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My sister said right away "St. Sophia" because I opened my mouth about the affair and out came the description of 10 years of abuse as well.
We are going through MC now, and my H is describing his vision of a happy M. It is his chance to say what he wants for the future and not to concentrate on the mistakes of the past. It is revealing.
I think, without the affair, I would have continued on being more nanny and maid than wife. Now I will expect to be treated as a W.
Has anyone else considered that maybe the A, painful as it was, shook up the M so that it had to become a M or end?
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Joined: Mar 2002
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The short answer is "yes". The affair was a dark blessing.....and when the smoke cleared, the strategies I've learned to save my marriage have outweighed the pain it took to learn them.
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When we feel the pain of betrayal, you either will get up and dust yourself off, or give up. I choose to live and work at this. And if the spouse will see you for the woman he married and shake off the delusional cloud a new level may be reached.
I think it is better than ever, but wish we did not have to get to the low point in order to know what we needed to know to get improvement.
I would not call an affair a blessing. It is ugly. And it is hurtful. But you will know eventually whether or not your marriage is of any value once you know all of the facts of what your spouse had done and what he will do.
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Everything that happens to you in life is a blessing....or a curse, it is only a matter of perspective...and perspective is a choice.
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broken
I know you know my or should I say OUR story.
It was indeed a blessing in that it put us on the road God meant and husband and wife to travel.
The greatest sorrow I have is that we missed the turn so many times that we travel down some dark and lonely alleys before finding our way back.
So yes the affair was as one put it a dark blessing. She would have never faced her sex abuse deamons without the trauma of her affair jolting her into therapy.
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Joined: Dec 2002
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We think of the A as a near death experience and we treated it as such. We both did alot of growing and changing. We went from a great M (that was in trouble at time of A) to an awesome M.
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Joined: Oct 2003
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Hi BH&A,
Actually my W and I just had this talk about two weeks ago. We both agreed that it was little "sick & twisted" of a way to look at it, but it is true. We both take each other less "for granted" now, and we understand how important it is to pay attention when your spouse tries to tell you there's a problem.
This isn't just a problem here, though. We have a close friend who is dying of cancer. She'll probably be gone within a month. This illness has been the thing that has reunited our friend and some of her brothers and sisters, some of whom she had not seen or spoken to in 15 YEARS!! And they live in the same town!!!
Why is it that we don't recognize the value of something until we've either lost it, or at least come awful close to losing it?
Oscar
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This is all part of forgiving, re-establishing trust, but most important, of rebuilding ourselves after tragedies strike. If we do our homework and learn our lessons, we become much better people for the experience. And so, yes, it is even appropriate to feel grati2de for the experiences we've gone through... ...and again, if we did our homework right and learned our lessons, we shouldn't have 2 experience the tragedy of infidelity again.
Wasn't Job grateful in the end?
-2long
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Yeah, but he started out grateful, that's why God had so much faith in him. But I get your point, and it's a good one. Oscar <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />
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I did tell WS that the other night. If it weren't for the A, I would not be working so hard on our M. I really had no clue. And I wouldn't have been aware of the tremendous personal issues WS has to face.
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I am beginning to feel very similar. I've realized that if I had not discovered the affair I would have most likely been clueless of my wife's unhappiness and her of mine, tolerant of her emotionally abusive behavior and would have lost her. I would have been left wondering how it happened. Now at least we have a chance. It is still early for us, but we love each other.
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For those intersted in this, Spacecase, a former MBer, built our website about "unconditional love". He collected a bunch of articles about forgiveness at: http://www.iloveulove.com/forgiveness/artforgive.htmI do NOT mean 2 detract from the excellent support articles at the MB website. This is SUPPLEMENTAL. Consider it such. THIS is "marriage builders". MB has saved me, as has "iloveulove.com", and I don't want anybody 2 misunderstand my intensions here. Love 2 all! ♥2long
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