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You Are Secure!
Goals for The Hero's Spouse My Story Welcome & Overview Though I am Christian and may use the Bible to support and validate my Stand, I do not believe a specific Faith is required. I believe in the value of a vow, a covenant, a promise made and spoken through the myriad variety of marriage vows. Secular governments have reduced marriage to the status of a legal contract. To me, it is more than that. I also accept that a couple may choose vows that are secular and not based on a covenant ‘til death. But for those who make a covenantal vow, I believe it is unbreakable. Those are my personal beliefs. It is for each individual to choose whether to Stand, or whether to step down. Some Standers are for Life, continuing to Stand knowing restoration of their marriages is unlikely. They are the Covenant Keepers, honouring their vows even as their spouse may marry another. I have dedicated my life to Sweetheart and our marriage as well as to helping Standers. I presently manage this website while working full time to earn my income. It is my desire to make this into my career and to do that I need your help. No, I'm not asking you for money, though please feel free to donate through the PayPal button on the sidebar! I could not afford a lot of extras during my Stand and I understand that many of you cannot afford them either. Disclaimer!! What I am is a wife who has experienced my husband's midlife crisis with infidelity and survived with my marriage intact. My training is as a writer which is why I have been able to write the content on this site. I spend my time researching, writing, scanning forums and coaching. My interests as a writer prior to MLC were in Traditional Tales (Folk, Fairy, Fable...) and Mythological Studies; such interests included an interest in Jungian Psychology. These interests provided a foundational starting point for my MLC studies.
To achieve each of those goals, I need traffic. The reason for increased traffic should be clear for #2, but it is also important for #1 because publishers and agents will take my submissions seriously when they see I have a platform and following. Please tell others about this site. With greater traffic I can earn additional income through my onsite advertising. Traffic Builders
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Additional forum services Now for the part you don't want to hear; he was a multiple returner, moving home and leaving again 8 times in total—though a few of those were only a few days, most were a few months in duration. Most MLCers leave and stay away—though they may return briefly within the first days or weeks after bomb drop. Sweetheart was a Clinger. He filed for divorce during his first leave and we stopped it soon after; he never filed again. After that he used divorce as a threat to get what he wanted and I quickly learned it was empty and called his bluff—often he immediately called off the bluff and admitted he had not meant it. The divorce pressure always originated from the alienator who resorted to desperate actions—faked a pregnancy, threatened indirect suicide, trespassing in our yard where the police found her—when he left or threatened to leave her. He originally moved into an apartment and moved in with the alienator once the relationship became physical; from that time on he always moved to her house when he left home. On most occasions Sweetheart taunted me with his infidelity to get me to kick him out; on these occasions I refused to be the bad guy. It was clear he would eventually leave, but he needed to make the choice. He was home for an entire year in the midst of his crisis and we were in counseling, when I discovered he was still seeing the alienator secretly, I kicked him out. I initiated his leaving on this occasion because he was cake-eating by keeping his affair secret and trying to play the part of a recovering MLCer. Sweetheart initiated his returns, but I often would not allow him to return until he left the OW's house and met conditions. In my situation Sweetheart was the beg-and-pleader. It was in this area that I caved too early and often. Money was tight and we had no funds for him to have an apartment—his first apartment had been a friend's condominium and was no longer available, we had also changed jobs and our income had decreased significantly since Bomb Drop. When he first returned I told him he could not come home and we arranged for him to stay with a friend in our neighborhood. He soon threatened to return to the alienator unless I let him move home. I caved and he left for the alienator's within a couple of days anyway. In the first year he went into a three month cycle where he was home and away for three month increments. In order to break the pattern I refused to allow him home until it felt right. After six months he moved home—that was when he was home for a year. After I kicked him out, I again let him move home too soon—on the advice of a counselor—technically it was not advice, she asked why I didn't just let him move home with the implication that she recommended it. Big mistake. Sweetheart rarely entered Monster, but that mistake sent him into the Monster I'd dealt with a few years earlier right after Bomb Drop. He told me how he was going to take everything from me in a divorce, he called the OW from our home phone while I worked because he knew it would bother me since I had access to the call logs—he admitted this later. During Monster or cycling behaviour such as this it became obvious when he was preparing to leave, so I told him that if he left again he would not be allowed to return to our marriage for a full year, and that he could not return directly from the alienator's house. We had broken his three month cycle and upon leaving he immediately (on one occasion he told me that he wanted home within three days, and he said it was within three hours on another occasion) left Monster and wanted to come home, but he also refused to move anywhere other than home—the march of his refrain. Eventually he agreed to move in to the spare room of the same friend who offered him a place in the beginning of the crisis; but he told the friend it would only be for a few weeks. It was at this time that our blessing arrived. My grandmother was living with my mother, but she needed more care than my mother could offer alone. I'd just been laid off and was available. I moved in with them, 100 miles from Sweetheart and home. This meant Sweetheart could move into our house. We had 8 months left before the one year was up and I told my mother and grandma that I could stay no longer than that. During that time I returned home for a couple of days every few weeks for counseling and to work on gradual rebuilding. I returned home in August of 2009. I will not claim that we are reconciled until we have been together for a year or more with no relapses. But Sweetheart has spent most of his crisis living at home or in contact with me—attempting contact during No Contacts. I am used to having him around; the transition toward living together may be more dramatic for those of you whose spouses have been more distant during the crisis.
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