[Standing Strong]

But in the end, if they do the work or not, they might go on to a new life without us because they have become different people and we no longer fit together.

Ah!!!! I was wondering about this for weeks..... this is the best explanation I've seen. Makes perfect sense. Thanks Nerissa!!

[Treasur]

But in the end, if they do the work or not, they might go on to a new life without us because they have become different people and we no longer fit together.

Ah!!!! I was wondering about this for weeks..... this is the best explanation I've seen. Makes perfect sense. Thanks Nerissa!!

Makes sense to me too...and that perhaps even more likely that we LBS become sufficiently different as a result of this experience that we no longer want what they might have to offer even if they do try to reconnect.

[gman242]

I really wish I knew. My H will not answer anything, I don’t know what a stupid girl 27 years younger has to offer. Everything about it kills me. I don’t know what it serves.

I had an MLT with no PA. However, I was in a position at the college I worked for where I was an adviser for a student club and I think for me, part of the fun was being able to do highschool or college over, kind of. Except this time around, I got to be the cool guy.

I think I experienced many of the same things MLCers do.. regret, anger, frustration of past failures, lack of direction, ambition, getting older, the road not taken ect.

Simply going out and being part of a group makes you feel good about yourself because you just need to walk the walk and talk the talk and feeling good turns off all the other parts of your brain. That's why I think lifestyles are so addictive. They just short circuit the brain. We have instant access to so many validating feelings with so little effort and risk, emotionally.

Your husband is older than this girl, he's got a job, money to throw around probably. It's a relationship of power. I think it's as depraved and sick as a 30 year old dating a 16 year old.

[Mitzpah]

I don't pretend to have an answer to this, I really don't know.

In our case, the relationship with ow has been ongoing since before BD as far as I can tell. So, coming up to nine years now.

I cannot pinpoint her as being like either of his parents - I am rather like his mother, if you wish. The uncanny thing is that he is doing exactly as his own father did and part of his leaving home involved getting close to his father's ow and his sister, who was the product of their relationship. Perhaps he rejects me because that is what he saw his father do to his mother. He seems to be replaying his father's life and decisions. His father died six years after leaving home as a result of a heart attack brought on by being a chain smoker and alcoholism. He was young - 53.

H. and ow lived together for four and a half years (three years he was still legally married to me), they don't currently live together but are in a full fledged relationship and this year has seen him refuse to be at any family event where I am present and has imposed ow's presence at kids' birthday parties events after I have left or am not present. She is a very constant presence in his life - his whatsapp picture is a picture of the loved up couple. This behavior may be at her insistence, however, it is presented as HIS choice.

Help or hindrance? I don't know.

[Nerissa]

I really wish I knew. My H will not answer anything, I don’t know what a stupid girl 27 years younger has to offer. Everything about it kills me. I don’t know what it serves.

I had an MLT with no PA. However, I was in a position at the college I worked for where I was an adviser for a student club and I think for me, part of the fun was being able to do highschool or college over, kind of. Except this time around, I got to be the cool guy.

I think I experienced many of the same things MLCers do.. regret, anger, frustration of past failures, lack of direction, ambition, getting older, the road not taken ect.

Simply going out and being part of a group makes you feel good about yourself because you just need to walk the walk and talk the talk and feeling good turns off all the other parts of your brain. That's why I think lifestyles are so addictive. They just short circuit the brain. We have instant access to so many validating feelings with so little effort and risk, emotionally.

Your husband is older than this girl, he's got a job, money to throw around probably. It's a relationship of power. I think it's as depraved and sick as a 30 year old dating a 16 year old.

Something similar happened in my own case.  Our relationship had become rather parent /child and as we hit fifty, this was no longer attractive to H.  His affair is over but he has returned to the rather rebellious teenager he was rejecting when I met him.  At that time he was looking for security and a settled partnership with someone to care for and to reciprocate.  He wanted  support for his adult life path and a wife and mother.  The return to teenage attitudes doesn't fit the current me.

  He is slowly working on his issues, though not in ways I would choose.  He has recently asked for joint therapy.  I suspect though that the person he becomes might well be quite New Age/ free spirit as a more grown up version of the teenager he used to be and I am not those things, nor am I attracted to him while he is the way he is.  In addition to all this, we still have quite a few resentments, old patterns and assumptions about each other which need a shake up since we don’t really know each other any more.

