It seems that the time I got to call my WW to the carpet over her 2 PA’s was very short-lived before this whole thing came back to me once again and my EA that ended 3 years ago. Now, all I hear about is the my betrayal of her trust and love, etc., etc. and that it was that EA that ultimately blew her away so much that it brought her to eventually have her PA’s a year-and-a-half after the EA D-Day. She says she has “addressed” her mistakes sufficiently and now wants to focus on my past. Her idea is to have me recount for her every single conversation I ever had with my ex! How the hell am I going to do that?!?! And, what good will it do to recant everything that I can possibly remember!? I told her she can’t even remember when she started and stopped her PA, or how often she saw him, or all that they did, and that was just from last year, and she expects me to remember conversations from 3-7 years ago! She said this whole relationship rests on my shoulders. I have to save it. I haven’t saved it in 3 years and it is slipping away. I told her that in my mind I thought I was “saving” us since my D-Day and that it was a shocking revelation to me 6 months ago that all that I thought I had done was nothing, or at least not enough, for her. She repeats the mantra “I just don’t know if I can forgive you for 4 years of deception and lies, and, it was in the first 5 years of our marriage!” “I just don’t understand it.” “I don’t know where to even begin to try to forgive you.” I suggested she see a counselor for individual therapy to sort things out but she came back saying I should see a counselor to figure out why I did my EA and to come back to her with her some good hard answers. So, all I see is her doing is justifying and rationalizing all that she has done in the name of my EA; that ultimately everything that has happened and that she decided to do since she found out is all my fault; and that I alone must find a way to fix it all and try to save the marriage. There is so so much more I could say and write about, but the main point here is her turning all the focus and responsibility on me, with me having to “accept” all that she has done as just part of the fallout and repercussions from what I have done. I feel about ready to walk out at this point and take whatever losses I must. I hate going home from work and I hate spending time alone with her. The tension is so thick and there is such a thin crust of civility holding back the volcano that could erupt any time, any day now. Help!

<small>[ September 23, 2002, 12:42 PM: Message edited by: Blind Sided ]</small>

Blind Sided:

Ah yes, blame shifting. Sounds like your W is actually starting 2 realize she did something wrong and hurtful. It's hard 2 admit something like that. In my case, I didn't have a past A for my W 2 dig up, but she dug stuff up nonetheless.

Was she justified? Probably in her mind, she was. Does it matter? He!! no. What matters is whether we have a future 2gether or not. I've decided that right now I want 2 spend the rest of my life with her. So, pure plan A behavior is in order. If she brings up R issues, I deflect them and change the subject 2 positive things. This isn't easy if you're upset (as I can certainly attest 2), but it got easier when I started taking prozac 2 months ago.

Look, this A talk is clouding your judgement (both of yours) right now. Try 2 agree 2 shelve it for now and concentrate on the things you have/do 2gether that you enjoy.

BS are you in counseling right now? If you are not then please consider it.

It's obvious that she does not want to accept responsability for her A and her contribution in the bad state of the M. She is in total denial.

Does she, out of nowhere, just comes up to you and starts blasting away?

I agree...she is trying to shift responsibility...a guilty conscience??

When she says you need to fix things, that's the problem...it should be we. It's a team effort. You know that <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> but she doesn't. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

From the sounds of things here, my reply is not the popular opinion.
We influence our spouses behaviors and thoughts with our own moral code of ethics or lack there of.
From my understanding of your situation, you were involved emotionally with another woman for a very long time. There were lies and deciet. You stopped. Then she had PA for a shorter term and a one nighter.
Which is more painful? Which sin lasted longer? Who betrayed whom first? Who was hurt the most?These are all good questions.
I just want you to realize that when you are married, your actions affect your spouses actions and being in a situation similar to this in my past, I can say that there is a STRONG chance or PRABABILITY that your wife would not have been unfaithful if you would have stayed faithful from the beginning. An EA can be equally or more deadly to a marriage as a PA.

If you are looking for an easy out-you got it! She was unfaithful! Can you go through a divorce with a clean conscience?
But if you want to stay married, start with the original betrayal (yours) and work through it SINCERELY OWNING IT and then work through the next betayal-hers and hopefully she AGAIN will follow your example with sincere repentance so you can RECONCILE and finally bring closure to this sort of behavior. Perhaps you can be a stand up guy and staighten out these betayal habits and stay married for life this time. With too much pride you get one thing-yourself!
I've been married three times and it doesn't get easier as the number gets higher.
You can love her as much as you did to start with-more. Work it out.

