I posted this in Recovery but have not gotten many responses so I thought I would try it here too.

I know I have not been around here for quite some time now, but i have a favor to ask of anyone who cares to take a shot at it.

DH is out of town, we were talking on the phone, about some of our current struggles.

I don't want to mis-quote him, but i'll do my best.

at times he would say, in response to something i said, that i am talking as if our past does not include the things in it that it includes (i.e. me cheating on him) and that essentially what i am saying is not possible because of those things.

i said something like, everyone is unique, some people cannot stay married after being told all that i confessed to him, but he was able to stay married and for that i am grateful. other people have been able to not only stay married but also re-build their marriage a huge amount. the question of what should or should not be possible does not have a "one answer fits all" type of answer. it depends on the specific people.

i told him there are instances of marriages that have fully recovered. He was interested in details.

so my request to anyone (might be best if it were other examples of BH and FWW) is to share the outline of your story and the extent of your recovery.

i don't think he is looking for a ton of details, just the basics.

i hope this request makes sense and thanks in advance to anyone who responds.

Mr and Mrs Wondering are a great recovery story if you are looking for FWW/BH side.

Hi FF!

i don't believe i know their details enough to be able to share their story with DH. Any chance you want to give me a bit of a synopsis?

Hi FinallylrningT2H –

It’s been a long time since we posted to each other! I haven’t been around much. My H and my recovery has been a long, slow, painful process, but today we are doing much better. D-day was 5 and 1/2 years ago, then I confessed 4 and/ ½ years ago that I had contacted FOM a few times during that first year, so we were back to square one in recovery, only it was even harder after the 2nd d-day.

Synopsis of my A – I began emailing an old BF after finding his name on one of those reunion sites. We began an EA and emailed or called each other for 6 months, and then I flew to where he was. I was only with him 4 days, and it was awful. We had SF on the 4th day. I regretted it immediately. Having an A went against everything I believed in, and I hated myself. I left the next day, flew home, confessed, and the nightmare continued.

I really didn’t think my M would make it. At first, my H said he was only staying with me for God and our children and grandchildren. We went to our pastor for MC as well as to a secular family counselor. I also went to IC. We have both spent a lot of time doing intensive soul searching, and praying for God to help us make individual personal changes that had to be made in order to stay M. We read HNHN, filled out questionnaires, and set aside time to be together. Sometimes we had fun; sometimes we fought.

It’s hard to separate all the years and give a definite timeline of what happened when, but a lot of the past few years have been painful and awful. We both had times when we wondered if it would have been more humane if we had just gotten divorced, because staying together seemed so much harder. I made a point to finish my BA and become trained for a job, primarily in case we ended up divorcing.

My H believes in forgiveness and he has put every effort into forgiving me, but there were times when it seemed like the flashbacks, images, and memories just about destroyed him. He has fought against anger and depression every step of the way. He threw himself into church work, which turned out to be a lifesaver for him.

There were times when I felt like our R was finally improving, that we had cleared a hurdle, but he rarely agreed. There were times when I felt punished by his anger, and I wanted to be angry too, but I realized that his healing would take however long it takes. Whenever I would ask God if He wanted us to stay together, I felt like I got a very clear “YES” answer, so I decided if God wants us together, He will help us heal.

We had always been a very sexual couple, and the first year after d-day, SF was intense. Starting with the second year, though, my H began to lose interest in me. The images in his head disturbed him too much. We have SF less and it is often very mechanical, and that’s disappointing, but we talked about it recently and it has been better sometimes.

All said, we treat each other better now. We’re more polite and care more about each other’s feelings. We are in bad moods less often. When my H is in a bad mood, it no longer devastates me or makes me feel punished. I give him space if he needs it, or attention if he’ll let me. He seems less depressed, although he says he still thinks about my A every day. It really has been a long road, but our daily lives are going much smoother now.

