After I called the woman's husband and told him what I knew of my husband's relationship with his wife, the woman's husband got the truth out of his wife and told me that my husband had been having an affair. I'd been concerned about this woman for two years, so much so that I'd gone to individual counseling.

My husband's response to my finding out and being upset about his affair included:
"She met my needs, and you wouldn't."
"You knew something was going on, and you didn't do anything about it."
"You were a terrible wife."
"Everything you wanted was a yes. Everything I wanted was a no."

It may be that I was a terrible wife. It may be that I refused to meet his needs. It may be that I was too controlling.

The BS FOG is that I deserved to have an affair, that somehow it wasn't HIS fault that HE chose to have an affair. Maybe it was OW's fault. Maybe it was circumstances. Maybe... Maybe...

The bottom line is this: I may have deserved separation. I may have deserved divorce.

No one EVER deserves an affair. And no one is forced to have an affair. It is the free will choice of the person who is having the affair.

Last year, four years after the affair was exposed, my mother in law said to me, "When I found out what was going on, I was upset... with you!" I chuckled and said, "And I was upset with Sophia...." My MIL said, "No no no". I then continued, "Until I realized that Tom's choices are his responsibility." My MIL continued saying "No no no" and that was the end of the converation.

My MIL is in the "mother of BS" fog. I was in the BS fog -- for years. I've only just come out of it in the last few months.

One thing I figured out long ago was that, if I was responsible for his first affair, I'd be responsible for his second affair. Who can live like that? My job is not to keep him from having another affair. My job is to care for him. HIS job is to keep himself from having another affair.

Cherished

in all my time here, I have found only one person that I felt was responsible for his wifes affair. That was a man that invited other men into their bedroom and then whined about her sleeping around behind his back. Other than that, it is always 100% the fault of the WS....100%.

MEDC,
I heard Harley talking on the radio with a man who got his wife into "swinging" and now he really liked it and he didn't. Even in this situation, and the situation described above, the woman had the choice to refuse.

When I was single, I dated a man who admitted to me that he was separated from his wife. You cannot imagine my horror. I didn't know I was having an affair. When I found out, that was the end of that relationship. I don't know whatever happened to that man's marriage. I got out of there.

Cherished

I don't know the mans situation...but IMHO, if a person is merely waiting on paperwork to be finalized it is not cheating...hence, no affair.
I know others feel differently...but I think it is okay. I dated a woman that was separated...her H had cheated on her numerous times...she filed for divorce and was less than a month away from being finalized. We are friends to this day and her divorce went as she said.
Now...if a person says he is separated only to act single, that is another story imo. A red flag would be the inability to go to someones house or to meet friends/family.

The day I registered on MB was the day my husband said to me, "Maybe we should separate so that you don't have to worry what I'm doing during the day."

Naive me replied, "I'm not worried about what you're doing during the day."

As it turns out, OW was pushing for intercourse. I guess my husband had some qualms about having sex with another woman while sharing a bed with his wife.

I don't know the situation with the man who was separated from his wife. The romance was over for me when he said he was separate.


Cherished

Over the past weekend, my mother in law shared with me reflections from a Catholic devotional book published by the Holy Wounds Apostolate of Wisconsin Rapids, WI. The reflections are given below.

My mother in law wanted me to know that every suffering comes from God, that God wanted me to suffer at her son's hands. I told her that God grants us free will. He may permit sin, but he does not will it. It was my husband's free will to be unfaithful and to be abusive. That was not God's will for us.

The BS fog and the WS mother fog have the same origin: a belief that the WS does not have free will.

My husband once said to me, "I had no choice but to have an affair." Apparently, he also believed he had no free will.

What I am realizing, and it's been a painful realization, is that I have equated care with sacrifice. The more I sacrificed for my husband, the more I showed my care for him. This philosophy came from books that I did not read, that my parents and grandparents read. Over the weekend, I also went through a book that is the explanation for a Catholic devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. My mother in law has in her home and my grandparents had in their home a picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that was prominently displayed. At the heart of this book is an explanation of what "true love" means. Here is the explanation, from page 350 of The Way of Divine Love: "The basis of love is humility, for it is often necessary to submit and sacrifice our likes and dislikes, our comfort and our self-love if we wish to give proof of true love." The philosophy of "true love", as taught to me by conservative Catholic parents and grandparents, is in direct conflict with the idea of the Policy of Joint Agreement. With the Catholic true love ideal, the more you suffer, the more you show your love. With the POJA, the way to show love is to give up what works for one in order to find what works for both. My great temptation in following Harley's program is to sacrifice my own needs in order to meet my husband's needs or to agree to what he wants to do even if it is negative for me.

