FL,

I know how you feel. I'm almost in the same situation, however my S doesn't have it in her to stay with me.

I am the FWH. I have great remorse for what I've done. Ten years ago I had the A with a classmate in university while my W and were dating and she was pregnant with our first child. She found out about the A way back then but I didn't tell her the whole truth until 4 months ago. We've been separated ever since.

I envy you that you at least are with your S. Please, please, please, count that blessing. You can at least work on things.

I hope all turns out for the best and that the grief you feel will one day be a thing of the past.

I think TA makes an excellent point; "that each betrayal - each mile further down the wrong the road, stubbornly refusing to admit this is not the right road - reduces the ability to use conscience as a guide".

I am going to make an analogy that may get lost in translation but I'm so thankful that my W only counted the number of times I held a gun to her head and not the number of bullets. For the first 9 years of our M we lived in an apartment because I turned my paycheck over to a bookie on a weekly basis. She only became aware of my addiction on "d-day". After I was "cured" there was a second "d-day" about 18 months later. While that was many years ago she will only mention that I betrayed her not once but twice. This is certainly more palatable then her citing the thousands and thousands of dollars involved or how many times I met the bookie behind her back etc.

I suppose I just want to remind everyone that there are different ways of keeping score. And I would suggest that the scorekeeper demonstrate a little more empathy.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

WOE

i just wanted to say hi and acknowlegde all the posts. i do feel very blessed.

i'm trying to let go of that last 15% and get to 100%.

you all have given me great things to think about.

i'm letting work distract me enough to not post a lot more but i will.

Thinking of you, FL

some of this has been really hard to read. hence i've been slow to respond fully.

i don't want the difficutly to stop me from growing

and i don't mean to quibble, i'm glad to have you all here to discuss this instead of my H. i certainly don't want to sound like i am minimizing anything.

i just don't see how the stmt "70 times over the course of our marriage" is fair.

yes, it is true, but it is also true to say i was 100% faithful for the majority of our marriage. since the infidelity occured for a short time in 1991 and then all the rest in 2001-2003.

but then i read up on CambridgeMan story....

CambridgeMan, thank you for your post and i am so very sorry for your situation. i read all your posts, i wish there was something i could say to help.

reading your story makes me have to face how i've lied to him for the entire marriage, since the first thing occured while engaged. and quibbling about how to word the rest of it suddenly becomes even more meaningless.

in the end, the best thing for me personally is to focus on who i am today. but where does that leave my H?? i certainly cannot say anything like "but i have come clean now and i'm no longer doing any of that stuff"

that seems worse than trying to get him to see the perspective of i was 100% faithful for many many years.

and 2001 really was part of a serious break down.

ugh, i'm about to start spinning in circles again!!

if me letting go of that little bit comfort that i get to have when i view the facts in a more favorable view (which really is a joke anyway) will help... then i'm just going to have to figure out a way to do that.

i do recall the post by kyellow. i will look it up.

and FAR, since i am finally getting some words out.... i'm really glad my post gave you hope. it is true, i really did want to divorce, big time!! back in 2001. he really worked hard to hold on to me. worked so well i thanked him with the truth, and a ton of hurt and pain now <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

smur, thank you so much for sharing here with me. it really helps to have another in the same boat. lots of times i feel very alienated here. my issue, i know.

gc, i need to read your short but very powerful post more often. thanks.

thanks to all of you. i'm sorry if i missed responding to anyone directly. i'm very tired right now and i'm going to head home. i'm going to walk the 2.5 miles to the train today. that will help me sleep again tonight.

oh, wait, one more thing before i go....

i actually have noticed that i am being self-loving. i have not once dug my fingernails into any skin in order to fight back tears, nor have i scratched at my arm. my habit of causing unhealthy physical pain to stop the emotional pain did not happen yesterday. nor did i turn to food at all, in fact, surprisingly, i didn't even think about, i think i was too tired!!!

so for that, i will pat myself on the back. not a normal habit for me, patting myself on the back. but it seems like a good idea.

FL, if it is any comfort it has been hard for me to face that I lied for nearly 2/3 of my marriage. Even though my A was "only" two years...I kept the truth from my H for nearly 10 or our 14 years together. I think most BS would agree that it is the withholding of information that hurts the most in situations like ours. {{FL}}

FL

Maybe this was a revelation to you today. That no form of words helps your H view your infidelities differently. That no ne of your 'reasons' excuse it nor mitigate it in his eyes.

