OK TRY, I'm obviously fouling up in my choice of words. Funny, as that is something I am so particular with.

Again, I apologize if I came across condescending. It was NOT my intention. I may break out the 2x4's on waywards but not the betrayed!

My point is pretty simple. Something was likely lacking in your marriage before the adultery. You may not think so, but your wife does. Right or wrong. It does NOT excuse the adultery. Nothing excuses that.

All I'm asking you to see that your past marriage is NOT one you want to repeat. You could possibly repeat the same problems.

Concentrate on the NEW marriage. That's why you chose to forgive, no?

Try,

ok, Iam may not want to 2x4 the BS, but I will.... ....


I saw on that other thread that you think that a BS who is caught in their affair and continues anyways, is just as bad as one who has a second affair.....

Well, let me ask you this.....Do you not BUY into DR. H's theory on the Affair Addiction??? Because if you don't, you are going to be hung up where you are at forever. I know it sucks, I know that you want to say that that is an excuse, but unless you go and have an affair, then it is some things for you to understand. What you DO have to DO is BUY that theory. Plain and simple.

Also, I would be willing to bet the farm that ILMH did know what she was doing to you and it created MUCH inner turmoil for her. I know it had to. Listen, I WATCHED my WS go through he77 for what he was doing. I know he was conflicted in so many ways. Sucks yeah, because I think, "well why did you keep it up???".....because of the addiction and the "high" that being in contact with their OP did for them.

Try, you have to move FORWARD.....I am really concerned you and ILMH will not make it if you do not.


I will tell you what Mimi has said to me....

You have to ACCEPT that she LOVED someone else...

You have to ACCEPT that she had an affair.....

I know it is hard, heck I still struggle with it daily. I also struggle with whether or not I can ACCEPT this, but if we want a fully recovered M, it's what we have to do......


not2fun

iam,

I get what you are saying. I think for some BS, they were getting their EN's met well enough, they think their M was hunky dorry, when in reality it wasn't for WS. Maybe this is how it was for TTH and ILMH....maybe not...

Now for me, my M sucked for both of us....big time. So, I TOTALLY EMBRACE the "Out with the old marriage, in with the New Marriage" concept.....

not2fun

TTH,

How 'bout an update...

Mark

Hey mark,

so nice of you to check in.

To use a golf analogy (and why not!), we are advancing the ball.

We profess our love for one another constantly throughout the day. I'm still doing pretty well controlling my emotions with ILMH, not LB'ing, and being a really good Dad.

For her part, ILMH is remorseful, and is trying to re-learn how to love me naturally. Undoing a year or so of behavior that was contrary to that crops up occasionally in subtle ways, but she really does want to restore our love and recover our marriage.

We both wish we could just go away together for a vacation, but sadly that's not in the financial cards. We wish we could spend more time together, but my 14 hour days make that difficult as well. But we both soldier on.

I would love to share more, but I've got three big client cases I need to get done so I just don't have the time to get into it today, but I will certainly check in more often than I have been.

Thanks again so much for your concern. It really does mean so much to us both to know that there are folks who want to help and are cheering us on.

FWIW I feel pretty good today. We finally got the exposure letter to OMW done last night, and it's a big relief. Frankly I'm a little surprised at how much better just having that done has made me feel. It was a struggle to go through the detail, and it took WAY too long to get it done, but it is at last. We still need to decide how best to deliver that to her to ensure that she actualy gets it, but I plan to get it to her hopefully by tomorrow.

I've gotta scoot, but I'll definitely check back in soon.

Peace!

TTH

TTH,

Even if you can't take a vacation, try to get away for a weekend or something. I've found that it doesn't have to be anything special either. This past January my wife and I both took a Monday off of work and got on the highway Saturday afternoon and drove about 4 hours, stopped and found a motel for the night and the next morning went to a state park for a couple of hours.

Then we drove a couple of hours to visit her sister via back roads, some of them gravel surfaced, and had dinner with her and her step kids, attended church that night with them and found another motel.

Monday morning we took a round-about way home, stopping in an area where they have a lot of covered bridges and took some pictures, etc. We stopped for lunch at a diner in a small farm town where there were 35 people inside, 30 of them all sitting together as a group. Several of them came over to say "Hi."

A high school kid came in to get a sandwich and the whole place was congratulating him on a great game the previous Friday night.

Then we stopped at the Cabelas about an hour from home, bought some stuff for our granddaughter and had a late supper at home.

We probably spent close to 350 bucks for the whole weekend, but it came from loose change I throw into a jug every once in a while and so didn't really come out of our budget.

Another time we ate at our favorite Cajun restaurant, got on the road and drove till we were tired, got a motel room and visited a huge furniture store the next day. After a dinner of sausage, cheese, wine and strawberries (those cost an arm and a leg because it was out of season), we stayed a second night and the next day stopped at a bunch of antique malls on the way home along the old road that parallels the interstate. We stopped for lunch at a Chili's and spent about 250 bucks on that weekend.

What I'm getting at here is that you can just do some random type of leisure activities without having to see anything with big round ears or a bunch of flags flying over the gate.

Sometimes we will go to a motel closer to home just for one night. They have an indoor pool and there is seldom anyone else using it on a Sunday night in January when it's below zero outside. We get a bottle of wine and our own glasses, hang out by the pool and just get away from every day life, all for the cost of a motel room and half a tank of gas.

I've found that a simple weekend, or even just a day spent doing something relaxing and different can make as much difference as a real vacation...

And by doing shorter trips you can take more of them without having to drop a few grand on a week in the islands.

Mark

Hey W2S, long time...

A number of things you said really hit home for me.

