<img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I laffed reading this ! THANK YOU !!!

I do not hate you .... I do loath and hate your affair. If it were possible for me to be cruel TO your affair, I would.

It is possible to for me to separate YOU from your affair and I feel compassion for you .... because you are really very sad and unhappy.

What's worse, your affair is making you less and less happy, more and more sad.

I think it is impossible to be soulfully and deeply happy without self-respect.

No self-respecting person violates his/her self by having an affair.

Whatever you lacked in self-respect prior to your affair .... has not improved by lowering your personal standards.

Real self-respect can be yours.

You need to raise your self-standards.

Interested?

MagPie,

I am responding to your posts as I read them. I think was not clear to you is that peoples comments about your attitude and wording is NOT so much about you as you think. Most of it was really how they fear your H is responding to what you say. If HE feels you are coming across as "entitled" then it will be a problem. If HE thinks you are coming across as someone who won't admit they are wrong, who won't seek to right the wrongs, then recovery is much more difficult.

In short the comments are more a way for people to point out how YOU come across when reading what you write, rather than how you ARE which we don't know. It is often seen around here that either the BS or the WS (and yes the BS often gets a dose of this as well) do come across in a negative fashion and the idea is to point this out if ONLY to sensitize the poster to the fact that they be impacting their spouse in the same way.

Just a few thoughts.

God Bless,

JL

Magpie:

I have read Bird's post and this one as well. Before I start let me say that I am the BS but I really do not believe that my status makes my statements here inherently biased. More important than being a former BS is that I am a partner in a fully recovered marriage that is more rewarding for both of us post D-day than it ever was even imagined prior to that date. That road has been rocky and took a lot of work from both of us but the rewards were many times greater than the efforts.

I understand and do put some credence into the issues in the marriage pre-A and the effect of those actions in creating the environment which was ripe for an A. We have all done our part in creating those environments.

The reason that I felt compelled to post here is to give you some perspective on how your husband may feel and some of the things that my FWW and I did to work through the early days of our recovery. I was making plans for walking out on my marriage the day before D-Day or at least seperating to find my way. We didn't do this for a number a reasons, partly financial but most importantly it is difficult to have the undivided attention and time committed to the marriage to rebuild it if there are two seperate homes.

I know that you read SmartCookies posts early on and you may remember some of the things that I told her particularly with respect to how she felt about her husband.
It is not my place to judge either your current actions or your husbands prior actions. It seems as though you have both been forthcoming with the truth about mistakes that you have both made. It seems that he is repentent about his part and has asked for your foregiveness. The emotional scars that he caused for you no doubt will take time to heal just as the scars that you are giving him by participating in an A will heal slowly.

If you read much about my sitch, you will remember that by the time D-day had occurred the A had long been ended and there was very little contact after AE through D-day. The cancer on our relationship caused by my wife's walls that she had to build to protect her "secret" and contributed to by my continued DJ's and other LB's over those years were a major hurdle for us to knock down prior to really getting into recovery. I had to deal with her fog and withdrawal after the AE but our marriage was shaky and I just didn't recognize that this was what she was dealing with. Looking back, all of her actions during and after the A towards me and our children are much more explainable. She is a completely different person today than she was when she was participating in the A. I am certainly a different person as well, broken and less innocent, but much more in tune with her needs and meeting those needs in ways that she never imagined that I could or felt she deserved.

I know the trip is over and was shortened. I sincerely hope that you got what you wanted out of this. I cannot imagine the pain that occurred for your DH while you were gone knowing where you were and that you were trying to decide which side of the fence to settle on. I had enough pproblems with all the images and questions even though when I found out it many years had passed.

I hope that you and BB are now ready to commit to the marriage and work through whatever issues that have occured both pre-A and since then. I must encourage you however if you are going to make that committment to fully subscribe to absolute NC with OM from here on out. You both also have to implement a policy of radical honesty. No more secrets between either of you....past, current or future.

Something that I have thought a lot about that was reminded as I read you story. It goes without saying that all marriages where at least one of the partners has or considers an A, that there are some serious issues and unhappiness in that marriage. In my particular sitch, I knew my wife was unhappy pre-A but just didn't know how to fix it. I suggested getting some help but she was too proud for that. Even as her unhappiness manifested, I still really loved her and would have changed if I understood at the time what I was doing wrong. In many ways, I neglected her and her needs and as she tried to tell me why she was unhappy I just blew them off. Ultimately, she had an A, I suppose like most trying to find what was missing in her M. I don't blame her at all for trying to find happiness nor do I blame OM who was in similar situation for doing the same thing. What I do blame them for is how they tried to find that happiness. Pre-A, my wife could have left the relationship with me and not been different that most marriages winding up in divorce court. After she was divorced she had every right to go and find someone who would meet her needs and make her happy. Instead, she was unwilling to leave the security of our marriage but wanted her needs filled by someone else at the same time. Typical of our society, she felt like this was possible. If the truth was known at the time, I guarantee you that her rationalization of this had convinced her that she was doing nothing wrong at the time/ Today, it makes her sick at her stomach to think of what she did and what she was willing to risk to do that.

