my husband and i are three years post d-day---and still not doing well. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />

it seems he is going deeper into his depression and is hitting the wall. the guilt and stress are killing him. he doesnt see that not dealing with it and stuffing it all down(his preffered method of coping with anything...) is just not working.

he is falling apart....and i dont know what to do. he has again quit counseling....ive lost track of how many times he's stopped. he is going to start again....but in the meantime im looking for help. i know he hasnt dealt with the guilt and feelings from being a ws and what its done to me. we dont talk, he rarely ever opens up to me, and he is having health issues from the stress. i think he doesnt see a way out from the guilt. the being ashamed of what he did and overcomming it. we still have trust issues and honesty issues and all that goes along with it....

what i am asking all my old friends here is...if you can think of a post or series of posts that may help him see a way out....can you please give me the links. i may never get him to post here but i may be able to get him to read with me. and if i do---i would like for him to see it can be done. he is in despair and sinkng....it scares me and worries me to see him like this.

thanks.......nikko

oh and ps......we will be away for most of today and home again this evening....so if i dont answer......i will get to it tonight or in the morning. thanks

nikko, I don't have a specific post to point you to, but I can give my thoughts..hopefully it will help your husband a bit.

My husband is one of those "guilty" persons. What makes it more confusing is that I believe he feels guilty for hurting me, but not necessary guilty about the actions he did...and so he feels guilty about *that* as well. A little confusing for both of us, but I feel that's the situation nonetheless. We haven't figured out a solution to this, but from my perspective as a BS, he needs to just accept that he did something wrong, accept that he hurt you, and he needs to ask YOU what he can do to make it up to you.

Can anything really make up for it? Not really, but there are things that can help you get over the pain as I'm sure you well know. Then it's your job to tell him when he has done something that helps you to move on from that traumatic event.

For me the biggest thing my husband can do to "make it up to me" is to be honest and open with me now. Also, I need for him to UNDERSTAND how it really affected me. I don't need one thousand and one apologies for what he did. What I need from him is an understanding what he's apologizing for. We haven't quite gotten there yet. I get lots of apologies, but I've never felt like he understood exactly what he did and the ramifications of it all. Another thing he can do to "make it up to me" is to make me feel loved NOW. Haven't quite gotten there yet either...but these are the things that can help me.

I feel that by your husband helping YOU...he's doing something constructive to both rebuild your marriage and make up for his actions of the past. Maybe he feels the counseling is slow and doesn't help him that much and so he can't really see how it's helping you. If it's important to you, have you explained why? (Not just for a rebuilding of a marriage..but that you can see how it helps him to make positive changes, shows a true effort on his part..all things that help to make you feel more secure, etc).

Maybe he feels that he'll be paying for his mistake for the rest of his life and so he tends to give up early. Although it's important for him to know that your trust for him will never quite be the same, it's also important to let him know that if he takes the right actions now, he WON'T be paying for his mistakes for the rest of his life.

Not saying this is stuff you or your husband actually do feel. Just throwing out some thoughts.

Nikko,

When depression has been a long term issue, the brain chemicals get out of whack dramatically and must be corrected with medication.

Please don't rule out possible biological causes which would greatly influence his inability to deal with stress and guilt.

It is a downward spiral, and I have been there. For me the climax was a complete nervous breakdown.

Please have him see a psychiatrist who will look at the physiological issues which are caused by and which also contribute to depression.

<small>[ December 26, 2004, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: weaver ]</small>

Oh how we've (BS's) been there.

I cannot take away the guilt my husband feels over hurting me ... I can however, try and show him that I forgive him. I cannot take away the pain that this has caused *US* ... I can however continue to move forward (for myself, my family and my husband).

I've found over the years that when one of us have made moves towards self recovery the family, the indiviual and the marriage can get stronger ... and it makes a difference.

I've had to identify what *I* can do too .... and even what *I've* done (in the past - keyword being "past").

*WE* have decided to move forward and are doing everything to be "proactive" in doing that. But it does take some long and sometimes painful discussions and commitment from the both of *US*, because it will effect the both of *US* and our marriage.