Strip away the 'interpretation of words' to look at what you have actually got.

You have a man who you have sh*t on repeatedly in many ways for most of your marriage. He is hurt beyond belief and probably has no expectation that there will be no repeat of your betrayal.

Man and Almighty God say its OK fo him to wash his hands of you in divorce.

He may not even know what he feels for you now, after so much pain rammed upon him time after time.

But he is HERE.

WITH you.

in HOPE that you two can work it out.

The man has a holy ,inexplicable love for you FL. He is still here with you. Is not abusive of you. Is trying his best with his meagre tools and expectations.

WHAT a man is this ! I am in AWE of him !

ANY man can fight a battle he can win, but to fight a battle you expect to LOSE AGAIN and STILL Compete with the little he has in the name of love and decency and husbandry ?

Such is heroism. I have tears of pride in your H FL as I type.

I am in awe of your H FL. Truly. It has come to me in a wave. I am overwhelmed with respect for this man who stands by you out of a DECENT instinct alone.

Cherish him FL. Take full responsibility for your past behaviour and CHERISH him. REWARD his faithfulness and wonder at the man God has given you.

All blessings

Hi, FL.

The subject of your thread is "living in an unforgiven state".

I do want to encourage you, that once you have taken responsibility for your actions, forgiveness is available to you.

Once you have received and acknowledged forgiveness, there will come a time and a place for you to establish boundaries as to the role additional guilt will play in your life, and who you will allow to inject that guilt, and how much guilt will be injected. You are not to grovel forever.

As I said in my first post to you, you can't take back what you've done. You also can't pay restitution. Only what you choose to do from here on will determine how others perceive your previous actions.

Please consider all this carefully. You will need it in the future.

God bless,
Gimble

FL

I can honestly say that if I learned that the majority of my M was a lie, I would probably move on. While I feel what you did is just as bad as a ONS, the length of lying would be too much. My FWW and I had many great years until our mutual meltdown starting in 2001, which eventually led to her A in 2003. Knowing that her infidelity started from the very begining would make it impossible for me to ever trust her again.

I will say that I have read many of your past posts and feel that you are learning and while I don't really know you, I would bet that you will never cheat again.

My FWW A has radically changed my views on life and my philosophy. I am not the same person I was pre-A. I never wished that something never happened as much as my FWW A. But one day it hit me...no matter how much I wished, prayed or begged, the bottom line is that it will never be the same as it was. Reality only exists in the moment that it is happeneing and the past becomes less and less real as time passes. Even my FWW thoughts, images and feeling for the OM fade like an over played cassette. Each day that passes those events become less and less real. I learned that and it makes the past easier to let go because it is no longer real. It's just thoughts that have become so faded and false that thinking about them just causes pain. Pain that only I can avoid. I learned I had the power to move past what no longer exists.

As long as you and you H focus on the reality of the moment and honor and love each other like each of you might be gone in the next minute, you both will flourish.

What your past self did was terrible, but that is no longer who you are at this moment. It is up to you to never repeat the bad that you have done. You have that power. I wish you much luck.

well, i hate to say, but i'm going to own my thoughts and feelings anyway.

i think the way things are being presented:

"You have a man who you have sh*t on repeatedly in many ways for most of your marriage." not true.

"the majority of the M was a lie" i disagree.

there is so much more to me than just my infidelity. i just cannot honestly say i can agree to these stmts. I'm not saying i'm not trying to be openning to accepting it as truth.

i'm saying i'm just not there and i'm not going to say i am if i'm not.

i can own my actions, i can take full responsibility but i will NEVER say i was down and out completely horrible to him. that is just NOT true. i tried to be close to him, i did tons and tons of loving things for him, he pushed me away. he told me we didn't need to do things together to have a good marriage. i gave him 3 beautiful children (one in heaven) and i have loved them. i have done countless of activities with them, without him, because he did not want to join us. he would rather go to a good movie without me than a bad movie with me (that is a metophor).

i disagree with his vision of what love entailed back then. at least the vision of what i thought he was saying love entailed.