Cherished

FROM A CATHOLIC DEVOTIONAL BOOK:

"Suffering is not simply an evil, for no one suffered more than the Son of God Himself, more than His Blessed Mother or more than the Saints. Every suffering comes from God. It may appear to come to us by chance or accident or from someone else, but in reality, every suffering comes to us from God. Nothing happens to us without His wish or permission. Not even a hair falls from our heads without His consent.

Why does God allow us to suffer? Simply because He is asking us to take a little share in His Pssion. What appears to come by chance or from someone else always comes because God allows it.

Every act in Our Lord's life was a lesson for us. The greatest act in His life was His Passion. This, then, is the greatest lesson for us. It teaches us that we too must suffer.

God suffered all the dreadful pains of His Passion for each one of us. How can we refuse to suffer a little for love of Him?"

____

"Even the greater sufferings that may fall to our share from time to time become easy to bear if we accept them with serenity and patience. What really makes suffering difficult to bear is our own impatience, our revolt, our refusal to accept it. This irritation increases our sufferings a hundred fold and, besides, robs us of all the merit we could have gained thereby."

___

"If we accept the sufferings He sends us and offer them in union with His sufferings, we receive the greatest rewards. Five minutes' suffering borne for love of Jesus is of greater value to us than years and years of pleasure and joy. The Saints tell us that if we patiently bear our sufferings, we merit the crown of martyrdom.

Moreover, suffering borne patiently brings out all that is good in us. Those who have suffered are usually the most charming people.

If we bear these facts clearly in mind, it certainly becomes much easier to suffer."

___

Dear Cherished,

As a Catholic myself, I recognize these statements, and I think I can relate to where you are coming from....

I would just say that I don't think the statements you have quoted make the equation "suffering = abuse".....

If you think about some of these statements and the historical climate of suffering experienced by people because of the lack of medical care, the privations caused by poverty and war which were prevalent when these statements were made....it is more likely that it is this kind of suffering that these sentiments refer to....suffering which is caused by disease you cannot control, or poverty or war...suffering that is brought upon you which you are powerless to stop....also, emotional suffering that may be temporary, which you go through as a time of trial....such as the death of a loved one....

The Church does not expect you to put up with being abused by your spouse in the name of sacrifice...it does not condone staying with someone who is subjecting you to abuse so that he can feel justified in his sin.....in the name of the "purification" you might undergo as a result of "suffering"...this would be pure masochism....

It is true that a priest might encourage you to try to work out the situation for as long as you can, to sacrifice your own emotional needs for the sake of your children's stability (this is what has been said to me).....but that doesn't mean they condone abuse....

I do understand and agree that these statements can end up leading a person to believe that they should accept abuse when they should not....

Just my thoughts....

LIR

Your words are interesting and they got me to thinking. My WH will not admit that he is having an EA with OW. He says cause he doesn't 'buy' into that whole mentality. Whatever.

He does admit however, that he spends too much time with this person and is perhaps to friendly and sharing with this person. He has also stated that he needed someone to turn to when I ended up going through my hospitalization and my depression. He asks me, what he was supposed to do.

To me he does not see it as choice or free will. He sees it as something he needed and needs right now to get over the pain and sorrow that I've caused him in the past.

I know that I was wrong in causing my husband pain and I am truly sorry and am trying to work on regaining his trust and love. My question I guess is how do I get him to see tha he is indeed wrong for is current actions even though he doesn't see them as wrong? How do I get him to see that he made a choice that I did not force him to make by becoming clsoe to this person?

Please sit down to read this.

"Every suffering comes from God. It may appear to come to us by chance or accident or from someone else, but in reality, every suffering comes to us from God."

A few years ago, a woman who had two children in our children's elementary school was diagnosed with advanced liver cancer. She was not an alcoholic. The doctors could not figure out why she got liver cancer.

My heart went out to her. She had a daughter in my daughter's kindergarten class and a son in my son's third grade class. She taught Sunday School to my daughter.

This woman accepted her illness and eventual death with grace.

Her acceptance was, to me, grace-filled and virtuous. I constrast her suffering with mine. It was not virtuous to put up with his abuse. It was degrading.

If you look at the quote above from my mother in law's Catholic devotional book, you will see that all suffering is viewed as coming from God, even if that suffering is the free-will choice of another.

