Smart move Rocked. I hate drunks and I hate when I become one.
2

Hi all.

I feel much better today about everything. It is funny how some days you can just wake up happy and other days you just want to run away.

Rocked, non-drinkers are so boring! Just kidding. I was a non-drinker for most of my adult life. I do not think there is anything wrong with drinking but I just have never felt the need. Plus, there is addiction realted issues in my family, so I stay clear.

Hope all is well with everyone today.

TTYL!

Welcome back to sobriety.

Where's Holiday?

Oh my goodness...2 and True, Saturday night was the fire dept's "canyon bash" bonfire and I got drunk too.
H and I tiled all day and then left to the party (only had a bowl of soup for dinner, first wrong move).
I had 3 drinks in 3 1/2 hours. By the time we left I was deathly ill (I don't like alcohol, so why in the heck do I decide to have any sometimes I'll never know). Anyway, H gets me home, up the stairs, undresses me, gives me tylenol and a drink of water and I get sick, yuck. Then he puts me in the tub (true love here) and this is where I don't remember anything until Sunday morning...he wrapped me in a towel and put me to bed. Next morning he was very concerned on how I felt. Told me how cute I was at the party (great). I don't know why the alcohol affected me so terribly. It was probably telling me what Rocked has been saying STAY AWAY FROM IT COMPLETELY. I think I will try to stick to the fruity umbrella drinks, virgin style!

My H thinks that it all hit me this month. He told me I seemed very stressed for the past couple of weeks, knowing what this month represents. Plus working hard tiling the past week and him nit picking at me didn't help matters. He was very comforting and apologetic all Sunday.

Did I see paradise blue posting here? She is a marvelous writer in another post that I have met. I think I spoke to 2 about her when 2 and I met.

And 2, do you really think you are only pretending to be happy? Your family is so beautiful. I hope your MC can help you really, really work this all out.

holiday

Hey Holiday good hearing from you! We must truly be kindred spirits to all have gotten drunk on the same night when none of us normally drink. That is VERY bizarre.

I remain in a hideous place. After MC yesterday I decided to truly seek the Lord for comfort before I went to bed. I was frozen in place. I couldn't even muster prayer I felt so defeated. I just kept saying "God I'm frozen. I can't even pray...help me." And then I cried again (completely sober) for about another hour. After I was done crying my H came down (since I told him crying to him is like talking to a wall because he never says anything back) and wanted to talk. All I said was the same thing I said in MC, I don't know how to love him. I care about him greatly and want the best for him, but I feel like I'm living in a loveless marriage and it is sad because even in my ignorance of his A...which was a very bad time in our marriage for the obvious reason...I loved him deeply.

In MC the counselor said something that I think might apply to me. She said forgiveness and reconcilation are very different. I can forgive OW (which I have) and not want to be reconciled with her. That is OK. I can forgive my H and not be reconciled with him. I don't feel like I am. I want to be, but I don't know how. I don't know how to love him because my love for him was very tied into my admiration for him, my respect for him, my belief in him...all which is gone. I feel like I've forgiven him because we get along fine (no fighting), I'm not mean or cruel, I'm kind and gentle in my approach. But it is loveless and probably very cold to him. I really just do not know how to love him again. I really do not.

I don't know what I want to do. I stay and feel most of the time how sad it is that my life has ended up this way. I don't want to leave the marriage (though I do continue to fantasize about being alone), but not because I'm so happily married, like it used to be...but because it is what I should do.

My H keeps telling me he's done everything he can to be repentant and move forward. But so have I. I have done MC, prayer, support groups, waited for God to change my heart. I don't know what else to do. I do not love him, only care about him and I hate that feeling.

For 11 years of my life my H made me happy. He doesn't anymore. A huge part of my life is missing because of that. I know I am not supposed to rely on him for my happiness, just like he wasn't supposed to rely on me or some trampy OW to make him happy. But I do miss it and because it was such a HUGE part of my life for 11 years, I do struggle to be happy without that love I had for him.

Do you all feel reconciled with your spouses? Do they make you happy like they used to anymore? One year later and no better than d-day. What a sad place to be in. How sad I am that my life has ended up like this.

2

2, need to throw you a new bone here. When was your last medical checkup? Just a thought here that perhaps in all of this your hormones are messeing up too.

