I'm open to any questions/concerns/thoughts any of you may have in regards to my show. I know it was painful to watch but please remember that only certain aspects of my sitch were publicly displayed. My H is not a monster. He is a good hearted soul who's made some very BAAADDDD decisions in his life and he is owning up to them. The first step to recovery is recognizing a problem. Thank you all for your support. BTW, I didn't find out about all the "others" until the most recent was discovered. I think had I known about them at the time of happening my outcome would be quite different.

Thanks for being out there ... I pray that your exWH really repented and both of you could enjoy fullfillin M. Hang in there, the road to recovery is narrow and hard.

-rh-

That felt good didn't it? <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smirk.gif" alt="" />

I never watch this show, but I happened to be flipping the channels and watched most of the first day and the second. It was very painful, Michelle, because it is very, very similar to my situation, as a BH. I too have a child from this affair, one that I love very dearly. My WW is the romantic affairee entangled with a WH who has had 2 prior affairs (he is an amatuer compared to your husband).

But after almost 3 years of this s..t, I will elaborate on the few things that I have divined from my situation:

1. Its not over. After watching your husband and friend, it was obvious that what you are experiencing is simply a pause in the affair. I hope that I am wrong, but this same thing occured in my situation where they claimed they were "working" on their respective marriages, while the whole time they were communicating. Even if communication is not currently happening, they don't put in the required effort to truly fix their marriage, for in their perspectives, the you and the marriage are the damaged goods and require more effort than they wish to offer. Plus there are no good feelings attached with the marriage, so even less reason to truly work on it. So they exist in their respective marriages, but merely existing and building up pressure because it is not giving them the feelings that they want. This drives them back into contact and the whole "passion", "romance", "love" cycle starts again. Remember they are not people who subjugate their feelings under intellectual and rational control, they control their actions by their feelings.

2. You will become deluded yourself while in this type of madness. Initially you will accept all of the crap that they give you and say "I'll take it so long as I can fix this problem", deluding yourself that this is a situation under YOUR control, which it is not. As time continues, the bitterness enters, from the blatant disregard of your feelings and dignity, and you will look at your spouse with disgust and anger or complete apathy. I think that this is a clearer mental state than the initial stage when you are taking the blame for the affair and running around trying to do everything to win them back. In this state you begin to critically analyze the reality of the marriage, the other person and your potential outside of the marriage. This is where you begin to feel more empowered and better about yourself. You think about all of the things you can do without this burden in your life. Life begins to look better during this stage.

3. Her child from your husband is going to be a major hinderance to your future with your husband. The child is a constant and strong reminder of their "love". This child will always be the "bond" between them that you can never share, nor can her husband share with her. Reasonable people would not wish that this new person did not exist, so it becomes easier to look at its existence as a "good" and the actions that caused him/her as "good" also. It is another reason they can use to validate their actions.

4. Your husband is a philanderer. This is not a simple scenario where your husband is generally a faithful person and makes a poor judgement while under a strong emotional urge. This is a complete mentality. From what I have read, from watching your husband on TV, I believe that he is not concerned about the potential loss of his marriage, but his loss of control of the marriage. For so long he dominated his world; had you, had any other woman he desired and he controlled the outcome. I think that he fears the loss of his control of the marriage more than losing "you", for a rational person would understand that having affairs runs the risk of divorce. If he can delude you into believing that he is trying to fix himself, then he can gain his control over you again. After every new affair that may occur, he will appeal to the idea that he is "trying", but he just messed up.

You made a statement in your above post, an idea that I quarral with constantly; you state that your husband is not a bad person, but a good person who has made very bad choices. My question is "when does a good person become bad"? My personal belief is that a person becomes bad when they know what they are doing is wrong and yet they continue to act in such a manner. This does not condemn one to being eternally bad, for we all have made bad choices, they can realise the error of their ways and truly work to correct their mistakes, but while they continue to act in a knowlingly harmful manner, it is my opinion that they are "bad".

I truly admire your courage to go on television and talk about this betrayal and humiliation that you have endured; I could not do it. One, the OM is 5 inches shorter than me and about 100 lbs smaller than me, so the episode would not have been very long and two, if Phil could restrain me from killing him, the rest of the dialogue would not have been suitable for television. I cannot imagine how you can do anything without being confronted with a trigger that reminds you of the betrayal of your marriage. My spouse has only had one affair and rarely a day goes by that I am not reminded by something, I cannot imagine 40 affairs. I watched your show with disgust, cursing the responses from your husband and friend, both because they were insulting to any rational being and two because they were so hauntingly personal.

I am wondering exactly what you mean by "quite different".

See, the thing for me is .... here you are, one of the nicest sweetest wives here on MB (prolly one of the prettiest too !) .... and all you are trying to do is live a normal life with normal problems and give of yourself to your family ... in other words ~be happy~.

And in order for you (or any of us) to accomplish this, we need to know what is commonly refered to as ~the facts~.

And with the facts in hand, we decide things.

We make mistakes when we have the wrong facts.

We make mistakes when we ignore the facts.

We cannot change the facts, we simply have to live with them, in the sense of accepting a fact as is, and making decisions based on the best factual information we have at any given time.

This of course has nothing to do with emotions. Which are not factual, but are very important.

Sometimes our emotions over-ride the facts and color the facts into something else.

For instance, the OW on your TV show .... she was not living with the facts at all. She and your H were living in never-never-land with Michael Jackson ! (LOL horrible reference, I know, but I could not resist)

The way your H and OW got to the low place they created .... was by ignoring facts.

YOU cannot deal with facts which are hidden from you .... but YOU are also responsible for dealing with the actual facts as they are (finally at last) revealed to you.

A good man, a good husband, a good father .... is one who does not risk everything for OW. That is a fact.

If your marriage is going to heal, it will be because each of you come to terms accepting the facts and deals with the facts in ethical and self-loving ways.

Best of luck to you ... I hope the counseling works. Some men are not capable of deep relationships because of scars on their heart from old trauma.... My son may grow up to be just like your husband !

THAT is a fact I am looking into. So I am not callously poking at your husband for no reason, but I am exploring how a man gets to where your husband got .... and is there a road home?

I don't know.

Pep