I am am here too, praying for you. There must be away for him to move out. I would agree, let him figure it out. Live w/ a relative, friend or ??? I also know that you still care about him in some way and want his safety.

I agree 100% with needhelp...

Morgan
I am so sorry for your pain! I think he is being mean because he feels guilty! He definitly needs the boot! He will be sorry he gave up the best thing that ever happen to him! He will wake up but then it may be to late. He is just being selfish!!!

When he's gone your life will start to get easier, little by little. He's toxic right now no matter what his reasons. You can do this. New beginnings are hard but they can be good. Hang-in there. You're a good person, you'll do well in the end.

Morgan, I am so sorry! My heart breaks for you!

You have spent so much time putting him first and now it is time to put you first. Take care of yourself, look out for yourself and your children, and let him be for now. Focus on your needs and we are all here to help in whatever way we can.

You deserve better than to be treated like crap! Whatever his issues are, you deserve better.

Thoughts and prayers are with you!

Thanks you guys. It's all kind of hard to believe - but I am making the adjustments. Your support really really helps. I am devastated for my kids.

Hugs,

Morgan

I'm not sure if this will be helpful or not, but I'm going to try and explain your husband's motives by putting myself in his position (something I sincerely wish I were unable to do). Bear in mind that what I present here is an attempt at explanation, not excuse. It is my opinion that he's acting childishly and despicably.

I don't know what prompted his affair in the first place, but one common motivator is that affairs are an escape. They're an escape from the stress of reality, from the responsibilities of a real relationship, and from one's own shortcomings both real and perceived. When an affair is ended, all those things come rushing back like a tidal wave, and facing up to that takes courage that some people just don't have - especially if they're the sort who have an affair in the first place for those exact same reasons.

I faced those same (self-generated) demons, and I was able to deal with them in part because I clung desperately to the idea that I would find the love for my wife that I knew I once had, and that this would give me the strength to pull myself out of the hole I'd dug and do what was necessary to make amends. I hate to say it so bluntly, but it sounds to me like your husband's fear was stronger than whatever love he has for you. In you, he now sees only a constant reminder of the consequences of his wrongful actions. He can't deal with it.

But he can't just leave either. It's not really because of the money, although that might be a factor. It's because if he just abandons you and the kids, he's COMPOUNDING his original crime. On the other hand, if you throw him out, he's being PUNISHED for it and he can pretend that everything is now even. I think he's waiting for you to demand that he pack his bags and go, and he's taking subtle actions to push you to that point.

Think about it - if he goes to OW and says, "She threw me out," then he'll be welcomed with understanding and comfort. If he goes to her and says, "I left her," then she'll view him with a LOT less sympathy and start wondering when he will leave her too.

The bottom line is, he's desperately searching for something in all of this that he can say is YOUR fault - and if he can't find such a thing, he'll try to make it happen. He doesn't want to live with the crushing guilt and full responsibility of the matter. He wants you to make the final move so he can say to himself and others, "She's the one who actually ended our marriage."

There are only two ways you can win this thing (and I use the word "win" in its loosest possible sense, because no matter what happens it's going to be devastating).

One is to play the game right back at him, and refuse to give in. The problem with that is that it draws out the agony for all concerned until one of you breaks. And it'll probably be him, but how long that takes is anyone's guess, and by that time he'll have come up with all kinds of lies he can tell himself about how it was all really your fault.

The other way is to basically give him what he wants, and throw him out. But you need to do it with the kind of finality that he doesn't have the courage to implement. You must throw him out of your heart as well as your home. His feelings must no longer matter to you. This man is no longer the person who you fell in love with and married. Most of us get married with every intention of living up to the trust of that relationship. When someone has an affair, they break the trust first with themselves, and that changes a person profoundly. After the affair is discovered, it takes a deliberate act of will to change oneself again, and it's not an easy thing to do. Your husband, for whatever reason, was not able to do it. He has chosen to remain the weak and dishonest man who had an affair. He lacks the courage to even try to restore his own honor. For you to try ad keep any part of this relationship alive, even within your own heart, is the same as a recent widow considering herself still married to her husband's corpse.

There will be practical matters such as money problems that will make things very hard indeed, but you'll need to find answers to those problems that don't depend on him - and you have to not care how he's going to solve his own problems. Because the truth of the matter is, he doesn't care about your feelings anymore; or at least, they come in a distant second to his own.

The longer he stays, the more he will break your spirit. He's doing it deliberately because he lacks the courage to sever ties with you completely; he's pushing for you to make the final move so that he doesn't have to take responsibility for it.

The final blow will come down when the escapist fantasy of his affair ends and the reality sets in again, and he'll discover that in his weakness, he's ruined his own chances for any kind of happiness. When that happens, he'll probably come running back to you, begging for another chance. It'll be up to you at that point whether to grant it to him, but before you do, make sure you look closely at him and see if he's really changed, or if he's just running scared again. Because if he comes back to you out of cowardice and selfishness, he'll leave you again for the same reasons.

MXeno....excellent reply....so much insight.

MXeno.

This is an awesome reply, truly awesome. I learned so much. I am almost 2 years into recovery but you just helped me more than you will know!!! Thank you. I know you were addressing morgan and her situation but this was very telling about the mind of a cheater dealing with the aftermath.

I would like to post this in OOYPD room, do you mind?

Texy -

I don't mind on principle, but what is OOYPD room?

OOYPD - Over One Year Post D-Day site....for those still struggling to understand and recover one year after finding out about the affair...

Excellent idea Texy.

MXeno, very insightful as usual. Thank you.

MXeno - thank you so much for your very thoughtful reply.

My H had an affair so he could feel important - he craved attention. He had been fired from a job and then spent years out of work and felt like "a loser" (his words, not mine). The OW worshipped him - there were no bills to pay, no kids to take care of - just the adoring eyes of a girl half his age.

Because I understood how hard it was on his ego to not be able to provide for his family, I felt like after the affair came to light that we could heal the marriage.

But despite a year of therapy, counseling, workshops - all of it - he remains disconnected from me. He is much more committed to being "right" - that its "unfixable" that what he did was "too awful to heal from". I think he is just scared to try and then to fail. If he tries to heal, tries to be compassionate, tries to be kind -- and it still doesn't work, then were does that leave him?

As a passive-agressive semi-narcisst control freak -- he is much more comfortable "in control" with the idea that he chose to end it. I dont think he could bear actually trying to make it up to me and having me reject him. Thats why he doesnt do the things that would help me heal.

I think that he felt like a loser before - and now he feels even more like a loser. And he is sick of being with me and seeing the pain in my eyes. He says things to me like "I wish things could just be the way they were before" - which makes no sense to me because the way they were before - he was unhappy enough to have an affair!

He claims he wasnt unhappy with the marriage - only himself. And that he was too ashamed to tell me that he felt like such a loser - so he went out and found something to make him feel better. For the better part of a year!

The saddest thing is that I believe he loves me. I believe he never wanted to end the marriage. Somehow he convinced himself that he could have the A and it wouldnt affect the marriage or the kids. He was wrong wrong wrong.

He says if a friend of his ever told him that they were considering having an affair that he would tell them to just step into traffic in front of a mac truck because it would hurt less and have the same outcome.

Hugs,

Morgan

ps - he has already started believing his own lies about "why it's ending because of me" and why "its my fault that its over"

He says things that are NOT TRUE AT ALL and believes them like the gospel.

Brilliant post, MX.