In reading about the struggle of some of the new MB's particularly the repentant WS there is a common theme...

THEY KEEP ASKING HOW IN THE WORLD DO I GET THEM TO BELIEVE ME???

HOW DO I GET THEM TO TRUST ME AGAIN???

Their spouse keeps saying you've LIED to me, I TRUSTED you and you BETRAYED me!!!

How can I EVER believe you again???

AND THEY ASK HOW DO I GET THEM TO COME BACK TO THE MARRIAGE AGAIN???

I know for Mrs.Flint and I the OLD marriage was DEAD and it required the BIRTH of a new one...

I firmly believe the success we have had is due to several things.

One we love each other more now than we ever have...and were willing to forgive each other...because of number

Two, MB.

Three, Since there was no way to UNDO what had happened, BOTH her affair and both of our shortcomings in protecting the marriage, a NEW marriage was required or we would FOREVER keep bringing up the past and trying to make SENSE OUT OF NONSENSE!!!

We did this by giving the new marriage a new symbol...

We chose a new ring because the old one meant NOTHING and if anyone asks about the old ring she tells them it was broken, which is more true than they will ever know...

The symbol is a simple gold band with PRH for Policy of Radical Honesty and our d-date engraved on the inside...

A concrete symbol of our new commitment AND our new marriage to each other.

Whenever there is a hurt or a doubt each of us can look at the new ring and remember we ARE NEW PEOPLE IN A NEW MARRIAGE that has not been tarnished.It is the FRESH start that recovery requires...

I firmly believe that there MUST be a defining line between the old marriage and the new that both agree on or there can NEVER be a new marriage.

God bless all trying to heal their marriages.

Jim

I love this Jim.
Working for the day.

I wish it were that easy. Symbolism is fine, but action and hard work and thick skin are worth a thousand times more. Years of being different is needed. Just no easy way. I only wish.

GreenMile,

With all due kindness and respect in reading your thread which was locked by the moderators not ALL marriages can or should be saved.

The issues that were mentioned in your thread, serial cheating, giving your wife an STD, untreated depression, continuing to lie to your BW and attempts to control your wife are not conducive to recovery.

You will note that Mrs.Flint and I have tremendous respect for each other. You do not respect your wife. NOTHING will fix that...

Jim

It sounds like you and your wife have found something that works for your marriage. I don't think a blanket statement can be made about this though.

My "old" marriage is filled with a wonderful 19-year history...vacations, long conversations, passionate sex, evening walks, losing loved ones together, birthing our babies, etc. We've had joys and sorrows together in that "old" marriage that I am not willing to allow this affair to claim forever.

9 months of hell is not going to steal 19 years of joy and blessings.

tst and I approach this differently than you and your wife. He offered to purchase a new ring if it was important to me. I said NO WAY. THIS is the ring you picked out for me. THIS is the ring I wore when our children were born, THIS is the ring that you placed on my finger, THIS is my wedding ring. And he cried at those words because those memories matter to him, too.

In 20 years, the year 2007 will be an ugly dot on our 40-year marriage timeline. Those years before and those years after will be filled with memories of our love and commitment to each other.

Excellent post Jim.

I struggle with this....

How do I look at my marriage as a "new" marriage? How do I look at this man that I've been married to for almost 19 years with different eyes? How do I find trust in someone that hurt me worse than anyone ever has in my entire life? Especially since he's the one person that should have been protecting me!!

I struggle with this every day. I struggle with "waiting for the other show to drop". I struggle with letting down the wall around my heart and letting him in. Finding the trust and forgiveness. Struggle with just saying to he!! with this and heading to Plan D. How do you let someone in that has already destroyed you once?

I'm 11 months out from D-day 1 and 7 months out for D-day 2. This whole thing sucks.

I envy you and what you have been able to do in your marriage. I hope and pray that I will be able to find solid footing soon or I know in my heart that regardless how "good" my marriage is now, I will not be able to get over what he did and I will move on to plan D.

