</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Is my husband's opinion of me any of my business? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I thought so. But wasn't sure what you were asking this morning. My opinion of you right now is higher than that of myself. Due I think to my insecurities. Due to us having passed through the written portion of my plan or maybe just my general lack of direction. ?

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Recovery can't be all one- sided. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">So true. And I am thankful that you've joined me in this journey. Together we will conquer this adventure. So many spouses on here never have the opportunity to recover their marriage, at best some can hope to recover themselves and improve themselves and become aware or what they need and can provide for any future relationships.

Good thread, it's been one that I've had to sift through my mind several times to get my mind around it totally.

<small>[ March 01, 2005, 11:27 AM: Message edited by: Pepperband ]</small>

Jelly, while I think we are pretty much saying the same thing I know because it is you and I we could point counter point forever and I'm telling you you are preaching to the choir but I would like to try to clarify a couple of things.

Keep in mind I am not smart enough to pull a portion of your post over to this one so I'm going from memory and I am and idiot ya know.

Okay 1st you said that you were generalizing but this can only be partly true, you see all of us can only talk from our place in this world. You are talking from the RWS pulpit. You are in a great place right now and I am sooooo happy for you but you have a different vantage point than I.

Like you I can only talk from my place in the sun. I am the FBS, and perhaps overly protective H of Mrs. E. She may have done wrong but I always was and always will be her strongest supporter!

Just as you can not see an A through my eyes I can not see them through yours. We are not seeing different things were are seeing them from different perspectives.

Mrs. E does take full responsibility the A and her actions during it. That IS why there is so much pain for her. Yes there were drugs involved pills and alcohol. Yes she could have just said no but she did not. She does not blame OM it is just one more thing she has to feel remorse for.

You said that if a WS were to be and open book and work to make changes to avoid a recurrence that would lead to getting to that happy place you are at. Or something like that, anyway I can tell you from personal experience that those things do not equal removal of pain and guilt. Perhaps I missed your point here but that's what I got from it. Mrs. E and I work daily to A proof our M. If she were anymore open I could see her insides but that does not take away the things she has done or the pain she feels from them, in fact it serves to expose them and that uglyness is painfull.

You said that trying to compair the pain of a BS to that of a WS was apples to oranges. Of course that is true BUT and you see that is a big but... pain is pain. Let me give you an analogy; Mrs. E and I had a son that died when he was 2 weeks old. Many a well intentioned friend told me "well at least he was only two weeks old, sure was a good thing it wasn't your older son that would be really bad". Now I can only speak from someone that lost a 2 week old son because that is my experience but I could give you a laundry list of reasons why it was worse to lose one so young. The truth is pain can not be measured just as love can not. When it's all cut and dried my friend it doesn't matter why you hurt only that you do.

Lastly in our case Mrs. E went from being the perfect wife/mother/daughter/business owner/you name it, to a drug riddled, physically abused, business failure, that had abonded her H and kids. That's a lot for anyone to get your arms around. In her case she got sucked into a world she knew nothing about and got trapped. Is that her fault? YOU BET IT IS! Does admitting that make it better. Not for her. Can I forgive her. Much to my surprise yes I can and have. However, even more to my surprise she has not been able to forgive herself and I'm telling you, for a BS that was a real revelation. In fact it is that very ownership you talked about that makes it so hard for her to find self forgivness. I'll give you another analogy. I was just the opposite of Mrs. E, opposites attract don't ya know, I was the typical rebel without a case most of my life. I might honestly have been the worst son that has ever lived. I treated my father like crap. Now days thanks to Mrs. E I've settled down and I now see the error in my ways but I still beat myself up everytime I think of my father and I dang sure know it wasn't his fault I was a horrible son. You see I can be a better son but I can't take aways what I did.

Jelly, if you've read down this far, what you have to understand is that to a BS what you are saying is music to our ears. Heck yes we want it to be ALL our S's fault. And I could not agree with you more on the ownership and accountability fronts, I think that is one of the biggest problems in our society today, everything is always someone else's faulty but I can guarantee you that more than one BS out there, especially someone that is not in R yet would like to print out your post run to their WS and say SEE!!!!! I assure you that's what I would have in the beginning and that will not work.

Jelly as you said most all WS's feel remorse/guilt what have you. However, since we all show these things in different ways we as BS's do not always get that and thus we end up throwing the A and the pain it caused in the WS's face in an effort to even those scales. What was truly a revealation to me is that in my case Mrs. E had already taken responsiblity for that pain and all I was doing was throwing salt in an open wound which of course caused her to pull away. Once again in my case and I would guess in most that is not going to lead you down the path to R.

Being intellectually lazy as I am I'm tired of this post so here it comes unedited. Hope I got my points across.

bump---for hubby hopefully!

Bump

MOST excellent thread!

Thanx for starting it Kyellow and thanx for bumping up Kiwi.

I have noticed that it's often the FORMER WS's who post here who will call the (still floundering in fog land) WS's on failing to take responsibility.

I think this is an excellent discussion, and I'm glad its still around for all to read.

I just wanted to add one more thought.

