I have been thinking about you saying this, about the control and fear and pride. These are very common feelings in the BS. I know I experienced them, and have seen it in others. The need to control, and fear about an outcome I couldn't control, turned out to be the biggest thing in this entire experience that changed about me. It was these feelings being so strong that forced me to finally surrender it to God. To trust that God had a plan for me, loved my DD's, loved my WH, and that things would work out if I trusted God and gave up my desire to control and plan everything.

I ultimately surrendered my own will to God's will - I deterimined that if I was going to have to sell the house, move into an apartment, divorce, and couldn't save our DD's from OW and the A, then I would have to trust God to protect us all and turn it to His plan for us. It was after that surrender, that commitment to God that I would have faith in Him and not worry, that I developed a peace about the situation. Only after that (much after, it seemed at the time!) did things start to turn around.

MSA


[color:"purple"]
Matthew 6:25-34
"Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?

"And why do you worry about clothes? See how the lilies of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?' For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.[/color]

I copied the e-mail I sent to exposure contacts, family, and friends for you all to be able to understand where we're at right now. I had a good conversation with her tonight and she basically said it was over, that she couldn't love me or trust men ever again. That the affair wasn't the issue and that she's resented me to the point where her heart is cold and dead. I believe that love never fails, but I know I've broken my own wife's heart and that is a hard pill to swallow. Up to her to run the ball and make the call now, but I think I have her attention and I will continue to show her love as well as I can. I will also begin seeking professional assistance with the control issue so that it doesn't become the death blow during my return home. Anyhow, here is the e-mail.
____________________________________________________________
SUBJECT: Revelations and Request for Continued Support
To our family and friends,

Okay, now for the rest of the truth as I am just now coming to understand it clearly. I have been a controlling husband during our marriage. I am guilty and God has convicted me to fix it immediately or lose everything I love in my life - my wife, my family, and my marriage. Control is the enemy and antithesis of trust. I love my wife more than anyone I have ever known, but instead of trusting (WW) to make the right calls for her and our marriage by being herself, I have periodically tried to control her and our relationship through critical words and unloving deeds that have left her defeated, empty, emotionless, hurt, and extremely resentful toward me. I have work to do for myself in order to relinquish control appropriately, for her in order to help her trust and love again, and for our relationship to reflect the image of God as a husband and father if we are to have a chance to succeed as a married couple and as a family. The first steps are to acknowledge the problem, humbly request forgiveness, and encourage others to hold me accountable for my actions going forward. That’s where you all come in - nothing broken in darkness can be fixed until it is illuminated. What’s needed now is your prayerful support of this process, your loving encouragement of our individual struggles, and your steadfast commitment to the marriage you pledged to support when we were married nearly five years ago.

I thank God that (WW) has endured to this point and that we are still married through this year’s deployment to Iraq. She loved me just enough not to destroy me or jeopardize my life with a divorce just prior to my departure. I count it as a blessing that I have since had the opportunity to begin learning how to truly trust in God for the protection of my soldiers, my family, and myself, and now I count it as a blessing that I have 4 months remaining to trust Him to become the husband and father I am supposed to be in Him before coming home to do just that. (WW) has asked for some time and space to consider the possibility that I can and will change. She has been inundated by the calls of support and concern that she’s received in response to my requests for your support of our marriage and family. She is grateful for the love and grace you have shown her and for your support. Thank you for responding to my request and for reminding her of just how much you all love us. I would ask on behalf of (WW) and (DD)’s precious time together that henceforth if you want to contact her with support you do it via e-mail more than with phone calls. She reads her e-mail daily and her e-mail address is above. We are both committed to being great parents to (DD), but everything else is subject to the swift resolution of the controlling behavior issue that has plagued me during our marriage. It is a critical period for us both and we will need every bit of prayer you can muster. Pray for me to overcome my tendency to be my wife’s commander and not her interdependent husband and friend. Pray for her to be able to trust me again and open her heart to the possibility that God can and has changed mine. Pray for continued safety for all of us in this period of separation. Thanks in advance for your continued support of our marriage and family.

I have copied links to three of the articles that describe the situation in our marriage and the better than I can.
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5043_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5043b_qa.html
http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5055_qa.html

All I am and will become in Him,
(sbmmal)
____________________________________________________________

MSA, NSYN - Thanks for your support. This is really hard at times, but God is ensuring that I am never alone...

