SW,
While I do agree that you are justifying etc. I have to express my sorrow with what you are going through all at once.

My father was horribly physically abusive to his children. We have all suffered enormously in our lives and none of us has ever been able recall a lot of our childhoods. He died when I was 19. My mother was P/A, she drank way too much and lived with a huge chip on her shoulder. She spent my childhood calling me names, telling me she hated me etc. In all my life and that of my brothers none of us can remember a hug, kiss or an I love you from either of them. Not one. As an adult my mother would show up at my house on my birthday, open my door, throw something in and tell me that that was my "dammed, bitc*ing birthday present" and leave without another word. She only treated her own mother and me this way. Still, when my mother had cancer I spent 4 years of my life taking care of her, keeping her in her home when she was incapable of living alone, rushing to her house in the middle of the night when she would yank out her trache and not be able to breathe. I did all of this when my children were small and I was running back and forth between my home and my farm taking care of my animals and land, the kids school and all of that and their tennis, karate and music lessons. I thought I would die. She told me "I will see you dead before I die" all during the time I was killing myself taking care of her. I understand.

Here is the thing. I took it, I let it go and I did all of that because I knew in my heart that if I did not I would never be able to live with myself. Could that be the source of some of your problem here? With my mother guilt was a powerful motivator. I feel terribly sorry for you going through all of this with a mother who was not a very good mother. BUT like me you grew up and became successful, in spite of or because of, who knows? You did it and whether you feel badly about her illness or care one way or the other when you think of her in the terms of how she treats you do you think you can live with yourself this way? If you can that is fine and understandable. I am just trying to help a little. Why should you care? You don't have to. Why should you help her or call her? You don't need to. I just think that she is the way she is because she learned it and that is just so sad. We all have our things, hers was terrible as a mother. She was probably not very happy with herself or comfortable. She is human and we all have that feeling of taking care of each other. Think about your future and how you will feel if you never extended some kindness to her at this time.

You just do not need all these bad feelings at once. Your mother is separate right now from anything else. It would benefit you and your beginning to heal your H greatly to relieve yourself of your feelings about all of this in whatever way you need to.

As I said, if you feel fine about cutting her out there are very few people who could blame you. Just think of yourself at this point. She apparently never did so you have to. What will you be able to live with?

Get this done somehow and then move on. You have a lot of work to do. It is hard to feel good enough to be humble to another person you feel treated you badly when you are whole, unstressed and mentally healthy. Remember, you are the one in your R that needs to do the work right now. You are the one who made the horrible choice that you did and caused all the pain now. You owe it you everyone to settle as much as you can in your life and get moving with this. JMHO

SW, I have a CD set that I find helpful in understanding family dynamic. It is called "Transcending Anger" by Father Tom Allender. I learned a lot about myself and my family dynamic by listening to it. You should be able to find a copy on line. He also wrote a book called "God loves an unmade bed" but I haven't had time to read that one.

tj/

DWG--

You are a better woman than I am, far better. My mother was not present in my life at all, aside from trying to push me off on others. A WAM (walk-away mother) if you will.

If I had the chance you did, that she needed my help during cancer....well, let's just say I would walk away myself.

How you got past that resentment and anger, I do not know. I wish I could.

/tj

suamico

I had not heard of that one, I may have to look into that even though my mother is long gone, issues still remain. I used a book called "The Dance of Anger" to help. It is written by an acquaintance of mine who wrote several other books. It might be another good resource.

I think it is an awesome tool for understanding oneself. He also has a few more CD sets I want to get. They are Family Spirituality, Moving from fear to faith, and Processing Our Guilt. He also has some new ones. Here is the website www.lifesjourney.org. You can get them from the website or buy a used one some place else. Now I need to go and listen to the CD's again. I do that every once in a while. I learn something different every time.

Continuing education for Marriages and Personal Growth. Why is it we have to wait until we are in these positions to find out that we can always learn more? I always wondered when I was going to really grow up and then I realized, I always thought a grown up was someone who knew everything already. What a mistake it was to grow up thinking it was only when you quit learning you could be considered a grown up. Thankfully I never did stop learning hence the feeling that I was never going to grow up.

