Not "perhaps", it WAS cruel. And disrespectful, controlling and manipulative.

You were not protecting your husband "from harms way". <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />

Your reasons were for you and YOU alone. You were protecting the OM and yourself from having to face and answer more uncomfortablness and annoying questions from your husband and the OM's wife. Questions YOU deem unnecessary.

*applause* for MM's post! Awesome.

SSB, it is abuse what you are doing to your H.

SSB:

I know full well what sort of sick game you are playing by refusing to tell your husband the full truth. My WXH shared some of the same sociopathic tendencies you exhibit. You get a real ego boost, a high, from knowing that your betrayed husband doesn't know all he needs and wants to know. You enjoy having the upper hand and control over him. It gives you some sort of sick pleasure to watch him worrying, wondering who the OM is, trying to compete with some mystery OM that you insinuate is somehow superior to him.

IMHO the truth is that the OM is somebody you'd be ASHAMED to be openly involved with. Of course you prefer to have your husband wonder who the OM is than to have him know the OM's identity. Because then your husband would know that the biggest lie of all is the myth that the OM is better than your husband. You cheated on your husband for one reason alone: because you lacked integrity - NOT because your husband wasn't good enough or because the OM was better than your husband - NOT because you deserved somebody better than your husband. THAT is the truth you don't want to have revealed.

But eventually the truth will come out. Someday your husband will be able to put a name and face to the OM and will be relieved when he finally realizes that the OM was in no way better than him after all. AND your husband will also then start to realize the motive behind your cruel refusal to tell him the truth: because you wanted to inflict even more pain on him, to see him worry and suffer even more, while you gloated and basked in the supposed superiority of yourself and the OM.

I saw my WXH briefly today; he brought our youngest daughter home from a month-long visit with him. I no longer am attracted to him in any way. I was willing and able to forgive and forget the adulteries, to stand by him if/when he truly told ALL the truth and worked on a REAL recovery. But he chose the smug route you are on instead. Just like you he was so sure he could get away with a pretenda-recovery, carefully controlling how much I knew.

I caught on that he cared more about his image than me, our marriage, or even our children. He saw me hopelessly in love with him, desperately needing and wanting a real recovery effort on his part and instead of loving me enough to help me recover all he saw was opportunity to exploit the damage he had done to my self-esteem to control and gloat. It's as if people like you have that old Rolling Stones' song 'under my thumb' as your 'recovery' theme-song. You use the adultery as a weapon to cut your spouse down to a size you can then control and abuse. It may even be that a major motivation for you committing adultery in the first place was to destroy your husband's self-esteem enough to get the upper hand over him. 'Recovery' to you means: OK goodie NOW I've got him so scared he'll just shut-up and put-up or else I'll just run off to the OP again.

Your husband will catch on. Someday he will look at you and he will realize that far worse than the cheating you DID is the evil casual cruelty you STILL inflict on him on a dialy basis as you continue your smug superiority control game. And once he sees through to that core of you he will lose his love for you. I know this because the way I feel about my WXH now is mostly just a mixture of contempt and pity. I know now that he kept his dirty little secrets because telling me the truth would have helped me recover when he wanted me to suffer more; he wanted me to believe that he and the OW were better than they really were, better than me, because that would make THEM feel better AND would make me feel worse.

I can clearly see them now as the losers they are. I know now that I was too good for my WXH, that he didn't deserve me. People like you and my WXH are like the so-called Wizard of Oz, cowardly hiding behind the curtain of your lies, pretending superiority over those you hide the truth from.

You still have some time to come clean, to humble yourself and to help your husband really recover. If you choose courage and integrity you will actually achieve a level of self-worth and integrity that no amount of posing will buy you. Paradoxically the very thing you need in order to truly improve your self-esteem is to humble yourself by abandoning your ego. Let go of the entitlement attitude before it's too late. If instead you choode to continue keeping your BH off-balance by your current tactics you will lose him. You can come out from behind that curtain voluntarily in a way that will enhance your self-esteem or you can continue to hide in shame, bellowing out smug assertions of your supposed superiority and entitlement until your husband yanks down that curtain someday.

meremortal...

Hat's off to you dear lady...excellent posts...

Mrs. W<~~meremortal fan <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

SSB

In case Jesus' own words mean anything to you:

( John 3:19-21)

AMEN!

Thank you noodle for your post. I've read it over several times. It is very insightful and articulate and makes your point without shooting zingers! I especially appreciate and understand the part about character. That was a big thing in my family growing up - "your character is important, it matters." My parents made sure I learned that even if others don't see what you do and you think you've gotten away with something, God sees and you see yourself. It's rather hard to go to bed at night with yourself when your conscience is hurting because you willingly damaged your character. That is, unless you haven't damaged your conscience by ignoring it so much.


Since I have been posting myself for the first time instead of just reading, I've noticed two kinds of posters: blunt, bold, in your face kinds OR here is some information, here is my experience, glean what you can from it. According to your own personality, you respond better to one or the other.


I'll never forget going to a counselor one time and she made me feel lower than the dirt on the bottom of my shoes by her bold, direct, in your face comments. I'm sure she was probably just trying to knock some sense into my head, but you know what, it did the exact opposite. I left that office thinking, "Well, she thinks I'm the scum of the earth, I guess I am, so I might as well act like it."


Obviously something that's missing when posting is "one on one feedback" and "body language" you pick up when you have a regular conversation with someone. Can't be helped, but it definitely causes misinterpretation of what one is trying to say at times.


I have a dry erase board in my office and this week someone gave me a quote they thought would be good for me to put up:

"People will forget what you did. People will forget what you said. But people will never forget how you made them feel."


EE