Are you still working on yourself? Are you still trying to do some exercise?

Since I hurt my shoulder and quit training I have been more emotional. I question my feelings on just about everything and everyone. My H trys very hard to keep me smiling.
Hopefully I can get into a better routine again and not dwell on the past as much as I have been.
Without my exercise routine I feel frumpy. Less energy and low tolerance to things going on around me. I am still trying to jog at least every other day to get one with nature again.

2, how about a trip to a botanical garden or nature museum in your area? Alone.

holiday

Trip to the spa planned on Nov. 30th! Everything is the same except for the fact that my entire life has changed. I'm working now, H new job, 1 year anniversary of the day my life changed forever quickly approaching. So aside from all that, everything is the same. Still working out, still in my bible study, still the same.

2

Hi 2 and Holiday,

Holiday, nice to hear from you again. You are still a very wise woman, and it sounds as if your hubby is taking good care of you.

2, I am sorry that you find yourself in this place again. I think this 1 year time frame has worked it's number on all of us. Do not underestimate your love. You may not have the "in-love" feelings for your H, but you still love him. I can tell by how you talk about him sometimes. There is a lot of anger, resentment, and hurt mixed in, but there is also an underlying love component.

As for the reconciliation question....well, that is a toughy. Had you asked me back in August, I would have said YES..100%. For some reason, I just "got over it" for awhile. I do not know how, or I would be back. It was not until the wedding that we went to that things starting changing back. I think that wedding was a hard slap in the face as to what my H so willingly gave to someone else. I think it made me realize that he did not value marriage in the same way as I did. And to be honest, he still doesn't. I asked him the other day what marriage was...and he said being with the same person forever...well, that is correct, but in his mind(still)...BEING with someone does not necessarily mean sexually. He will never change that attitude, and that is something that if I stay with him forever I will have to accept. For me, like I think it is with you, I no longer think of the OW like I used to. I was unlucky in the fact that my H did not choose someone "beneath me" like so many other WS do. In fact, he chose someone that was very similar to me in many ways. Unfortunately, she was unlike me in the ways that lead to As. I will always feel inadequate to her in many ways(unlike you do), but realize that I can't change that, and it seems as if my H does not remember her in a positive way at all...so, she means nothing to me anymore as well. I think that changed around the time of the wedding also. That should be a good thing, but instead I think it allowed some of that anger that was reserved for her to overflow to the person I was actually mad at. I have blamed my H, but have always put more blame on the OW. I still do in some respects...she literally seduced my H, BUT when it came down to it, he STILL said ok. When I decided that she was a non-factor, HE finally became the only factor I could focus on. These last couple of months have been filled with sooo much sadness, and for the first time...REAL and deserved anger. I was always angry, but it finally became real. I think anger often comes out when we are hurt instead of letting someone see our "weakness", but this was not a sad anger...this was, spitting mad.

I think what Holiday has been telling me all along, finally sunk in too. I have no control over what my H does. It does not matter if I lose 100 lbs, become the the spitting image of the OW, become the "perfect" wife and mother...he could STILL leave me at any time for any reason. I never really thought that before all of this. He and I used to have a running joke of what we would tell the judge in our custody hearing if we got divorced. He always said I would lose b/c his parents would pay for the top lawyers and my parents and I could never afford such a thing. It sounds vicious, but it was always in jest, b/c neither one of us ever believed that there was ANYTHING or ANYONE that could come between us. His A shattered all of that for me. Now I see that there are things that come between us, and certainly there are OW. I am no longer "the one" ( I saw a good post about this on the recovery board). He COULD fall in love with another woman, and unfortuantely, he did.

So, this long ramble leads me to tell you that no, I am not reconciled with my H the way that I should be. I still have hope that I will fall madly in love with him, and return all the joy and happiness and love that he has shown me. I hope that one day when he says all the kind things he says to me that I can just accept them at face value, and not think things like, "well, if you thought that, you would have never had an A" or "I bet you told her that too". I do not know if I ever will feel that way, but I don't really care. It would be nice, but I made a vow. He broke his, but I did not break mine. I know that God gives us an "out", but I doubt he really wants us to take it. Life is about sacrifices. One sacrifice may be that to keep my vow to Him and my H, I will have to live in a loveless marriage. I do not live in that now, nor do I feel I ever will truly live in that kind of marriage. I may not be madly in love at the moment, but I do love....and I know my H really loves me. I know your H loves you too...you are not in a loveless marriage. You are in a onesided marriage at the moment, but maybe not forever. Keep faith.

