I imagine most of you won’t know who I am or remember me? For those of you who do, a big HELLO! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Big Grin]" src="images/icons/grin.gif" /> For those of you who were so instrumental in helping me keep any semblance of sanity and held me via cyberspace when I needed it, Thank You! You all know who you are. I will remember you all and love you all for the rest of my life.
I started lurking here in March and joined Marriage Builders in May of 1999. D-day for me was February 21, 1999. An anonymous phone call is how I found out. This is nearing the time of the forth year anniversary of that day! Boy isn’t anniversary a horrible term for it?
By the grace of God, Dr. Harley’s Surviving An Affair, the Marriage Builders web site & Discussion Forums along with the wonderful members, I was able to keep most of my sanity and reach the goal of saving our Marriage.
It was a long hard battle. I have read my old posts occasionally and they show me the steps and how slow the progress was. My husband said he’d try but insisted that he was no longer in love with me and hadn’t been for a long time, years! That was news to me, but I did know our marriage was a miserable place to be. He had found the OW and I just delved deeper into my depression and the comfort of my bed, where my dreams were the only happy place in my life. I had gotten to the point of not feeling anything; I was numb as a person. On D-day I was healed of the illness of depression, and boy oh boy did I feel then. Pain and agony I never knew was possible. Grief so severe death sometimes looked like the only means of escape.
My husband also insisted that he was madly in love with the OW and he’d never get over her and their relationship would always feel unfinished. My translation to that is “interrupted” as it never had the chance to run its own course and come to any kind of reality. It was all good times fueled by the excitement of being new, forbidden and hidden. She bent over backwards to be the “woman of his dreams.” A position I once held. His withdrawal was long and painful for him, as it was for me too.
They worked together and continued to do so in the factory where they built pick up trucks. They cried in one another’s arms hidden in the cabs on the assembly line during breaks. It was all very dramatic and public within the world they knew in the factory. They were under scrutiny by the group of people that finally decided after three years I needed to know what was going on. I think in retrospect that because of all of this drama it made him feel more bound to her. The fog was very thick.
I was a mess. I cried all of the time. I did crazy things, so crazy that I am too embarrassed to admit to by typing them here. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" /> It hurt so badly often manifesting it self physically. I lost 26 pounds in five weeks with little effort. There were days when I couldn’t even swallow the bite of food I had just forced in my mouth. I got closer to God which was one positive consequence of the whole situation. One thing happened right away, we both began to threat each other with a kindness we hadn’t had in years. He started being tender to me.
We still did have arguments. There were times that I found very scary. I remember distinctly being in the hallway in our bedroom and crying while we were discussing something and him screaming “Don’t you understand I don’t want you’re a$$!” I wanted to die. I’d never felt so desperate in my life. One moment I would do anything to get him to stay here and the next minute I would tell him to get out. I even tried to pack his clothes on a few occasions. He wouldn’t leave. Now it wasn’t because he didn’t want out, but because this was “My house, and I’m not going anywhere.” When he would tell me that he may leave I was begging him to stay. There was the time he told me “I have never loved anyone in my life as deeply as I love OW.” In the next breath he said “Maybe I love you more, because I am here after putting up with all this $hit?” He was a very confused and hurting man. The only time I saw him cry was over the pain “everyone” was in and his loosing/giving up her. Once when a mutual friend of theirs told him that she felt the only reason he had an affair with her was to get his wife back, he cried and was nearly hysterical. He just kept saying “She couldn’t think that, she couldn’t believe that.” He was so concerned about hurting her regardless if it was at my expense. When it came to her and I back then, I always lost. <img border="0" alt="[Teary]" title="" src="graemlins/teary.gif" />
Things slowly were getting better between us, but his feelings for the other woman, whom he saw every day at work, were not diminishing. Finally after eight months he transferred to a different shift and department. I can honestly say that after the transfer things moved along in a positive manner at a much more rapid place. He also admitted to that being so.
In April of 2000, fourteen months after D-day my beloved husband looked at me & smiled and told me he loved me. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> It had been a long hard haul but we were on the road to recovering our marriage. It got better gradually with each and every day. That doesn’t mean it was “all better” and perfect, but we had jumped over one huge hurdle. The proverbial roller coaster continued to run around the track, it just didn’t have same intensity it had before.
Plan A does work! The concepts and principles here do work! Plan A becomes a way of life. Of course backsliding happens and you can get complacent. Then you have to snap yourself into attention and get back on track.