If what you say is true, then you would be right. A lot has happened with me since that locked thread. My lack of respect for my wife was an issue of anger burying respect. A lot of self-realization and ego shattering has taken place, and with that has come gigantic respect for my incredible and amazing SSS. I think we have a good chance, as long as I put in the hard work and expect very slow progress over many years. We will be at MB weekend this coming weekend. Just another small step along the path. My path has lead me to periods of self-pity and panic and backward-focusing on myself instead of SSS at times, the last wave occurring just days ago. Just self-absorption trying to rear its ugly head. TST and Believer helped me a lot with that. Every day, it is a bit better. Anyway, I just added a little to this thread, trying to help a bit, that's all.

Hi SMB!

Congratulations on your success with your new marriage!

I feel A LOT of people, myself included, need to be able to see a defining line between the past history of lying and deception.
A kind of concrete timeline where we BOTH started to work on the marriage and that is untarnished. I don't feel you have to forget about all of the good things that did occur in the marriage, just that you need to be able to identify WHERE the lies stopped and recovery began.

I think that there are also people that will continue to hold the affair against their spouse FOREVER if there is not a clear defining point where recovery for BOTH parties began. I think that the repentant spouse needs to have a place in time that they can look at with some dignity and say that from that time forward they have been working with their spouse toward recovery.

Again congratulations on your success and best wishes!

God bless.

Jim

Hello GreenMile,

I am so glad to hear that things are going better for you. I think that you had a very dark time for a while and that things now seem to be looking up for you.

I hope that good things continue to happen for you and your wife.

Good luck and God bless.

Jim

Each day brings a new challenge. Sometimes darkness and sometimes light. What an amazing soul SSS is. What a fool I was for so long, and that is being too kind. I'll keep working. It helps to see myself as just another guy, instead of on some imaginary pedestal of my own making. Just a sinner trying to change and have a real life going forward. Good luck and God bless to you too, JF.

Jim, just wanted to say how much I love your posts. you are a real asset to this forum and I am glad you are here.

Hi Melody!

Thank you so much!!! Mrs.Flint and I learned so much from you and the others who took time to help us save our marriage.
I'm almost healed up from being "batted back into play" when I would get lost and try to take the easy way instead of the right way to heal our marriage. Once you all got my "compass" adjusted for me it was a lot easier!!! I hope you know how much you all have meant to my wife and I. Thank you.

God bless.

Jim

Hello JoJo,

I can hear how badly you are hurting...

You describe the pain of a BS so clearly and I felt that way once too...

It's not so much needing your spouse to come back to the marriage now as YOU needing to come back, isn't it?

The way that I was able to forgive my wife was to do what I had sworn I would never do...

I put myself in her shoes...

You know, the ones where low self esteem tells you that you aren't good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, handsome enough and that sooner or later your spouse is going to wise up and dump your sorry self...

Well, what better way to shore up the crumbling self esteem than to have some guy or gal tell you that you are wonderful and it shouldn't matter that you have to lie to them or have sex with them to get it...

Because you deserve it, right?

When I was able to feel compassion for my wife's weakness at not being good enough in her mind and her thinking that being lied to and used would somehow solve all of her problems I was able to forgive her...

It is EXTREMELY painful to put yourself in your spouses shoes because your mind wants to shout THEY HAD NO RIGHT TO DO THAT!!!
Which is correct. BUT, it does allow you to see WHY they did do that. Which is the beginning of making them human to you again. Which means they can be forgiven.

Just like you...and me.

When I did that and fully understood WHAT had happened, we were able to begin correcting the problem. Mrs.Flint finished her education and is now a nurse. I worked hard at being a better husband and friend. She is respected by all. She also redeemed herself to her family and friends by OWNING the affair to all. No excuses.

All that know her respect and value her.

Most of all me...

God bless.

Jim

Hi JoJo!

You sounded so discouraged in your last post just wanted to see how you were doing???

I know I had MANY, MANY days like you are having and it was such a nice break to be able to come here for support.

If you get a chance let us know how you are doing!!!

and



Jim

Hi Jim,
How long did it take you to get to this point?

V

Hi V!

I know for Mrs.Flint and I it wasn't so much how much time had passed, it was when I saw the repentance in her eyes...

When I saw that it made me WANT to understand how someone like her could have fallen so far...

She NEVER could understand how I could have chosen her for my wife...

She never saw how special she was...

The funny thing is...

I never understood her choosing me...

I had watched her chosen saddle club queen, over a number of other beautiful women...

Watched other men fall all over themselves just to say Hi to her...

Low self esteem will do that to a person...

