I don't know what "WADR" means.

I can understand why you think that may be true, but I am not thinking in that way. I don't need any future tussles, and I can go practice in a clinic part time, if needed, and be financially viable without tussles, unless I become disabled. Seriously, I am not greatly worried about what this would mean to me, because I have no intention of it ever coming to that. What is needed now is for SSS to have a sense of security and for it to be me that guarantees that for her. If a post nup of the nature that Steve Harley describes is the best thing, then that is what I want to do.

With All Due Respect

Cheaper than the movies I guess, and interactive, too. Not a bad choice actually.

Ah! Thnx.

I need help. I desperately need help.

After all these months, SSS is concluding that I never loved her, that it was all a calculated USE of her one and only life for my own purpose. I am falling apart. What if that is true? What if the person I was simply did not love her ever? Maybe that explains it all. I destroyed her. But I can't live without her. She is everything to me. I love her so deeply it hurts. All I want to do is spend the rest of my life with her and give her everything she was denied for so long, to really be her husband finally. All I want is to make her happy. But now she cannot trust it or believe me. What do I do? Please help me. Someone please help me. I love her now. That is all I know. Why did it take me so long? Can I save this? Can she ever love me again? Oh, God. Someone please help me.

GM - I have been watching her thread, and I still think things are very, very hopeful. She is going through the recovery process and working on her own issues, which is exactly what she needs to be doing right now.

And you need to keep working on your issues.

Thnx, Believer. I feel like my whole life has been a mistake.

I do not know how you could have lived your life this way. You should be in jail or something. Why do you want to remain married anyway? You were not acting married all these years. I cannot see how in any way, you have loved her.

It seems to me like you have had some big "health scare" like a heart attack, diagnosis of cancer, diabetes, or heart problems to cause you to give up the other woman and say you want to stick with your wife now....perhaps because you dont want to grow old and sick on your own after all, she is a NURSE. There is some motivation NOW, and I would like to know the REASON, the real reason that NOW you are trying to resurrect your marriage you ruined all these years. It is a selfish reason I am sure.

I would urge her to divorce but I am not going to. I do not know quite how you could make up 25 years to someone but if you figure out a way to do it, more power to you.

What I do not understand is how someone as corrupt as you could really change and want to recover the marriage. I picture you cheating on her again and again as is your nature. Even if she does continue to stay with you.

How can you change?
How can you make up for 25 years abusing your wife and fam?
How can you even pretend to love her?
What is there that could make up for her ruined life and marriage now at this late date?
What caused you to want your marraige back NOW?


These are my questions and maybe her questions also.

GM:

Your line:

It has been in many ways for at least the last 30 years.

It DOESN'T have to BE GOING FORWARD.

Do you think its tough NOW?

Just wait. The mirror gets larger and larger. You ARE the only one to look into it and see the reflection.

SSS has ALOT to process before she can make a statement that she is done. And then BE DONE.

If she processes it ALL, then she can decide to stay. Have you told her EVERYTHING?

LG

Thanks for the help, Stella. You are so sweet and supportive.

I wish I had the answer to all of your questions except the part about pretending to love her. That one is easy. I love her. The realization of that was brutal... and recent. It had nothing to do with my health.

She is the best person I have ever known.

As for cheating in the future, I feel it is impossible. But just in case, I have written a detailed plan to protect my emotional needs and vulnerabilities, and I keep studying that to make sure it is automatic. None of that is of any use, if she cannot make a go of it with me, and I am in a state of horrific fear of that. The damage is so great. I feel so hopeless. I don't want to end up back in the psych ward. When I look forward, I feel good. When I look back, I want to die.

It has been, at least my personal life, a mistake. I wish I had a time machine and could go back and do my adult life differently. I do see going forward as the only way to keep on living. But that mirror is huge, and I see it 24 hours per day.

Yes, I have told her everything. There are little details that I remember now and then, and I am making a list. but there is nothing substantial remaining. Steve Harley said that these kinds of details were not important.

This reeks of manipulation.
Sorry.
You do sound desperate, but you sure don't sound loving .



True.



Help you what?
Help you feel better.
Sorry.
The pain you feel is the rent come due.



It sounds like you need her. You don't sound loving at all.



Go back to the psychiatrist for the answer to that question, if you really want an answer. It is an inappropriate question to ask of strangers.
I believe you are sick. Still sick. See a physician when you are sick.