I wrote this not to pass judgement on you, rather to give you a different perspective. It appears obvious that BB did a very good job of taking away your self worth and values during your marriage as well as making you very unhappy and unsatisfied. It is hard to commit to a relationship long term under these conditions. However, a more appropriate method would have been to leave him, file for divorce and then try to "test drive" OM to see if he could fill those needs for you better. Had my wife divorced me, had her fling, decided that the grass wasn't really greener and come back to work out our marriage, most likely I would have taken her back with open arms. Taking her back after she betrayed her committment to me and her kids without doing it in a way that gave me and the kids choices was wrong and selfish. She learned that in a short period of time but the damage was done.

There is not disrespect in my mind of either you or BB deciding that there are so many issues that cannot be worked through that the marriage must end. If that is the case and you have both put forth the effort to make sure that those issues are truly irreconcilable, get the D and move forward with each of your lives.

There is a tremendous amount of satisfaction for those couples who are able to get past those issues and truly reconcile and build a better marriage over time after an A happens. That process cannot be started until the A has ended for good and there is absolute NC. If you stay in the middle of the highway too long, eventually you will become roadkill.

NT

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Magpie,

I wish I had more time for a detailed post. You and I seem to have a lot in common. I can really relate to a lot of what you write.

Like you, by the time I had my affair, I was so emotionally battered that there was a huge disconnect between my mind and my heart. At the time, I didn't even realize how hurt I was. I was so numb. And during the affair, I marveled at the fact that, though I KNEW it was wrong, I didn't feel the least bit guilty about it.

Unlike you, the decision to end the affair was made for me. The OM ended it in no uncertain terms. I can only imagine how hard it is for someone to end an affair before they're ready. But you must see why you need to do this in order for your marriage to have a fighting chance, don't you?

I was glad to see you post again after you came back from your trip. If you decide to work thinkgs out with Bird, I hope you keep coming here. There are some posters who seem to have a holier-than-thou attitude. And those who even seem to get a kick out of other people's anguish (Yes Hanzo, I'm talking about you. Your post above serves absolutely no purpose execpt to be obnoxious!) But there are others here who are kind, patient, and wise. Over time, you'll learn who they are, and you'll learn to trust what they tell you even when it doesn't seem to make sense at the time.

I'll be thinking of you.

--SC

Oh, magpie...

I was a WS...I eventually learned that it was my own pride and lack of humility that destroyed me. Until I put time an energy into understanding what was going wrong inside myself, I could never be a good husband and father.

You will never heal until you deal with this. Stopping your affair is not the root problem. Being contrite is not the root problem. Those are all actions that will proceed forth from a person who has come to realize that she has destroyed the one thing, the only thing, that each of us can truly claim as our own...our integrity.

Maggie, where is your integrity? Do you like who you have become? Admitting your failure to yourself is the first step to healing. You have disappointed yourself...and you are angry about it.

It's not your H's fault. You are a grown woman. You can tell yourself all day that he "made" you do things if you want...but it won't get you any closer to recovering your integrity.

I'm not going to to tell you stop your affair and go back to your H. I'm not so sure that's the right thing to do in every case. I am fairly convinced that an affair is never a solution to anything. It's usually an attempt to self-medicate pain.

I am quite sure that you will never be able to live peacefully with yourself (or anyone else) unless you strive to become the person you believe you should be. And that will require that you come to understand what it means to humble.

You are stubborn and proud of it...this will be your ruin. Saying "well, that's just the way I am" doesn't excuse you from addressing it.

Spend a little time looking inward, magpie. That's where your work needs to start.

Low

exactly! wow! good post low!

This morning I set up a hotmail account for my wife and I. **edit** The intent is to provide a means for any poster on this forum to contact us directly if they desire. There is of course no obligation to do so <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

If you e-mail this account, please be aware that this is a joint account, and we will both see any e-mails sent there. I do not, at this point, intend to post either of our personal e-mail addresses on the forums, though you all are free to ask for them through this hotmail account.

I do realize that there is great concern (justified) about "private" conversations, especially between members of the opposite sex. That is not what this account is for - rather, it's a way to make contact with both of us, and if someone out there wants to follow-up one-on-one, that is fine, though my preference would be that any one-on-one be same sex. Thanks.