Confused

I think you are genuinely miserable, and really want to feel better.

Trouble is, you've been doing things all your life that make you FEEL better for a while, haven't you? And now all those feel-better things have produced consequences that make for a lot of feel-worse.

There's a lesson you've GOT to learn from this. Feeling good about yourself does not come from doing things that are exciting and seductive and pleasurable. Feeling good about yourself comes from having values and acting in accordance with those values. It's about having a sense of self-worth.

You can't hold onto self-worth if you break your promises (and you made a big promise when you got married, didn't you?) You can't hold onto self-worth if you live a lie. You lose respect for yourself every time you belittle your husband.

You may well be a warm-hearted and caring mother to your children, but the truth is that you're lying to them. Will they ever know about their real parentage? If not, their lives will always feel 'wrong'; things won't fit. Would you want them to grow up to have relationships like yours? If not, what can you teach them about how to conduct themselves that's different from what you've done? If they ever find out what you've hidden from them, they will be deeply shocked. No matter how kind you are to them, you have given them a mess to grow up in, and you don't have the life skills to help them to manage their own lives better.

You need to get help, Confused. You have deeper problems than we can deal with here. You need to get a really good IC, and you need to work hard on yourself.

TA

Actually Confused, I am anti-adultery and in real life I am just as hard on people who are active in adulteress relationships as I am here.

If I'm asked, I tell them exactly what I believe. Its called taking a stand for whats right.

Coddling active adulterors does them and their family a disservice, as most adulterors are h3ll bent in remaining in denial. Spewing justifications (my husband is boring, sickly and unattractive, etc.) and rationalizations. Everything they can think of instead of taking responsibility and being accountable for THEIR destructive and poor choices.

Jo

That is like saying no one has the right to assert that a drug addict isn't a good mother.

Confused, everything you do, positive or negative, affects your children and your ability to parent them.