Before we got M, we went to a craft show and bought a decorative wooden plaque that has our first names engraved in it. It hung on the front of our house for years, but after my A, my H took it down. Yesterday I noticed that he has put it back up. It’s on the back of the house, but it’s up nonetheless!

We’ve been M 32 years. Earlier today I was remembering that at about 20 years, people would say to me, “Oh, you’re lucky,” and it would bug me. I would say, “I don’t feel lucky. Luck has nothing to do with staying M. It’s hard work!” But after living with my H the 3rd decade, and after all we’ve been through, and seeing him work so hard at staying M, and showing forgiveness and grace to me, and knowing how hard it has been for him, I really do feel lucky now. “Blessed” might be a better word.

There really is no way to explain or describe recovery in, say, 25 words or less. LOL. It’s an ongoing process. Both people have to want to stay married VERY BADLY. If I were to give any advice to anyone about staying M after an A, I would say:

#1. Surrender yourself to God – body, mind, and soul.

#2. Pray for God to show you what changes you need to make in yourself, and pray for help to make those changes.

God bless you and your H, FLT2H.

Rose

Hey FLT2H - I bumped up Acey's Success Stories thread... our "story" is in there...

Semper Fi,

RIF

FLT2H - are you, or your husband, looking for stories that INCLUDE or EXCLUDE God as a party to the marriage and the recovery?

RIF - thank you very much. Yesterday I also found the success page but the links do not work anymore. to me it looks like all links created prior to the new version are broken.

Hi FH, perhaps you recall a previous post to you regarding my DH struggles with church? In any case, we do believe in God. DH says his faith is just as strong, this has not changed anything.

That said, i think he is specifically interested in real life stories of real life couples who's marriages have survived infidelity and have a strong/intimate marriage now. I don't think he would care if the couple survived by looking to God for help or not. I guess he is looking for evidence that it is possible. Or maybe he is trying to convince me it is not, that my expectations of what are relationship could be like now is unrealistic given the past.

Does that answer your question?

(Rose - i'll be responding to you next, the above was a copy from the post I have in Recovery forum which is a duplicate of this one)

Hi Rose,

As always so very nice to hear from you. Thank you so much for responding here. Are you ok with how your marriage is now? do you struggle at all with desires for a closer relationship? do you feel connected to him? do you feel close? did you have the type of relationship with him that you always wanted? or did you have to change the vision of what you've wanted to match reality? wow, that was a lot of questions huh??

maybe the problem is just with me. i honestly don't know...

so what is my problem anyway, you ask? (ok, you didn't ask but lets assume you did)

1) lack of PLEASANT conversations. It seems as though about 75% of the time, our conversation includes a tone in his voice that says to me that I am annoying him. Notice I did not say he is annoyed, because i know I really can't make that judgement, and yet that is exactly the judgement my feelings are making.

2) lack of quality time together which consists of lack of conversation in general and lack of companionship- we don't just sit and talk to each other about our days very often. a normal day involves working, coming home and eating as a family, doing dishes and then the rest of the evening is not very interactive. normally the tv is on. i've taken up the habit of doing more and more sudoku puzzles to pass the time. with the weather getting nicer i'm trying to get out more with the dog or on my bike if there is any daylight left. i won't say we don't do anything fun together, just he and I, but I wish for more on a regular basis and not just to make me happy but because he enjoys being and doing things with me too.

(our sex life is kinda messed up right now too. and that really makes me sad, i know it's my own fault,everything i did really messed up everything, i never viewed sex as the beautiful gift it was meant to be. now i do and i so badly want to be able to give him that gift now but it's not a beautiful gift anymore. certainly not in his eyes, i'm making a judgement again, he has never said that but to me it seems very obvious. i am not a gift in his life and no matter how badly i want to be, i never will be)

RIF - in re-reading what i wrote to Rose specifically the last paragraph, i was wondering, what thoughts you might of had while reading it.... i mean, since Mrs RIF was with so many others, as I was... well, what did it do to you? and your view of the specialness of sex?

question does not need to be only for RIF, if other BH's care to share (and i guess hopefully recovered BHs, because that is what i am trying to understand, what is possible in the recovered marraige)

thanks.

