can you explain where you see my being contolling because i don't see that from what i said. Be specific so I understand what part your talking about please

I think everyone tries to control things. I have no doubt that your H tries to control you and you I am sure try to control him. I think it is human nature and it always amazes me how some people don’t think they are the least bit controlling.

I thought my wife was very controlling and she thought I was, go figure. Maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. If your H is as bad as you say then I feel very sorry for you.

If you look at what you posted above I get from that your Husband cannot discuss your Affair? That sounds very controlling to me. I guess you only can discuss his problems and not yours. It sounded from your post that he is the only problem and he needs to be fixed and then everything will be fine. Well I am going to bet that your husband thinks your Affair was a big deal and it needs to be discussed. I would imagine you feel other things need to be addressed and you are right, but it should not be just the things that you want to address. I think you are the controlling one when your spouse has no right to discuss your failings but you sure want to discuss his.

According to your post he is the problem he needs to be fixed and yes you had an Affair but you don’t want to discuss it so it is not a big deal. That is controlling. Now what if he does not think any of his shortcomings should be discussed or are out of bounds? I think you would think he is controlling.

Maybe the reason your Husband looks so bad is because you were in an Affair and you need to justify it like my wife did. Maybe you need to step back and look at both of you and not just him. I admire people who don’t just give up so I am glad you are here and in counseling. Your husband needs to address his problems and so do you. Best of luck and please don’t take this to be too harsh. This advice is free so take it for what it is worth.

Perhaps the middle ground here would be for you to assist your husband in healing from your affair, and he can assist you by taking actions to fix his portion of the marriage?

IHE is right in that it's ALWAYS both sides that need to fix things in the marriage. Both of you insisting that you should ONLY work on the issues you feel need to be addressed will get you nowhere. So compromise...work on issues for each other instead.

[color:"blue"]In an effort to make this clear ....

Wife said:[/color]



[color:"blue"]The controlling problem I see here (one that YOU can fix all by yourself Wife <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> ) is that , so far, as you approach couples counseling, your expectation s been that your H has things about him needing to be fixed. This does not help you.

As YOU approach couples counseling ... approach with the attitude that there are things about YOU that need to be fixed. This is an area where you can exercise your personal power.

As long as you view counseling as a place for H to get repaired what he needs to repair, you miss an opportunity to repair what's broken in you.

Your focus on H and his faults .... means you are attempting to control him at the expense of ignoring yourself.

Your focus on yourself and your own faults (things you have power over).... means you are controlling you and you relinquish your H's healing to hisownself.

Your very best hard effort at finding out what's wrong with YOU is going to be the winning lottery ticket for you and your children.

Does that make it more clear? [/color]

[color:"blue"]The affair was your attempt to sidestep your responsibilities to fix yourself Wife.

There are some HARD questions about your pre-affair marital behavior you should be asking yourself.

Begging and such do not work. 1 year of begging and suffering did not work, and for certain 7 years of more begging will not work any better than the first year did!

Ask yourself why you did not do something different ... after experiencing the failure of begging to get your husband's attention.

There are ways to deal with an addicted spouse but ---> begging, argueing, flinging ultimatums ... do not work. (as you know <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />)

Go into therapy/counseling to discover why you continued down a path that showed no promise of success ..... this is important stuff for you to discover and repair about YOU. See ... you can become healthy enough to leave a failed marriage without the self-inflicted harm an affair causes.

Learn how to make yourself stronger (not louder) and more responsible for the choices you made ... like remaining in a lousy unfulfilling marriage where your children were being abused emotionally. Hold yourself responsible for that decision..[/color]

Pep you are right in both posts. There are many things that I did within the marriage that helped it come to this point.
I tried many different ways to keep my marriage together and not all of them were healthy to me or to H. By not leaving the marriage sooner it enabled him to act the way he did and it pulled me even further away from who I really was and changed my true self. YES I take some blame for the kids because I allowed it to continue when I shouldnt have. It is a burden of guilt that weighs so heavily on my heart that it's like a crushing stone. Like many spouses in a bad marriage I felt if I was just paitient long enough things would get better. Quite the opposite happened and my heart became hardened and my love for H died a slow and very painful death.

Why did I continue to stay? Because of the love for H and my belief in my faith. I also wanted to trust him soooo badly when he would say he would change. I needed to make sure I have put all I had into my marriage before I walked away.

I left the marriage before the affair started. It started as a friendship/EA before I left and I knew then that what I was doing was wrong and that our marriage was truly over. I was going against everything I belived in and values I felt very strongly about. It wasn't untill a couple of weeks before I came home that the PA started. Stll a very bad choice on my part and is a choice I made that is tearing me up.

Why did I come home? Quite frankly i'm still not sure. H wanted me to. When I said I didn't think that I could ever love him again he said he could have me brought back legaly because of the kids. It's all so confusing but I wanted to do the right thing and really what choice did I have? I didn't want to deny him seeing the kids and knew we couldn't work on anything from a long distace...even if it was divorce we were working on.

Now...H wants to rebuild and I don't know if I can still fight for the marriage. Emotionally I am drained and my heart is hard. The A is the worst thing that could have happened and just added even more hurt and pain all the way around.

Yes there are many things that I need to work on within myself. Very much so. I want to put all the blame on H but when all is said and done it rests on my shoulders because I made my choices and now I own the consequences.

Your approach to counseling is smart. I do need to focus on me and he needs to focus on him. Thank you for bringing that to my attention.

Some may wonder how a Christian can have an Affair...it's the fog. It does not matter your values or how smart you are...it just happens through a selfish need. It hurts deeply because i turned away from what God wanted me to do...it hurts all people involved in your life. I know that God will forgive me and I can only hope that those that i hurt can forgive me as well. I never wanted to hurt my H like that.

