What is Plan A?  Plan A is to avoid outbursts, disrespect, and demands at all costs.  Plan A was simple to understand but difficult to implement.  I was to avoid doing anything that would upset my husband.  Anger, disrespect, and demands were to be completely eliminated.  Plan A is very hard for me to implement since my husband was disregard for my feelings.  How could I avoid upsetting my husband when he was doing everything to upset me?  Everyone has a limit to his patience, so do I.  Therefore, I need to give myself a time limit for Plan A.

I decided on a six-month time limit.  During those six months, I would try to avoid doing anything that would upset my husband.  At the same time, I would do everything to meet his emotional needs.  However, I had to understand that as long as my husband continued to see the other woman, he would vacillated back and forth between me and her.  That drove me nuts.  But I did everything I could to avoid angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments, and demands, even when I knew he was lying to me.

I did not tell my husband about the time limit, because he would have interpreted it as a threat - a demand for him to leave the other woman.  However, I did tell him often how much I loved him.  It was not easy for me to express my feelings for him through telephone, so I started to write email to him.  And I also found out that he had a easier time handling his emotional reactions when he did not have to communicate with me through telephone.

I would not say or do anything that would make my husband feel uncomfortable when he came home for visit.  The truth was it was the affair itself that made him uncomfortable.  Whenever I asked about his activities, he would lied to me, and that made him feel guilty about his lies and about what he was lying about.  Affairs and dishonesty always go hand in hand.  You could not have one without the other.  The only way for my husband to become honest again was for him to separate totally from the other woman.  But without separation, he could not be honest, and without honesty, he could not be comfortable living with me.

My thoughtfulness helped marital reconciliation much easier.  The care I used in Plan A made me an attractive choice for my husband.  It also proved that I knew how to protect my husband from anger, disrespect, and demands, even when he was having an affair.  So I knew, when six-months time ended, I left my husband with the best possible memories of how he was treated.

Here are some example of emails I wrote to him last year:

I guess we have hit that bump in the road, the place that comes in every relationship.  It's where two people have to look around and decide whether to go forward or whether to pull back.  The place where things stop being so perfect and start being more real.  It's a little bit scary but a whole lot worth it.

And as for me, I want you to know that I love you.  I have faith in us, and I want us to keep moving forward...together.

Now that some time has passed, and hopefully our tempers have cooled.  I want and need to tell you how sorry I am.  I am not very proud of the way I acted.  Because I was thinking of myself and how hurt I felt.  I am sorry to say I did not give enough consideration to your or her feelings.  I hope it is not too late to ask for forgiveness from both of you.  And most of all, I hope it's not too late to see if we can mend the relationship we both enjoyed so much.

I am offering my hand, with all the courage I have, hoping that you will take it and that we can somehow make a new start....

From the conversation we had yesterday, I sense something was not quiet right..you keep talking about aunty's new plan...but you have never disclose any detail to me..Is there a problem between you two?  Are you losing your confidence?

Sometimes it can be so difficult to make a decision, especially when that decision could play such an important part i your life.  Maybe that's why, at times like these, people often tell us to listen to our hearts.  Deep down inside you probably know what you should do, but it takes courage to do something about it.  I guess I just want you to believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.

Trust yourself..Trust your feelings...And listen to your heart.

I have complete faith in you...No matter what....

Part 8 (by Dr. Harley)

How to End an affair the Right Way:  Total separation

如何正確的終止外遇關係： 完全斷絕所有關係

1. He should reveal information about the affair to you

他應該將和外遇有關的事坦白的告訴你

2. He should make a commitment to you to never see or talk to her again.

他應該對你承諾永遠不再見她和與她聯絡

3. He should write a letter to her ending the relationship and send it with your approval.

他應該寫一封信，告知與她斷絕所有關係，信的內容須經過你的同意

4. He should take extraordinary precautions to guarantee total separation from her:

他應該盡所能且保證與她完全斷絕所有關係

1. Change jobs and relocate if necessary.

如果有必要，請換工作或是搬家

2. Block potential communication with her (change e-mail address and telephone, cell phone, and pager numbers; have voice messages and mail monitored by you)

斷絕所有聯絡管道

3. Account for time (you both should give each other a twenty-four-hour daily schedule with locations and telephone numbers).