I have financially provided, i have domestically tried my best, i have supported his business, doing his books, as well as our personal books.

all of this stuff counts!!!

yes, he is a hero for how he held on to me when i was pushing for divorce, he held this family together and he lifted me out of the extremely deep and dark hole i put myself in. every word you said Bob about how much he has done, i enthusiastically agree 200%

and all of this really hits home: i really do not want to take any chance that any of my words may cause him to think his pain is not relavant. i am in no way shape or form saying that what i have done is no big deal and that he should just get over it.

i guess i'm trying to say, i agree what i have done has hurt him beyond words, i agree i need to own up to my actions and i need to own up to changing, growing and maturing in a way so that he is not in any danger due to any future actions on my part. but i just cannot agree to some of these stmts (including his) where the rest of our marriage and my performance as his wife gets minimized and counted as irrelavant.

and for the record, i also think CambridgeMan's W (as he has presented the story) is being unreasonable. Now granted we only have his side of the story in the same way that we only have my side of the story.

so let me have it if you must. maybe it will be good for me. maybe someone's words will cause me to have the "ahh haa" moment i feel like i am being prompted to have.

please understand, what i have said here, i say in order to own up to exactly what i am feeling and thinking right now. i will never not own up to my thoughts and feelings ever again. if i disagree, i will keep saying i disagree until i have either been convinced otherwise or the discussion ends with an agreement to disagree. i have learned that trying to ignore my feelings and trying to discount my thoughts resulted in me doing things in order to compensate. the new me, owns her feelings and thoughts.

FL -

It is extremely painful to read your thread. While I completely understand how your husband feels, having gone through a similar thing, the past is the past. The past no longer exists. Also there is no promise of a tomorrow.

The only thing that is real is today.

I made some tragic choices in the past, and beat myself up for them for years. One was having an abortion. But it is done, and I can't change it now. It was the way I coped to get out of an abusive marriage. It was wrong for me personally, and has caused years of anguish.

The way I lived my life in the past is no longer how I have chosen to live my life. I am a different person now.

Does that mean that the abortion never happened? No. Does it mean that it will not effect me the rest of my days? No. I realize that it forever changed things. I have accepted that.

Your choices have forever changed things in your life, and your husband's life. I think you are a different person now.

Your marriage is a different marriage too. It will never be the same. But it IS a marriage that has been through the fire, and consists of two battered people who are clinging together. That is something very hopeful.

My marriage didn't survive, and for that I am sad. But I still feel good that I did my best when all I wanted to do was give up.

Thanks Believer, very much.

now before anyone spends too much energy replying (not that your replies are not welcome) i think i did have my "ahh haa" moment.

i am mistakenly hearing that i am terrible thru and thru and have not done anything right in the entire marriage when i read some of the comments. and the fact is, no one here, nor my H has said to me "you have been a 100% terrible and horrible wife"

in fact, the very fact that H is still with me should be telling me just that. if all i ever gave him was ****** and heartache, he would have no reason to stay. the fact that he is staying even with the enormity of my betrayals should actually be telling me just the opposite. i must of done something good. hey that is from a Sound of Music song, i love that movie.

back to the point.... i now see your points. it is extremely hard, everytime i force myself to look a bit closer at the destruction and pain i have caused this man, it is EXTREMELY hard. but i guess once i get it all, really see and accept it all, i won't have to have more of these moments when my remorse overwhelms even more than it already does.

my H actually helped me be able to get to this "ahh haa" moment. we talked breifly about this thread.

as always thanks to you all. i'm going to go relax with my H now. i'm sad but somehow i still feel better on some level. i guess maybe that is what happens when you stop fighting internally and just accept reality.

nite all. i will certainly check in tommorow.

FL

I'm with ya girl!

There's a point when you know you're right. In this forum you can get no satisfaction out of lying about your feelings. What's the point then? This is the perfect outlet to express yourself anonymously and not worry what someone might think of you. What are they going to do?

You're right about what side of the story you get. I know I haven't been the best husband I could be. I know my W could tell you stories about how I've made HER feel that I don't even know about. I know that I did not meet her need for admiration. There were times she would do something like clean the house or decorate a room and I'd be "it's alright, it just doesn't matter to me." I know now that was not great because she really needed my support.

You cannot express every day of your marriage in this forum. You are letting everyone know the things that pertain to your feelings and where you need advice. You're right that there's so much more to your marriage. I've said this once before to a friend going through a separation: Don't worry about other people's perceptions of you, you know the truth of who you are, so have confidence in knowing that you're right.

You are here to express YOUR feelings. Sure, your H may feel worse (or may not) but there's nothing YOU can do about how THEY feel. You can only really do something about how YOU feel.

And here you are.

Don't give up. Both you and your H are still in it together.

"You have a man who you have sh*t on repeatedly in many ways for most of your marriage." not true.

FL I retract MOST and the unnecessarily emotive phrasing I used here. I apologise, that was my BS talking.