Wait for the year to pass, and the holidays. I plan on starting over when Jan. 1st comes around. I am not sure how to do it, but I am sick of living the way I have been. I am giving myself to the end of the year. I plan to mourn hard. I plan to cry as much as I need to, and if I have to...yell at my H a couple more times. I may hate him for a couple days, I may not. If this doesn't happen, then I will be ok with that, but I am not going to "pretend" to be happy. This is the worst time in my life...and I will reflect and mourn and then hopefully move on. I have forgiven him. I did that the day I decided to stay. I have told him. He chose not to accept it, and now tells me that I really haven't forgiven him. Those things hurt, but I still press on. The only thing I have left is to fall madly in-love. I will not push it, but after the new year, I will no longer push him away either(or so I will try).

Have you ever thought that maybe you are not ALLOWING yourself to feel his love(so you can start to feel "in-love")? It will take more courage for you to do that than you can imagine. I do not think it is easy, and I know that I have not done it. Holiday, I think you, out of all of us, have done that the best. Maybe it is b/c it is the second time for you, I don't know, but I think you have let your H back into your heart even though you may still hurt. I know that I am afraid to do that.

Anyway, long ramble. I am sorry. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

I hope you all have a good night. I will chat with you later.

True <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Hey Guys,

True, as always I feel you. I think I realized after MC yesterday that I am a TOTALLY different person than I used to be...than last year. I always prided myself on being a low maintaince wife. I never needed the best of anything, didn't demand hours of time and attention, didn't need constant building up. I was happy just being married to my H and fulfilling my dream of being a wife and mother.

But I'm no longer that person. That person died when my H took away my ability to feel fulfilled, appreciated, admired simply being who I was. NOW I feel like I need him to do all these things I never required of him before. I need to feel special. I need his undivided attention a lot, I need his comments of admiration and appreciation for me to feel his love again.

I think after the reconcilation talk with our MC I realized that I don't feel reconciled because everything has gone back to the way it was. We are nice and cordial and polite to each other. That was always enough for me to feel loved by him. I supported his so called long hours of work and was happy when he came home...even at midnight. But that doesn't work anymore...cordial and polite. I guess it never worked for him which is why he needed blow jobs on his lunch break by a groupie to feel loved.

I did my event which was a HUGE success, I started a real job for the first time in 5 years. I guess I now feel like I should be acknowledged nicely by my H for all this. He started his new job. I went to the going away party where I risked seeing OW and bought him a nice motivational card and stuck it into his briefcase for his first day on his new job. Did he come to my event (5 minutes from home) to see the fruit of all my hard work? Did he give me a card or buy me a plant for my home office? NO! And before I would have been fine with that and believed he still loved me. Now, that doesn't work anymore.

He has talked me up to others. He went on and on at MC and at his job going away party about how proud he was of me doing this event and working to help out during this transition. But did he ever just sit me down and tell me that when others weren't listening. Did he look me in the eye with heartfelt thanks and appreciation that I am working to help fill the gap of his paycut so he could live his dream? NO! And I think I just now realized that the old way of doing things (like this) don't work anymore.

I hate to be high maintaince and needy. But I am now and I think I've been trying to deny that about myself, but realize I can't anymore. I need him (my EN's I guess) to do more. He talks about all that he did to leave his job and get in MC to prove to me he loves me. But that was just to rectify the situation...that doesn't prove crap.

So there I am. And I don't really want to tell him this, because I don't want to have to admit how pathetically needy I've become. OW was a demanding, needy wreck. Now I am?! Oh this is great!

2

Yes, 2,

I was a low maintenance wife. I did not require a lot. In fact, I loved that we could do things by ourselves and still feel so special to each other. It is funny, my H's OW was also very needy, clingy, and moody. She was always pouting about this or that...or so he tells me. We find this strange that our H's would go for a woman like that when they have us at home, but I have read that most men go for women that are what they really don't want b/c there will be no risk of falling in love. Now, my H did fall in love, so I don't really buy that part, but I suppose my H knew on some level that they would never work out as a couple and so it was ok to just screw her(after all that is all she said she wanted, right??)

