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i'm a former WW and now have complete forgivness from my husband and family but I can't seem to get past forgiving myself and feeling like God has not forgiven me. I posted on another thread about getting back my relationship with God but for some reason i'm feeling like he is not there for me anymore. i'm from a small town and have tried to get back in church but I feel like somebody will see me and think, there she is, how could she do that to that wonderful man(meaning my husband). My affair has been over for more than 3 years but all of a sudden the stigma i feel is overwhelming to me right now, i'm feeling so much shame for how my life has changed in all this time, i want to be respected and looked up to as i was before, i am a different person and i want my Lord back........ How can i make myself feel his love and forgivness?

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Hi JEC!

First of all, don't worry about what people who don't know you think. Only your family and friends matter. All the rest means NOTHING.

Why don't you go back and read Foreverhers' replies to KY. There is so much in his replies that pertain to you.

You can call him out if you need more than what he has written.

((((JEC)))) hugs to you!


Weaver

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Thank-You Weaver for responding to me, I have read forevers post many times and it has helped, i was wondering if anyone knew of any Christian ww who has any insight for me? I guess I'm just longing for some peace with myself and with God in my life.

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hi, i don't know if i have much insight for you but i can tell you, you are not alone. i am working on the same. the thred KY started has been great for me to read. i have not posted in it but i have read it. i have not yet read the other post that FH linked, i plan to later.

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Hi Finallylearning thank-you so much for your post telling me I am not alone, sometimes i feel that way, I guess i've always been the type to be harder on myself than anyone else is, I have the most wonderful husband and family and I am very happy with them but i guess just not too happy with myself. I wish i could do something wonderful and redeaming so that i could feel worthy once again, i use to be so admired and maybe that is part of my problem i think i had such high regards for myself never thinking for a second that I would do something like what i did that maybe i needed to fall and realize that i was not so great after all. I don't know i guess i'm rambling now, but if anyone out there is reading this post that is in an ema or thinking about it PLEASE talk to me or if your spouse is cheating i would like to maybe give some insite as mine was a very long ema and i was totally out of love with my husband for a few years and now am totally in love with him in a much better way, so the love can come back.

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JEC47,

You stated </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I wish i could do something wonderful and redeaming so that i could feel worthy once again, i use to be so admired and maybe that is part of my problem i think i had such high regards for myself never thinking for a second that I would do something like what i did that maybe i needed to fall and realize that i was not so great after all. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Step back and read this comment. Don't you find it interesting? I do. So where do you want to be,where you were before (admired) by many or perhaps you just might settle for being loved?

What do you think? I think you will find your way back to your religion, when you decide what is important in your life and learn to value it.

I think once you are confident in your goals, in where you are in your life, you will find what others (outside of those you are important to) think is not of much importance. For most of us our religion is a personal one, I suspect it will be for you as well.

Hope this is of some help.

God Bless,

JL

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If you are a Christian, and have repented, your sin is forgotten. But for some reason, women have a terrible time forgiving themselves. It is really a struggle, but should not be.

There have been many others here going through the same problem. I think you have to accept that the past is gone. You are no longer the same person. It is time to move forward.

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Oh wow i'm so excited, I have been reading here for ages, never had the nerve to post, i finally did it and just wanted to say thank-you so much for your support and encouragment to me. What a wonderful site this is!

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I will pray for you tonight. I will pray that you will soon forgive yourself. I realize that it is hard to do, but necessary. Please keep posting and reading here. We will help you.

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JE, I'm a religious non believer, and I also have a great intolerance of infidelity. The one thing that never fails to melt my intolerance is FWSs who express their shame openly and liberally.

On the Biblical front, adultery seems to be pretty forgivable on the scale of things. There are numerous examples in the Bible of forgiveness of adultery when remorse is demonstrated by the sinner. Guess God is somethng of a sucker for a pitiful human that sees how stupid they've been.