Hardly. It was for me. I could not live with the guilt I would feel leaving her to die alone. Probably the fact that I was a nurse also had something to do with it but mostly it was so that I could live with myself the rest of my life and not beat myself up feeling guilty. She did make certain we had lessons, clothing etc. it was not total abandonment no matter how much we often wished it was.

LOL, they used to take us to the local orphanage (this was in the mid 50's when there was such a thing here) and tell us that was where we were going if we did not behave. It was pretty brutal. I understand where they came from, it is hard to forgive it never-the-less it factored into their behavior.

I can live with about anything but guilt, probably my biggest boundary that kept me faithful. I can't deal with knowing I could have done better or done something right and made the wrong choice. I am no better than anyone, it is just a matter of what I could live with for the remainder of my time here.

I can live with what happened to me with GM. If I was him I think I would not be alive right now to tell the tale. It would kill me to live with that kind of guilt.

The thing is...I wonder if my lack of guilt is what keeps fueling this resentment.

I can safely say that I could walk away from her pleads for help without an ounce of guilt showing. It would bring me a great deal of pleasure, in fact.

That is why I say you are better than me. You did what I never can.

When things are bad enough it supercedes guilt I would imagine. I would bet that my situation, as bad as it was, was not as bad as yours nor did it affect me as badly. We are all different with different tolerances. Your mother dug her own grave here, she treated you badly enough that she lost you. Her loss. Yours too but not a loss of her in particular.

Are there any books that you can recommend to help with this?

Thank you for taking the time to reply to me about this. It helps to know that someone knows what I'm going through.

I realize this isn't MB help, but... I trust you all for just about anything.

Sorry for the big old thread jack but I think all of this may very well apply to the situation at least in some way.

The Dance of Anger by Harriet Goldhor Lerner helped me.

http://www.amazon.com/Dance-Anger-C...mp;s=books&qid=1280175994&sr=8-1

She has several books that follow this one. As I said before, she is an acquaintance of mine. She is a very nice woman, our children have the same names and are each about a year apart in age and we had mutual friends. I have not read this book for a long time, it might not really be good but I do remember when I read it it was helpful in my relationship with my mother. You might look at her other books. She was at the Menninger Foundation before we lost it to Houston.

I'm going to go an even DIFFERENT route.....

SW...

My DD16 was molested when she was 9. He was a step-father to a friend of hers. He got to my daughter ONCE. He had been raping and sodemizing his step-daughter for over a year. The night he molested my daughter, he did so to both girls, at the same time.

My DD could not live with what he had done. And when he attempted to do so again, she came forward to me. We promptly called the police (which took a HUGE amount of strain......killing the man was what my H wanted to do...I took those easy options out of his control...aka..hid the guns....). He was arrested.

There was an investigation. Many interviews for my DD and her friend. The sick [censored] didn't take the plea bargin, and instead wanted a trial. After all, nobody "understood" his side. Many experts will tell you that when a perp. does this it is to put his victims through another he77 of having to re-tell their story to a bunch of strangers with them there. Another sick twisted deed of the perps.

We got the last victory though....he was found guilty on all charges and will spend the next 96 yrs in prison......he is not eligible for parole until he serves 55% of that (I'm pretty sure that was the total...its been a few years so that is a bit cloudy to me.....).

My point is, he is NOW in prison. He has been there for the last 7 yrs. He has not molested another child since then....for he has not had an oppertunity to do so. So the fact that he HASN'T molested another child, does that make him no longer vile or evil?

I would say no.....

My daughter would say no....

What would change that??? His WILLINGNESS to get help, to OWN his choice. To take responsiblity for his actions and to release any justification for what he has done...(I don't "buy" the "I-was-molested" BS.....never have never will....). To make AMENDS beyond what the courts have required.

You say your affair was not evil.....only a "mistake". That is just another perp for twisting the knife deeper into the victim. And every day that you hold onto those justifications, those excuses, is another day you allow EVIL to become YOU.

Just because you ended the affair, does not make you a changed woman. It does not release you from your evil deeds. No more so than going to prison and not molesting another child makes the monster who dared touched my daughter less evil......