Here's a decent summary of my story. It's at the bottom of the page.

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1984340&fpart=12

We are in R, and we are still on the "roller coaster". The highs and lows are slowly growing less extreme and less frequent.

hi Krazy, thanks for the link. when i went to it though i found myself in a middle of a 13 page thread where a few posters are (for the lack of a better word) bickering with each other.

and then i went to page one and read the note to your wife and i went to the last page too.

all i can say is I am so very sorry for the pain you are in.

thanks for sharing.

Hi again FLT2H

Good questions. What scares me is that I understand them! LOL.

“Are you ok with how your marriage is now?”

I know what I’ve described doesn’t sound like a situation to be satisfied with. The thing is, H and I are both willing to keep working on all areas of our M, but NOT SET A TIME LIMIT. We’re committed not to get D. There might be statistics out there that the average couple would or should be recovered in a certain amount of time, but we want to stay M even if our timeline doesn’t match up to the statistics.

Six years is a long time to be in recovery, but working on a M is forever, really. My H has mentioned that part of his problem is that he thinks he has to be in control of everyone around him all the time (probably born out of a deep sense of responsibility), and he is learning that he just can’t control other people’s actions. It hasn’t only been his disappointment in me, but with our grown children as well. They have made decisions that seemed disastrous to us, which just worsened his discomfort about not being able to control everyone. A lot of things in our lives have piled disappointment on top of disappointment, but he is finally beginning to relax and relinquish that feeling of needing to be in control all the time.

The first few years after d-day, we were very anxious to have everything “better than before,” hoping it was true that we could be deliriously happy someday. At 52, I’ve changed my definition of “happy.” I don’t have to be delirious all the time; I’m “happy” being “content.” A part of that contentment comes from my H and I still having terrific Rs with our children and grandchildren. When we are sitting on the patio, enjoying their company, it is the most satisfying feeling in the world, AND it has brought H and I closer. I’m not sure we could have the same Rs with them that we do if we didn’t understand what it’s like to make mistakes, need forgiveness, and be forgiven.

“do you struggle at all with desires for a closer relationship?”

Yes. Desire for a closer R probably exists in most Ms, and is something partners need to work on with or without an A occurring. That’s where the Harley’s books come in handy – to teach us what to do to get closer, such as, filling each other’s needs, spending time together, etc.

“do you feel connected to him? do you feel close?”

Up until about 6 months ago, my H kept saying that he didn’t feel close to me, and even that he didn’t feel M to me. I finally pointed out that he IS M to me, whether either one of us feels like it or not. It comes down to love being a verb, an action word, something you DO even when it’s not something you FEEL.

However, we both agreed from the very beginning of recovery that if we were going to be committed to staying M, we might as well keep working on having a better R, rather than staying M and being unbearably miserable. We just had no idea of how long it could take. Sometimes I feel close to him, but I do long to be closer still.

I’ve also discovered that I don’t have to be having sex all the time like newlyweds in order to feel close to my H. This is hard for some (a lot) of people to be patient about, but sex is not the only part of an M, although it is a very important part. Our pastor pointed out to us during the first year after d-day that some Ms have to change their sex life because of other factors such as illness, accidents, etc, but they stay M and find ways to work around their problems. They can also enjoy the other aspects of being M. H and I are both in our 50s, and our bodies are changing. Just like any couple who grows old together, we have to be reasonable and learn to adjust to those changes, too.

“did you have the type of relationship with him that you always wanted? or did you have to change the vision of what you've wanted to match reality?”

I think changing the vision of what one wants to match reality is a part of being M for a long time and maturing over the years. It seems like a lot of people get M in order to have their own needs met, without necessarily thinking about what their responsibility is to meet their partner’s needs - the ones that we can, anyway. We can’t meet all of someone’s needs all of the time. So if people get M with unreasonable expectations and want to stay M, it only follows that they will have to change their expectations.