Now four years later I have my husband back. I know he loves me. He is an extremely handsome man. He is very visual with attractive spouse being a huge thing to him. Well, I have gained so much weight that I am anything but physically attractive. He still loves me. I can tell when he says it, how he looks in my eyes, how he holds me, and well the list goes on and on.
There are times when triggers hit me. The blows aren’t as hard but can still bring me to tears. I can honestly say that there has not been a day that I at least haven’t thought about it and her. I harbor horrible feelings towards her. Feelings I never thought I would feel about anyone in my life. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" /> I still need much work in this area. It’s a chink in my character. I believe the one way that would have put most of this far behind me would have been if we hadn’t made our marriage work, if we were apart. That is an option I didn’t want then and don’t ever want. The love and happiness far out weighs the sadness and pain.
One thing that I feel will make me freer of all of this would be for us to move far away. Just as Dr. Harley recommends. In a little over four years we will be moving to the other side of the country. We have been looking for land to build our home on. Yes we have a future. We have plans for that future. We have common goals and both look forward to spending many more years together with the good Lord willing.
My husband never went to counseling, never read any book, never spent any time on this web site except for a rare occasion or two when I badgered him into reading a post. I think that the total times were twice, and I really can only remember one time. He made fun of me sometimes for coming here or found it aggravating. Yet somehow he learned the terms and would say “You’re love busting” or some other reference to them. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" /> He never wrote a No Contact letter or shunned her. He never did a cruel thing to her then or since. He never even spoke words of No Contact. He said it was just understood that the relationship they had was over. He never believed he could ever get his love back for me and had a time frame in his mind as to when he would go if he didn’t. He truly believed we would end in divorced.
I have learned that you must work on a marriage all the time. You must never take it or your spouse for granted. Love is like any living thing, it needs air, water and food to survive. If you give it light it will grow & thrive. You can’t pass out too many sincere compliments and words of appreciation. Everyone (at least that I know) wants to be adored, loved and know they are number one. One function the OP usually does very well is to heap on plenty of admiration. I also learned how important recreational companionship is. I learned that when your pain becomes too much it is very therapeutic to reach out and help someone else. God often has a way of working things out when we aren’t paying attention because we are busy helping someone else. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
I don’t post here anymore because the baton was passed to newer members when I wasn’t looking. When a post would catch my attention, usually someone else had posted and said what I was going to, much more eloquently. I do lurk and check in on here almost everyday. I don’t read all the posts and I don’t know the whole story of most members. There are so many of you now! When I first came here I was number 1813. Now because of the dreaded disease of infidelity there are at this moment 25,577. I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I don’t come here? I’m not able to contribute to helping people here by posting so I try to be content with extending my thoughts and prayers to everyone here.
In closing I would first like to apologize for this being so long. I am afraid that was my MO here on the forum…I just plain talk too much here and in my life away from the web.
Secondly although you may never meet in person, know that everyone here at this moment will be a part of you forever. Don’t argue and post disrespectful judgments regarding other members or their situations. I feel the need to tell you all to be supportive of each other here. By being supportive and remembering that most everyone here is or has been in extreme pain, you are helping to heal them and maybe their marriage. You’re helping to stamp out the disease of infidelity. For many members the only kindness extended to them today will be that which they receive here on the forum. I urge you to please remember that with each and every stroke of your keyboard. In the early days here we always made sure we were lovingly supportive of each other. We cared deeply and did anything we were able to do to make a difference and help each other. Yes we cried together and shared horrible pain, but we also laughed together. We were a family and most of us came out whole and are better people for it.
The last bits of advise I want to give to you, and forgive me if you find it offensive, is pray, pray and pray some more. The power in prayer and prayer in numbers is amazing.
Hold on to your faith, keep persevering. Don’t give up hope or quit trying. We are living proof that it is possible for only one person to do most of the work while the other is resistant and have a complete turn around and become a recovered Married Couple.
Recanting this all has been difficult and painful. I guess I didn’t realize how much of it I had put away. Still I felt it was a necessary to do so. I should have done it last year at this time and didn’t. I’m trying to give back to a place that gave me so much.
Where have we landed? At a place where the grass is greener on this side of the fence and where we both know how blessed we are. We are at a place where we know we can count on one another to always be there and we are best friends again. I hope this helps some of you? I hope it provides you with new hope. That is affirms that Surviving an Affair is possible and you can have your marriage restored. It will never be the same but it is possible for it to be better in some ways and the relationship to be deeper. A “New” marriage if you will.
Now I’m going go light a candle, a tradition that was started here and many of us once shared in doing together. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
Hugs to one and all,
Samantha
<small>[ February 17, 2003, 10:57 PM: Message edited by: Samantha * ]</small>