Quote:Yet, when I am struggling, I end up feeling guilty for the feelings I have. I think it goes back to being the protector of our DWs. Even if it means protecting them from ourselves.


Sometimes I think I feel worse about how I feel about ILMH in these moments, than anything. This really rings true. I truly never had so much as a bad thought about her for our first 8 1/2 years together.

Quote:I suffer from OCD. I'm probably the worst personality type to be dealing with infidelity.

With ya...

Quote:Quit literally, the thoughts of the A start the moment I wake up in the morning until the moment I go to sleep at night. Sometimes, they even carry over into my dreams while I sleep. Every event, fight, fog-filled statement echo in my head like a broken record. It's like the movie "Groundhog Day" only mine revolves around LaLa's A. It's like reliving Dday over and over again.

YES! This is exactly how I feel. I hope that one day I will be able to compartmentalize a bit more, but it sure hurts like HE!!

Quote:It's different because what we are doing goes against everything we believed ourselves to be. We both found ourselves in horrible situations. Yet, when it happened we also found out just how much we LOVE our DW's in spite of the mistakes they made. For a long while, I approached recovery as being able to rewire my brain as to what is acceptable for my life. Recently though, I have come to realize that is never going to happen. I can't change who I am. I will never be OK with what LaLa choose to do.

...hence the perpetual torment...

I thank you all for allowing the latitude for this T/J. I just had to comment as this so completely touched on what I'm going through.

W2S, are we the same person?!?

Hey TTH!

I thought I would respond to you over on your thread rather than to continue TJing MyRev's thread. I'm gonna IMPLORE upon you how very important it is that you NOT follow the path that I have taken. There are many differences in the circumstances in our situations that led us here.

Let me explain. It was 16 months from the time I suspected LaLa's A from 7/06 until her joining recovery in 12/07. During that entire time I told no one what was going on. I had no support system at all. I dealt with everything on my own. You see, I'm a very different kind of person. A true introvert. Generally, I don't have a need for social interaction. I can be completely content staying at home with LaLa and the boys. At the time all this took place I had no friends at all and not even the social interaction of a job because I was self-employed. LaLa was the center of my world. She was my best friend, my wife, my lover, my confidant and my coworker. All the adult interaction I had was with her. I had no one else and that was the way I wanted it. It was truly the happiest I had ever been in my life. Everything seemed to be falling into place. All our dreams were coming true and then disaster struck. In that moment, I lost everything including my best friend. The one person I would normally turn to for support in times of crisis. Without any support, I internalized all the crap that went down and didn't recognized it for the wayward alien fog that I know it is today. That is what led to my obsession. That is why I have the struggles I have today. I have no one to blame but myself.

In your situation things played out very differently. You were extremely lucky in that you found MB so early. You heard the mantra that it was all fog, you learned that it was about the addiction and not an act perpetrated against you. You've had an excellent support system all along. You must USE this stuff to your advantage. You have a group of friends that have walked this path and have made it to the other side. Listen to what they are telling you.

I know it's not easy. It is likely the most difficult thing you will ever do in your life. You must do it though TTH. You have to face it now. The sooner you do that the more likely you will have a successful recovery. If you are obsessing about the A you need to take action to change that. Start a journal, go on AD's, vent to someone other than ILMH. What ever it is you need to do to purge this evil stuff from your system do it now. If you are going to obsess about something make it following the MB principles to the letter. I think if you do that everything else will fall into place.

Trust me TTH, I'm speaking from the voice of experience here. DO NOT BE LIKE ME! BobPure once told me something that was so wise and I later found an opportunity to use it against him. Basically, he said that "wallowing self-reinforces the hurt." You know what, he was absolutely right. I can tell you that because over the 5 million times my circumstances have played out in my head NOTHING has changed. I still HATE what happened. The thing is though TTH, it is up to you to quit chasing that rabbit down the hole. It will take you no where but self inflicted misery. It will only make it that much more difficult to climb out later. You have what so many people here can only dream of. A truly remorseful FWW. I hate to say it, but the rest of recovery is up to you. You have to be willing to judge your situation by things that are happening now and not things that happened in the past. You can do this TTH! Hang in there and keep the faith........

So, what are you going to do? Are you going to keep chasing the rabbit down the hole or are you going to use tools you have to make things better?

Want2Stay

TTH,

Can we get an update? How was your weekend? Hope things are getting better. Hang in there and keep the faith.........

Want2Stay

Hey W2S, thanks for checking in.

Still fighting the good fight. We had a good weekend with a bunch of friends over Saturday night.

I'm still not venting at ILMH. She's trying to do what she can. I'm trying to focus on the future, and trying to find some peace.

ILMH finally fessed up to OMW about the truth this weekend. When counseling with Steve H, we identified her doing this as one of the critical parts of "cleaning out the wound" which according to him needs to be done before the EN's CAN be met. So finally having this done 2 1/2 months later relieves some of the open, raw wound feeling. I'm actually surprised at how much that simple act of truth helped me.

Anyway, I do appreciate you stopping by. Neither of us has posted much lately. Our whole thread seemed to go haywire, and I wanted everyone to settle down a bit.

In general, for about 10 weeks from D-day, I'd say we're doing OK.

As for finding MB early, I wish I had found it prior to ILMH becoming physical with that [censored], but we all know which hand will fill up sooner...

Peace out,
TTH

Glad to hear things are going well for you. I think the idea of a small truth creating peace is exactly the right description. Every time your WW can take enough ownership of something to express it, it helps. I am still waiting for my H to tell his best friend...something that I feel like he really needs to do.

Keep up the good work. See...it is possible.

HTM