If we go through with therapy to address these points , it will be to ensure a better relationship but not necessarily a reconciled one, although I would consider that in the unlikely event that seems possible.  Although anything is possible with these people as we have all found out, usually  to our great dismay.  H’s mother turned into a New age , attention seeking twerp in the last third of her life and stayed like that so I’m not holding out huge hopes, except that she caused quite a lot of disappointment to her children.  He seems to have forgotten all that and is repeating history.

Edited to say I posted before I read your post Mitzpah.  Two of us whose spouses display similar a tions 

[Granite]

For my Wife the Affair Partner is an integral part of the crisis.

It would have been better, nicer, easier had she been able to work through her past internally, which she did try with me or thru counseling, but the more she learned about herself the more depressed she became.  Introspection when it occurred was terrifying for her.  Her greatest nightmare was to suffer the same mental fate as her mother.

So here she is having an affair/relationship with a guy who is exactly like her Father and treating me exactly as her Father treated her Mother.  Lately she has started stating she is suffering from the same “illness” as her Mother. I should state I am completely opposite of both her parents, which must be why I was banished.

My Wife is on some kind of journey.  She sends me "postcards" when she feels the need to share.  The Affair Partner is not the tour guide, nor the bus driver, maybe he is more like the Cheshire Cat, making my Wife more like Alice.  Whatever the case, he is part of the trip.

[Milly]

My H has been with his OW for over 5 years now. I can't see the resemblance to either of my H's parents, but then I don't really know the OW. I am a bit like H's mother, so not a sexy look I think.

Just like Mitz's H, my H has turned into his father who left the mother for an OW, much younger. H really disliked everything about his father, but now he's his clone: cheesy, slimy, stingy, moneyless, with a big fake smile.

I do think what Nerissa said makes complete sense. It's possible that when a long time passes, we are just no longer compatible.

[Treasur]

I'm not like my xh's family either which I suspect was part of my initial appeal. He said once that he had never met anyone who could be relied on to keep their promises and who didn't do manipulation as a life sport

I don't know much about ow but the little I do know suggests she is a bit like his mother (who is narcissistic and probably borderline, long history of mental illness) and xh has become his father (a small fat bitter bullying man who self medicates with angry silence, work as avoidance and booze). Sad.

[Mitzpah]

I would just like to say that although I say I am like his mother - I am not physically like her at all, just in the strength and character. She and I were very close and we respected each other. She died 24 years ago, 13 years after his father. She was probably what you would call a covenant stander, except she refused to have her h. (FIL) back when he came home one night, completely drunk and incoherent. After that night, he threw his lot in with his ow and she got pregnant with h.'s half sister who is 19 years younger than h. and I. My MIL loved her h. till she died even though she had refused his drunken advances years before. She actually described herself as a widow after his death. We (as a family) only got close to ow and her daughter after her death - the half sister was then about 15.

I think my h. thinks I am like his mother in that I hold high standards... perhaps he feels he cannot face me. I don't really know if he identifies me as his mother now, certainly a mother figure because I am the mother of his children and over the years (since BD), he has praised me for that... Not that I desired that, I would much prefer he recognize me as a woman

[Trustandlove]

My instinct was that xh's choice to marry ow was just another bit of running in the hope that some other woman would fix him rather than him take responsibility for his own demons,

I'm with Treasur on this one, this is what resonates with me...   and I also see in my H the not wanting to face me, as I have "high standards", and he feels inadequate....   

I don't honestly know how they work their way out of that, I stay out of the way now, and have for a long time. 

As to whether or not this is necessary?  Perhaps for them to find out that it doesn't work, although you'd think mine would have found that out, as I think he holds the record here on the forum for the number of OWs, but I saw a few years ago that he seemed to be becoming himself again, there hadn't been an OW for over a year, it even appeared that he was looking at himself a bit, and then he (quite suddenly, it appeared to me at the time) ran hard -- and yes, it turned out that the latest OW was there.  Which is why I agree with Treasur's assessment....

I also don't know much about the OW, but from the little I know she is nothing at all like his mother, nothing at all like me, so goodness knows what.  Perhaps it's just that -- something different, maybe just the "someone worse than him" that we often talk about here.