back from another mtg and so many new posts!!!

it is also quitting time so i don't have time to give the new posts enough justice to respond to any of them.

i do want to address some of your comments melody...

i didnt say you choose to be betrayed, nor did i say your reaction was wrong. all i was trying to get across is that, I beleieve, anyone can choose to work on healing and, with God's help, anything is possible towards that goal.

i will repeat, i am not judging you, i am giving out my opinions and beliefs. you have the right to any reaction you want and you have the right to decide exactly where life experiences will lead you long term. we would all love to have nothing but pleasant experiences along our life journey, that is not realistic.

i fear i have hit some nerve with you and i don't understand why. it could be that i am reading your words incorrectly.

so in order to make myself clear... i do not think you reacted incorrectly, i do not think your pain was insignificant. i do not think you are wrong for choosing to not fully trust now.

now you can choose to believe what i am saying or not. that is your choice.

i am just holding tight to my new found faith Melody and i don't see why that is a bad thing.

i don't believe one just "sends up a wishlist" that is not what i have done with my life. i've worked very hard on improving myself AND i work very hard on my own healing as to the hurts i have suffered in my life.

i never said you or anyone here is sick or in need of healing.

i have been telling bob (and anyone in pain) that i believe your pain can be healed with God's help.

i'm sorry i cannot read any one else's posts now, i am going home <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

“The WS says they would never be unfaithful again. But then, they vowed never to be unfaithful in the first place.”

I try to avoid words like “always” and “never,” and it often bothers me when other people use them, but I feel the way FF does - I made the worst mistake of my life, but I am certain that I will never do it again.

The entire experience was so horrible for my H and me that I do not ever want to make that mistake again. I’d be the first to argue that “never” is a hard word to defend, no matter who is using it, but I’m tellin’ ya, I’m never going back under that rock – it was too hard to crawl out from under!

Peace and God bless,

Rose

Faithful -

It means a lot to me to discuss this with folks that have been on the other side, especially people that I care about. I hope we can continue this thread, and let each other know how it feels. Nothing but good can come from it.

Amen, Rose!

B, I think conversations like these are very useful. Having been on both sides I can see both sides as well. Frankly I get confused as to which way to respond sometimes, LOL <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Actually, writing off the debt is called survival. Forgiveness is renewing the credit line.

Good one, TA! Wow!

Patriot said:


I will anxiously await this new thread as I have many points to raise regarding some of your statements and questions.

FL, but I am healed. Completely healed. That is not the issue. The issue is one of being changed. And when one suffers adultery, or any other betrayal, they are likely to be changed as a result. I did not CHOOSE that change, but it is a rational, healthy reaction to betrayal.


Your concern is unwarranted, you have not hit a nerve, so don't worry.


I don't know that means, FL. I have "faith" that God exists but am not sure what you are getting at here. "Faith" in what exactly?


But that is up to God, FL, not us. If it is in God's will, however, he doesn't wave a magic wand at our command and make the pain go away. That is in God's will, not ours. But just for the record, my "pain" is long gone - it goes away with time.

Whew! It's getting hot in here.

How so?

Hmm...

I for one, would never choose to go back to being the person that I was before my husband betrayed me.

I grew out of that experience into the woman that I am today. I LIKE ME!!! I'm pretty cool if I do say so myself. Besides, I have a mug on my desk at work that says "Goddess". So it must be true!!!!

And thank god, NO ONE can ever take that away from me.

There was a point in time that I was self-righteously furious with my husband and I remember screaming at him: GIVE ME BACK MY INNOCENCE!!!!

But you know....that "innocence" was really childish fantasy. Perhaps its a melodramatic analogy, but I like to think of a Phoenix rising in all its glory from the ashes...

That was me.

I chose to heal. I chose to grow. I chose to no longer be a victim, and I chose to accept my past. To change what happened would change who I am today.

While my husband's acknowledgement and amends certainly made my recovery easier, they were not REQUIRED.

I learned along the way that I did not NEED my husband to be OK emotionally, financially or physically. I learned that while I can never control someone's choice to betray me, that if someone ever betrays me again, I'll be ok because I trust MYself to be able to make the choices I need to make to take care of me.

Placing complete trust in any human being is to set them up to fail. No, I'm not cynical or untrusting. I just learned along the way that EVERYONE is human.

I came out of my husband's affair a wiser, more confident, self-trusting woman. It didn't happen over night. And lord knows it took a tremendous amount of work on my part.

My husband's affair was not a good thing. But it absolutely was the life-altering event that changed me forever. And I like those changes.

Sheesh - I just have to keep poking at this like an ant hill to see what comes out.

I think the willingness to do something and doing something are not the same thing.

Also, no where in my words did I say forget. I never said forget anything and it would be stupid to ask someone to do it.