I don't know if your husband will forgive himself for his actions and how it has effected you and your marriage ... as well as you need to forgive him ... he needs to forgive himself too - he does need to know what it is that you are forgiving him for and what he truly is forgiving himself for.

As I tell my family ... let go and let God - but it's also about ... let go and let grow.

JMHO

ladies,

thank you so much for the replies. let me re-read and digest it all and ill reply in a bit. he was up again all night and asked me yesterday to speak to his counselor and tell the counselor everything cause he cant. (he also has a lot of family issues and guilt to deal with). i told him i would. ok--gonna get some coffee and wake up...be back in a bit.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">what i am asking all my old friends here is...if you can think of a post or series of posts that may help him see a way out....can you please give me the links. i may never get him to post here but i may be able to get him to read with me. and if i do---i would like for him to see it can be done. he is in despair and sinkng....it scares me and worries me to see him like this.

thanks.......nikko

--------------------
May today there be peace within you. May you trust God that you are exactly where you are meant to be. "I believe that friends are quiet angels who lift us to our feet when our wings have trouble remembering how to fly."
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Nikko - is your husband a Christian? If so, then he is obviously believing Satan's lie (older than the hills) that "God didn't really mean what He said."

Nikko, this is the Christmas season. Perhaps more than any other time of year, this is the time when we reflect on what it MEANS to God and to ourselves to be FORGIVEN for sin and what the COST was to God to provide us with that gift of love. It began now....it was fulfilled after much pain and suffering at Easter. Do we "dare" shove God's gift back in His face?

There are at least 3 "aspects" of forgiveness that your husband is dealing with.

1) God's forgiveness for sinning. If your husband has Jesus Christ as his personal Lord and Savior, has confessed his sin to God and repented, then God HAS forgiven Him because of what Christ did for him. That sin no longer exists as far a God is concerned.

2) Your forgiveness. If you are a Christian and your husband has confessed, repented, and sought your forgiveness you must (if you haven't already) forgive him out of obedience to God's commands. If you have forgiven him then you also have to accept and implement the 3-fold promise that you make him when YOU say "I forgive you."

3) Your husband needs to forgive himself. This is often the hardest part, in part because of the guilt that is felt. It's goes sort of like this; "I know that God and my wife have forgiven me, but my sin was sooo HUGE that if they only knew what I know about how BIG a sin it was they could never forgive ALL of it, or me. Therefore, since I know it ALL, I won't forgive myself for the sin or pain and suffering that I inflicted."

Again, if your husband is a Christian, then he is confusing "consequences" for sin with "forgiveness" of sin. The phrase "forgiven but not forgotten" comes to mind.

"Come to me all ye who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Nikko, none of "forgets" the sins we have committed. God never forgets anything either. BUT, God gave us the same "free will" that He has to make a CHOICE and the ability to live by that choice. Forgiveness is a choice, an "act of love" that flies in the face of anything close to "deserving to be forgiven." None of us "deserves" to be forgiven. We forgive because we love. We forgive because of, "This is love, that Christ died for us." We forgive because of, "While we were YET sinners, God sent His only begotten son to take the consequences of sin upon Himself and to 'pay the required price' for sin on our behalf." God, who was without sin, could make the choice even though we were (are) totally undeserving of that loving choice. God chose despite ourselves.

When we "realize" the depth of our sin and the total separation from God that it warrants, we begin to understand just HOW great a sacrifice God the Son made on our behalf. It's realitively "easy" to die for someone who has been loving and loyal to us. It's something else to die on behalf of an axe murderer so that he doesn't have to die as a consequence of his sin. Whether that sin is/was adultery, theft, or any of millions of sins, we have all been given the underserved gift of forgiveness through Jesus Christ. He bore ALL of our sins. He died for ALL of our sins, past, present, and future as long as we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.

Being a basically "hard headed" lot, we tend to learn the hard way. We go off in directions that lead to sin (an it's attendant consequences). Thank God that there IS forgiveness available through Christ. So we learn the hard way, even have to live the rest of our lives sometimes with some of the consequences. But we live a "forgiven life" and we seek to conform our lives TODAY and into the future to simply obeying God's commands in humble obedience.

