Why is it that we continue to struggle with the pain of recovery, the constant triggers, the "not knowing their secret"?

Wouldn't it be easier to make a clean break (as much as we can considering we have children) and start afresh without those who betrayed us?

I'm starting to think that that might be a better option? I need your thoughts on this.

If that is not the best option - please can someone tell me how to let go of the past. I feel like I'm being destroyed!

I choose to do exactly that ... I did my best under SH's supervision. I did change my part of the mess but WW refused and even use MB technique to "take" OM away from his family by fillin his top 5 ENs while refusing to have contact with me. I am ready and eager to start new w/ someone who will cherish, care & protect my love for her.

However I did plan A for about 6 months and my WW self impose NC (plan B) ... now 5 months later I am guilt free and ready to look for someone that I could shower her with love.

Read and follow MB guidelines ... yes, you have a choice but try plan A & plan B ... you have nothing too loose by trying but a lot to gain if you will be able to save & fix your M. Most of us aren't willing to throw the towel of long history of M (mine is 17 years) ... but there is a point of no return (mine is finalized Dv), it is your decision.

Good luck. -RH-

DonnaLee,

I think I'm stuck in this rut of relationship hell! I would love to start fresh. I was thinking about that last night as my H prepares for a 3 week business trip (left this morning) and I've been a wreck wondering what he's up to or will be up to. I don't need this in my life. I don't need the constant stomach aches and nail biting. I shouldn't have to use sleep aides to get me through a restless night.

I don't have children with my WH and we are currently separated, but we both want to recover our marriage. Well, he says he wants to recover, but his actions still say ME, ME, ME!

I'm interested in this topic and would love to see some more responses.

Are you currently living with your H? What are some things you would love to be doing but have put off? I would love to learn to play the piano.

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Some of us were ultimately forced to make the choice to end the marriage. After five fake or half-as# reconcilliation attempts, I called it quits. There were other extenuating circumstances, not to mention the fact that I was losing every ounce of self-respect and sanity I ever had.

While I have no regrets about doing my part to save the marriage, I would boot him out the first time if I had it to do over again. THAT would have saved me and my girls tremendous additional pain that spanned a period of 1 1/2 years. And that doesn't include the pain of the past year of recovering from the actual divorce and my ex's engagement to the pyscho OW....

Hindsight is definitely 20-20, but maybe one day I will look back and be glad that I did every thing I could to save the marriage. Not right now though.

And another thing, don't assume that the grass is greener on the other side. I certainly haven't run into my "soul-mate" (hate that term!) yet - just freaks and married men. I won't even go there!

My FWH wants us just to forget the past and move on. Although his affair (I really hate that word - it has brings up images of something lovely - instead of the dirty, digusting betrayal of what it really was)happened many years ago - problems like the "whys" etc were never resolved - even with counselling. A recent 'trigger' brought it all back.

And now I want answers - which he cannot give me because he can no longer remember. Which brings up the topic of a previous post. Can men really not remember?

I am in desperate need of truth and honesty - these he cannot seem to give me - so why do I persist? How many times do we have to through the same old same old?

If I left now, I would be really angry with myself for wasting the past 15 years with him and also the fact that I have given him the greatest gift of watching our children grow up and by taking him back allowing him to be a part of their lives. I think he got off so lightly!

What happens when they can give you no answers?
Should I just call it quits?

.

As redhat suggested... you always have a CHOICE in plan A and plan B. You have made the choice to attempt recovery for your M. No one ever said it would be easy... but it is true that it cannot happen unless BOTH spouses are putting their 'all' into recovery.

Why even bother with MB? Simple... it makes us better people regardless of what the outcome of our M is. Your initial instinct when d-day arose was to save your M. If you were to have ignored that instinct, then later on in life (a few months, years, decades, etc) you may have regrets that you didn't do whatever you could to save it.

Harley himself says that not all marriages can be saved. You have to decide if your M is one of those. He is usually referring to marriages with other addictions (aside from OPs) such as alcohol and drugs, and even personality disorders such as being bipolar.

In the state you are in now, it is vitally important that you talk to you H about your feelings. It wouldn't be fair that you start making arrangements to 'start anew' without giving your H one last chance to earn your love back. What do you have to lose? You could give it a timeline... and have a letter ready for him when he returns from his business trip. In that letter, you can have all of your needs and boundaries outlined, and let your H know, that without 'xxx' being done, you need to move on without him. Try not to make it sound so threatening if you can... but that's not always possible. (I've been in that situation for a while now... I finally had to give my H some ultimatums to make him see how strongly I felt).

As far as your H forgetting a lot of the details... at this point, I believe that to be true. After all... so much of that time was based on lies and deceit.