Finally, the church environement is something of a smokes and mirrors deal where true goodness is concerned. I never met so much hypocrisy in my life as I have in church. That is not to say that truly superb individuals cannot be found inside a church. They just don't go there as often as ordinary small minded folk, who aspire to being better but mostly fail at it. In some ways, I think it's the greatest test on an individual, whatever their background, to be who they are and strive to be better and to not be dragged down by the lowest common denominator (in the new pew). Work on you, be you, and have compassion for those who have no clue what you've been thru.

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</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by Just Learning:
<strong> JEC47,

So where do you want to be,where you were before (admired) by many or perhaps you just might settle for being loved?

What do you think? I think you will find your way back to your religion, when you decide what is important in your life and learn to value it.

God Bless,

JL </strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">JEC,

I'm a FWW. I came here looking for help in rebuilding my marriage long after my A's were old and cold. JL has been instrumental in restoring happiness to my house- so listen to him! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

I hope 2scared jumps in on this post, because he has written before about how painful it has been to be knocked off his "pedastal" - he is a FWH.
JL, has a very good point for you to consider- being loved is much more important then being admired. And our God has infinite love for all of us.

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JEC47

I've heard that when you are in jail and in the hospital you get to find out who your true friends really are. If there are folks that you know who condemn you for your affair and not acknowledge your redemption from it, then those people are far from being godly people. I don't think that the good Lord is too fond of prideful, arrogant and self righteous people who judge others but not themselves. Yes you fell into sin but eventually you got up and accepted the wrong you committed against your loved ones and God and made restitution to them. If anybody has a right to hold her head high it is you and not those fools who sin because of their pride, arrogance and self righteousness.

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man oh man you are all so wonderful, this might sound silly but just these few little posts of encouragment to me have me in tears, i wish i would have started posting here long before now maybe i would be in a better place in my healing if i would have.
I want out of my self-loathing mode so bad, my family knows a little about how i'm feeling about myself but not much, it just seems easier to discuss it here, maybe safer, i don't know.

I have tried to attend Church a few times with my family but i usually just sit there and think geez i wish i could sing in the choir or i wish i could do this or that but i don't think i would be allowed to, i use to do all those things way back when. Well thanks again everyone.

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You seem to be right where I am. Did you read on my thread the example of having your child do something wrong, they ask you for forgiveness and you freely give it to them. They then reject it, don't accept it, how do you feel? Confused, maybe, why wouldn't your child accept your forgiveness, you have freely gave it to them, yet they want to hold on to their bad behavior. How sad. Stop holding on. Maybe this will help.

This is the link ForeverHers gave me.

Long, but well worth the read. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

quote:
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Do you dare release the person you are today from the shadow of the wrong you did yesterday?

Do you dare forgive yourself?

To forgive yourself takes high courage. Who are you, after all, to shake yourself free from the undeniable sins of your private history – as if what you once did has no bearing on who you are now?

Where do you get the right – let alone the cheek – to forgive yourself when other people would want you to crawl in shame if they really knew? How dare you?

The answer is that you get the right to forgive yourself only from the entitlements of love. And you dare forgive yourself only with the courage of love. Love is the ultimate source of both your right and your courage to ignore the indictment you level at yourself. When you live as if yesterday’s wrong is irrelevant to how you feel about yourself today, you are gambling on a love that frees you even from self-condemnation.

But there must be truthfulness. Without honesty, self-forgiveness is psychological hocus-pocus. The rule is: we cannot really forgive ourselves unless we look at the failure in our past and call it by its right name.

We need honest judgment to keep us from self-indulging complacency.

Let me recall the four stages we pass through when we forgive someone else who hurt us: we hurt, we hate, we heal ourselves, and we come together again.

We all hurt ourselves . Unfairly, too, and sometimes deeply.

God knows the regrets we have for the foolish ways we cheat ourselves. I smoked cigarettes too long, and while I puffed away on my pack-a-day, I feared the time that I would say: you fool, you fool, dying before your time, and you have no one to blame but yourself. Then there are the opportunities spurned, disciplines rejected, and addictions hooked into – they all can haunt you with a guilty sense that you did yourself wrong.