It will take much more than that....

And each and every day you keep score....you feed your resentment, your justifications......you do the same.

You don't want to be called evil....

Then change the mechnaism that allowed evil to proliferate.....

Not2fun

ps....before you go and get yourself tied up in another tizzy....I will tell you...I point blank compared my H to that monster. I flat out told HIM his actions were no better than that monster and that what he had done caused me MORE pain and agony than that whole horrid episode. I didn't spare my H's "feelings"

Posting on this forum feels like the emotional equivalent of voluntarily sticking hot needle in my eyes, but if nothing else I am giving an on the ground perspective on a WW from the moment the A ended, and maybe that will help someone, maybe even us.

I think this thread is some evidence of a mental state approaching psychosis which is probably about right for where some WW's are. Or at least this one.

I also have realized that I am not being wholly present with my H, who is, at least currently, not nearly as hard on me as you all are because I am bringing some of the defensiveness I feel here into our R when I don't think it is really appropriate for where he is. Just something I need to keep in mind.

First, I am not evil. I have ended it. I have told my H everything he has wanted to know which to date is not much. If he were to ask me details today, I would tell him that I'm not ready, that I will lie, and that won't help anything in the end. Because I am not ready, and I would lie, and I must be honest. But he hasn't asked. I am working on loving him and making him feel safe. For where we are, physically and emotionally, I am doing all I can.

His grip is loosening a bit in that he seems more comfortable with me being out of eyesight and he and S15 are going to play golf tomorrow (just found out) so I'm hoping I can squeeze into Steve's schedule while they are gone. If not, well, I don't know if not. I just an hour ago heard about this window.

I talked to my pdoc this morning about my mom and H and he said "you need to talk to your H about your mother" and worked through a script with me. I sent H a text message asking if we could go for a beer, and did a core dump on him, sobbing and shaking. The four days I have been withdrawn from him over my mom were REALLY hard on him -- he always thinks I am trying to decide whether to stay married to him -- he knows how mixed up he and my mom get in my head. He was kind and listened and didn't argue with me and by the end of the conversation I wanted to curl up in his lap but instead I flirted with him.

Progress.

Then I called my mother in his presence because I wanted his moral support and did exactly what my pdoc said to do -- said what she wanted to hear. She's 80, I'm doing my passive/aggressive thing via text message, let the poor woman up.

I looked at my H and said "how did I do?" and he said "you are such a good liar."

Hmmm.

Well, he's right, I lie all the time to everyone about everything -- and I'm not talking about the A -- it's a pattern of covering up, sweeping things under the rug, etc.

I read the "hugs" while I was standing in the kitchen and sat down on the floor with my head in my arms sobbing. Thank you.

I've read Dance of Anger 3 times -- and am due for a 4th. Dance of Intimacy is also great, although I had to put that down in favor of SAA. I am reading now for the 3rd time "Will I Ever Be Good Enough" by Karyl McBride -- about daughters of narcissistic mothers. Required reading if you think you might be one -- but be prepared to take it slowly as the pain will engulf you.

And if you need something light to laugh with your spouse about, get "Sh** MY Dad Says" and read it aloud. H & I laughed until we were crying. Perfect for a couple who is in that awkward stage of post DD, pre everything else.

On a baseline level it is simple -- don't have an affair, ever, no matter what. Everything above that feels complicated.

And one more thing -- the irrational venom, vitriol and defensiveness I drop in this forum is venom, vitriol and defensiveness my H doesn't have to endure. Thank you for providing me a forum in which to vent without hurting him further. The web designers should give the posters the ability to tag their posts "insanity alert" or something. It's not like I'm not aware when I'm going off the tracks. But letting it out here is better than the alternative.

not2fun -- I can't imagine.... bless you and her. I don't pray anymore much -- a lifelong Episcopalian, I left the church I loved with all my heart in 2007. But notwithstanding there are people I pray for daily and I will pray for you both.

So stop lying. Okay, so it's a defense mechanism. Great...you know you have this issue, so deal with it head on.

I'm wondering a couple things.
1. Why don't you want to do the marriage builders program which is successful? You keep wanting to do things your way...which has not worked in the past.