I also hate to admit how needy I have become. I LIKED being independent. I LIKED being fiesty and opinionated and honest. I LIKED, no LOVED my life before the A. I do not like the person I am when I freak out just because my H has not IMed me during the day, or text messaged me from his other office. I hate being suspicious all the time and holding my tongue and remembering what he did. I feel as if I can not share some of my worst feelings, b/c they will make him feel bad! I think a part of me will always view myself as weak for not leaving him when I found out. I feel like I compromised my own principles in a way. I became the kind of woman I always said I never would become. I used to scoff at women who stayed with their H's(no offense Holiday). I said I would never be like that...and here I am. There are other times that I can see how much strength it takes to be here, but I think there is this inner battle still, after a year, of what I think I should have done, and what I did. Don't get me wrong, I do not regret staying...I just struggle with what that decision says about me as a woman, wife and mother.

Anyway, don't deny yourself. In the long run I think we will all be happier if we just tell our spouses what we need(and forget the old notion of "he should know that!!") and remind them gently when we can. I think for my H and me, us telling each other from the day I learned about love bank deposits/withdrawls, what was a withdrawl and what was a deposit helped us see some of the old things we did that didn't really help. It opened our eyes to how we communicated. Even my oldest daughter will say sometimes to one of us...you know, mom/dad, that is a love bucket(which is what we call it) withdrawl.

Hope we can all perk up here soon!!

True

True...you still are: independent; fiesty and opinonated! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />.
You may consider yourself needy, but it is just a season.

If I weren't able to place my H back into my heart I would have never been able to sleep in the same bed as he. I needed to move on. One day at a time and just like life, no guarentees just better ground rules.

2 and True, I will never believe your H's fell in love with these OW. It was only their selfish attempt at a short term escape. They could have never replaced you even if your H's had decided to be with them permanently. They would have come to this place again in their relationships, only now with a new mate (same issues, new relationship).

I think the OP in extramarital A's are simply conquests where men are concerned and now watching young women (my son's friends in their early 20's) they too are out for the game.

I hope you both, as I still do, when down, explain to my H whats going on in my mind and heart. Lately he's asking me before I have a chance to tell him. They can never mend us completely, we must do this ourselves.

Have a better day tomorrow,

holiday

My H is not in my heart and I have thought about moving on. Our MC suggested seperation which I am considering at the first of the year, after the holidays if things don't change.

I have not been able to let my H back into my heart because I don't know how. I guess I feel like he needs to earn his way back, not by ending his A and going to MC, but by courting me and loving me, and making me feel special. He is not doing that to my satisfaction. He has all the energy in the world to pour into this new job, but not into a new marriage. He's fine with everything returning to normal...I'm not.

I talked to one of my dearest friends last night at great length. Her H is in a very untraditional EA (sometimes I think more). Her story is complicated and really irrelevant to my point, which is talking to her made me realize a lot. It is different talking to friends than a MC. She was a HUGE help to me in realizing that I do want my marriage, but not like it is, not like it was. I had never been happier in my life than living my dream pre-A. But I can't go back to that. It is going to take a lot more to make me happy now and I don't know if my H is up for it or even able to love me differently...just like I'm not sure I can love him differently.

He was gone last night and tonight we are going out with his old job again for the final farewell with his former dept. (she won't there). Then another busy weekend ahead.

I think I will wait to MC next week to share all my insight brought on by her comment of reconcilation. Most of the time my H doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say much. She has a way of making him talk and acknowledging that he heard and understands. And all these years, I just thought he was quiet.

Off early Christmas shopping today. Talk later.
2

OK all you "newbies" who at nearly one year still lose it. Well, I am at almost 2 years and I still occasionally lose it too.

FWH and I were at a Chili cookoff at our church Saturday night and he was being terribly impatient with the little ones who were running around. He kept referring to them as brats within ear-shot of their parents and I quietly asked him to refrain. He then accused me of being critical of him and I countered by telling him he was acting like a [censored].

We somehow made it thru the rest of the evening without further incident, but when we got home, things got worse. We ended up having an A discussion. I asked him if he had any idea what I felt like every single day. I asked him if he had any idea how I began to feel ill two weeks before our anniversary because he had forever tainted the date by taking OW to a B&B on that day two years ago. He said, wow, you're lucky, I started to feel sick a month before, wondering what I should do.