Should you call it quits b/c you're not getting the answers you need? That's up to you. You have to decide if these minor details (and they tend to be minor in the whole picture) are worth setting a boundary over. Again... it's up to you.

Take care,
Karen

Hi, again,

My H can't (or won't) give me answers either. He blames it all on his abusive mom and "women" in general. It's like all women are his mother and so he will destroy her by destroying us.

My H is away for 3 weeks and I really want to set my personal recovery in motion.

Good luck!

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Hi DonnaLee

I can certainly simpatize ,I'm going through the same thing and have the same questions.I guess it's time to actually look back,keep some kind of a score card from the very beginning and evaluate everything..from EN to sexlife,goals,dreams,actions and then draw the line and decide.Unfortuntely it will be you to decide and whatever you decide it will be hard.
It's even harder if love is still there,and usually that's the case for us the BS's.What I'm saying to myself is "If you love them enough you have to let them go".I'm trying to cut all contacts exccept for kids,gave myself about 6 months of emotional solitude and see how it goes.
It all depends on you,can you make the clean cut and not feel any remorse?Can you really choose to close that door forever?
Whatever you decide..good luck!

DonnaLee,

His openess and honesty is going to be critical to any recovery on your part. If he is withholding, and it sounds like he is, then you are BOTH going to die a death of a thousand cuts. You can't possibly restore trust or love if he is still placing the protection of the OW over your need and RIGHT to know. It took me a long time to convince my spouse of this and to get him to come completely clean. And until he did that, there was really no recovery in the offing.

It is much easier for him to just buckle down and answer all your questions openly than to go through these neverending defensive interragatories that just tear down the marriage and destroy trust. They are lovebusters on both sides.

Here is what Harley says about this issue:

From my perspective, honesty is part of the solution to infidelity, and so I'll take honesty for whatever reason, even if it's to relieve a feeling of guilt and depression. The revelation of an affair is very hard on an unsuspecting spouse, of course, but at the same time, it's the first step toward marital reconciliation.

Most unfaithful spouses know that their affair is one of the most heartless acts they could ever inflict on their spouse. So one of their reasons to be dishonest is to protect their spouse from emotional pain. "Why add insult to injury," they reason. "What I did was wrong, but why put my spouse through needless pain by revealing this thoughtless act?" As is the case with bank robbers and murderers, unfaithful spouses don't think they will ever be discovered, and so they don't expect their unfaithfulness to hurt their spouse.

But I am one of the very few that advocate the revelation of affairs at all costs, even when the wayward spouse has no feelings of guilt or depression to overcome. I believe that honesty is so essential to the success of marriage, that hiding past infidelity makes a marriage dishonest, preventing emotional closeness and intimacy.

It isn't honesty that causes the pain, it's the affair. Honesty is simply revealing truth to the victim. Those who advocate dishonesty regarding infidelity assume that the truth will cause such irreparable harm, that it's in the best interest of a victimized spouse to go through life with the illusion of fidelity.

It's patronizing to think that a spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Anyone who assumes that their spouse cannot handle truth is being incredibly disrespectful, manipulative and in the final analysis, dangerous. How little you must think of your spouse when you try to protect him or her from the truth.

It's not only patronizing, but it's also false to assume that your spouse cannot bear to hear the truth. Illusions do not make us happy, they cause us to wander through life, bumping into barriers that are invisible to us because of the illusion that is created. Truth, on the other hand, reveals those barriers, and sheds light on them so that we can see well enough to overcome them. The unsuspecting spouse of an unfaithful husband or wife wonders why their marriage is not more fulfilling and more intimate. Knowledge of an affair would make it clear why all efforts have failed.

After revealing an affair, your spouse will no longer trust you. But lack of trust does not ruin a marriage, it's the lack of care and protection that ruins marriages. Your spouse should not trust you, and the sooner your spouse realizes it, the better.

The Policy of Radical Honesty is one of two rules you must follow to protect your spouse from your self-centered behavior, which includes affairs. The other rule is the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse). If you were to be completely honest with you spouse, and you were to follow the Policy of Joint Agreement, an affair would be impossible, unless for some reason your spouse wanted you to have one.

If you knew that your affair would be discovered -- that right after having sex with your co-worker, your spouse were to find out about it -- you would probably not go through with it. And if you were honest enough with your spouse so that YOU would be the one to tell him or her what you did, your honesty would be a huge reason to avoid any affair.

How the victimized spouse should respond to the revelation of an affair is a subject of a later column. I do not have the space to treat it here. But a spouse is twice victimized when he or she is lied to about an affair. Truth is far easier to handle than lies.