My husband said to me, "God may not have wanted me to sin, but he wanted you to suffer." In other words, God used him as an instrument for me to become more virtuous in accepting my suffering with grace.

Now place that attitude in the context of his being attracted to another woman. He kept bringing her up. I would get upset, and he would say "Nothing happened." When I finally followed Harley's advice to call the woman's husband and the affair got exposed, one thing he said to me was "I didn't think I was doing anything wrong." He had decided an affair was sexual intercourse, and he was downright virtous to only stop at oral sex. This guy was a former seminarian.

Once, when I called Harley's radio show, he said he thought my husband's view was that, if I really cared about him, I'd want him to be happy and I'd support him in having an affair. That idea on Harley's part may seem absurd, but there is a laundry list of things he wanted to do or wanted me to do that were negative for me. Sophia was just a continuation of lots of other things -- golf, volleyball, training for and running a marathon, singing in the church choir... His life was away from his family. Sophia was simply the logical conclusion of this. I was the obstacle passed which he had to get to enjoy his life. I did think that sacrifice meant showing care, and I literally drove myself into walking pneumonia for several months out of a willingness to do what I could in supporting the family and caring for the children.

With your husband, if you get into a discussion of "right" vs. "wrong", you won't get anywhere. It's all a matter of perception. He may think an emotional affair is OK. He may think oral sex is OK. He may think sex is OK as long as you don't know about it.

Harley's plan is about approaching your spouse and letting the spouse know that something is negative for you. "I am hurt that you are spending time with her." If you've got a spouse who thinks that your sacrifice shows care, then the only approach that I see that has a glimmer of hope is to let your spouse know that you care about him so much that you don't want to do anything that is negative for him.

Can you believe it? My father had heart bypass surgery at the Mayo Clinic, and he and my mother flew into Minneapolis a few days before the surgery so that he could have pizza with me and our four kids. My husband tried to leverage that into his taking our kids to his family for five days. His view was, "Why is it fair that you get to see your family without me and I don't get to see my family without you?" There is this whole idea of balance and fairness. To him, it was a matter of fairness -- the balance to my spending two hours with my parents two miles from our house three days before his heart surgery without him because my parents won't see him after he broke my arm WAS EQUIVALENT in his mind to his taking our kids 200 miles away for five days over New Years.

If you had depression and had to be hospitalized, what might this equate to in his mind. "When is it my turn to be happy?" That's the attitude of a person who believes in balance and thinks, "I'm getting the short end of the stick."

My IC said right away, "Cordially ignore him and build your own life." Harley has advised Plan B. He does not agree with my current approach, which is to focus on finding what is win-win and getting away from him when he is nasty. For Harley, there's too much of Plan B at home, or emotional divorce, in my current approach to marriage, but at least I am uncovering the rationale that led to an affair and abuse and to my staying in this marriage. I still hope. I hope that, someday, my husband will believe in win-win when I won't participate in win-lose.

Cherished

Dear Cherished,

I can relate to what you're saying...incidents with my H are similar....my H sounds like he rationalizes in a similar way to your H....for example, he often accuses me of "tit-for-tat" behaviour....if I say that I am hurt by something he has done by way of explanation for my attitude, or my response, or my tone of voice, he immediately says "so it's tit-for-tat, is it?!"...as if MY response is an attack back on him for him having hurt me...in other words, I'm not "allowed" to react to his behaviour...I am not "allowed" any negative feelings....my reaction is viewed as hurtful to him...

I have to agree with Harley, that too much of Plan B at home is very unlikely to save the marriage....as I am in much the same situation as you, having slept apart from my H for almost 2 years, I have to agree with Harley...staying together under these conditions cements the emotional divorce...being in close physical proximity with someone you SHOULD be physically intimate with, and with whom you were once physically and emotionally intimate with simply extends the physical and emotional divorce...the longer you stay together, the wider the gap becomes...you live separate lives and for the WS, that is fine with him...he is let off the hook but allowed to stay with all the comforts of home...the BS makes all the sacrifices...and I think it's true that if the WS really loved and wanted to be with his affair partner, he would go...but he doesn't...he just wants to be single, act single, live a single life, without having to live alone.....his affair partner really is on the level of playing golf, singing in the choir..she's an activity like any other which he has convinced himself he deserves to have.....