So it would appear that your husband's "struggle" remains within his head. "How can I forgive myself for what I've done?"

You begin that healing by understanding that God MEANT what He said and does NOT break His promises. You begin that healing by understanding that you are NOT the first, nor sadly the last, to sin....even sin grievously. The Scriptures are replete with examples of sinners who CHOSE to repent and God blessed them as they walked into the FUTURE, not the Past, with God. They NEVER forgot their past actions, but they LEARNED from it. If your husband wants a couple of "Examples," then let's pick two terrible sinners as those examples: King David and the sins of adultery and murder; and the Apostle Paul (formerly Saul) who sought to destroy Christians wherever he found them and was the CHIEF persecutor of the church in it's infancy. SURRENDER to God is the key. Believing God and trusting God NO MATTER WHAT WE ARE FEELING is the "how to" in accomplishing that surrender.

Let me give you a couple of passages from an earlier thread on forgiveness that might be helpful to your husband. I'll also provide a link to the entire thread because it might be helpful to both of you.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">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 bungling 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
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> I know how biblically minded you are FH, but is this not an alien concept? Where do we read that we should forgive ourselves, is not this buying into self-esteem psychology? We are surely only ever asked to forgive those who have offended us and seek our forgiveness, and at this point we are obligated to forgive them. But forgiveness of ourselves....? We need to seek God's forgiveness, and the forgiveness of others, but I think self forgiveness and the whole self love thing is better replaced by humility and an acceptance, that if we have repented then we have been forgiven by God and the offended party. Self-forgiveness appears obsolete. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Mr BC – I understand your confusion on this point. You are correct that there is no explicit verse in the Scripture that says, “forgive yourself”. But I don’t think, and remember that this is just my opinion, that there is necessarily anything “alien” about this “forgive yourself” sort of thing. Yes, there is an element of self-esteem involved here. But, self-esteem is an integral part of who we are and is integral to recovery for both WS and BS. I agree with you that “self forgiveness and the whole self love thing is better replaced by humility and an acceptance, that if we have repented then we have been forgiven by God and the offended party.” But let’s think about it from the aspect of the “real world” struggle that many of us face even after we have received forgiveness from God.

There are Scriptures aplenty that speak about forgiving those who have sinned against us and about forgiveness from God to sinners who repent. In the case of forgiving someone who has sinned against us, our spouse or someone else, WE are taught to forgive as Christ has forgiven us. That means “forgetting” the sin and treating the person “as if” they had not sinned against us. It means not dwelling on the sin. It means not “saving” the sin to use as a weapon in any future disagreements. It means not gossiping about the sin with others (talking to others who have no “need to know”) in a manner that imparts something like, “See how much better and holier I am than the sinner, aren’t I just great?” Now we all know that we struggle with even this sort of forgiveness. We may intellectually assent that we have forgiven, but forgiving as Christ forgives is not something that we do naturally. We have to choose to forgive and behave in a Christ-like forgiving manner. I think you might agree with that. It’s “easier” to forgive someone else.

But what if we are the “sinner”? What if we have committed a sin or sins? Yes, we repent and receive forgiveness from Christ, and if it applies, forgiveness from whomever we sinned against. But some sins we do are primarily against God and may not be what we would think of a sin against someone else. For example, not remembering the Sabbath Day and not keeping it holy. In either case a sin has been committed by us and we need to seek forgiveness from God, or both God and the sinned against person. We DO need to accept that forgiveness. With God it is a little easier because we know that He is faithful to forgive. With others, we need the reinforcement of their subsequent actions toward us to “validate” that their forgiving of us is “real” and not just “words”.

But, and this leads to the statement that I made about forgiving ourselves, we also struggle with the sure knowledge that we have sinned. Maybe it was neglect of our spouse, maybe it was the sin of the adultery, maybe it was doubting God’s faithfulness and promises, maybe it was…..the list is very long. Whatever the sin that WE committed, we also have to deal with ourselves.

Think of it this way, in Mark 11:22-25 we find, “Have faith in God,” Jesus answered. “I tell you the truth, if anyone says to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins”.