Of course there is much more to you than your infidelity, but affairs tend to be a focus for BS a lot more than some positive things in marriage.

I can't think of any of Squid's positives that impacted me as radically as Squid's affair has. All the stuff you cite as being good contributions to your H's life benefited YOU too. They greased the wheels of YOUR life too. to cite them as some service you delivered to your H is incorrect IMO.

And IMO you are being unrealistic if you expect your H to consider your positive contributions to your marriage on the same level as your infidelity. Not right now.


i am mistakenly hearing that i am terrible thru and thru and have not done anything right in the entire marriage when i read some of the comments. and the fact is, no one here, nor my H has said to me "you have been a 100% terrible and horrible wife"

Nobody here has said you haven't done anything right in teh entire marriage. No one has said you have been a 100% terrible wife. I don;t know where you get this from, unless it is a sensitivity for you. FACT IS you could have been a STEPFORD wife , or whatever your H needed when you weren;t having affairs and H's life would STLL be defined by yoru infidelity not your wifeliness. Maybe its a WS versus BS thing. Maybe affairs are not seen as destructively by WS as they are by BS. After all they usually provide pleasure of sorts for a while to the WS, but only heartbreak to the BS.

But whether you think its is reasonable or not your H's knowledge of yoru affairs is defining his life right now, and if he is like me it is filtering his everythougt concerning you and your marriage. You think thats unfair?

Well BS think its unfair too.
This post from you reads to me very clearly as a mitigation of your behaviour becaure you were a good wife when you weren;t having sex with other men, and anyway your H didn't join in your family activities as much as you would have liked.


I see now why your H cannot yet forgive you and why your recovery may not be progressing as quickly as you would like.

I have learned that readying onesself for recovery is a risky investment FL, one that it seems you are not prepared to make at this time. That is fine, and is your choice.

I cannot think of a successful recovery on here where the FWS retains thoughts of entitlement and resentment towards their BS after d-day.

And FL, in my very amateur, unimportant opinion you DO.

It probably time I stopped posting to you now FL. I do not want to offend, and I am no MC. Just a bloke.

All blessings. Truly

Hey FL

I like this bit :



Sounds just like JL would say to you (and other FWWs)!!
I'm glad you've had a breakthrough.
Yes - it is possible for both facts to be simultaneously true ie

Fact
- that your H is hugely hurt as a response to your betrayals and needs you to fully and completely take responsibility for what you did and the extent of his pain.

AND

Fact
- you are not a terrible person, in fact you are not the same person anymore. You have learned and grown the hard way. You can forgive yourself and you can work to repair your part of the problems in the M.

Dear FL

I think what you need now is encouragement. You are doing very great in your struggle to become a good W. You are now a FWW rather than a WW. You strive to own what you have done, you repent, and you want to make up for it.

At the same time you need so much to feel a little bit self respect. You search through this black picture for spots of white or even grey, to give you some minimum of self respect. You want to be able to say: "I was not totally a bad person."


I) Not only were you not totally bad, you were mostly a good person: You were a good mother to your children. You were a good employee at work. You were a good friend to your friends. You were a building and contributing citizen of your country. You cared for the needs of others, you shared others pain. Perhaps you prayed for and supported others economically, emotionally or in other ways. In short, you were a good person. YES!
Remind yourself about this daily.

II) But, you also made some terrible selfish choices. And since you did not come clean about these choices, they tainted all of the relationship with your H. You were still mostly a good person. You still cared for other's problems; you still had empathy with pain. You still were a good and faithful employee. But you allowed your M to become tainted a stay that way.


So how can I encourage you now? My hearth feels deeply for your current pain. I can wear your moccasins and walk, not a mile but at least some feet. I feel your desperate need for encouragement and for some self respect.
Still I also feel that BP is right: In your search for a little bit of self respect you try to minimize some of the horror you wrecked. I will talk a little bit about that later. First some encouragement: This is my main message to you. Please remember this more than anything else in this post:


[color:"red"] An A has defining power. So does keeping it hidden for a long time in the M. Yes. This is true.
BUT: what you do to own, and correct for the A has also defining power. You are now in the process of redefining yourself. And I think you are doing great! It is a hard work, and a painful one. Please don't let your feelings discourage you. You are doing great! [/color]


**********

Now I will try to explain what was the point of BP and some others. This concerns the A and how that defined your M at that time. Remember, you are now redefining yourself. You are now choosing to be a better person.
Their intention was not to define you, but to make you understand your H's pain and thereby his struggle to forgive.

