There is no FEAR that I made the decision to marry Patriot from an unhealthy place. That seems like a FACT to me. I made the decision for unhealthy reasons.

Does there even exist a healthy reason to make the decision to marry someone whom you found out a month before your wedding day had been unfaithful to your for 1 1/2 years?



I obviously do NOT trust my perceptions or my decisions.

I can't tell if he is lying to me. My sensors don't seem to work properly anymore. Sometimes they scream loudly to me and then I am told that I am wrong.

I can't tell when he is being genuine. Logic tells me to pay attention to his actions, rather than his words. That is not a very good guide when dealing with someone who has conflict-avoidance difficulties and is motivated by approval or avoidance of disapproval.

How in the world do you know if they are doing something just to gain your approval???

If an approval addict wants to gain your approval, they can simply say whatever it is they know you want to hear, but does that make it genuine?

If you are open with them about what you want, it seems like it only gives them ammunition with which to deceive you so they can gain approval.

If they aren't honest about foggy thoughts, for fear you will disapprove - how are they to be overcome?

For the past month, I have been in IC.

I like him (the IC), but 50 minutes sure does go by quickly and progress is slow.

We have addressed such things as:

NegaFroz and why she exists.
Separation Anxiety
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

I feel very afraid today.

I am afraid that Recovery is unrealistic for us because:

everyone, including Dr. Harley and every other expert says you should not marry if there has been infidelity prior to your marriage.

There are reasons they do not think these marriages will work.

Sure, people can defy odds, but neither of our coping skills are the greatest in the first place, so it seems very unlikely we would be the exception in this case.

To believe otherwise seems foolish, naive, and like maybe I am making yet another unhealthy decision.

I am afraid that fog is being masked over by a desire to gain approval for doing the right thing. Doing the right thing is good, but do the reasons matter? Just because someone DOES the right thing doesn't mean that the thinking behind the behavior has changed, does it?

I can be patient. I'm still here. I just wish I knew if we are running in circles or even headed in the right direction.

There is something missing here that I can't quite put my finger on. I don't know why there doesn't seem to be any intimacy in our marriage.

Patriot left for two weeks to go do Army training to further his career.

This is difficult for me.

It's difficult because I feel abandoned. It's also difficult because even before the A, I struggled with abandonment issues and the last time he left for two weeks for the Army, he told me the training was three days longer than it really was and went to the Bahamas with OW.

During that three days, he didn't answer his cell phone and didn't call me. It was like torture. When he did finally call me three days later, he told me he was in some field doing Army exercises and couldn't call me.

During that time, I gave and gave because I loved him and I wanted to be supportive. Obviously, if I had known the truth, I wouldn't have been so giving.

I actually gave up the use of the one vehicle we had at the time and walked 3 or so miles to work in the blazing sun because he preferred to drive, rather than fly (turns out he needed the vehicle to drive to a different city than he was in so he could meet OW at the airport there to go on their trip). I even reassured him that the kids and I would be fine before he left, when he said he felt bad about taking the vehicle from me.

Last night he called to tell me he is leaving his hotel room to go do Army exercises for...guess how long - 3 days.

This is scary and uncomfortable. It feels like re-living a painful situation.

I am angry about being in this position, without having been given choices.

I feel manipulated by the method he used to get what he wanted. The Army training was not an order. It was a choice. It was presented to me as though it were an order.

After he'd already signed up for it and there was no way to get out of it, I found out that there were also options as far as when he could go and he made that decision because he wanted to accomplish this class before January.

It is very possible that if I had known about all of the facts before the decision was made and he had told me that it was something he really wanted and why, my Giver would have kicked in and ideas could have been formed to help me to feel more comfortable.

Now that he is ensured of getting what he wants (because he's already gone), he seems to want to try to help me to feel more comfortable.

I resent that because it seems like it enables him to still cause damage and then come in like the 'good guy' and make it easier and more comfortable for me while I suffer because of damage he caused in the first place.

I don't like using my Giver when I didn't have a choice. I don't like feeling like I have no control over decisions that affect my life or feeling tricked and duped so he can get what he wants.

I don't like that this kind of behavior happens a lot and that I am, once again, being asked to sit here and wait, just try to get through it and be understanding because NOW he is sorry that he did something and at this point there isn't anything he can do about damage he already caused - then or now.

Well, lots of things are changing in me, Patriot and our marriage. It seems like it happened all of a sudden, but I suspect it’s really more a matter of several months of progress paying off.

I can’t precisely remember which MB member it was who, a year or so back, suggested to me that I was afraid of intimacy. I think it may have been Pep. Of course, I vehemently denied this.

I just didn’t see it then. The idea didn’t make sense to me at the time because I knew that I so craved that level of intimacy with Patriot.

I really did crave it. That is true. I was also terrified of it – terrified enough to take steps to make sure I wouldn’t get it.

So, let me take another stab at the million dollar question I’ve been asking myself for close to 2 years now…

Why did I marry Patriot a month after D-Day?

Because he was exactly what I was looking for and the A did nothing to change that.

He fit the bill.

He had all the qualities that I still love about him now – so smart, funny, witty, sexy…and the icing on the cake: EMOTIONALLY UNAVAILABLE

And the best part about that for me was that I got to blame HIM for the lack of intimacy and confirm to myself that the reason he was rejecting me was because I wasn’t good enough – just as I have done with my birth mother.

I’ve been wearing my pain and anger like a shroud – a barrier to protect me anytime he tried to get too close.

I have set up hurdle after hurdle, hoop after hoop and this brave man, who has his own fears and childhood wounds, just continues to persevere and jumps over and through them all.

I have begged, screamed, blamed, cried and pleaded for him to be emotionally available to me. Well, finally here he is. He has stripped everything away. He’s worked hard to manage his own issues and everything I TOLD him was the reason we lacked intimacy in our marriage – dishonesty, conflict-avoidance, passive-aggressiveness, fear, boundaries…

He’s managing it all and now he stands before me – willing, able and vulnerable. He amazes me.

He’s called my bluff and suddenly I am left to face what was really my issue all along – my own fear.

I’ve tried so hard to reconcile with myself the choice I made to marry Patriot because I knew it was an unhealthy decision at the time and I did it anyway. I have felt so trapped here because I never really felt like I had a choice. Sometimes I would even blurt out to him, “I don’t want to be here.”

I DO want to be here. It’s scary and I know that someday I will inevitably experience the loss of him and it terrifies me to think about – more loss in my life - but I’m going to choose to live my life with him anyway because I don’t want to miss this. I don’t want to shove this gift away, simply because I know that I won’t get to keep it forever.

One more thing – that nonsense about he and I having nothing to rebuild because we never had anything real in the first place and our relationship isn’t special…load of crap. I bet you guys knew that all along.

{{froz}} I am sooo proud of you!

ahem..<<I bet you guys knew that all along. >> Why do you think we believed in you?

Thank you.

In case I haven't mentioned it to anyone today...

I am MADLY in love with Patriot!

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