But the hurt your heart cries hardest to forgive yourself for is the unfair harm you did to others.

The memory of a moment when you lied to someone who trusted you! The recollection of neglecting a child who depended on you. The time you turned away from somebody who called out to you for help! These are the memories, and thousands like them, that pierce us with honest judgment against ourselves.

We do not have to be bad persons to do bad things. If only bad people did bad things to other people we would live in a pretty good world. We hurt people by our bugling as much as we do by our vices.

And the more decent we are the more acutely we feel our pain for the unfair hurts we caused. Our pain becomes our hate. The pain we cause other people becomes the hate we feel for ourselves. For having done them wrong . We judge, we convict, and we sentence ourselves. Mostly in secret.

Some of us feel only a passive hatred for ourselves. We merely lack love’s energy to bless ourselves. We cannot look in the looking glass and say: “What I see makes me glad to be alive.” Our joy in being ourselves is choked by a passive hatred.

Others sink into aggressive hatred of themselves. They cut themselves to pieces with a fury of contempt. One part of them holds its nose and shoves the other part down a black hole of contempt. They are their own enemy. And sometimes, in the ultimate tragedy, their self-hatred is acted out in self-destruction.

Of course, your inner judge may be an unreasonable nag, accusing you falsely, and flailing you unfairly. On the other hand, your better self often sweeps real guilt under a carpet of complacency. You con yourself just to save yourself the pain of confrontation with your shadowy side.

In any case, you shouldn’t trust your inner judge too far.
Still, he is your toughest critic, and you have to come to terms with him.
So let us move on to love’s daring response.
What happens when you finally do forgive yourself?
When you forgive yourself, you rewrite your script. What you are in your present scene is not tied down to what you did in an earlier scene. The bad guy you played in Act One is eliminated and you play Act Two as a good guy.

You release yourself today from yesterday’s scenario. You walk into tomorrow, guilt gone.

Again, the word that fits the case best is “irrelevance.” Look back into your past, admit the ugly facts, and declare that they are irrelevant to your present. Irrelevant and immaterial! Your very own past has no bearing on your case. Or how you feel about it.

Such release does not come easy. The part of yourself who did the wrong walks with you wherever you go. A corner of your memory winks at you and says, “Nice try old chap, but we both know the scoundrel you really are, don’t we?” It takes a miracle of love to get rid of the unforgiving inquisitor lurking in the shadows of your heart.

Perhaps nobody has understood the tortured route to self-forgiveness better than the Russian genius Dostoevski. In his novel Crime and Punishment, he portrayed the inner struggle of self-forgiveness in the soul of a murderer named Ilyon Raskolnikov.

Raskolnikov did something as evil as anyone can do. He brutally murdered a helpless woman, and old pawnbroker – a miserable woman to be sure, and miserly, and mean, but innocent still. His guilt was stupefying.

No soul can bear such guilt alone, not for long. Sooner or later one must tell. Raskolnikov found a girl, an angel, Sonia, and he confessed to her. He told her everything.

She persuaded him to admit everything to the police, and he finally did. He was sent to prison in Siberia.

The loving Sonia followed him there and waited for him to forgive himself so that he could find the freedom to accept her love.

Raskolnikov could not forgive himself. He tried to excuse himself instead.

He came to grief, he said, “through some decree of blind fate”; he was destined to kill the old woman. Besides, when you come right down to it was his act really that bad? Did not Napoleon do the same sort of thing and do they not build him monuments? In clever ways like this he excused himself by finding deep reasons why he was not to blame.

Raskolnikov did not dare to be guilty.

“Oh, how happy he would have been,” wrote Dostoevski, “if he could have blamed himself! He could have borne anything then, even shame and disgrace.”

Yet, now and then, Raskolnikov did get a glimpse of “the fundamental falsity in himself.” He knew deep inside that he was lying to himself.

And finally it happened. How it happened he did not know. He flung himself at Sonia’s feet and accepted her love. “He wept and threw his arms around her knees.” He finally had the power to love. And his power to love revealed that the miracle had really happened; he had forgiven himself.