告知一天二十四小時的行蹤

4. Account for money (you both should give each other a complete account of all money spent, and you make all financial decisions jointly).

告知所有開支明細

5. Spend leisure time together.

兩人好好的享受空閒的時間

Part 7 (by Dr. Harley)

An affair is a very powerful addiction.  Our husband’s craving to be with their mistresses can be so intense that objective reality doesn’t have much of a chance.  The fact that wives and children may be permanently injured by this cruel indulgence doesn’t seem to matter.  All that matters is spending more time with their mistresses.  That makes it an addiction.

The analogy between chemical addiction and an affair is striking.  In both cases, the first step toward recovery is admitting that the addiction is self-destructive and harmful to those whom the addict cares for the most – his family.  After recognizing the need to overcome the addiction, the next step is to suffer through the symptoms of withdrawal.  Addicts are often admitted to a hospital or treatment program during the first few weeks of withdrawal to ensure total separation from the addicting substance.

The way to overcome an addiction is tried and proven – abstain from the object of addiction.  Alcoholics, for example, must completely avoid contact with any alcoholic beverage to gain control over their addictive behavior.  They must avoid places where alcohol is likely to be found, such as bars and parties.  They must surround themselves with an alcohol-free environment.  In the same way, when our husband separates from the mistresses, extraordinary precautions must be taken to avoid all contact with the mistresses – for life.

當你了解後，就比較能用一種平常心來看待這一切，對〝外遇〞這兩個字了解越多，認識越深，它就越不能左右你的心情，影響你的生活，而阻擾了夫妻感情的維護。阿曼達問我 "但心裡真能毫無不平或不甘嗎?你都如何克服自己的心魔?" 其實很簡單，無論發生什麼事，告訴自己，"他好可憐喔，毒癮又犯了！" 我是不會和一個生了病的人計較的，你應該也不會吧！

Part 6 (by Dr. Harley)

An affair is devastating to almost everyone involved.  It's one of the most painful experiences that the jilted spouse will ever be forced to endure, and it is also very painful for the children.  Friends and members of the extended family are usually hurt as well.  But what most people don't realize is that the unfaithful spouse and the lover are also hurt by the experience.  It almost always causes them to suffer acute depression, often with thoughts of suicide.  With all this sadness, why do so many people do it?

Affairs usually begin with an attraction to someone you know fairly well, someone you spend time with each week -- your friends and co-workers.  First, there is usually dissatisfaction with marriage that stems from the failure to meet an important emotional need.

I'm sure that my husband, like many of them, did not intend to fall in love with the other woman.  Those feelings that she rekindled in him came as a surprise, and he is at a loss to know what to do about it.  He knows that they are a risk to his marriage, and yet he feels compelled to draw ever closer to the object of his new love.  It's the way his emotions mindlessly encourage him to spend more time with those who meet his emotional needs.  And in many like mine, the wife is given no opportunity to learn to meet the unmet need, because it is not clearly revealed to us.  Besides, we are not brought up with this kind of thinking in mind. 

At this point, he is simply drawn to the mistress.  She is attractive to him because she is able to meet his sexual needs.  Whenever they are together, she makes a special effort to converse with him, and she shows a genuine interest in his favorite topics.  The pleasure he receives from her make him fell in love with her, and so it's natural to assume that he will want to talk to her even more.  He is finding it difficult to wait for the next opportunity to see her.  If he wants to talk to her more often, he will need to create new ways to spend more time with her.

So, the husband is now at a crossroads.  He can take the next step in developing his relationship with the mistress, or he can explain his problem to me and try to resolve the issue with me.  My husband should tell me about the entire situation.  I should be the one he enjoys talking to the most, and his feelings for the mistress was a good wake-up call for me.  If I were to learn to meet his emotion needs, the temptation to have an affair would be much easier to handle.