2. Do you think rather than giving you space your husband is starting to give up?

Remind me again. What are his emotional needs? What are yours? How much time have y'all spent alone this past 7 days? What love busters did y'all us to commit towards each other that you are not doing now?

OK. You're scared. OK, you are passive-aggressive. OK, you are the product of your childhood, controlled and molded by a mother with massive problems of her own. OK, it seems that she and your BH may have been in cahoots to ruin your life. Surely, all of these things have some logic and factual basis behind them. I doubt there are many here who do not feel bad for the pain you are experiencing. But here is the shocker. At least it was for me. It is a simple truth. Once you are an adult, you have the ability to make choices. You have choices, and you own the choices you make. You have free will. You are not a leaf in the wind, tumbling at the mercy of the forces around you. You are not predetermined to make evil choices. You have the ability to discern right from wrong. You made a terrible choice, and you didn't really HAVE to make it. You chose it, because it was the easy way out. You know this, and it makes you feel like a coward. I know those feelings, because I was a coward and made choices that I knew were wrong but made them because I thought I could justify them, and because they were easier than taking on the seemingly impossible job of confronting and tackling my own demons, and because I could blame other people, which unburdened me from much of the guilt. Still, I made them. You made them. We both own them, and there is no longer any easy way out.

Do you believe in free will, or are you merely the helpless product of the forces that shaped you? If you truly believe in your humanity, your intelligence, your will, your accomplishments professionally (you own those, right?), then there is no escape from the truth that you chose evil. It is an age old tale. It is the plot line to half the books in the world and most of the stories in the most famous of all books. If you don't want to end up a lonely, bitter old woman filled with regret, there is only one road to a different future. It is a long and hard road, but it starts with totally owning what you did, with taking full responsibility for it, with driving out any thought that you did what you did because of the all the terrible forces that backed you into a corner. You have to abandon the psychobabble, the explanations for your actions that an old fashioned psychotherapist would smugly discern to explain your pathology, stemming from your awful mother, etc. You just have to throw that out the window. It is the one and only door that you can walk through and find the path to eventual happiness and peace, whether you remain married to your BH or not.

Lurker alert! I kind of caught on to the tail-end of this situation and for a while I thought that people were being a bit tough on you but I was keeping an open mind.
But the quote above made me realise that they are right. You are not even remotely there yet. You are absolutely a WW, not a FWS! Sorry but who cares that you are not ready?!? You still have no idea of what you have done. Be careful that your BH is not disconnecting himself from you. Not sure how long this situation has been going on for him but there is only so much a person can take.

Having lived it, I do not believe recovery of an M can occur until there is openness and honesty. If a WS cannot be open and honest, he/she is still wayward in thinking, if not deed. I "took" close to 3 years of trickle truth, outright lying and lying by omission (duration of the A plus 21 months after D-day) and it was extremely damaging to me and to our M. It was perhaps the most damaging aspect of the A, even more than the crazy, obsessive portion of the active A.

AM

Saddest, we all realize that you've had a tough childhood and some unfortunate circumstances during adulthood...like A LOT of us on this forum. However, you choose whether that defines you as a person or not and if you blame your actions and reactions in the present based on what has transpired in the past. When we get this far into a marriage and an affair happens, there is some serious mess ups being committed by both parties in the marriage.

Imagine if your husband had an affair or multiple affairs. You can even throw in some wild details with a touch of illicit activities. However, you'd only be able to imagine the worst because you wouldn�t be able to get the truth. I mean, seriously, can you imagine the huge slap in the face it would feel to you if you asked your husband details like �who was it�, �who many people was it with�, �why�, �how long did the affair/affairs go on� etc etc etc. And he said to you, �you know, I�m just not ready to talk about it. Sorry.� Would you really just accept that and it�d be okay? And then you�re left to sit and stew in all the pain and betrayal without any answers or just limited answers here and there which just fuels the uncertainty of what happened.

I know, I know. You have trust issues that you need to work through first. And while you�re doing this, you�re creating a huge amount of trust issues for your husband now. I can say with absolute certainty that if my spouse physically strayed, I�d be gone. But to expect to stick around without having the answers I wanted laid out to me�that�d be like spitting in my face after having an affair on me.