I just punched you in the face. Please forget it. How? It happened and THAT will not change, so forgetting something is impossible. At least something this big. Sure... I forget many things. And if someone asked me to forget something, I might be able to. Not by reminder to forget it, obviously... but I suppose it is possible. Possibility to forget is inversely proportional to the weight of the event. Cut my finger 3 years ago? Probably forgetting that one. Mother died? Not likely. Long story short, I never said forgetting something was the answer or a possible solution to try.

But, I still wonder where the line between living in the past and minimalizing the pain is. If everyone really thinks they are not perfect and that everyone in an A has something to learn, then maybe there is something here. Maybe finding the answer to that question is worthy of examination.

Also, not to be offensive, the title of the thread is how affairs change people. BSs don't have a corner on either the 'being changed by an affair' market, nor the 'people' market. Where as your statement does fall under this title, I think so does mine.

Sure... things hurt. Do they have to hurt forever? I wonder, actually.

Honest question. How is writing off the debt survival? Pardon me for asking, as I have a certain view on forgiveness, but If you will humor me I would like to know your answer, TA. Thanks

[quote
Also, not to be offensive, the title of the thread is how affairs change people. BSs don't have a corner on either the 'being changed by an affair' market, nor the 'people' market. Where as your statement does fall under this title, I think so does mine.

[/quote]

I have to say I agree with you here.

Sour... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Very true and I never said otherwise. But true forgiveness comes with time. The best that most BS can do is become willing at first.


Good, then we agree on this point.


I think some do live in the past, others are processing their grief in the normal grief process. And others try to minimize the damage they inflict on others. There is no cookie cutter answer for every person because it will vary from person to person.


But no one said that BS' corner the market on being changed by an affair. Just becasue the discussion was about BS' does not such an exclusion make. However, let's not forget that the WS volunteered for it, the BS did not. And sure, your statement is relevent, but in this context it sounded like you were connecting "forgiveness" with an entirely different issue, ie: how affairs effect their victims. They are not interrelated, and maybe you weren't trying to make that connection, so please forgive me I misinterpreted your point.


It's not a matter of "have" to hurt, but in reality, some things DO hurt forever.

I want to mull some of this over and formulate some ideas on it but I wanted to point this line out specifically.

why?

because I find it to be powerful. powerful in that it is so true and I bet no one would disagree with it.

Yet many post that 'your situation is not unique' and so on. If someone's situation is so 'not unique'.... then why isn't there a cookie-cutter answer to all this? Seems contradictory to me. But that is just my initial take on things around here. Anyway, I am in an especially "ponder the meaning of life" kind of mood.... so please forgive me.

I am not following your logic. Just because you can't use a cookie cutter approach on every situation does not mean that something is "unique." Something can fail to be unique but you can't treat it the same as you would a situation with entirely different circumstances. It would make no sense to treat a situation where D-Day was 1 day old the same as one where D-Day 10 yrs old. But does that mean either situations are "unique?" No, of course not. They are usually not. Just as the babble of a WS is not "unique" and the mushy nonsense of affairs is not. We hear it all the time; there is nothing unique about repetition.

eh... it's late. I will revisit this in the morning when my eyes are not watering from yawning... lol.

sure... WS babble is not really unique, because at the heart of it is deception talk by someone trying to hide something... or the extent of something. The reasoning for the babble is the same.

And I think all will agree that the fantasy of an A is just that. Fantasy. Bunk. A bunch o' poo. Noting unique about that.

But what is unique is the overall situations people are dealing with on here. Caren is dealing with something different from me, as an example. Maybe the Math/programmer guy is out in my tonight and I am just being very granular with this. I will think about it.

Well, and that's exactly my point, Pat. Some things are not unique and others are. If we have heard it over and over again, it is not unique. But, I think we can tell the difference. On the other hand, Caren's situation is an example of why you can't use a cookie cutter approach to every situation. Her situation is not the same as say, mine, so they couldn't be treated the same. That would make no sense.

Friends
I come back to this thread after a nights sleep and it has become even more interesting !

The overwhelming majority of posting BS say they live around the consequences of what broke because of their FWS afair.

ALL posting FWS say total recovery is possible, and some go on to say that a BS who feels 'broken' after forgiveness may not have forgiven properly or is rooting themselves in the past.

Interesting BUT in truth a FWS can never know how a BS is changed by infidelity except for evidence they see in practice or hear from their FWS lips.

Nor can a BS ever know how a FWS is changed by infidelity except for evidence they see in practice or hear from their BS lips.

What is inarguable is that FWS and BS are changed forever by their experiences.

FL thinks God can make all these changes for good, and most other posting FWS see MUCH good from the experience !

Mel, myself and several other BS thinks many changes BS have to make are REMEDIAL in order to simply survive the insult, but some have STILL gone of to a great recovery ACCOMMODATING these changes, not restoring them.

Whether the difference in attitude to recovering from infidelity is because WS have some good and pleasurable associations with their affair as well as many dark ones, while BS typically have nothing but satanically dark associations with it, we will not be able to empirically assess.

My summary , and the quote of the thread so far for me is from Hemidart :


Keep it up I am learning lots !