BS

Ezra makes good valid points and I would like to add that it is very obvious that your W has not forgiven you for your EA. Something tells me that just like a lot of BS's, your W's self esteem took a nose dive after she found out about your EA and it has not recovered at all. Her PA's seem typical of what is often referred to as revenge A's by the BS as a way of restoring the sense of self worth that was shattered by the WS.

Once again, I humbly suggest that you seek out counseling for yourself, even if she doesn't want it for herself.

TMCM, EZRA, 2L:

Okay, all valid points were made, and probably all apply. We talked last night. Very calmly for a change. Yes, she is still deeply hurt (obviously) and feels that the fairy tale is gone, the dreams are shattered, and she is so torn inside she doesn't if or how to forgive me. I let her speak and didn't give my usual rebuttals. I acknowledged her feelings, I told her I was sorry, I answered her questions; I told her I love her. It was sad overall but still good none-the-less. But I really have to bite my tongue when I hear her say she really doesn't feel bad about what she did because of the pain I have caused her (she sites the EA plus some other shortcomings over the years). She said she had to show me what her pain felt like; that what I was feeling in response to her PA's was a small part of how she felt. When she speaks like this I start to get angry inside because it's as if she decided to be my judge, jury and executioner. She said I needed to see how it felt to be betrayed and deceived and lied to. Again, the attitude I see is that I am supposed to accept her behavior as just part of the fallout. She's not responsible for her actions, I am. I made the mess; I have to clean it up.

Ezra, I understand what you are saying and I understand the approach you are proposing I take with this, but I already feel as though I sincerely worked on recovery and healing for the 2 1/2 years between my D-Day and her D-Day, so I am in double shock. A part of me doesn't even want to start to over again back at that point and move forward to her once again, and for what, to hear her tell me she feels justified once again? I can't count the times I have heard her say that to me. And who measures sin? Man? 4 years of talking on the phone once every 4-6 weeks is worse than 6 months of F***ing our mutual friend several times a week and boinking another mutual friend in the garage while I was at home?!?! All unprotected?!?! Last time I checked, you couldn't contract any STD's via phone calls. Oh, and for sake of not focusing too much attention her faults, I never mentioned that she used to massage a relative about once a month and gave him a "happy ending" for his birthday one time, and yes, we were married. Or, how about the 3-some she had while we were engaged just 2 weeks before I moved out to California? Hmmm, now who's got the sexual dysfunctional behavior here? She has always felt that her openness and honesty about her activities exonerates her in some way, much like she feels now because she "confessed" to me, I didn't have a clue. Oh, there's other things I could detail here to give you a much better psychological picture of what I am dealing with here, but I won't go into it. Needless to say, I wished I had heeded the warning signs long ago and backed away but I believed everything would be different for both of us because we found "true love". Yes, of course I know I came into this with my baggage too; we were both delusional. Love doesn't cure anyone's emotional and mental problems. It didn't cure mine, or hers. So here is this mess we have and I am, correction, we are, deciding if it worth the effort to put it all back together, because, in reality, what was it all based on anyway?

Basically, I am P-O'd at myself for not making a much bigger deal over the "little things" that she has done and being so damn easy going. You see to me, sex is the final veil of separation from your partner. You can flirt, you can talk, but when it comes down to getting naked and having sex, well that's a whole other level of commitment to the OM/OW and a bigger step away from your partner, not to mention the many health concerns that come into play as well. As wrong as I may have been in this thinking, I made an absolute commitment to myself not get sexual with anyone else while I was married and I have stuck to that. That's my boundary line.

Her and I both have many issues with each other that are only exacerbated by this situation. So, I will take all of your input to heart, give it great thought, and see where we move on from here. You see, I am evaluating her, and us, from a new perspective and trying to see, logically and truthfully, if we are or are not compatible on many real basic levels. I told her the other day that we can&#8217;t even seem to function well together as good friends let alone as mates. I will keep you all posted! Perhaps I will gain more insight and change my perspective once again. I have gone through so much internally that I have decided not to decide at this point, what I ultimately want to do with us. Thanks to all fo you and keep watching!

BS. Thank you for giving us more detailed info on what has transpired before and after your M.

It's too bad that you did not come out with this info in the beginning because the advice you would have been given would probably have been more on target than the advice you've been given so far.