For me, I decided it was better to stay together...that our kids needed us to be together....I know that isn't the popular view, but it was my decision, so I own it and I own that I choose to live with it....but I don't necessarily believe that God wants me to suffer....I do, however, try to see the benefit in the suffering I have experienced...through the pain I have experienced, I hope I am more understanding and compassionate of other people who suffer, and I hope I am able to help other people who have suffered similar pain, in some small way.....this is the only benefit I can see to the suffering I have felt....I certainly don't feel I deserved it, or deserve it....I also don't believe that even though I choose to stay, that I "deserve" the suffering I feel....I could choose to go...but if I DID go, I would contribute to the suffering my children would feel...I felt that suffering when my own father left my mother, and I really don't want my children to feel that pain....I know what it feels like to come home from school and find your father's clothes closet empty, the cufflinks gone, the toothbrush gone, and the house emptied of all the things that were him...that is an acute bereavement that I don't want to inflict on the hearts of my children....I actually think it is easier for a child to accept the death of a parent than it is for them to accept the abandonment by a parent, because that is how it always feels for the child....so that's one of the reasons why I have stayed in this unsatisfactory marriage....

Maybe I am in a BS fog of my own...

LIR

friend4life,

I'm not suffering much. I give up what is negative for him, but I also remove myself if there is anything that is negative for me. My temptation is that I would suffer and think it is somehow virtuous. I struggle against that view because Tom tells me I am selfish and only think about myself. In fact, I am thinking about my children. I don't want them to put up with an inconsiderate spouse.

My sister in law is in a state of emotional divorce. As she put it, "I'm done." She does what makes her happy, and she thinks her husband is controlling if he doesn't like what she does. She pointed out to me that he does what makes her unhappy, so she is going to do what makes her happy and stay together for the sake of the children. I told her that this is exactly what my IC recommended. This is not what I am doing. I am trying to meet his needs as best I can and giving up what is negative for him, but I am also removing myself from what is negative for me. I called it "emotional receptivity" when I emailed Harley on the private forum. He called it Plan C and said I could be his experimental group of one -- in other words, he doesn't think it will work.

What's amazing about the Marriage Builders program is Harley's still willing to follow along with me and give me advice even though we aren't following the MB program because my husband's view is "That's Harley BS." Maybe so, but Harley has a good marriage. I observed Harley unnoticed at a radio event near my house when his wife was a radio broadcaster. I had gone there because it was advertised that Joyce would be there, and I thought he might be there. I wanted to thank him for suggesting to me on the radio program that I call this woman's husband. I told him that my husband had admitted to additional contact with this woman. Harley told me two things: 1) the broken arm was more of a problem than his relationship with this woman, and 2) there may be more to the contact than getting together for coffee. Harley was right on both points. Before I approached him to talk with him, I observed him looking at his wife, and the connection between them. He was off stage, unnoticed, and she was on stage, at a little mall in our suburb of Minneapolis. They had "the look of love." I want that. I want to be cherished, and I'm not willing to settle for suffering or emotional divorce. That day turned out to be D-day for me. About an hour after I met Dr. Harley and thanked him, I talked to the woman's husband, and he told me his wife had admitted to an affair. I was hysterical for years, but I never lost the desire to have that "look of love", the desire to be cherished. It may be that I will separate and divorce, but I won't settle for emotional divorce.

Cherished

I found a book that my husband showed me when we dated. It was puzzling to me. It is called "Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence" by St. Claude de la Columbiene. Here is an excerpt:

"1. CONSOLING TRUTHS
It is one of the most firmly established and most consoling of the truths that have been revealed to us that (apart from sin) nothing happens to us in life unless God wills it so. Wealth and poverty alike come from Him. If we fall ill, God is the cause of our illness; if we get well, our recovery is due to God. We owe our lives entirely to Him, and when death comes to put an end to life, His will be the hand that deals the blow.

But should we attribute it to God when we are unjustly persecuted? Yes, He is the only person you can charge with the wrong you suffer. He is not the cause of the sin the person commits by ill-treating you, but He is the cause of the suffering that person inflicts on you while sinning.

God did not inspire your enemy with the will to harm you, but He gave him the power to do so. If you receive a wound, do not doubt but that it is God Himself who has wounded you. If all living creatures were to league themselves against you, unless the Creator wished it and joined with them and gave them the strength and means to carry out their purpose, they would never succeed. You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above, the Savior of the world said to Pilate. We can say the same to demons and men, to the brute beasts and to whatever exists -- You would not be able to disturb me or harm me as you do unless God had ordered it so. You are sent by Him, you are given the power by Him to tempt me and to make me suffer. You would have no power over me if it had not been given you from above.

