Mel, since you post your e-mail I debated if I should just e-mail this question to you. Then I decided maybe someone else might benefit. I noticed on 2 recent posts on others' threads something you said which hit me. You said you had a happy M before the A. Before all the crises hit us in 2002-2003 our M was in a really good place. I actually still thought we were in a good place, just in a really crappy year. The other thing you said is respect is a big deal for you. I had several triggers today which made me aware again of the following. I love H, but since the A I don't think I respect him. And respect, along with integrity, has always been huge for me. If you don't mind answering, these are my questions. (1) How did you make peace with the fact that your H had an A even though you didn't have a sucky M? I wrote over in Recovery how days like today I just think, "How did you throw us away for the admiring little twit?" (2) How long did it take before you respected him again? Thanks to you and anyone else who wants to take a stab at these questions. CV

CV,

Obviously, I am not Melody. But I asked her those very questions just today, and here are the answers she gave me...


Melody's reply

CV, I was able to make peace with his affair by seeing how he handled it afterwards. He worked hard to redeem himself and reestablished trust. To me, having character comes not from being perfect, but in how we handle our shortcomings.[there are degrees here, of course] He made enormous personal changes and tried very hard to prove himself to me. That is how I regained respect for him.

It probably took around 2 years for me to feel respect for him again. Maybe more.

And while I did respect him before the A affair happened, we didn't really have a happy marriage, because we had just got married! I found out about the affair 6 months into our brand new marriage.

Hope that all makes sense!

Frozen, thanks for the link. Melody, I appreciate your response to my questions. I filled out this personal history questionairre for an MB weekend we did a few months ago. We've been a little slow finishing the lessons. One question asked me to list my faults. What came to my mind is that my moral code is so strong that I have a difficult time dealing with a lack of integrity. I don't blast H with my thoughts, it's more of an internal thing.

A few weeks ago I saw the movie "The Clearing." It's about a kidnapping, yet to me the bigger story was about this man's A and how it altered his M, which seemed very happy pre-A. Funny thing is maybe you'd have to be a BS to even think the infidelity theme was bigger than the kidnapping theme. At one point the main character acknowledges to his kidnapper that his W no longer looks at him the way she did years before. Something like that. That line hit me because that's me still. I love H, but it's still hard for me to imagine looking at him with the respect that I once had. It's a hurdle for me that I hope time will overcome. Thanks Mel! CV