHING she does to repair the marriage, because his every thought is on the next time he can contact the other woman. Who has to be removed from the picture so he can go through withdrawal, for the fog to clear, and realize yes, here's his wife, who has put up with it all and is still here.
But that will never happen until the OW is gone. So she needs to know one way or another if there IS another woman. If not, great, there are TONS of things she can do to get him back. But if he IS having an affair, she has to deal with the affair first and stop it.
Ok so let's assume there is NO affair. How can I improve myself and show that to him when he is barely at the house and tries to avoid me?
I mean we don't even sleep in the same bed for almost two months and he does not seem too thrilled about the idea of therapy. His first session is on Sat. He goes to an office(working on some project and looking for work at the same time) comes home, eats dinner, plays with our son for an hour, goes to the gym in the evening, comes home and then goes to bed.
I think you need to learn to detach - find some peace.
I'm not so sure you'll be able to catch him - "if" he's even doing anything.
So - instead of driving yourself crazy, just do what you would do if he wasn't even there.
I think its Ok to do nothing right now. Do what you need to do and what you want to do. No need to prove anything to him. If you work on "you" - do it for yourself, not for him.
You find out what HE is thinking. What makes him angry or upset - and avoid doing all of those things like the plague; NEVER be what he thinks of when he thinks of unpleasantness. It could be anything from leaving the porch light on to drying out the chicken to buying $100 shoes to having an annoying laugh. If you want him to want to be around you, you have to learn what HE wants.
And find out what makes him happy. Banana split? Clean sheets? Extra starch in his shirts? A wife who grows bigger flowers than all the neighbors? It could be anything! But you HAVE to find out. Because if you want him to WANT to come home to you, it will have to be because he is HAPPY when he's around you. We avoid that which makes us unhappy, and are drawn to that which gives us pleasure.
But only HE knows what those things are, at this point.
Have you looked at the questionnaires at marriagebuilders.com yet? Love Buster (what he doesn't like) and Emotional Needs (what makes him happy)? Figure out how to get those filled out.
You find out what HE is thinking. What makes him angry or upset - and avoid doing all of those things like the plague; NEVER be what he thinks of when he thinks of unpleasantness. It could be anything from leaving the porch light on to drying out the chicken to buying $100 shoes to having an annoying laugh. If you want him to want to be around you, you have to learn what HE wants.
And find out what makes him happy. Banana split? Clean sheets? Extra starch in his shirts? A wife who grows bigger flowers than all the neighbors? It could be anything! But you HAVE to find out. Because if you want him to WANT to come home to you, it will have to be because he is HAPPY when he's around you. We avoid that which makes us unhappy, and are drawn to that which gives us pleasure.
But only HE knows what those things are, at this point.
Have you looked at the questionnaires at marriagebuilders.com yet? Love Buster (what he doesn't like) and Emotional Needs (what makes him happy)? Figure out how to get those filled out.
So in the conversation that we had couple weeks ago he said that I have been feeling miserable and with negative attitude and that has been emotionally exhausting for him. Ok so I admit I might have been negative but not as bad as he is describing it. He says this started before we even moved to the US. But he was not going to leave me when I got pregnant and thought with the baby things would improve. Even though he has never given any indication of this being a problem for him. In the mean time in the last 2.5 years I went through adjusting of not working(not allowed to work in the US because his work visa does not allow the spouse to work), got pregnant and had a baby that is now 15 months. No family to help nearby, friends are not easy to make where I am(even the counsellor said that people in the state are not the friendliest bunch and she is from here).
So what I told him few days after that that I did not liked to be labeled negative and that I will even go as far as getting my hormones checked just to make sure I am ok on that plan. I also had a underperforming thyroid(condition I did not find out until Oct 2009) which now got better and I just found out that it can cause depression like symptoms. So I am being proactive on my end I think. I still do everything at home that I did before plus taking care of the child.
One issue is NOT the sum of him. You really need to print out those questionnaires, so you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about - if he were to fill them out (push really hard for it), you'll find a good 10-20-30 things that you do that he doesn't like. And you'll find at least 5-10 Emotional Needs that he has, that YOU should be meeting.
Yes, it's a lot of hard work. But do you want to be married, or not? The biggest benefit - assuming no affair, which negates everything you do - is that, once you start making HIM happy, he'll be so glad to be around you that he'll want to make YOU happy. Just like when you were dating.