If from time to time we meditated seriously on this truth of our faith it would be enough to stifle all complaint in whatever loss or misfortune we suffer. What I have the Lord gave me, it has been taken away by Him. It is not a lawsuit or a thief that has ruined you or a certain person that has slandered you; if your child dies it is not by accident or wrong treatment, but because God, to whom all belongs, has not wished you to keep it longer."

Here is my husband's key point:
"He (Jesus) is not the cause of the sin the person commits by ill-treating you, but He is the cause of the suffering that person inflicts on you while sinning."

As a result of this thinking, my husband had no concern whatsoever for the pain he inflicted on me. His only concern was for his own soul. After all, from my husband's point of view, God wanted me to suffer because he was making the choices to be abusive and have an affair.

BS fog with a religious twist...

Cherished

Dear Cherished,

I'm not sure about this...are you saying that your H sees himself as an instrument of God's will? That God must want you to suffer, otherwise He would not have put lust in your H's heart, which brought suffering into your life? It is the Devil who put lust in your H's heart, which has caused BOTH of you to suffer....

There is something wrong here....I couldn't argue with him - that would end up in a duel....the point here I think is that you are duelling with the Devil, who twists all "good" to serve his lies.....

But there is no justification for excusing your H's individual culpability in his own decisions, which caused you to suffer....it reminds me of the suicide bombers in prison in Israel, who, when interviewed, say that it is not them that pushes the button on the suicide belt, it is not them who kills...it is God who causes them to push the button at that particular time, so it is God who actually kills...God who decides who will live and who will die....

This is evil. This is a twisting of the Truth to serve the purposes of evil. I know one thing. God does not hate. God does not kill. God does not inflict suffering. God loves. Man suffers. God sent us Jesus. Jesus unites us to God with his very human suffering. God understands our suffering. Jesus understands our suffering because he has felt it all. God does not "want" you to suffer. But He is with you when you do.

You said in your last post that you do not suffer much. I believe you do, Cherished, otherwise you wouldn't be here. When you read your Bible, look for the promise of joy in the lines of Scripture.....that's what is promised on the other side of suffering. There is no purpose in suffering for nothing and that is not what the Gospel preaches. There is something on the other side...that is what you need to focus on...

(((Cherished))))

LIR

friends4life,

I am here trying to understand the BS fog. He did not need to concern myself with the impact of his behavior on me because he believes that suffering comes from God. I, in the BS fog, believed:

Love endures all.
Forebear with one another.
Forgive one another as the Lord has forgiven you.

I don't suffer much now because I don't endure much anymore. I remove myself from him. I no longer believe that God doesn't give us more than we can endure. I suffered from an injury to my head nearly 10 years ago when I had walking pneumonia, and now I am going to the Mayo Clinic because two plastic surgeons have said they don't have the expertise to operate on it because it is now growing. I suffered from a broken arm 12 days after surgery which included a hysterectomy because I was threatening to call the woman who turned out to be his affair partner. I certainly held onto the belief that "Love endures all...", beyond all reason. It is evil, and I no longer believe that I should endure contempt and abuse.

For five years, I feel as though I've been thrashing around. It's just in the past year I have felt as though I was getting to the truth, and the truth turned out to be very simple:

My husband had an affair because he chose to -- it made him feel good -- and he didn't feel responsible for my suffering. I endured because of a false belief that love endures all. What I missed is a more fundamental belief in my own human dignity.

Cherished

Cherished, I think I understand what you are trying to say and I agree with you. When I replied to you, I was trying to add to what you said, not disagree with you.


I understand that you are here for your own healing and that you've got past feeling responsible for what he chose to do. You're trying to work out how it was that you "bought" the idea that you were supposed to endure every suffering he decided to dish out to you...that this suffering was somehow a "gift" from God, and that God willed it. I don't believe that. I think your suffering was caused by his sin. And sin is what he decided to do under the influence of the Devil, not God.

I don't think God calls on us to suffer abuse at the hands of another human being.


I agree totally with you. One of the things that comes through in your post was your H's indifference to your suffering. I think that if he is "worried about his own soul", that it is this he should be most worried about. Christ was anything but indifferent to our sufferings, so your H's indifference to your suffering is, for me, the most telling sign of his spiritual illness...

LIR

At the heart of it all is the idea that "every suffering comes from God." The BS fog is about someone other than the WS being responsible for the BS's suffering. For many, the problem is the OW or circumstances or the BS. For me, it was God, and I needed to patiently endure.

Wrong. In fact, evil.

Cherished