Well done!

A recovery is contingent upon BOTH spouses becoming aware of their own needs and their own shortcomings. Have you read up on MB about the Giver and the Taker? It's a great explanation of the struggle we all have within us in a relationship.

I am confident that by learning to meet each other's emotional needs, and eliminating LoveBusters, that you and your WW can get through this - you both need to be accountable for your actions within the marriage. Right now it seems you are feeling very responsible for the state of the marriage. That is valuable stuff, and important to recovery. However, I would caution you that she broke her marital vows by becoming involved in an extramarital affair, and she cannot blame that on the state of the marriage, though it helps to explain how she chose for that to happen.

For it to not happen again, she must take responsibility for the extraordinary pain her unfaithfulness has caused you -- problems in the marriage don't justify cheating. I don't say that to advocate bitterness toward her in your heart, or for you to hold it over her head, but it is an important prerequisite for forgiveness and moving forward I think. Hopefully that component will hapen in time in her heart, with your changed behavior.

My continued prayers are with you and your family,
MSA

MSA,

Even though I know my WW has not yet read the e-mail I sent to her, I got really angry last night thinking about it because I told her all those things, then wrote them for public consumption "on the record" and I feel very vulnerable to having it held against me. While I agree with both your sentiments, that taking responsibility for me is important and that holding her to the covenant we have in marriage is important, I am at the end of what I have to offer her for the mistakes I've made. I have been a good husband, a solid provider, a good father, and my intentions have always been pure - to love my family with all that I am. That doesn't seem to be good enough. However, I am learning that all that I am is nothing compared to all that I am becoming in Christ. All that remains to do is to continue to focus on improving that. Nevertheless, it is frustrating to hear her reject all I have done for her and ignore my efforts to improve myself and our marriage over time.

It is very hard to do this when everytime you catch a rhythm and some momentum the Army calls and says - "Hey how about another life interruption?" She wasn't cut out for the military lifestyle, she's told me so and I knew it, but we met after I was already in ROTC and I couldn't get out. Since then I have been looking forward to the end of my contractual obligation in May '07, but which effectively means I'm done when I get home since I can't be deployed again, even for this stupid border thing, for six months. We decided together earlier this year that I should resign my commission for the good of our family and our sanity. Sort of like a POJA without knowing it. This was before finding out about the A. I don't think either of us could deal with the same heartbreak a third time. After this deployment I am getting out for good. No questions asked.

I've called on family for support and an outlet to vent. Finances are becoming a wreck for WW so the pressure increases. I'm asking for help from my parents to investigate and expose to the maximum extent possible while affording me plausible deniability. Mom will seize on that in a heartbeat out of her own curiosity now that I've given her OM's name and have explained my desire to gather evidence that would enable me to gain custody. I hate to say it, but I think that I'll make a heck of a politician one day in the not too distant future... I'm still on the level and I'm trying to expose the truth, so I think I'm okay, but WW would blow a gasket to know the lengths to which I am willing to go now to do so. Only because she is still being secretive, still lying, and still playing a bunch of people off of her as long as she can. She's got another love interest now I think. He's the director of the studios that she performed for at the most recent competition. It's getting pretty scary to see how self-destructive she's becoming. The end is not far off - I fear and I hope simultaneously.

Love never fails. 1 COR 13:8
But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore, do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. MAT 6:33-34

sbmmal

It is always hard to see someone you love hit rock bottom - worse yet, NEED to hit rock bottom.

Take it as a given that she will not at all appreciate one thing you are doing now, and at any point in the future until there is no one else in your marriage but you and her. BUT!!!!! Your efforts are not being wasted, either. Try though she may, she cannot ignore them.

Your kind gestures when she deserves (and knows she deserves) only scorn are something she cannot ignore no matter how hard she tries. It shows her you are working to change, and it removes any justification she may have felt for having an A.

That puts tremendous pressure on A-world. Combine it with exposure, as you did, and you have a nice bomb on your hands. Now it's just a matter of time and patience. Keep on what you're doing, but gently not frantically.