BOTH of you are putting too much expectations on yourselves and on the marriage. You two did not come to this situation overnight and you certainly won't get out of it overnight. Personal and marital recoveries can take 2 years or more and if both of you are honest about doing the best to save/rebuild the marriage, then both of you must develop the mindset that your recoveries are going to be a one-day-at-a-time process that cannot and should not be rushed. If you read Dr Harley's book 'Surviving An Affair', you will remember that WS [wayward spouse], Sue, was in a similar emotional situation after she made the decision to return to the marriage, but it was her willingness/committment and that of her BS [betrayed spouse] to follow the The Four Rules For A Successful Marriage that eventually lead both of them to reconnect emotionally with one another, the question is do BOTH of you have the same resolve as Jon and Sue to follow those rules?

TMCM

[color:"blue"]No matter what happends next in your marriage, you will have to live with yourself for the rest of your life ... so my intent is simply to open your eyes to a better way of dealing with the problems before you. Dealing with problems in a way that taps into your integrity and strength, not your tendency for conflict avoidance.

You seem such a good person. Only good people struggle with this feeling of having let themselves down ... the not-so-good people are not bothered by guilt or a sense that they let themselves down. The affair is/was shameful, but you yourself are not shameful. Understand?

Get the most out of counseling by recognizing when you are trying to control anything but your own learning and your own growing. When you are focused on what you CAN and SHOULD do based on your integrity ... your life becomes less of a mess and much more satisfying. Not to mention, restored self-esteem.

Best of luck to you. May God bless your family.[/color]

My self-esteem is pretty low right now and with some luck and prayer we can get through the weekend here and concentrate on the kids for awhile.

Pep: can you please expound on :The affair is/was shameful, but you yourself are not shameful. Understand?

I would really like a little more insight on this. My feelings are just so muddled up right now. Sometimes i feel like there is so much going on right now that I can't breathe.

You are a human being, and trying to do the right thing - you are NOT a bad person, you are a good person who made a poor choice, who did a bad thing. Don't let your poor choice become WHO you are...cause it's not WHO you are.

You are a Christian - if you ask God for forgiveness and truly make the changes you need to make, God will give it to you and he will forget your sin. God doesn't look at you as a shameful person, he sees what you did is a shameful thing.

You are NOT your affair. You will learn, grow and change from this experience. I KNOW what the remorse and the pain feels like - but grow from it - you made a horrible horrible mistake, but I bet you wont ever make it again.

Here is something that kick started my recovery to who I am, and learning to forgive myself for what I did..

A forgiven woman (author unknown)

Yes it is true that when you stand before the Lord to ask His forgiveness.
Your dress is ragged and tattered because of ugly sins.
Your hair is thickly tangled with the web of rebellion.
Your shoes are torm and muddy by your past failures.
But God never sees any of that!
He sees you Holy.
He sees you Perfect.
Because you are dressed in His righteousness.
And He has covered you with the full-length cape of His love.
He sees nothing else!
Even when you explain how you really look underneath, He hears, but He forgets forever.
The dimenstions of His forgetfulness is as far as the East is from the West.
And it endures past all eternity.

Thank you so much...It is a beautiful poem that says alot about how God sees us. In my misery I seem to forget sometimes what an awesome God He is.

Yeah, what Dorry said <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />

You've raised kids. You have seen some pretty awful behaviors by your kids I'm sure ... but you know that they are good kids deep down, right?

One of your kids steals some little thing from a store. You make him take it back and apologize. The act of stealing was an awful thing to do .... but the kid is not an awful kid.

Same with you.

Oh .... and you hope the kid who has stolen feels a little guilty about what he did ... because he realizes stealing is wrong.

However, you want him to like himself and honor himself irregardless of his little slip of sin....

because he has learned from his mistake and knows he is not a bad boy ... but that stealing is bad

Thanks...I understand what you meant now. Had a rest and my mind is clearing a bit now. Guilt does have a way of putting you in your place does't it?

Oh yes it does! The only problem is that it also has the nagging habit of preventing someone from doing the right thing.

MDW,

Let me offer you a saying that might help you in focusing on you and the issues at hand. I read it first many years ago on this site. A man named WhoDat had it in his closing lines.
Reflect on this and then consider what Pep and others have said about working on YOUR issues. Do you see how allowing "resentment" to be a major portion of your marriage has poisoned YOU. You need to focus on this because as you release the resentment and as you really focus on you and your pain, you will be able to see your H's help in much more effective ways.

Your marriage can be rebuilt. You and your H can change, but what must change first is your perspectives and that takes focusing on your own flaws just as your H must focus on his. If you do this, then progress can be made.

Just some thoughts.

God Bless,

JL

As usual, JL has it just about right!

In His arms.

michdadswife - I'll toss in one more for you, "Hate the sin, love the sinner." God's perspective and why Christ endured so much for us....because we have VALUE and IMPORTANCE in God's eyes beyond any sin that He has forgiven....."as far as the East is from the West."


I'll tell you what, both of you, if you truly want to have a starting point to rebuild both a Christian marriage and the love for each other, I can help you by sending you a pamphlet that my wife I received when we began our Marriage Counseling. If you'd like it, email at mbforeverhers@yahoo.com and I'll email it back to you. If you do send and email, mention it here so I will know to look at my yahoo account.

The title of the pamphlet is "What Do You Do When Your Marriage Goes Sour?"

Lastly, you both need to commit to the long haul and to NOT "bailing out." The average recovery timeframe is 2 years, so you are both just beginning.

God bless.

Sent you an e-mail to send the pamphlet. Thanks so much.

Sent. I hope it helps you and mich dad.

God bless.