He forgave himself? For such a crime as cold blooded murder? Yes. “Everything, even his crime, his sentence and imprisonment seemed to him now . . . and external strange fact with which he had no concern. ”

Release! Release by a discovery that his terrible past was irrelevant to who he was now and was going to be in the future. He was free from his own judgment and this was why he was free to love.

Raskolnikov stands out in staggering boldness to show us that even the worst of us can find the power to set ourselves free.

Finally, the climax of self-forgiving; it comes when we feel at one with ourselves again. The split is healed. The self inside of you, who condemned you so fiercely, embraces you now. You are whole, single; you have come together.

You are not being smug. You care very much that you once did a wrong. And you do not want to do it again. But you will not let your former wrong curse the person you are now. You take life in stride. You have let yourself come home.

It does not happen once and for all. The hate you felt comes back now and then, and you reject yourself for doing what you did. But then you come back to yourself again. And again. And again.

To forgive your own self – almost the ultimate miracle of healing!

But how can you pull it off?

The first thing you need is honesty. There is no way to forgive yourself without it. Candor – a mind ready to forego fakery and to face facts – this is the first piece of spiritual equipment you need.

Without candor you can only be complacent. And complacency is a counterfeit of forgiveness. Some people are superficial, there is no other word for it. Drawing on the top layer of their shallow wits, they pursue the unexamined life with unquestioning contentment, more like grazing cows than honest human beings.

The difference between a complacent person and a person who forgives himself is like the difference between a person who is high on cocaine and a person who has reason for being really happy.

Then you need a clear head to make way for your forgiving heart.

For instance, you need to see the difference between self-esteem and self-forgiveness.
You can gain esteem for yourself when you discover that you are estimable, that you are in fact worth esteeming. To esteem yourself is to feel in your deepest being that you are a superb gift very much worth wanting, God’s own art form, and a creature of magnificent beauty.

Sometimes you gain self-esteem only after you come to terms with the bad hand you were dealt in life’s game.

I know a man who has what is cruelly called the Elephant man syndrome; a tough hand to play, but the only hand he has. He has learned to see the beautiful person he is beneath his t horny skin, and he esteems himself – because of what he is. Kim, on the other hand, is a beautiful adopted child whose birth-mother dealt her a genetic disease. Kim has chosen to accept herself as an incredibly splendid gift of God because of what she is, and in spite of the tough hand she was dealt.

Blessed are the self-esteemers, for they have seen the beauty of their own souls.

But self-esteem is not the same as self-forgiveness. You esteem yourself when you discover your own excellence. You forgive yourself after you discover your own faults. You esteem yourself for the good person you are. You forgive yourself for the bad things you did.

If you did not see the difference, you may shout a thousand bravos at yourself and never come to the moment of self-forgiving. So you need a clear head about what it is you are doing.

You also need courage. Forgiving yourself is love’s ultimate daring.

The reason it takes high courage to forgive yourself lies partly with other people’s attitudes toward self-forgivers. Self-righteous people do not want you to forgive yourself. They want you to walk forever under the black umbrella of permanent shame.

I understand these people; I am one of them. There is something inside of me that wants a wrongdoer, especially a famous wrongdoer, to keep a low profile, to take the last place in line, to speak with a meek voice; I want him to grovel a little. Maybe a lot.

So, when you walk and talk like a person who has sliced your sinful past from your present sense of selfhood, you will need courage to face the self-righteous crowd.

Then you need to be concrete.

You drown in the bilge of your own condemnation for lack of specificity. You will almost always fail at self-forgiving when you refuse to be concrete about what you are forgiving yourself for.

Many of us try, for instance, to forgive ourselves for being the sorts of persons we are. We are ugly, or mean, or petty, or given to spouting off; or, on the other hand, we are too good, a patsy, everybody’s compliant sucker, humble servant to all who want to get something out of us.