It guess it was probably several months before I finally "got it" and not too long after that I could start to forgive her...

and myself for not being a better husband and for allowing it to get to that point.

It also marked the start of her being able to see herself as others saw her...

instead of the way she saw herself.

Good to see you V!!!

God bless.

Jim

Thank you.

That to me will be the line between the old M and the beginning of the new one.

I know that I speak for so many BS's, it's so hard to have patience.

You seem to make many of my cloudy thoughts clear and you give me hope ... thank you again.

Take care

Hey Jim,
Same stuff, different day!!

When you talk about your FWW, I see myself. This is exactly how I felt....you'd think I would have been the one to have the A, not H. So putting myself in his shoe's, well I was already there, felt the same way your FWW did and I didn't have an A. He did!

I think that I'm having such a hard time with this because it goes so much deeper than just the A.

It's the years and years of not having my EN meet, even after I told him often what they were.

It's the years (18 years, the entire time that we've been married) of his flirting and being inappropriate with other women, even with me asking him not to, that it was wrong and disrespectful to me and our marriage.

It's the years of him telling me what I wanted to hear then him doing what ever he wanted to do.

It's the years of him NOT taking care of me, being there when I needed him. It's the times I was left standing in the rain with a flat tire because work was too important and he couldn't leave to come help me.

It's the playing golf with his work buddies, 3 days after I came home from the hospital with our daughter. After I'd been up all night with her then had a 4 year old to take care of too. His reason....."What am I going to tell the boys?"

It's him contacting her again, 4 months after d-day1. Contacting her the morning after I had an emotional breakdown. Him contacting her and discussing, yet again, our marriage, what I said and feel and how he feels. That he wants me to just stop thinking about this [censored], that he can't take it much longer. Then lying to me AGAIN when I asked if he had contacted her.

I have a key logger installed on his work laptop, which he nows knows about since I went ballistic when I saw the contact.

I told him last week that I want him to take a polygraph. I need to know.....no, that's not right, I HAVE to know, that he is telling the truth. That he has told me everything that went on during that year+ with the skank and that he is not talking to her now, for me to start moving forward. (I have a hard time believing that it was only an EA when it lasted that long and because of some of the things that I found in their emails to each other)

Now?.....he talks the talk. But he doesn't necessarily walk the walk. He tells me he loves me, he gives me cards and flowers every now and then, he helps with the kids and the house. He shows affection.

He's done nothing, not taken the initiative, though to get us through this. He didn't reseach and find the MC, didn't buy the books, doesn't come to MB...nothing. He waits until I bring things to him. Sooooo....how committed is he to recovery?

Sorry for dumping, once I got started I couldn't stop!
JoJo

It's the years and years of not having my EN meet, even after I told him often what they were.

It's the years (18 years, the entire time that we've been married) of his flirting and being inappropriate with other women, even with me asking him not to, that it was wrong and disrespectful to me and our marriage.

It's the years of him telling me what I wanted to hear then him doing what ever he wanted to do.

It's the years of him NOT taking care of me, being there when I needed him. It's the times I was left standing in the rain with a flat tire because work was too important and he couldn't leave to come help me.

It's the playing golf with his work buddies, 3 days after I came home from the hospital with our daughter. After I'd been up all night with her then had a 4 year old to take care of too. His reason....."What am I going to tell the boys?"

That he wants me to just stop thinking about this [censored], that he can't take it much longer.

I told him last week that I want him to take a polygraph. I need to know.....no, that's not right, I HAVE to know, that he is telling the truth. That he has told me everything that went on during that year+ with the skank and that he is not talking to her now, for me to start moving forward. (I have a hard time believing that it was only an EA when it lasted that long and because of some of the things that I found in their emails to each other)

Now?.....he talks the talk. But he doesn't necessarily walk the walk. He tells me he loves me, he gives me cards and flowers every now and then, he helps with the kids and the house. He shows affection.

He's done nothing, not taken the initiative, though to get us through this. He didn't reseach and find the MC, didn't buy the books, doesn't come to MB...nothing. He waits until I bring things to him. Sooooo....how committed is he to recovery?

Sorry for dumping, once I got started I couldn't stop!
JoJo

[/quote]

Are we married to the same man?

SS2...how sad is that? How are you getting through this? Seeing past the 'past' to the future?