Having your mom gather intel is great, BTW! Yes, your WW would be furious if she knew. That is because right now she thinks it is far worse for you to tell other people what she is doing (and - gasp - more awful still, to PROVE it...) than for her to actually do what she is doing. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Just don't take it all personal-like. She is not in her right mind just now, but there is every hope that her sanity will return in the future. You are giving the two of you the best chance possible for that to happen.

NSYN,

Thanks for your support - it is difficult to watch this knowing that DD is also in the mix and there is nothing I can do but pray. An important step forward for my faith.

I latched onto your statement, "Keep on what you're doing, but gently not frantically." in the context of controlling behavior. I hate the fact that I am here in Iraq, but it has helped me to realize that control of anyone or anything is an illusion based in pride. It has taken me going to Iraq to understand who I am supposed to become. We go outside here and know that at any moment we could be blown off the face of the earth - talk about not having control over things... Anyhow, I find myself over-compensating for that with gestures, projects, gifts, and e-mails - in an effort to control my situation, which is out of my control.

I need to back off and let God do the heavy lifting, to keep myself from taking things personally, to give me a chance to work on ceding more control to him, to help me concentrate on the duties and responsibilities I have to the soldiers I'm deployed with, and to give her time to miss me some, without all the craziness that goes with the controller.

I'm doing a daily bible study e-mail to her that has been a really good forum for the open exchange of ideas and spiritual intimacy, which I anticipate she desperately wants but likely isn't getting from OM. This is the consistency part I'm going to focus on - that and the weekly DVDs. I shot a 5-minute clip last night at the MWR (morale, welfare, and recreation) karaoke night. I sang her Duncan Sheik's Barely Breathing. Until now I never really knew what the lyrics to that song meant - now I get it completely and wish I didn't.

We talked today after I called her dad and her BF's husband. Both conversations allowed me to explain myself, acknowledge my need and commitment to changing for the better, and remind people that accountability is a good thing in the context of marriage and families. I had a chance to remind my WW that we were still married and that she hadn't been honest about the smaller infidelities that had led to the big one she was in now. To the concept that we were still married, she responded, "How do you know?" and I responded with "I'm not stupid, I know you have contacted a divorce lawyer." It died there, because she had already told me that she hadn't. I know I am protected because I am deployed, and that I have the ability to suspend divorce proceedings until 90 days after I return, which gives me about 6-7 months to figure out how to be the husband and father I need to be.

She told somebody in our family that she still loves me, but that she couldn't trust me anymore. I attribute that sentiment as much to the product of my controlling behavior as I do to the fact that I exposed her infidelity to many people she'd rather not disappoint. She is still paranoid from that and she asked me if I'd contacted the neighbors again. They hate her apparently, but this is my barometer of whether something is still going on with OM.

Sorry for the rant. It's good to be able to vent and keep the record of the progress being made with me and the Plan A. I believe that love never fails (1 Corinthians 13:8) and that if she still loves me, she will be able to learn to trust me again as I make the changes necessary to make our marriage better than ever. I thank God for MB and the support of everyone here. There is strength in the truth and in accountability, and both can be found here.

She does not trust you because she is untrustworthy.

You may need to remind yourself of that every day. It is not the controlling behavior, or anything else you have done, past, present, or future. A person who is betraying a sacred trust has no trust to extend to others.

Say it again.

"She does not trust me because she is untrustworthy."

The flip side of that, is that when she again becomes trustworthy, she will trust you.

NYSN,

Good point. She doesn't trust me because she is untrustworthy. Good to have another barometer of when we have moved from EA/PA to withdrawal.

Friends are continuing the pressure and my family has circled the wagons in support. I am now feeling a real uncanny peace despite the storm swirling around us. In a very strange way I am very thankful for the wake-up call and the timing of these events. It has been a catalyst to make long-overdue personal improvements and to take stock in what I have and what I love. We had both become complacent in our marriage, our faith, and our family in the months leading up to deployment and as a result we both became very independent of one another.

Fortunately, and she cannot deny this, when I arrived in Iraq and surrendered my life, we really began communicating and connecting again about our marriage, our family, and our lives. There was a profound realization that occurred when I had to contemplate writing "the letter" that would tell her I wasn't coming back. I still haven't written it, but I think that it would be a good exercise for me to complete.

