it's simple. I have forgiven and have married, but I am finding it difficult to forget the pain. That is why I am here. Would it be possible to concentrate on that ?

I think we already have.

fine then thanks and good luck.
I have learned nothing except that there are a great many very bitter people on here who cannot see the wood from the trees and choose to judge when that is not what this forum is all about. We have all won and lost and we have all had pain. That doesn't always bind us and the way others choose to lead their lives may not be to our taste, but just as I don't understand the multi wife thing that happens in Dubai, that doesn't mean that I would judge it.
I met my CW and screwed up and paid for it. Maybe that's all there is to is and I should accept that and get on with the very important job of being the very best husband and father I can.

Oh, and sorry for any offence caused. Truly.

Then you need to read through your thread again.

And I am sorry that I ever tried to help you.

The first sentence shows you havent learned anything. You dont FIND happiness in someone else, it comes from within...And you are trying to learn how to avoid making mistakes again, then how are you supposed to do that without realizing your past mistakes and taking FULL responsibility for them so you dont make them again. NO JUSTIFICATIONS. And I NEVER questioned your parenting skills, I only questioned the fact that you seem to think angels brought you and your affair partner together, but somehow not you and your first wife.

And those are the reasons you cannot be helped on this forum, you dont want to be helped...you already know everything.

Its like a train wreck...I cant seem to stop reading this thread and posting....
You just dont get what we are all trying to tell you at all....and I dont know if you can accept the help right now. You need to read this in the future, maybe then you will see what we have been trying to tell you to HELP you not to JUDGE you.

No, you have all missed the point. An unwanted pregnancy is not an angelic act. I brought two adults much misery in the end.
I admit that I need to work on self to try to find true happiness and will do so. That I have learned.
If I had just come on here and said that I was married and was having an issue I would not have been lambasted in the way I have.
I am truly sorry I came here as it seems to me that it is entirely directed by those who cannot accept that there are, just sometimes, different ways of going about things.
I read on other threads people being advised to leave their husbands or wives.
I wish you all well. Whilst I am blessed with a wonderful wife, be assured that I will do everything to keep her and us happy.
Good luck to all.
Bye

Kookoo for Cocoa Puffs....Peace, my brotha! DUDE

All I have accomplished today so far is giving myself a huge headache...Its just talking in circles with you bingo.

Yeah, I'm a pretty patient person, but bingo, buddy, you're stretching me thin. You have much to learn. There's nothing wrong with that. Time is being wasted right now, volleying posts back and forth that are accomplishing little.

How about this: let's take a breather from this thread. Bingo, make it your weekend homework assignment to read as many of the links on here that you can. Let's talk more after that. What do you think?

Dearest Still, Say, MaritalBliss and others that are finding themselves frustrated on this thread...I understand...Dealing with bingo is EXACTLY what it was like living with my father during mania...there seriously is no getting through...really...I tried for YEARS and YEARS...it is fruitless while this mentally ill man remains unmedicated...

I leave you with Mr. W's wise counsel...


Mrs. W

I know, I know Mrs.W...I should have listened....Ive learned my lesson beleive me.

So now we have two doctors, who have never met me, never been professionally trained yet, very dangerously, feel the need to label someone who was in serious grief when diagnosed with "MILD" bi-polar. That was by a qualified phsyc who prescribed nothing more that some sleep aid pills for a short period of time. I have never been diagnosed with that since and have been in therapy with qualified phsycs who have not suggested your diagnosis.
I will refer friends to the Wondering Practice. Possibly alongside that very nice Doctor who treated Michael Jackson.
You amature doctors are very, very dangerous indeed.
I will take a breather from this thread as no one has actually asked the question "How long were you with your ex-wife before you married her ?" The answer...5months (of which, unknown to us 4 of which she was pregnant) would possibly explain why the Marriage was doomed from the start. Basically what was a few dates turned into something I am told here was a gift from God (the marriage) and even though we were never ever compatible in any way and mutually separated and divorced perfectly happily that counts for nothing. The fact that my current relationship has lasted nearly as long counts for nothing either.
I don't claim to know it all and certainly don't wish to pour scorn on the obvious religious bias here, but, really, I am wondering wether it really was worth bothering.
If one cannot be accepted for who they are, warts and all then it is shameful that these sites exist.
I came for help with a very minor problem about forgetting and spent the next few days defending myself about something none of you watched, lived through and saw the demise of. I speak to my ex wife now as a colleague and co-parent and we get along just fine thanks. She has no axe to grind, no remorse, no hatred, no sadness, no loathing. Neither do I. And especially, we have no bitterness, of which this place seems to ooze in bucket loads.
I'm sorry for wasting anyones time. But i'll leave judgement to those who really know me. None of which have ever, ever stated that I made any sort of error at the end of my marriage. All of which said it was a stupid thing to do at the start. Again, with my current wife, no one has ever said to me, including my ex, that she was an error of any sort. In fact, we went out to lunch together, that is my ex, my CW and me and discussed how best to deal with the kids and introducing them to my CW.
You think I am justifying, but you have got it all wrong ALL wrong.
My marriage now is the one that I wish to make perfect forever because believe it or not, I found someone who I want to work to be with forever. We all make mistakes, we all have regrets and we all have to live with them. None of us are perfect. That doesn't mean that one needs to be reminded of imperfections.
Guilt is a useless emotion as it serves no-one. That is what you have except a few good people, have tried to pile onto me and my wife.
Well. Thanks.
If I don't get it......then how come I am still married and have been in this relationship for so many years, and few of you have managed the same. People and glass houses springs to mind.
I'm out of here.