Nobody can tell you to remain married to her or divorce her, but keep in mind that reconciliation and rebuilding takes TWO people. Ultimately your decision will have to be based on whether you have hope that she will acknowledge her part in the deterioration of the M and express a deep desire to rebuild the M.

I too was married to a woman that thought she had every right to have A's, PA's to be more specific, and was very jealous of every woman that approached me for the most trivial of reasons. She too put the blame on everybody, including me and our daughters, but none on herself. Ultimately I reached the point where my love for her died and thus all hope for the rebuilding of the M, that I, with our children in tow, moved on with life.

So as you can see, you are not the only one that has gone thru a similar marital experience and, sadly, you will not be the last.

Come back and share your experiences, hopes and frustrations with us and we may be able to share so of ours with you.

Good luck and God bless.

Oh and one last parting thought for you BS:

Kindness can be a thousand times more powerful, and TERRIBLE, than vindictiveness.

TMCM,

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Kindness can be a thousand times more powerful, and TERRIBLE, than vindictiveness.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Wow, no truer words have been spoken! It is similar to the saying "The best revenge is to be successful in the sight of your transgressor!" Yes, TMCM, I could've/should've posted our entire relationship history when I started coming here, but believe it or not, I was protecting my W by sparing all the details of her behavior over the years, trying to stay focused on what happened now with her, and me with my past EA. But, in reality, to see and understand the whole picture clearly, it is all pertainant information in making assessments and determinations in our relationship as it is today.

My W sounds similar to the Ex you describe. My W is extremely jealous and suspicious of any woman I work with or talk with, yet I was supposed to trust her exclusively with all of her male friends and contacts. There has been nude hot tubbing, weekend getaways sharing the same bed (but nothing happened), and her continuing to see her girlfriend off and on since we've married(she's bisexual), so, in reality, our marriage, nor our relationship for that matter, has had any real fidelity built into it from the start. There's another story in all this that I could share at some other point, but let's just say that we had an "Indecent Proposal" from one of her older close male friends (the weekend getaway guy) that I agreed to, which got us a house. In my own very twisted way of thinking I thought it better to embrace the situation with someone I know than to worry about strangers, plus, I thought it would ease her up on me, but it didn't, she actually got more jealous and suspicious, than less. Go figure. Anyway, we have both made terrible errors in judgement, and she has a long long history of sexual inpropriety and conduct(basically no boudaries) that she brought into the relationship, so like I said, there's a lot more to fix here than to get over her PA's and help her get over my EA. I think there are intrinsic differences that we may not overcome and cannot ignore or gloss over. But the jury is still out on that.

Thanks for your feedback once again.

<small>[ September 26, 2002, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: Blind Sided ]</small>

Blind:

Woah!! I had no idea.

I remember seeing the movie "Indecent Proposal" and thinking that I would never agree 2 something like that, no matter how lucrative" Little did I know that my W had had her first A with Rat Meat by that time, maybe even around that time.

A lot of whether you can survive this as a couple depends on you, and what you can forgive. I'm afraid, that if I had gone through similar experiences, there's no way it would seem possible 2 me.

I wish you all the best,

2LONG,

Oh yeah, it's been an interesting journey. I think that it's almost a book worthy story. Some of what I have seen and experienced in my life since I moved out to CA would be shocking to some, nothing to others, I guess it all depends on one's own perspective on life, their philosophy, their spiritual beliefs, and their own life experiences. I had lived a life slightly out of the norm to say the least, and my W has lived a life way out of the norm. I guess perhaps we saw that same out-of-the-norm essence in each of us; the part of us that always felt we didn't fit in anywhere; and we fell for each other. I think we thought that would find some sort of "normalcy" in living if we got together because we understood that oddness or uniqueness in each other. I guess it didn't work out that way. We would have been better off as friends than as mates, IMHO, with 20/20 hindsight, but I tell you one thing, dispite all that I have been through over the last 8-9 years since I met her, I do not regret the valuble lessons I have learned in life during that time. In some ways I have reached deep down within myself to do many things that I would not have normally done in my home town, like for instance, I actually pursued being a car salesman (didn't like it) and I worked as a waiter for Mimi's Cafe for almost 3 years as my 2nd job (loved it!) and we have been a host family for students from 4 different countries (loved it) and the W was a surrogate mom for a couple in Fla. and had twins for them (interesting process and experience). There's more, but I must stop for now. The bottomline is what you stated and what TMCM has stated, too. I need to look deep within and see where we go from here, together or apart.