Thanks for your continued assistance.

sbmmal

SBMMAL, I must ask: Have you ever physically abused your wife?

Sir, I would caution you against internalizing this statement (or any statement) made by NYSN: " [color:"red"] She doesn't trust me because she is untrustworthy. She will begin to trust me when she becomes trustworthy. [/color] "

If you have read and understood any of the info on this site, these statements are patently absurd. When your spouse stops trusting you it is probably for a good reason. People trust when it is safe for them to do so, and they trust when they are shown that they can do so. You yourself began to admit why she has negative feelings about you. Taking all of that into consideration, do these statements make one bit of sense to you?

As I read this thread, I was saddened by your situation and then happy that you began to try to see your role in it. I saw that you were willing to address the issues and willing to move forward by making changes.

What I have also observed is NYSN attempting to push you towards blaming and resenting of your wife. I see NYSN capitalizing on your self-admitted need to control your spouse-which is something that contributed to your current situation anyway.

You should consider the messenger and think about why NYSN would speak to you this way, as well as why he / she may be SO interested in what is happening with you & yours without offering ways to obtain a positive outcome. To put it bluntly: When people want to "help" you or offer "input" / "advice" beware of those who will want to see you fail because it confirms that their own failure was normal and valid. To be blvery blunt NYSN's posts seem quite negative. Please BEWARE.

A bit about me: I am former Navy. My husband is USMC active duty preparing for a 12 month deployment to Iraq. This will be his third trip to that place. And-as in the past-I will be waiting for him when he gets back.

CS,

To answer your question and respond to your feedback, allow me to say first that I am reading much more into the MB site than to the feedback I get from this thread. The purpose of this thread for me is to record my response to the affair, to have a sounding board for my own Plan A, and to find Godly counsel from people like MSA who want to see my marriage reconciled.

On the question of physical abuse, the answer is NO. I have never raised a hand to my wife in anger. I don't drink and I am not a drug user. Physical abuse is not the issue. The issue is that I have been overly independent and tried to control the uncontrollable in my life without the assistance of God in my life or my decisions. My goal now is to realign my life with God's will for it, to save my marriage, and to become the best husband and father I can be with Him in the lead. Getting out of the military and refocusing my life in accordance with these priorities is the solution to my side of the problem.

Nothing NYSN could say would push me towards blaming and resenting my wife. We were both broken in the same way, we abandoned our walks with God and struck out on our own independent paths and that sinful pride manifested itself in two different forms in us.

As for whether the statements she made about trust make sense, I will answer with the MB standard answer when a WS is still wandering through the fog: she's justifying the behavior, she's lying, she's hiding a significant portion of her life from me, she's bought her own new cell phone to talk to her boyfriend in front of my DD, she's telling my family that I've cheated on her (never ever), and that I've abandonded her financially (she's living in our house with a paid mortgage and full utilities provided with my DoD paycheck). So when I think about someone who is untrustworthy I can believe that they wouldn't have a whole lot of trust if they don't trust themselves to make the right decisions on a daily basis. I am still standing for my marriage and my family, doing what I can do and allowing God to do what he needs to do with me.

I am curious about the history of the posters that give me advice. I've done a lot of reading on posts by MSA and I trust her advice because she's seen it through to the end that I desire in my marriage and helped multiple people do the same. I don't know NSYN's history, but I do think that her advice is consistent with MB concept of a WS in the fog and that she understands the current situation with my Plan A and my objectives clearly. The bottom line she said which rings true is that when she begins to be trustworthy again she will trust me again...

Thank you for your concern and for supporting your military spouse while he deploys in support of this struggle. I'm curious what brought you to MB as I noticed that these were your first two posts? I pray that you and your husband during the upcoming year to remain close and enrich your marriage in awesome ways.

Thanks again for your note of caution and for asking the 500-pound gorilla question everyone wanted to know the answer to. It remains no and will forevermore.

I don't have the time to respond to this right now, as I need to spend time with my husband before he leaves for work.

However, here is the link to my story.

Admittedly, I am struggling a bit within my own self right now. Tomorrow will be one year of recovery, and that is definitely one of the standard rough spots.

That does not change that I am, overall, happy in my marriage, and 100% certain that we are recoverING.