And in Luke 11:4 we find, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us”.

And in 2Cor. 2:7-11 we find, “Now instead, you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him. The reason I wrote you was to see if you would stand the test wand be obedient in everything. If you forgive anyone, I also forgive him. And what I have forgiven – I have forgiven in the sight of Christ for your sake, [i]in order that Satan might not outwit us. For we are not unaware of his schemes.”[/i]

Obviously these verses pertain to forgiving someone who has sinned against God and sinned against us. But the point that I am making is that WE are also TWO people within ourselves. Think of it as the “sinful, fallen, controlled by the flesh” me and the “spiritual, child of God, created in the image of God”, ME. The two “parts of me” are at war with each other as long as we live in the body. It takes a choice to accept Christ, it takes a choice to be obedient, and it takes a choice to try to be more Christ-like despite our “fallen sinful nature”. We are no longer slaves to sin once we have been “born again”. But the war goes on. We are admonished throughout Scripture to “fight the good fight”, to not give in to temptation, etc.

So what happens when we are the sinner? The war within us lights up. Satan pulls out the “big guns”. He slops on lie after lie. He twists our emotions because he know our emotions will betray us every chance they get. He gets us thinking that, “yes, I’ve been forgiven, but my sin was SO BIG that God didn’t really mean that I was forgiven so that it is as if the sin never occurred”. “Yes, I’ve been forgiven by my spouse, but my sin was SO BIG that I don’t think I could forgive it had it been done to me, so it’s nice that they say I am forgiven, but I DON’T BELIEVE IT”. “Ya’ll may have forgiven me, but I know how big my sin was and I can’t forgive myself for that sin!”

So go back to those Scripture quotes above and read them just a little differently.
“if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins”; “for we also forgive everyone who sins against us”; “you ought to forgive and comfort him, so that he will not be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. I urge you, therefore, to reaffirm your love for him”; “in order that Satan might not outwit us”.

Think of these statements about forgiveness from the perspective of your “spiritual self” needing to forgive your “sinful self”. We are “mind and body”, “body and soul”, “I am as I think I am”, “do not self-mutilate your body”, “ do not beat your own body”, these are the sort of thoughts I think you might want to think about. Satan will use our doubts to keep us in mental bondage if he can. Does it make sense to not “heal the whole you”? Forgive that sinful side of yourself as God tells us to forgive those who have sinned against us. Forgive the sinful side of you for sinning against God. This is admittedly part of repentance. But it is not just stopping with “I am sorry for what I have done wrong”. It includes if I may be so bold as to “alter Scripture a little to try to clarify what I am saying, “if you hold anything against anyone (including your “fallen half”), forgive him(yourself), so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins”. This is the “evil twin” that resides in each of us.

If we don’t include forgiving ourselves, we can allow Satan to beat us up with the “Yeah, but’s” for the rest of our lives. He can convince us that that nothing we do can be “good enough” to make up for the wrong we have done. None of us is without sin. None of us is without the need for forgiveness, from God; from those we’ve sinned against, and from the “good side” of ourselves that we have also sinned against.

I hope that helps to clarify it a little. I don’t disagree with your objection at all. I just think that being encased in a “fallen” body makes it very difficult for us to forgive ourselves for having done wrong and to accept forgiveness from God or others. Our self-esteem, how we see ourselves, may have been dealt a very big blow. God does not want us walking around groveling all our lives. He wants us to live a forgiven life.

God bless. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Forgive? Trust? Really? Has anything been learned in the past year?

(((((nikko)))))

God bless.

nikko.

just the word forgiveness in the search engine as a title word yielded lots of good posts on forgiveness........

ark

Maybe you could pick a day and bury the affair. That's it. You never bring it up again and if he does you remind him that he is forgiven. It goes in the past and that is it, it doesn't cycle because you have an end point.