One of the most important things I’ve learned through the recovery process and all of the self-introspection is that in an M, a person has to consider their S’s feelings to be as important as their own feelings, if not MORE important. This is ESPESIALLY true for a WW or WH. I don’t mean for the M to be set up so that only one person is giving and the other is taking all the time, or that one person is always in a power position over the other. If both S’s consider the other’s feelings FIRST, a lot of problems could be avoided. (POJA)

“so what is my problem anyway, you ask? (ok, you didn't ask but lets assume you did)

lack of PLEASANT conversations. It seems as though about 75% of the time, our conversation includes a tone in his voice that says to me that I am annoying him. Notice I did not say he is annoyed, because i know I really can't make that judgement, and yet that is exactly the judgement my feelings are making.”


I know that tone very well, although I agree that at least some of the time it is a judgment we are making about our H’s tone, which may not always be caused by us, or our As. Sometimes things can be bothering them from work, or they have a stomachache, or whatever. However, sometimes we are right. When I suspect that my H is feeling annoyed by me, I ask him. It can be a sticky situation, and you have to know your H’s moods. If asking H if he is annoyed with me makes him even more annoyed (LOL), I give him space. Usually we are able to talk things through at a later time when he is feeling better.

Also, I’ve discovered that our need for conversation is something that other family members and friends can fill until our H’s feel like talking. I know you know I don’t mean inappropriate Rs with male family members or friends. Find women who share the same interests. I think also there might be some needs our S’s may never be able to fill, and we have to accept that fact IF we are determined to stay M. Some people just don’t like to talk. Whatchayagonnado? There’s no reason our S’s can’t at least be willing to try, though. Both people have to be making an effort to connect.

“lack of quality time together which consists of lack of conversation in general and lack of companionship- we don't just sit and talk to each other”

Spending time together is something the Harleys make clear that we have to make a point of doing. It’s hard if one S isn’t willing, or if time together ends up being stressful instead of filling the need for companionship. Maybe unplug the TV? It’s good you’ve been entertaining yourself, but have you thought of joining your H doing something he enjoys, even if it’s not your favorite thing to do? He might be more willing to go, and appreciate it more, if it’s something that means a lot to him. You might have already tried that, though.

Well, I guess that’s plenty to write for now.

Rose

Rose,

what an awesome post. thank you so very much. it helped more then words can convey.

Rose,

I just had the urge to say once again, you ROCK!!

DH is coming home tonight. It will be very nice to see him and I intend to make sure he knows it.

FLT2H_

I'm delighted if what I wrote helped! I'm rooting for you, and I hope you have a good time with your DH!

God bless,
Rose

Rose,

If you are still out there... What do you do for yourself when remorse is heavy on your heart? How do you learn to accept God's forgiveness and grace? How do you learn to forgive yourself?

i know it is counter-productive and a sin to waste energy with this struggle to forgive, my head really gets that, but still it gets to me. i can break out in tears in a moments notice. i think about determination but all i feel is failure.

i was listening to an audio book, "Love & Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs", really good stuff. but in between the mental notes i was taking, sadness about how badly i've failed DH, especially regarding respect, kept coming over me. i reached the parking lot right as the first CD was ending and i broke into tears. how can future respect ever make up for all the disrepect of the past?

Hi Rose !

I wanted to thank you for investing your experience on us on FLs thread.

Very helpful, thanks SO much.

All blessings

Bob

[/threadjack]

Hi Bob –

You’re welcome! You and I haven’t posted to each other much, maybe once or twice, but I have read a lot of your posts. I hate it that you have so much pain, and I pray for you and your wife. I hope things start getting better in your M again soon.

God bless,
Rose

Hi Rose, you are still out there

did you see my post too?

Hi FLT2H -

I'm still around. It will take me a little while to answer your questions, but I will work on a post and get back to you as soon as I can!

God bless,

Rose