All the best, sb, and of course you are always free to disregard my advice, or anyone else's, too. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I'm curious what brought you to MB as I noticed that these were your first two posts?

I have visited this site in the past, and I did not know there were forums. I began reading out of curiosity and I replied to your thread because you are military, like us.

I read your story and I could not continue reading it. I am sorry. I do not want to appear to be judgemental, but I could not fathom the lengths you went through to stay with this man.

I am hoping that he did not pass any STDs to you. The incubation for HIV can be 5 years.

Cinnamon - Thank you for your curiosity. However, you need to understand that these threads, including my own, are designed to help people reconcile broken marriages suffering the pain and betrayal of infidelity, not for mere bystanders to gawk at. I hope you will continue to observe my Plan A without the criticism you have shown to NSYN in your fourth post on MB because I intend to turn the other cheek about a thousand more times before I am ready to give up on marriage to my wife and an unbroken family. NSYN successfully recovered her wayward spouse before her situation led to divorce and destroyed an entire family and lives in the process. Her story is encouraging to someone in my position because I have seen yet another example of how humbling yourself before God and living in faith that what you were doing would save your marriage and not lead to divorce, despite all worldly circumstances screaming to the contrary, can and does work. You've never been a mile in these shoes and I don't think you even have a concept of how difficult facing these circumstances can be or the lengths you will go to save your marriage and your family and yourself. Please stop being disrespectful on my thread.

NYSN - Your threads were very encouraging and I know you speak the truth from a terrible and simultaneously wonderful experience through the wilderness. Please continue providing insights when I go off course in my Plan A. I have saved your Plan B Letter to my HDD and I will be rewording it for my own use when I return to the states for good, if my best Plan A doesn't win her back before then.

I called her and left a message of concern about DD's ear infection and a gracious message about having a great day. My battle buddy in Christ and his wife sent her a message about saving our marriage and I am shutting up on the topic in anything other than our daily e-mail devotional to allow the full extent of the exposure to really wear on her. Today's devotional topic was Understanding Sexual Differences and I used it as a forum to explain how I'd shut that need off as if training for an endurance event prior to deployment which is why I became so emotionally numb and why she noted a particular decline in sexual activity prior to me leaving. She said she thinks that I was cheating on her. I also explained that this desire was not dead in me, but that due to communications (shared phone banks) I could not openly express this to her. I mentioned the benefits of married SF over just sex, which will likely not meet the emotional need she has for affection like she needs it to. I used the e-mail as an opportunity to connect with her about how we connect when we share true intimacy in the context of heart, mind, body AND soul. I reminded her of the more adventurous times and of what I know she loves. Then I capped it off with a lovingly concerned discussion about STDs and the dangers of becoming barren that she was putting herself in by not knowing. A little dose of reality on top of a reminder of the truth of our relationship. I know that she wants another child, or at least I know she did, and that she also will remember getting from another suitor and graciously giving an STD (clamydia) to me during her bout with infidelity when we were engaged and I went to Korea. Needless to say, unless she can do this before I get home in July, I'll be wearing a raincoat for SF I intend to share with her as part of my Plan A.

It was reassuring to read your thread and I'm thankful that believing is more fruitful than seeing. You and your mom are real characters and I am very entertained by your writing and immense poise under pressure. Your story gives me the confidence to stand up knowing that I've taken on all the responsiblity I need to for the conditions that led to this mess, but that I am not responsible for her actions. I now know that I need to more aggressively take the truth into the fog and have faith in God that he will reveal it to her perfectly, without committing LBs. Hard to know what to do when this far away and unable to see what's going on clearly. Takes a lot more faith than I have, so I'll work on that. Consistency and patience are what I'm learning from reading your post. She's already quite the cake eater and I think I'll reel her in a lot more between now and the end of my leave.

sbmmal
I am working to determine her most important emotional needs and trying to figure out how best to meet them during my leave and before. Any suggestions, please let me know.

SB,

Just to let you know, you are free to question my motives at any point, and I will be glad to respond to you on the subject.

In case you don't have the time or inclination to read my story, let me bring up the most applicable portion to what you are experiencing right now. (And you were very correct that what she is doing right now is simply justifications and rationalizations.)