This type of incident is just what I was referring to in a thread I started recently I am the Affair and the Affair is me. .

We are not the same as we were before being touched by infidelity, and therefore, we will never react the same way. The knowledge of the betrayal may not hurt quite as deeply as time passes, but I think the knowledge that it happended will forever be a part of me.

Hi Holiday and 2...and Rocked, wherever you are!

Well, yes, Holiday, I am still independent, opinionated, and fiesty...but only with you guys <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />...ha ha. Seriously, I was talking more about as a couple. I liked our ying/yang thing. Now I am much more conservative....aaaggghhhhhh! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/pfft.gif" alt="" />

I do not think that I have excluded my H from my heart; I just think that I have not allowed MYSELF to feel the love from him like I should. He tells me all the time how much he loved me before, how he told the OW about what great wife/person I was, and how he never wanted me out of his life. So I think of the old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. I have had a hard time loving him the way I should because there is that potential to be crushed again. If I do not care, or "love" him, then it won't hurt as much when he decides that he can get away with it again. Maybe poor logic, but it is what goes through my head.

I know you do not believe that my H fell in love with the OW, but I do. He does. She probably did. It is easier to think oh, it was just nothing, but the fact of the matter was that he felt he was falling out of love with me, and in love with her. I think I said it before, the FEELINGS are real, even if the feelings are based purely on fantasy. He does not take saying the words "I love you" lightly, and I do not believe that he would have said them to be "polite". Believe it or not, on almost everything except this A, my H was/is a man of integrity. He is usually fiercely loyal, and honest. He does avoid conflict, but does not usually lie to get out of it. He just avoids completely(for example, when the OW was at the theater and trying to hold his hand and whatnot, he said, I just ignored it and figured she would stop). He may be niave about some things, but I do not for one second believe he lied to her about his feelings...they may not have turned out to be a deep everlasting love, but it was love.

2, I do not mean to make light of your post, but I have to tell you that you have probably just scared my H to death. He told me the other day that he thinks that part of the reason I do not hold him in high regards lately is that you and I are so similar on how we have dealt with the A, and how we feel about ourselves and the choices we have made. He sees you feeling so unhappy, and then me replying that I understand, and assumes that I must hate him, or plan on leaving him. Your talking about separation probably made him really worry. (And honey if you are reading this....no, I am NOT planning on leaving you!)

I am sorry that you are talking about that at all. I did not realize how bad you really felt. Have you talked to HIM about loving you differently? I know that my H and always thought one of the best aspects of our marriage was that neither of us tried to change the other person. We may not have agreed with some of the others views or how the other did some things, but we respected each other as human beings(of course now we all know that he didn't respect me at all...but, BEFORE all this, I thought he did). However, I now see that although you cannot really change a basic personality in a person, you can ask that they change HOW they approach something, or even how they feel about a certain subject. It may just be that HE needs to know that it can no longer go back to the way it was. I have agreed with my H that we do not want it to go back, and that we will try and keep our changes permanently. In that way, we can never forget what happened, but at least we can learn from it.

I hope that things change. Try remembering how you felt just a few weeks ago when you thought you had turned a corner. There must have been something to that. Try to figure out what, and work from there.

Talk to you later.

True <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />


Hi WhoMe. I must have been writing at the same time. You made some very good points. Thank you for letting us see a glimpse of year 2. Come back here if you want. We are a pretty nice crowd <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /> Heck, we discuss everything under the sun, and are not afraid of any topic...although we might get a little fiesty(me more than others <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />).

True,


I could have written those words....actually have written some very similar ones here. They are so true for me that I still, at almost the two year point, create little alternate senarios in my mind where I actually do end my marriage. You know, the what if I had done this instead game.

For awhile, they actually make me feel that I may have regained just a bit of power. I know, with out a doubt, that my FWH would not have ended up with OW. In fact, I suspect that he would never have seen her or talked to her again once I ended the marriage. And....he would have been devastated....which a part of me still thinks he deserved.

But, I surprised myself, and decided to try and work out our differences and for the most part, we have a far better marriage than we did pre-A. We are better as a couple, but it has come at the price of my self esteem. I liked the pre-A me better than who I have become.