But people who try to forgive themselves for being wholesale failures are not humble at all; they are really so proud that they want to be gods. John Quincy Adams, not the greatest, but a very good President, could not forgive himself. “I have done nothing,” he wrote in his diary. “My life has been spent in vain and idle aspirations, and in ceaseless rejected prayers that something should be the result of my existence beneficial to my own species.” The last words spoken by the great jurist Hugo Grotius, the father of modern international law, on his deathbed, were: “I have accomplished nothing worthwhile in my life.” Such people sound humble with their moans about being failures in life; but they are really crying because they had to settle for being merely human.

You must call your own bluff: precisely, what is it that you need forgiveness for? For being unfaithful to your spouse last year? Good, you can work on that. For being an evil sort of person? No, that is too much; you cannot swallow yourself whole.

Most of us can manage no more than one thing at a time. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said Jesus. When we overload ourselves with dilated bags of undifferentiated guilt we are likely to sink into despair. The only way we can succeed as self-forgivers, free from the tyranny of a tender conscience, is to be concrete and to forgive ourselves for one thing at a time.

Finally, you need to confirm your outrageous act of self-forgiveness with a reckless act of love. How can you know for sure that you gambled with guilt and won unless you gamble your winnings on love?

“She loves much because she has been forgiven much” –this was Jesus’ explanation for a woman who dared to barge into a dinner party uninvited, plunk herself at Jesus’ feet, and pour out a small cascade of love.

Love is a signal that you have done it, that you have actually released the guilt that condemned you. You won’t always know exactly when you have forgiven yourself. It is like reaching the top of a long hill on a highway – you may not be sure when you have reached level ground, but you can tell that you have passed the top when you step on the gas the care spurts ahead. An act of love is like quick acceleration. A free act of love, to anyone at all, may signal to you that you do, after all, have the power that comes to anyone who is self-forgiving.

You can buy her a gift! Invite him to dinner! Visit someone who is sick! You can put your arms around a friend you never touched before! Write a letter of thanks. Or tell Dad that you love him. All ways of confirming that we performed the miracle of forgiving ourselves.

Yes, love gives you the right to forgive yourself. And it gives you the power as well. At least to begin. Healing may come slowly, but better a snail’s pace than standing still, feet sunk in the cement of self-accusations.

To forgive yourself is to act out the mystery of one person who is both forgiver and forgiven. You judge yourself: this is the division within you. You forgive yourself: this is the healing of the split.

That you should dare to heal yourself by this simple act is a signal to the world that God’s love is a power within you.

(Forgiving Ourselves, Ch.8, Lewis B. Smedes, Forgive & Forget, Healing The Hurts We Don’t Deserve, p.71-77)

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Thank-You KY I just read the link from foreverhers and i will save it, all i can say is wow thats intense and wonderful, I want to be in that place, i wish i did not care what people thought about me so much, but i have to admit i do. Sometimes i wish i could just take out an ad in the newspaper and say (look i did this and, i made a mistake, I still make mistakes but,i'm not that person anymore why don't you just ask me the questions i feel your wondering instead of thinking the worst!) I know i can't do that but believe it or not i have really thought about it. silly huh. Thanks again KY and foreverhers.

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I think that my WH feels very ashamed by his behaviour so he feels it is easier to not try to make amends. He doesn't want to face my family and friends etc. They all know he did a bad thing yet he is a good guy.

I reckon most BS are willing to move forward with their partners if they can see true remorse. You sound like you really are sorry for your affair. If other people are prepared to forgive you, then hold your head up high. Nobody is perfect, we all make mistakes. I wish my WH was sorry. He said he was but his actions never showed it. Good luck, TT.

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JEC,

I repeat where do you want to be? Who do you want to be? Who is important in your life? Do the people that are really important in your life know of your past? I know some of them do, perhaps all of them. What have they done and said? Ask them about this, I mean it. Sit your H down and tell him what you are struggling with.