I need to point out something, though:
Quote:
but not as bad as he is describing it
This is called a Disrespectful Judgment. It is YOU saying what HE is allowed to feel. Yes, but. No, there IS no but. If he feels bad from your negativity, it is bad enough to matter. If you spend all your time making excuses for how much you are NOT at fault, or 'not that bad,' well, what good does that do your marriage? He feels what he feels - although if he's having an affair, those feelings are warped, thus the reason you have to find out - and what he feels is what matters.
A spouse convinces his or herself that they are unhappy - maybe never have been. They begin doing things out of character and don't begin discussing "the marriage" until THEY'VE done some damage.
Maybe there were signs, but I'm not convinced. I certainly don't remember any kind of conversation requesting me to fill out a LoveBusters questionnaire, a request for marriage counseling, or even a "We need to work on some things." Instead, it was up to me to stumble upon a phone bill with 900 texts to a number I didn't know. Or in this case, him sleeping in another room for months before finally giving any kind of reasonable explanation.
And yet WE are supposed to be finding out what they want - what would make them feel better. Maybe WE need to stop and reasses what type of person our spouse has become before we start trying to make them happy. I don't think my wife even KNOWS what she wants - truly - so how would I give her something she can't even define.
And it drives me crazy that so often - within the same thread - people are advised to install keyloggers or request polygraphs - but also make yourself more attractive? It seems all of the advice is so extreme and so action driven. Action can be hard when you've just been unexpectedly punched in the gut. And, until you know the lay of the land and have thought things through, don't take action just for the sake of doing something.
"Maybe" I've changed. "Maybe" you - notready - have changed. But they - our spouses - have definitely changed.
My wife agreed to marry ME. The version of her that I agreed to marry is gone, and I'm not convinced that I want to stay married to this new person who is inhabiting her body. My wife suddenly developed the ability to look me in the eyes and tell lie after lie. That is NOT who I married.
So - notready - do what you feel like doing. You will know when its enough. Be yourself - and try to be a better version of yourself if it makes you happy. Don't go crazy wondering what you need to work on. He has damaged the marriage and created this distance. Give it time - give him space - and use that space to think about what YOU want.
One issue is NOT the sum of him. You really need to print out those questionnaires, so you'll get an idea of what I'm talking about - if he were to fill them out (push really hard for it), you'll find a good 10-20-30 things that you do that he doesn't like. And you'll find at least 5-10 Emotional Needs that he has, that YOU should be meeting.
Yes, it's a lot of hard work. But do you want to be married, or not? The biggest benefit - assuming no affair, which negates everything you do - is that, once you start making HIM happy, he'll be so glad to be around you that he'll want to make YOU happy. Just like when you were dating.
I need to point out something, though:
This is called a Disrespectful Judgment. It is YOU saying what HE is allowed to feel. Yes, but. No, there IS no but. If he feels bad from your negativity, it is bad enough to matter. If you spend all your time making excuses for how much you are NOT at fault, or 'not that bad,' well, what good does that do your marriage? He feels what he feels - although if he's having an affair, those feelings are warped, thus the reason you have to find out - and what he feels is what matters.
Turnera, I took a quick look at the questions. Are they the same for both men and women? Maybe I missed somewhere where there is a difference between the two? After all, men and women are not the same spiecies.
I will see how my next session goes with the therapist after she has seen him. I think for now I will do little bit of of both types of advice I am getting here(turnera and nice777guy). I will use the keylogger but not obsess myself every minute of the day but at the same time try to be happy myself and get myself into more positive thoughts, yet at the same time show him respect and that I care about as much as the opportunity allows for that. Yes I still do things around the house, try to take our son to activities during the day(even though he does not really ask how our day was). This was a guy who used to call twice a day from work to see how we were doing. Some days now he does not even call at all.
And for the emotional needs, I have already made up a list of things I like to see in a marriage from my spouse and things that may bother me.
I will use the keylogger but not obsess myself every minute of the day
Once you install that keylogger, its going to be very hard to keep from looking at it.
If the keylogger doesn't give you proof, it may just make your life worse by giving you more questions than answers.
That's how I've been with our phone bill at times. It hasn't proved anything really - but its given my imagination a lot of things to go overboard with. And it can be hard to stop looking, even when there's nothing really there.
Once you install that keylogger, its going to be very hard to keep from looking at it.
If the keylogger doesn't give you proof, it may just make your life worse by giving you more questions than answers.