It�s quite clear that you don�t want to buy into the marriage builders program. You want to use this forum to engage in a gripe session to help get things off your chest. You want to throw out little bits and pieces of stuff to show that you�re making progress and want a pat on the back. However, you want to continue to be deceptive and lie despite saying you don�t want this �defense mechanism�. Why don�t you just wake up this morning and say, �you know, I�m going to stop the lying. I�m going to start being an honest person. I�m going to stop blaming the past and letting it control who I am today.� Yes, it can be that easy.

I don�t expect a reply. I just thought I�d throw some things out there. What I have found is that those folks on here that keep spinning their wheels and not taking in the marriage builders program find less and less people reaching out to help them. You get less and less replies. And the one that started the thread either ends up posting in the divorced section or stops posting completely because they have isolated themselves.

I will put in my 0.02. (worth every penny)
SW; you are too close and defensive to get perspective right now. You can not see the elephant in the fridge, because of all the grey paint in there. ( I know a take on a sad old joke, but I like the analogy.)

You should continue reading Dr. H's books, but what you really need is a perspective on fog speak.

GM.. that guy.. foggiest first time poster I have ever read. If you can go and read his origional postings/thought process you will learn quickly what fog is.

I am not saying you are GM, or that your situations are the same, but once you have been around awhile you develop a "fog screen" that you can see a mile away. no pun intended, GM.

T/J
<I almost can't beleive you are the same man, reading your posts now and comparing them to before. wow>

SW;
You are going to have to read and learn what fog speak is.
You are an attorney, I am sure that in your line of work you identify similar patterns of thinking in people you counsel. Maybe not about A's, but they are there I am sure.

Returning posters on this thread are identifying the fogspeak in your communications. It. drives. them. nuts.
If so may vets can easily spot this, there HAS to be truth in their words.

If you are only going to argue, nothing here is going to fix your M. You need perspective.

More hot needles..... best thing for lancing the abscess. I know I am a WW -- it's been 18 days since I ended it. I know I don't have perspective -- just occasional moments of lucidity.

Am coaching with Steve tomorrow afternoon. Don't know how I am going to pull that off, but I'll figure out a way.

You should have seen me over analyzing the personality inventory.... then I decided to go with my gut and send it without reading over it again. Although I did want to put a footnote about agreeing that its OK for criminals to be released on a loophole -- those "loopholes" keep us all safe from things like unreasonable searches and evidence tampering. I'm a believer in the system.... OK, I'm over noodling, again.

So, here is what I am going to talk to him about:

1. Note taking policy.

2. H hasn't brought up the A except to say he wants me to guide us through this. He hasn't asked any details. I don't think at this point that I would be radically honest. I'm being radically honest here --I don't have my head around it yet and am afraid that in the moment, I would panic and fudge. I didn't mean to suggest that I would never tell him the truth because I absolutely will if he wants to hear it. I'm just glad he hasn't asked yet, and I'm not going to bring it up until I know with certainty I will be RH.

If I hadn't come here, I would have seriously f***ed this part up --I would have been a deer in the headlights if he asked. The trickling out of information that armywife described is exactly what I want to avoid. What if he never wants to know? Do I press it? When? How?

3. EP's that make sense for our situation beyond NC.

4. His DJ's send me running for the door -- how do I handle them at the time?

5. I want to talk to a friend.

Suggestions on prioritizing/content invited. It's only 45 minutes and I want to make the best of it.

H's #1, and according to him, only unmet EN is for honesty and openness -- not specific to the A, but of course that is part of it. That's why I thought talking to him about my mother was a good thing -- in fact, he said this morning he was happy that I tore down part of a wall.

We spend at least 3 hours of UA a day -- usually more.

LB's for the week -- me withdrawing, him a couple of DJ's. Not a bad week.

Lying/hiding behind my wall is second nature to me. It's safe. What I can't intellectualize I hide. H is doing a good job making it feel safer to come out. When I come out, he gets a chance to meet my EN's. My coming out meets his EN for openness and honesty. You all have me confused -- isn't that good?