You said </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> i wish i did not care what people thought about me so much, but i have to admit i do. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">If you are talking about your children, your H, your family, then you SHOULD care alot about what they think. And they think... they love you. They have forgiven you. They are seen in public with you, in church with you and they are NOT ashamed of you. Your H is proud to have you by his side. Your children love you.

So don't you think that isn't impressive enough? Don't you think there are many in your church who ENVY you and the love your family gives you? I'll bet there are. Further, the fact that they do, means you are a very special woman.

JEC, you are looking at this thing all wrong. So unless you are trying to punish yourself and you think it is more important that your family who wants you with them, it is time you realized, you have been given a huge gift. You should be proud of that gift, just as your family is proud they gave it to you.

This is like your H buying a brand new outfit, and then you won't wear it, because you think it will make you look "too good". You rob your H of the chance to show people he has good taste and that he loves you very much.

He apparently does have good taste and you are robbing your family of a chance to show it to everyone. I realize it is often harder to receive a gift than to give one. But, it is often very important to the giver, that the gift is received with grace, class, and the knowledge that it was given with love.

You have been given such a gift. It is time you accepted it and acknowledged it instead of hiding it with your guilt. You are no longer guilty JEC. Guilt is placed in us to make us stop what we are about to do, or are doing. When we do stop in and repent, guilt has no place in our hearts. Remorse?? Yes, you can be remorseful, but you are NOT doing anything to feel guilty about now are you? Common fess up. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" />

So accept the gift from your family and let everyone see what you have been given.

I hope something I have said is of help to you.

God Bless,

JL

<small>[ October 13, 2004, 09:04 PM: Message edited by: Just Learning ]</small>

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Hi Tummytuck I don't know how long it has been for you and your husband since your recovery started but we have been in recovery for over three years, at first i was angry and sad and just all around upset with everyone just like your husband, i did not want to end my affair it ended very swiftly after discovery thank god it did, it was a very sick relationship, i'm not sure what to tell you to do to help your husband, it's VERY hard to face family and friends, are your family members willy to forgive? All of my family were very hurt and mad at me but we did work thru it and his family were actually alot better about it than i thought they would be, they just wanted their son to be happy again, i guess i was very lucky with that. Anyway thanks so much for posting to me and I will pray for you and for your husband. Please pray for me.

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JEC, i wanted to bump this up to make sure you saw JL's response to you, you might have been typing at the same time. be sure to read JL's post carefully, it is a good one. you HAVE been given a wonderful gift from your H and family, to not accept it would be wrong. i have been currently thinking about how i think in my head how much i want my H to say he forgives me, but what i have realized lately is that no matter what he does or does not do, what is going to really matter to me is if I forgive myself. i think about how can H respect me or want to be with me, but in reality i realize I am not respecting me right now. sounds like you are feeling the same way. my A has not quite been over 1 yr (beginning of Nov is 1 yr), d-day is just over 6 months old. i sure hope by the time 3yrs rolls around I will have learned to fogive myself, not only for my sake but for the ones that love me. not forgiving yourself HAS to be impacting the way you are acting and your H HAS to be seeing that.

i am rambling... i just wanted you to know i understand but it is time for you to move on, see yourself as you are now, not as you were.

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Hi JEC, I don't know what to do with him either! But you said your affair ended very swiftly. I believe he still is in contact so we cannot start to recover. I don't have absolute proof but just a paranoid nagging doubt! He erases all history from his mobile every night. Does anyone in the whole world do this unless they have something to hide (maybe they do - let me know folks). Am I right in that there is a saying "God helps those who help themselves"? He has done nothing to help me through all of this and I can't live in limbo land forever. He comes in from work, has his dinner, falls asleep on the settee and stays there all night. At the beginning after DD I tried to be affectionate but he was having none of it. His mind is still in another place. When I have tried to talk to him he usually gives me such inadequate responses - it's all so negative. He has very serious health issues and is heading towards dialysis. I've asked him to go and talk with someone (doctor, counsellor etc) but always shakes his head. He feels noone could possibly understand what he is going through.

I just feel the whole thing is such a terrible mess. TT

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