Dear Lady K and B,<P>Sorry for not replying sooner as my baby was hospitalised last week and now fine and discharged.<P><BR>I believe that wise sayings are coping mechanisms to help us with living a more joyful, peaceful and full life. These perspectives enable us to see and rationalise away undeserved and unpredictable hurts and actions of others that make a mess of our lives and souls. It is so human to fall under the tragedy of a spouse's affair because we are rejected and feel our roles have been made redundant.<P>We come under the umbrella of protection of our husband's strength and responsibility. He becomes accountable to God as head of the house to protect us and the children. We are helpmeets to our husband. That is one of the reasons that we are devastated when we find our roles have been violated and our world turned upside down. Instead of protection from our husbands, we are lied to and deceived and even replaced by some piece of nothing. <P>How in the world can a woman scorned be rid of her rage and fury? How can she be healed of the ultimate betrayal?<P>I am going through a long process of healing to find my way out of the wilderness back into the light. I had the help of family and church pastors and now counselling (without my H's blessings). My WS and I were jointly counselled by a church pastor to help me understand the affair. I also went to a healing ministry and was healed of my emotional trauma (violence, rage, suicidal thoughts and tendencies, etc.). We started bible study classes and we commit each other to God. I am now doing individual counselling to help me move on in my life and to help me make sense of the scary affair. I also start looking at the world through more 'practical' eyes and no longer ached for my H's approval and presence which leaves me more time for constructive things.<P>"Do not define your husband by his mistakes:"<BR>In the beginning it was very difficult not to see him as a hateful pile of lying trash. In order to accept WS back as a person, and to cope with having such a piece of bull in my life, I had to think about other qualities that made him something else, such as a good father. If not, I might as well divorce him because I cannot cope.<P>"Do not let your spouse's failure define you:"<BR>I feel this is paramount if we were to become whole again and not let ourselves or others (including unrepentant WS) deceive us into thinking we were at fault and we were the reason they had the affair. Although my WS said that it was a scheming evil thing that got him, I nonetheless felt I must have failed in some way - I was too trusting and I was too blind to WS's faults, ie, shouldn't have married him in the first place. But all these are under the bridge now. What is important is that the MAIN FAULT lies with the WS and his character flaw/s. It is the job of a WS-to-be to communicate the problems within the marriage before throwing themselves in another's arms. Even if there was no premeditation, it still points to the WS's lack of commitment and responsibility which is also his/her failing.<P>Of course there are rotten marriages without affairs as there are good marriages that had been destroyed by affairs. There are also repentant and unrepentant WS. It seems that affairs are as diverse as WSs. We do ourselves the favour by picking up and going, we care for our parents by taking our tattered lives back and slowly mending ourselves. For me, I take that life back and hand it to God to help me become whole again, and I will rest in His care and trust in His love and pray that He get my WS to see not only the errors of his ways but to start nurturing me and the marriage back to complete health.<P>PS. B, <BR>It is precisely my WS's lack of faith and FEAR in God that caused him to become so drunk and to be unable to FLEE when the evil thing was in his bed. Now that he knows there is a true God because he experienced first and second hand the power and grace of God. If I had being more alert to this lack of faith I should be better off not marrying him. I was deceived even before marriage. So the next best thing is that he learns within the marriage and become the godly man that I had hoped for.
