Everyone has them.

Everyone struggles with something.

You're lying if you say you don't.

Well, I think you are.

I read a book called If the Buddha Dated by Charlotte Kasl and found the most interesting sentence in the entire book to be:

Everyone is in the closet about something.

So, I wanted to post a place for discussion and a link that I think relates to both wayward and betrayed spouses.

As a betrayed wife, I had my secret life - my fantasies - about my wayward husband and my (mostly unpleasant) fantasies for him....even (for a while) my fantasies about reclaiming and rebuilding our marriage.

"In My Secret Life" by Leonard Cohen

It's amazing how much destruction some of our played-out fantasies can cause.

Now, I open the discussion.

I had a friend once. She was the mother of my daughter's then-best friend, in second grade. She died of a very aggressive breast cancer.

Shortly after she learned that her bone marrow transplant had not saved her life, and that her cancer had spread to her brain, she said something to me which I never forgot.

"Everyone has the same demons. They may look different, but it is really the same. Everyone has to face their demons. I have faced mine and I am at peace."

She remained cheerful until her death. Shortly before -- a day or so-- her death I visited her, in her trailer-park home, loaded up with meds and drifting in and out of consciousness. She told me then that she saw Jesus in the room. I did not doubt it-- her manner was more real than any I have ever seen before or since.

Vicki taught me a lot. But the most memorable lesson was that everyone has to face the same demons, eventually. (Vicki's demons were drug addiction.)

Wow, this is a good one. I think my inner demon is that I somehow think I deserved to be mistreated and cheated on by my WH. That some little part of me feels that I'm not really worthy of being treated with total kindness and compassion. I have sometimes felt that I'm not a truly "good" person, therefore deserved not to be treated "good". It's an ongoing process to figure out why. I am, however, doing so much better with those feelings since I found MB. I also realize that through Christ, I am forgiven for any bad that I've done. It's a process that I have to be fully engaged in daily to overcome.

I truly believe that almost everyone struggles with issues. However, most people are not willing to expose that part of their life.

And, because we are not willing to show our true humanity - because we often want others to think we 'have it all together' - we miss out on the help others could give us and the help that we could give to those who also struggle.

For sure, we all have demons. That's the hardest thing I've found out about R.

Okay Cinderella, you sound far more educated in this topic than I, is struggling with control a demon or a symptom of a demon?
I read this thread earlier and wanted to think about my demons, between then and now I had an argument with DS17, and realized that I have an issue with control.
Is this what you mean about demons???

I liked the idea of this, but was again struggling to work out whether I had identified demons or symptoms of demons. If it's the symptom I've identified then I can't figure out where the demon lies.

I was primarily talking about the secret things we all struggle with. They vary from person to person. But, we all struggle and we don't like talking about those struggles.

So often we don't share our struggles so we don't get the help/support others would gladly give us and we can't give others the help/support that we could offer.

Those secret, dark parts of our psyche that we don't reveal. The ones we think others will cause others to look down on us.

If I think of demons like fears, I might be thinking along the same line as VST.
Not that I deserve to be treated badly, but that I will never be important enough to be treated really well. The A certainly didn't help with that but R is helping.


Is this more of a demon? I guess I'm thick to this kind of stuff, but I do find it interesting.

I went through some self awareness, tough is an understatement, about why I had been so angry for so many years. I couldn't let go of the anger until I realized that it was resentment ( if this is a demon I can expand on this ), and how that effected my bad actions toward H. This was a huge struggle for me but well worth it in the end.

Ok

I think I have 2

1 That what ever I do and no matter how hard I work at it, I will never be good enough

2 I'm not sure how to explain - actually maybe I might leave that as an inner demon for now

Stay, I think we share that first one.

I know there are parts of me that I just almost refuse to discuss because they are so painful. Mostly, they have to do with feeling like I don't measure up or they deal with lack of self-forgiveness.

Here's mine.

Emotionally, I am absolutely convinced that God must hate me. Otherwise he'd have protected me from Chewie's As.

One question I was told to ask myself when these thoughts come up is,

"Is that the voice of the Shepherd or the Butcher?"

But it is still a tough, tough one.

And it's cousin is the one you have mentioned-- I'm not good enough, defective, worthless.

Ugh, I have been thinking about this thread for a couple of days.

Mine are:

My life is not meant to be happy for long periods
I don't 'see' what everyone else does which makes me not understand what everyone else understands
I have a propensity to self destruct when things are ok
I am not well liked/ people are pretending
I am emotionally immature


Scratch that, I am just plain immature

I also have a bunch of stuff I won't tell, because they all relate to the self esteem, self destruct issue. :crosseyedcrazy:

I've never thought of this as a demon lil. I'm with you on this one.

Did you know there are a bunch of people who, I bet, have read here and aren't brave enough to admit they have an Achille's heel?

:crosseyedcrazy:

Lil, I often don't see things the way others do. I don't live in a black & white world. I live in a rainbow world. Drives me nuts sometimes when I can't get other people to see that their way is not the only way.



:twobyfour:

Its a demon for me because it makes me second guess myself ALL THE TIME. I endlessly wonder what I am missing that seems to be blatently obvious to everyone else.

In a sad little way I am happy (?) that others have a similar problem. to you

Actually.. the list could be endless...

I'll also go with the:
I am not well liked/people are pretending
and the self destruct thing when things are going well

Lil - I love you, I'm not pretending (gushy for a Brit aren't I?)

I'm finding lots of demons now. When I'm upset, I feel not well liked either. Otherwise I don't think about it.
I don't really understand the self destruct thing. ???? Or is that what I just wrote above???
I've never thought about it.

I think all you gals are great, and I can't pretend about that either, cuz I don't like two-faced peeple.


I think my world is much black and white with rainbows some of the time, but this board is slowly adding more colours, if that makes sense.
Some things I only see my way, all depends what it is.

I love you too ST.
Yes your right about it being gushy... not very stiff upper lip what?

I, on the other hand am a big ball of soppy lovey-dovey ness

And I actually like quite a few MBers, but shoosh, don't let it get out