I think that its necessary to come to this realisation in recovery, but it can be from either direction.
What I mean is, understanding exactly where my reponsibility begins and ends has sometimes been difficult for me in the past. I sometimes took on the issues of my loved ones, tried to help and felt responsible, or alternatively, guilty, if I couldn't help. Ironically this sometimes made me less able to really help them, because their problems could appear overwhelming to me.

After dday, I had to understand that there were things I couldn't help H with, and trust that he would fix them himself if and when he was ready. As much as I might have wanted to fix everything on my own, since it was my fault, it wasn't going to work.

I take responsibility for everything that I've done, and I will keep working to make permanent changes to improve myself. No more, no less.

bumping

just bumpin' again

WoW...

sending my fww this one...

Hi Smur,

My thoughts on responsibility...

IMO I tried far too long to help my WH realize he had some problems and to get help for them.

But now I realize that as long as he can find somebody (anybody) to believe him and to sympathize with him, and as long as he does not feel 'in love' with me, he doesn't really have any motive to change.

While my WH, his family, his friends, and his OW du jour, all believe I am totally to blame (for him having 7 + affairs during our marriage?!?!?) I KNOW that my WH would have committed adultery no matter who he was married to. HE has a serial adultery problem - once the divorce is final it is no longer my concern.

At times I wished I was more to blame, because then I could have had some ability to fix it!

But it's his problem.

And as hard as it is to face, the reality is that he doesn't love me, or even our daughters, enough to fix it.

So he will lose me, and to a great extent his duahgters, because he chooses to protect the false image of himself that he has built up and projected to his 'supporters' and admirers.

I once asked the family counselor why he doesn't understand and appreciate that WE (me and my daughters) are really the only ones who know him and still love him in spite of his flaws. She said he doesn't WANT anyone to know him. For him the goal is to con people into admiring what he pretends to be.

I can't imagine the amount of self-loathing and fear he must have deep inside. He's like one of those foster kids who tries really hard to hurt and disappoint the people who want to adopt him, because he's convinced they eventually will reject him (so why not reject them first?)

I still wish I could help him but he doesn't want to be helped. And trying to help him has only caused immense damage to me and my daughters so far. It's just sad that nobody in his own family knows and loves him enough to confront him! But that's partly because they have the same issues he has...

Anyway, I just wanted to say (rambling over LOL) that it IS sad to realize that there's nothing you can do to help somebody who is getting so much 'help' in staying stuck. All we can do is find and fix the parts we broke, offer to help others with their share of the fixing, and then just accept what they do with their part of the responsibility.

<small>[ February 28, 2005, 07:34 AM: Message edited by: meremortal ]</small>

bump

And I want to add that IMO a BIG part of taking responsibility is for the adulterers to admit they did what they did because they enjoyed it.

At the time they didn't care who they were hurting - they were being selfish.

They weren't conned by a cad, so tragically deprived that they simply HAD TO get their needs met no matter what, immensely naive, taken advantage of... blah-blah-blah

They were just shamefully selfish.

bump

bumping

Bump for TA- Andrew.

I'm hoping this can help you hold your W accountable, help you see, why maybe she chose an A.

I really believe it is about ones character flaws that leads them to chose such a cowards way out of their reality.

KY

^bump^

^bump^ for newbies

Gosh Ky
any chance you could knock my WH off his LALA land trip. I know they have to do it themselves but I sometime is someone anyone but me would just stand up to him ans say buddy u are messing up big time and you need to take this mess on your self instead of blaming your wife it would make a real difference. But alas no one will they [censored] foot around him and just tell him they disapprove. I think he needs a good blasting but hey he don't listen to me so i just quit talking to him.

i've gotten alot out of reading this thread. many of the comments have helped me better understand my situation.

thanks!!




hmmmmm. is this what i'm doing without meaning to? i really don't know if this is how it comes across.





i've done this. i have come to understand what emotional needs i was not meeting for my husband and realized that i was using MANY love busters.

I have made changes-still have far to go!




maybe this is something that upsets my husband so much and keeps him from being able to heal while with me. that i keep saying all of this is 50% my fault. i have to understand that even thought i was not meeting his needs-he SHOULD HAVE TOLD ME and GIVEN US A CHANCETO WORK IT OUT. he should not have made the choice he did. although i understand how he felt-i do not feel his choice was in anyway right or in anyway my fault...

well that's where i need to be right? it really wasn't my fault-i still loved him. i still honored all of our vows, he could have talked to me-we could have gotten through our problems.





this is soooo true in my case. i've forgiven him and am ready to move on using the things i've learned from our mistakes to have a better relationship and he's not even forgiven himself because he's till having the affair...

oh my gosh...no wonder we are so far apart in where we think we should be right now!!!






this seems very true...he still blames ME for HIS CHOICES...

he said it himself "he knows i was sick but he can't forgive me because when i was depressed i wasn't there for him and that he feels i checked out of this marriage long before he did"

so if i'm undestanding this

he CAN'T forgive himself until he ends the affair and accepts the blame for his choices instead of blaming me

and he can't accept my forgiveness until he does

am i getting this?

Wow - old memories - i was only a month or so out of D-day when I posted to this..amazing the changes that have taken place since then.

Thanks to Jelly for inspiring me to make the changes I have continued to make along my journey! I hope all is well with you!