But he did what most people instinctively do, his next step is to tell the woman how he felt about her, and ask her to get together with him more often, privately.  He would tell her that he fined himself thinking about her often and wish he could be with her all the time.  He feels so guilty and ashamed of these feelings, but nevertheless, they are there.  He tries not to think about her, but he does.

Once this honest expression of feelings is out of the bag, an affair is off and running.  Even if the other woman had never given him a single romantic thought, the seed is planted, and starts to grow.  Such an admission would lead to his thinking long and hard about his marriage, and he would start seeing the other woman in an entirely new way.  If the wife was not meeting one of his important emotional needs, he would express his frustration to the other woman, and she would willingly agree to meet that need.  The rest would be history.

Of course, it's possible the other woman, all along, was feeling the same way toward our husband as he felt for her, and after his declaration of love for her, she would immediately reciprocate, fall into each other's arms, and run off to rent an apartment and start to live together.

We are all wired for affairs.  The only people who are exempt are those who are utterly incapable of meeting someone else's emotional needs.  If you can't meet anyone's needs, no one will ever fall in love with you.  But if your husband has anything to offer others, and you are not meeting an important emotional need, commitment to "forsake all others" can become words without meaning.

Trusting our spouse was a big mistake.  There is no emotion more powerful than romantic love, and people have abandoned their careers, their children, their religion, their security, and their health because of it.  Try talking to a man who is in love with his secretary about the suffering he is causing his wife and children.  Try explaining to him how he will lose his job, his money, and his self-respect.  You find yourself talking to a man with half a brain, a man who seems possessed.  What's going on that causes him to lose all of his perspective on life? It's nothing more than a feeling of love.  But that feeling is one of the most important feelings we have, and we will do almost anything to get it and keep it.

We all learned an important lesson about human nature.  Our husbands are wired to fall in love with whoever they spend the most enjoyable time with, and the fact that our husband fell in love with the women in China simply means that they had deposited enough love units to trigger their feeling of romantic love toward them.  Our husbands were having more fun with those China girls than they were having with us.  The rest was history.

To get our husband back, we must become their best friend again. Their relationship with these other women will probably fall apart eventually, as they almost always do, and they will come back to us.  At that point in time, our husband should never see those women again, we should try to welcome our husbands with open arms and then try to re-create the relationship that we once had, when we were both in love with each other.

Granted, at first we will be very resentful about what our husband did and said, but we shouldn't let resentment prevent us from putting our family back together again.  Little by little our resentment will fade away, as our relationship with our husband improves.

We were very disillusioned to think that our husband and the other women could have hurt us so badly, but now we all knows that, quite frankly, we would have done the same thing ourselves if conditions were right.

Dear Agnes,

Bravo ～ 明智、出色的女人！

如此的老婆,如果老公離得開.......那才是男人一輩子最重大的損失.
相信這位"出軌"的男人,一定也相當"出色",否則妻子不會如此用心去嬴回他的人！

事情遇到了頸瓶,先冷靜想好自己取、捨的決擇......要挽回婚姻,就得往建設性的方向前進....
事實就是事實,誰是誰非...怨、恨都無以濟事！

Part 5

 

The last thing I need to do, which I think is the most difficult thing– Domestic Support and Admiration.  I have to remind myself that he needs peace and quiet time at home and needs me to be proud of him every day.

 

Men often fantasize about a home life free of stress and worry.  After work each day, his wife greets him lovingly at the door and his well-behaved children are also glad to see him.  He enters the comfort of a well maintained home as his wife urges him to relax before taking part in dinner, the aroma of which he can already smell wafting through the air. 

 

Conversation at dinner is enjoyable and free of conflict.  Later the family goes out together for an early evening stroll, and he returns to put the children to bed with no hassle or fuss.  Then he and his wife relax and talk together, watch a little television, and go to bed to make love, all at a reasonable hour.