That's how I've been with our phone bill at times. It hasn't proved anything really - but its given my imagination a lot of things to go overboard with. And it can be hard to stop looking, even when there's nothing really there.
A keylogger is a temporary thing. You set it up, you observe, and if you find nothing, you remove it. That simple.
If you DO find something, you keep it on there long enough to print out the proof - and then you confront the WS with the proof. It's just a tool to get to a place where you can take action.
Like I keep saying, if there is nothing going on, great! Remove it and change tactics. But if there IS - and cheating is WAY more rampant today than we want to believe, thanks to technology - then you have to cut off the source of the addiction before the WS will even notice you're in the same room. As long as there's an affair going on, the ONLY thing that consumes their mind is getting more 'fix', keeping you from knowing about the fix, and covering up the fix if you suspect. So they can keep it coming. It literally consumes people's minds.
And it drives me crazy that so often - within the same thread - people are advised to install keyloggers or request polygraphs - but also make yourself more attractive? It seems all of the advice is so extreme and so action driven. Action can be hard when you've just been unexpectedly punched in the gut. And, until you know the lay of the land and have thought things through, don't take action just for the sake of doing something.
Action is necessary, because the other spouse is perfectly happy with the status quo. It is YOU who is hurting, so it will have to be YOU who changes things. Also, just taking action will give you a HUGE boost to your peace of mind. Go to marriagebuilders and read some of the threads in infidelity from people who exposed their spouse's affair, to see what I mean. Most of these people fought and fought and fought, to keep from exposing: he'll be mad; she'll leave me for sure; everyone will hate me, yada yada. But once they did expose it, the sense of hopelessness left them, they felt empowered for having done something.
But exposure is the single most important thing you can do to an affair because it is, by its very nature, secretive. If it wasn't, the WS would just leave the BS and move in with the OM/OW. They HAVE to keep it a secret. And half of the appeal of the affair is the high you get from sneaking; the other half is that your spouse is still meeting half of your needs (the boring ones), while the OM/OW is meeting the other half (exciting ones) - they don't WANT to get all their needs met by the OM/OW; deep down, they know that person isn't marriage material, that's what the spouse is for.
So exposing it to the people who mean the most to your spouse - and to the OM/OW's spouse - gives the affair a kick in the face. They can no longer live in this fantasy. They can't pretend that they can kick out their spouse and invite OM/OW over for Thanksgiving - now that the family knows he/she broke up part of the family, they won't be welcome. REALITY comes crashing down. And often, the OM/OW will walk away cos the affair is now too much work or has too many consequences.
And the fog that envelopes the WS's brain literally keeps them from seeing reality. Instantly, their marriage was a sham; their partner was evil; they were never really happy. When a month before, they were looking forward to next Christmas. There IS no communicating with a WS about your relationship, because they have - by necessity, to live with their treachery - convinced themselves that YOU are the problem, not them.
That's why I keep saying you have to stop the affair first. Just being nice, hoping they'll 'remember' what you had..it won't work while they're busy getting their fix and worrying about the next hit. Psychologically, it is impossible. The affair has to be confronted or stopped in some way.
And the reason I say to look good, smell good, don't Love Bust, and meet their Emotional Needs while at the same time fighting the affair is that, once you DO stop the affair, the WS has to look around and see that you really ARE everything they wanted; you really DID stand by them and not go crazy on them. You never know the moment someone is going to come out of that fog; but when they do, you want an amazing 'you' to be the first thing they see.
nrtq, yes, there is just a unisex questionnaire. But if I recall, you're free to put your own information in there, to adapt it to your marriage; otherwise it wouldn't be such a useful tool.
And of course, it's entirely possible he's just fed up with you. That's how I've felt for the last 10 years (til I worked the MB program, though I still have residual feelings). I will never cheat, but I certainly wanted only to be away from my husband - because of HIM. But I went first, and fixed myself, and guess what? He came around and started meeting my needs. I voiced my unhappiness with his LBs - and told him I was going to leave him if things didn't change - and he stopped most of the LBs. But he wouldn't have done that if I hadn't gone first and become a better person myself. I had to give HIM a reason to want to stay with ME.
So we each went for our first individual counselling session. I went first few days ago he went yesterday. He did not ask me anything about my session and I did not ask anything about his session. Are we supposed to discuss any of this or should I wait until we go together. I just don't want to look like I am putting pressure on him by asking questions. Posted via Mobile Device
Re: What to do? Need men's opinion 