My husband, when he was a WH, accused me of everything under the sun he could think of: lying, having him followed, embezzling from his corporation, committing adultery, etc.

None of it was true. I was completely trustworthy in every respect. (Not to imply having him followed would have been untrustworthy; I just had no need to do so, and was telling the truth about that.) He was the one sneaking around, cheating, lying, and all the rest. And because he was behaving in that way, he was unable to even comprehend that I was not.

That is such typical WS behavior, straight out of the script, they all do it to some extent, and it stops at or shortly after the beginning of NC. It is just like magic! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I have sensed that you still have the common BS tendency to blame yourself too much for the A. I have addressed this indirectly in some of my posts, but perhaps was not clear enough for some.

Your controlling behavior, while it contributed to the state of an unhappy marriage, did not cause your wife to have an affair. Kudos to you for recognizing this as one of your personal difficulties, and taking steps to understand and correct it. Keep doing that.

All problems before the affair, no matter who started them, could be divided equally between both of you. Pre-A problems = 50/50 responsibility.

Once she chose to step outside your marriage, the affair and all its problems became 50/50 between her and the OM. None of the blame for the affair is yours. It is all the fault of the two people in the affair. You can, and should, blame her for the affair: it is half her fault. You should not blame yourself.

This realization is actually very freeing, once you internalize it. When you understand that you didn't cause the affair, and it is not directly your problem, it allows you to stop trying to control it, as if you somehow could.

You cannot control your wife, or her affair. You can only influence them, and you have been doing a superb job of that. You can also set to work to change yourself, admitting to your contributions to the poor marital state that allowed an affair to occur, and doing your utmost to correct everything possible about yourself....the one person over whom you actually have control. I see you doing that.

Just so you know, I do not want you to resent your wife. But, realistically, you will. Dr. Harley says resentment on the part of the BS is one of the biggest obstacles in recovery. I can attest to that from personal experience. However, just as with every other part of affair-busting and recovery, Dr. Harley has a very good plan for dealing with resentment, as well.

Every BS on this board who is either recovered, or recovering, has gone to great lengths to reach that point. This is a severely stretching process which no one can fully understand who has not been involved in it. It is long and hard, but has a great reward in the form of a newer, better, healthy marriage.

Take care,
Neak

And yet, oddly enough, you were able to overcome your reluctance and do it anyway...



Quite frankly, I can't fathom it either, and I'm her mother. But she did. And it certainly seems to have worked. She still has a husband, and 3 little children still have a father. And for others on this board who, unlike me (and apparently unlike you), are less ready to throw in the towel early in the face of such great provocation, and just give up, she is you_neakly able to encourage and inspire them in their efforts to keep on trying.

Her persistence has annoyed me at times, particularly when it has seemed like the object of her efforts so absolutely did not deserve what she was doing. But, in addition to the love I have always had for her, she now has my very deep, sincere admiration for achievement in the face of seemingly-insurmountable odds. For someone trying to recover and restore a marriage, there are worse examples that you could follow...than old Neak. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

Best wishes to you both.

t&l

SB, thank you. Until Mom said something, I didn't realize that I had missed your last post, as I was still typing one of my own.

I'm just running out the door to VBS, but will respond when I have a chance.

Neak - Please keep giving sbmmal your excellent advice. I think all of us here who have been with you through your story greatly admire you. You did what it took to keep your family together, and to honor your marriage vows.

C&S -Hope you will keep reading. You will see some fantastic turn arounds. Most of us (before it happened to us) thought we would throw out the infidel and divorce. And some do. But the folks here aren't willing to just give up.

sbmmal - Keep your chin up. Prayers being sent your way.

Yes, I was...I am being honest when I say that the sexual hotel motel stuff truly disgusted me.

The danger of HIV is very real-yes, sex can result in DEATH-and sometimes you need to care for yourself more than you care to cling to an ideal. The man did not care enough about you to refrain from risking your life.

One year post-yuck does not a healthy marriage make. Again, Neak probably needs to have HIV tests every six months.

Women who stay with a man (and men who stay with a woman) "no matter what" do not serve as an inspiration; they serve as cautionary tales. Healthy inspirations are those folks who work together to solidify their relationship.

I am sorry if I offended anyone here, but I am simply telling you how I feel.