Save what? The sham of a marriage?
Why would anyone want to save something so thoroughly false?



Not if you continue these manipulations and dramatic breast beatings.
Meaningless.
Not loving.
Very self focused.




Again, you need to make a call to your psychiatrist when you get this worked up.
It's not SSS's job to fix your brokenness. It's not ours.

I am sure that these pity parties you throw for yourself used to get you some milage - especially with the paid OW.

Call your psychiatrist. You are ill.

Well, yeah - he has not acted honorably, he has lived a life of lies, etc. etc. But NOW he says he wants to change. And he DOES seem remorseful. So we can keep giving him cyberslaps, or try to help him.

His wife has been warned, and I really don't see the point of bringing up the past over and over again, and beating him up.

He needs a psychiatrist. He is sick.

Okay, we'll send him to a shrink.

Personally, I think he is a SA. He doesn't think so.

But I'm sure he could go and get "help" and snow the guy and continue on his path.

He either IS going to change, or he is NOT. I think his wife is preparing for either alternative.

That's true.

To be honest with you B, I don't get the sense of true remorse . My nose is twitching the same way it did when he first started posting. He lied to the board and tried to manipulate the members into feeling sorry for him.
It is 100 % still all about him. Even the "I love her so much I can't live without her." .... is self focused.
B, I feel really sorry for him believe it or not. I am conflicted. I feel sorry for him but I realize that the worst thing for him is pity. Our pity feeds his self focus. He needs professional attention. Continually and long term. He truly is sick. If he had cancer, we'd tell him to see an oncologist.

Well, I'll defer to you Pep.

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt because his wife says that he is very kind, and cares about other people - except for her.

He has taken care of his wife and family, so he gets some points there.

The risky sex (from someone that should know better) is troubling.

That is why I think he is a SA.

Thnx, Believer.

Regardless of whether I deserve it, the pain is unbearable. It feels like the world is coming to an end.

I want to do what is right. I have spent 30 years doing what is wrong and living a lie. I want to stay with SSS and give her all my love, but perhaps it will not be possible for her. I know it is possible for me. And I know that I will be faithful and have put the safeguards in place to assure that. I just was reaching out for people here to encourage me and help me at this terribly down moment.

I look at this forum as a place to get advice that helps supplement what the MB program can do. But I keep running into people who just want to trash me and vent their anger and suspicion and discourage me and SSS and get us to divorce. They feel that once a liar and manipulator, always one. Once a cheater, always one. Maybe they know me better than I know myself, or maybe they feel so much sympathy for SSS, that they feel obligated to protect her by discouraging us from trying. But sometimes people do change and seek redemption and succeed at it. I just want to be one of those people, that's all. No psychiatrist is going to help with that. I will be that person, regardless of what happens to my marriage.

My focus is on SSS. When she is down, I am down. When she is up, I am up. Her world is mine. It is easy to take any post and say that it is self-focused. The fact is that when anyone posts, they are speaking for themselves, and it can be interpreted as self-focused. Do I want to be happy? Yes, of course. Do, I want to save our marriage? Absolutely. Do I want SSS to be happy and fulfilled? More than anything in the world. Does the fact that I want those things mean that I am self-focused? Well, it sure could be looked at that way. After all, it is ME that is posting. I am in a quandary about this possibility that I did not love SSS when we got married. She is concluding that, and it is putting her in a state of unbelievable anger and sadness. It would explain my behavior. I speak for myself when I say that I want to change myself, and I want this marriage to work, and I intend to stay faithful, and that I love her deeply, a love that has overwhelmed me since this discovery of my affair turned our lives upside down, and I had to look inside my heart and realize some serious things about me that were very messed up. Is that self-focused? You betcha. It better be, don't you think?

Do I feel true remorse? There are no words to express the pain of remorse in my heart. It put me in the hospital a while back. It leaves me in tears off an on throughout every day. To question whether my remorse is genuine is to just simply not know me or us or what is happening here.

I hope you will hang in there.

I know that change is possible, because of how much I've changed, and I was much worse than you.

On the other hand, there is that guy back east who swore from the bottom of his heart that if they paroled him that he would spend the rest of his life showing he changed, he would cherish his wife and kids, blah, blah, blah.

It's the same man who murdered his wife and kids, and then killed himself.