I haven't followed your whole story. Has he truely ended the affair? That could be a problem if it is underground. I also agree that maybe he needs medication. Maybe he is bi polar and maybe that was part of how he got into the affair in the first place. Now he may have cycled into a depression. Maybe a visit to a psychiatrist who also does IC may be helpful. JMHO at four years out. We just live life now and the affair rarely comes up.

wow---thanks for all this!! <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> ive got a ton to read and reply to.

i want to clear a few things up...as far as i know the affair is long over. no proof otherwise. ive dissected it on my own and forgave him for the affair a long time ago. i know why it happened and how. i dont talk about it. what the problem is is his actions (or better word..inactions) since. ive got the biggest elephant under my rug you can imagine! lol

since he has allways been a conflict avoider and a "stuffer" he figures that without him doing anything it will just all be peachy on its own. sadly we all know it doesnt work that way. so for his whole life he has dealt, or not dealt, with things by stuffing or avoiding. this is no longer working for him and he is being consummed by it. predictable outcome.

he asked me last night if i would talk to his therapist and explain all this since i am better at it than him. i said i would. from that point on he has to do the work. the therapist cant treat ME for his depression. LOL he has issues from childhood on...its gonna be a long road. but i know he can do it. i've always believed in him. he also does need meds and he will get them.

what i need is a plan for him to start forgiving himself...steps if you will. i figure the affair would be a place to start cause ive allready have forgiven him and can help him through it. im hoping that once he gets some esteeme back from gaining his integrity back he will continue on to the other things.

ok---let me go read all of this and get back to you all...thanks

oh and ps.....he told me he doesnt feel like ive forgiven him. so i asked him what forgiveness looks like to him? he didnt know but was gonna think about it and get back to me. my guess is just move on and not ever have to deal with it...but maybe he will surprise me with a different answer....

Nikko...I don't have any threads to give you, but I can certainly relate to your husband regarding being a stuffer. Yeah, conflict avoider.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by nikko:
<strong> since he has allways been a conflict avoider and a "stuffer" he figures that without him doing anything it will just all be peachy on its own. sadly we all know it doesnt work that way. so for his whole life he has dealt, or not dealt, with things by stuffing or avoiding. this is no longer working for him and he is being consummed by it. predictable outcome.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I don't know too much of your sit, but can probably guarntee if not an A, then something else to have your H escape from reality. The reality of facing a problem and dealing with it, rather than stuffing.

There comes a time when we stuffers just finally let it blow and scream at the top of our lungs, "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!" For me, it was a combined gambling and EA thing--both avoiding conflict; both getting me deeper in my own hole of depression; both making the problems at hand worse by letting them fester. He needs to make a stand for himself.

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">he was up again all night and asked me yesterday to speak to his counselor and tell the counselor everything cause he cant. (he also has a lot of family issues and guilt to deal with). i told him i would.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">IMHO, you are enabling him. It's a fine line between wanting to help him and actually making his "stuffing" deeper. He needs to do this. He needs to do this on his own; yet he needs to know you are supporting him 100%. Seems like a contradiction, but it's not. He's still avoiding getting this out (or learning how to) by having YOU tell the C his issues. Not doing any good unless it's coming from him directly. It's like you taking a bar exam for him and hiim trying to practice law without even knowing what the laws are. Kinda defeats the purpose.

Suggest that you go with him, maybe, a few times to his C. But, this HAS TO come from him.

I'm still early in this "forgiving of myself" and not stuffing, but he really needs to start somewhere. This first step for him will be the hardest.

Hope this helps a little. Best wishes and God bless!

liny--thanks so much for that. i have juggled the enabler vs. he really asked for help this time...hes never done that. i know it is enabling, but if i go with him and help him lay it all out and he and the counselor have a point to begin from....would one last act of enabling be that bad? i dont know...i know he finally asked for help---he hasnt done that....so i feel like i want to help.

i guess i need to think more on it. thanks though

the more i think on it the more i come to the conclusion if he wants me there i will go...but he has to lay it out himself. i can fill in gaps and give my opinion if asked...but it has to come from him. i called and hopefully will hear from the counselor today.

i found a great book for ws...gonna post about it in a new thread.

I think this is a wise POJA with yourself! You're not compromising the fact that *HE* has to do this, but you will be there physically and emotionally for the first session.

Best wishes to you both! (Let us know how it goes.)