Stranger Alert!!!!!!! WhoMe, you've entered the best darn thread on MB. Be warned that we care alot about each other, pray for each other, and look to each other for support.

Five things you gotta agree to if you're going to hangout with us:
1- Tell us about your A story
2- Truly care and pray for us all...as we will for you
3- Laugh at my humor...I'm a senstive guy.
4- Don't cheer for the UCLA Bruins! (2's enough for this thread)
5- Make sure when you get drunk you do so only when all the other ladies in this thread do.

Rocked...you are a pill!
And Who welcome and tell us how we might help.

Hey...next time at least`invite me to get drunk WITH you all. Maybe if we ever all get together. What a riot that'd be. Newest member has to be the designated driver. Who, that'd be YOU! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

Rocked,

Well I am not actually that new, but it did take me over a year to locate this site. I found it on a very bad day in the post one year doldrums. My story is below, mostly....

In our former marital state, my H always felt that I was indifferent to him, ie. didn't care whether we stayed married or not. Although that wasn't true, I let him think it was. I made no effort to meet any of his needs. I am not excusing his A, but have certainly accepted how it happened and how I played a role in what ultimately developed.

He tried, literally for years, to discuss the state of our marriage with me, I refused. Eventually, he began to look elsewhere for the things that I was denying him. At first, it was sort of a game for him. He looked up former girlfriends and began corresponding with them. He looked at this as a just in case situation initially.

Then, in 2001, a former college classmate moved back to the US from overseas. Because she needed the income, he hired her as a free lance writer. Since she resided on the West Coast and we on the East Coast, their contact was only via email and phone. Over time, and I am not sure when the line was crossed, or who crossed it first, they began an EA. The EA progressed to the point where OW separated from her H. Beginning in Jan 03, she began to coax my H into a PA which began in Apr. 03.

There is no defending his actions, he made a choice. Initially, I think he was pretty guilt-free, no matter what he says. All of the symptoms of the A were there, I was either too naïve to see it, or in denial. By July, he was starting to show serious strain and I sensed something was really wrong, but still didn't open my eyes. In Aug, he started to pull back from the A. She pushed forward and started to threaten him with informing me. He took the easy way out and let her keep him in the A rather than come clean with me.

Things went from bad to worse and even though I still didn't know for sure, didn't look for the evidence that was everywhere I looked if I had wanted to see it, but I was ready to simply throw in the towel on our marriage. He continued to resist and try to escape, she became more and more unglued, frequently flying across country and surprising him at his office. Following a West Coast trip in Oct, H ended the PA, but still continued the EA. In Nov OW again surprised him with a visit, but he did not succumb to her advances and refused to sleep with her.

On 1 Dec, after numerous attempts to tell her it was over on the phone with her becoming increasingly hysterical, he ended the A via email, I learned of the A accidentally the next day. Funny, he had planned to tell me the following week while we were on a trip together. Of course, he would never have been able to wait that long, even if I hadn't found out. OW was planning on contacting me anyway. It never even occured to him that she would contact me once he ended the A.

NC with her was immediate and total on his part. Although he did feel guilty about hurting her, over time he came to the conclusion that she never really cared about him, or he her. When he ended the A, he did so because he didn't want to be with her no matter what happened with me. At this point in our R, he says it doesn't really matter that she was a nutcase or that things really went bad very quickly. What mattered to him most was that the A was damaging our marriage long before I knew about it and he knew that if it continued there would be no hope for a future with me.

Dday for me was about the worse day of my life. However, there have been some days which haunt me more. Even tho my FWH never loved the OW, never planned on leaving me, always realized that it was me he loved, and still planned on spending the rest of his life with me. It still hurts. I came to this site because I wanted someone to tell me that someday I would forget. I didn't hear that. What I did hear was that over time, it would hurt less. Being here on MB helps so much. I don'tfeel I can burden friends (actually haven't shared the sit with any one not here on MB). Plus, they just wouldn't understand. So, does it hurt less, just a little less, but that is a start.

I wrote this in Feb 05 and have come along way since. I now realize that nothing can undo what happened, so I accept it. I don't like it, but it is what it is. We are both happier than we were in our pre-A marriage and in most ways I am a stronger person than I was.

I think that we will make it, but because there are no guarantees, I also accept that if we don't, in the end, I will be OK.