It has to do with that taint thing. When there is a secret A in the M, the whole M is unfortunately tainted. If you are 99% of the time behaving like a good and faithful W, and less then 1% of the time cheating, then still the whole M is effected. We can discuss where the boundary for cheating lies. Jesus said any man who looks with lust at another woman has committed adultery with her in his hearth. (From my memory, and with my poor English translation.) According to this definition I have been unfaithful to my wife. I will not judge her from quite this strict a moral code. And I hope neither will she judge me that way. Anyway, somewhere along the line there comes a point of no return. Crossing that point makes you a cheater. Not a 0.1% cheater, or a 50% cheater, but a cheater.

Just to make my point, not to compare to your choices: Consider an employee entrusted with lots of money from the employer. Millions pass through his / her hands every day. This employee is a capable person doing the job very well. After many years of faithful service, just when the private economy was in total breakdown, this employee put a tiny little bit of this stream of money into his/ her own pockets.
Consider also an officer in the armed forces, selling only a few bits of information to the enemy and doing a capable and good service the rest of the time.

Unfortunately an act of betrayal does not stay in its closed compartment, but taints the good parts of the effected relationship as well. This is a choking discovery to lots of WS's.
I hope this enlightens you a little bit on how your H feels about the years of secrets, and why the happy moments you shared with him during this time apparently does not count now.

******************

Then I will return to my main topic: You are doing very well in redefining yourself. Continue on that path! Understand your H and his pain. Feel sorry for what you have done. But do not let those acts totally define you in your own eyes. Work towards regret rather then destructive guilt. Even during the active A you were a good person in most of your other relations. You were a good mother, employee ... You were never a totally bad person.
Focus on who you now are and how you now choose to be. Focus on how you now can be a good W to your hurting H.

I will pray for you, your H and your M.

Wow, good post. FL, hon I tainted my M for ten years with my lies. What frank said here I just got two nights ago. Now focus on this to lift your spirits. NO ONE here is calling you a bad person. This is all about us FWW owing up to our own destructive tendancies including the inability to accept what we did. Honey I am right there with you. Lets walk through this minefield together ok? Even though I am divorcing my H I need to learn from my mistakes so as to never repeat them AND to heal my wounded soul. The lies they ate and festered in my soul leaving a blackness that only time and the Lord can heal. You have people here that love and care for you and will walk you through this.

you guys are all so wonderful.

from the bottom of my heart i want to thank you.

i just want you all to know, i have read every bit of it and i am humbled and blessed to have your support.

soldier on.

This is 100% true.

FL ... you know how much I adore my (now) husband. He's my sweet baboo !!!

However, after D-day .... everything .... and I do mean EVERYTHING we shared during the 2 year span of his A .... was ruined. Garbage. Stenched with the infection caused by betrayal. During my H's A, I was conducting my life with certain knowledge .... like when H would call and say; "I love you" that he meant what he said .... I was unaware that he's be screwing another man's wife 10 minutes after that phone call. Therefore ... all "I love you" messages were rendered invalid for that time period. It's NOT about the sex....

it is NOT about the sex

it is about the loss of perceived reality

as a BS ---> what we thought was REAL was FALSE.

This is the BIG STUFF needing repair in recovery.

Perception of what is real is blown away. Leaving everyting suspect.

And this takes years of hard work to gain comfort in one's OWN perception of reality. Words YOU speak to your H are not going to be his perception of reality for quite a while. Too bad, suck it up.

This is completely different from "being unforgiven". I think you are mixing things up.

You might be completely forgiven by your husband , but not trusted by him.

When your H decides to trust you is none of your business. You job is to live a trustworthy life .... no matter what.

pep, in your opinion, knowing what you know about our situation, since the first betrayal occured while we were engaged, does that time period cover our entire marriage??

i'm really stuck on this pep. i'm trying hard not to be, but it's killing me.

i think the reason i am stuck on this is i am now really understanding that the answer to that question above is yes <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

and somewhere in my head i know the only path here is to accept the answer of yes and find a way to be at peace with that answer.

but i don't know how to do that pep. how to do that and still have any spunk left?

how exactly am i supposed to celebrate our anniversary next monday pep??? sure, i have a lot to celebrate, i have a H that held on to me and refused to let go. first for 2.5 years while i tried to push us into divorcing while i (ok, i'm going to give myself a break and not finish that sentence). and now even after hearing the truth about me, he is still here.

but what does he have to celebrate?