 

I know many of you may chuckle as you read the above scenario, but according to Dr. Harley, if there is a wide gap between the reality of your home life and this fantasy, your marriage may be in serious trouble.

 

My husband is already used to the carefree life style in China.  There are no households responsibilities need to be shared.  He is free to do whatever he wants.  Unlike over here at home, he gets pressure from the kids or me all the time.  There are always children fighting each other, house needs to be cleaned, tree needs to be trim, or dishes needs to be washed.  I know it is not fair, but it is the reality.  There are many things that I just don’t feel like doing because of what he has done to me.  However, I also understand that I need to take one step further and overlook everything in order to save our marriage.  I look at this as an opportunity for me to meet his emotional need.

 

He also needs me to be proud of him.  Dr. Harley taught me that honest admiration is a great motivator for most men.  When a woman tells a man she thinks he’s wonderful, that inspires him to achieve more.  He sees himself as capable of handling new responsibilities and perfecting skills far above those of his present level.  That inspiration helps him prepare for the responsibilities of life.

 

While criticism causes men to become defensive, admiration energizes and motivates them.  A man expects and needs his wife to be his most enthusiastic fan.  He draws confidence from her support and can usually achieve far more with her encouragement.

 

So this is what the Doctor told me to do:

1. Hold his hands when we are out together.

2. Hug him when he comes home.

3. Send him surprise cards and flowers.

4. Talk to him about his day went and how I spend mine.

5. Take an interest in his daily activities and discusses them with him.

6. Always tell him where I have been and leave number where he can reach me in an emergency.

7. Show strong family commitment.

 

Remember that a man really needs appreciation.  He thrives on it.  Many men have affairs stress that the admiration of their lovers acted as a warm spring breeze in comparison to the arctic cold of their wives’ criticism.  How can they resist?  Don’t make your husband go outside your marriage for approval; he needs the perspective your appreciation gives him.

Dear Amenda,

You will find my answer pretty soon in the story.  Like what I said in the other article, this is a very long process.  It took me almost two years to get to the stage I am today.  There are many steps to go through.  Everybody can do it.  Just need to believe in yourself.  Here is what I did:

1. Realized the problem and deciding if you would like to save the marriage or not (Part 1)

2. Understand what his five needs are and do everything necessary to meet them (Part 2-5)

3.  Understand the affair, know why it happen and how should it ends (Part 6-8)

4.  Put Plan A in action (Part 9)

5.  How to incooparate Plan A and 180 Degree (Part 10)

6.  Start Plan B (Part 11)

7.  A new life and a new you (Part 12)

本文於 修改第 3 次

但心裡真能毫無不平或不甘嗎?

你都如何克服自己的心魔?

Part 4

The second thing I needed to take care was my husband’s other needs – Recreational Companionship and Physical Attractiveness.  I started to take lesson at the Nike Golf Center near my workplace during lunch hour.  And I did let him know about this.  After a few weeks, I started to notice that he would ask me questions about my golf practices and staff like that.  And He would offer me tips on how to improve my golf swing.  Our phone conversation had made a nice turn with less arguing, and of course with a subject that the other girl had no knowledge about.  We would communicate longer and more often, which made the other side less comfortable for a change.  

I always wanted to have some cosmetic surgery done on my face.  I asked for his permission and went ahead with a double eyelid surgery and chin implant after he left the second time last year July.  I did not show him any pictures of what I look like after the surgery, although he had asked for it so many times.  But instead, I did let everyone else know how much I have changed and how happy I was.  It was a huge difference.  I told myself I should have done it 20 year ago.

I also changed the way I wear my hair, my wardrobe, my makeup, and everything else.  Sometimes I would dress up, bring my kids to my in-laws house and asked them to baby-sit for me for a couple of hours at night while I went out with “friends”.  Of course I did this on purpose.  I might be just going out with my girlfriends for some coffee, or even getting some grocery shopping done by myself.  But they didn't need to know that.  His parents were so worried.  My father-in-law actually called him up and told him I might be having an affair with someone else while he was away.