You already said that. A couple of times, I think.

You may want to ask yourself why it is you feel compelled to continue to have the last word, on an anonymous forum, no less. That could be a great avenue to explore for personal growth.

So does this mean you are over her ONS and you have forgiven her - well then the job here is done?



Gg

Bingo, this would indicate to me that this process has been at least some benefit to you;

You came crashing through the front door of this site called MarriageBuilders. You demaded to know "why you couldn't get over your W's ONS.???"

People escorted you out and brought you around to the back door. That was done to teach you something important: HUMILITY!!

Based on your above quote, I think you almost have it now.

So based on the premise that no one gets over it, but has to spend long hours and lots of work to "get through it", have your learned anything here? I truly do hope so.

I hoped you've learned that your W's unfaithfulness in not something new to mankind. It's been going on since the beginning of time, and you are right, we all make mistakes, many of them. Myself and my FWW included. Something like " the poor banished children of eve" syndrone.

Bingo, stop trying to go around the mountain. The only way to the other side is to do the hard work of climbing the mountain. Once you have conquered that, true forgiveness will be your reward. And life from that point on can be wonderful.

All Blessings,
Jerry

Yes, Although angry with some posters, I have learned a great deal over the last few days.
Call it Karma, call it what you like, but I truly appreciate that what you cannot do in any relationship, good or bad, is just give up on improvement. I gave up on my first marriage for what I thought and still do think were very good reasons. That is not to say that it was right, but that is what happened. I deeply regret the way in which I met my CW because I didn't have a chance to grow personally enough to allow the new relationship to have a good start. Ironically, there has never been any jealousy from my CW, and as such she felt that she was truly getting into an honest relationship with a recently single man. That is not true, I was not single by any means, I was still legally married, I realise that now, and have never really thought about it that way until the last sleepless night that I have had.

What I did do, and thank you for all of those that have pointed this out, is carry on the same behaviour into my second relationship as I had committed in my first marriage. A great deal of that was taught to me by my father and mother who were unhappily married for as long as I can remember. Learned behaviour.

I suspect what I did was marry my first wife for the sake of the child as that is pretty much what my parents did even though my father was a jew and my mum a gentile. That created a very imbalanced view on marriage and as such I had not got a clue what I was doing as my own compass was with out a magnet.

I promise you all that I clung on in there, but when I divorced 10 years ago there were not the resources that there are now, and the therapy that we took was deeply uncomfortable and really only served to divide us further as we realised quite how far apart we were. Regrettable, but true.

When I met my CW I was a mess, as was she (she came from a terrible 3x broken home) and as such we had to write our own rules as we knew no better. What we did know is that for both of us we could not do anything but be in love. She was quiet and demure, spiritual (not religious) and sensitive. I was controlling, as I had to be in my first marriage, and as such even though we were, and still are deeply in love, I was trying to create everything I thought I wanted in a wife and she knew that I was everything she wanted in a husband and just waited for me to calm down and relax into what we had. I didn't, and if you sit on anyone long enough then eventually they wil wriggle, which is precisely what happened.

She made one silly drunken mistake, not an excuse, the truth. I paid the price for years of continued controlling behaviour. She deeply regrets what happened and although it was a 5 minute moment of selfishness knew at that point that she was in the right place with me, but things needed to change dramatically for US to work for the "ever" that she had hoped for.

I had made her so low and so unloved and so deeply wounded by my actions that for a moment she gave up the fight and rightly or wrongly made a drunken decision to make herself feel better. In fact it only served to hurt her heart and then the real hard work had to begin.

She didn't go, she didn't carry on with an affair, but she did let me know in uncertain terms that enough was enough. The fact that this happened (the ONS) is actually irrelevant and in many respects I should be grateful, because if it were not for that, we would have wound up with much more work to do and perhaps looking at a D at some stage in the future.

Sure, she lied to try not to cause any hurt as she felt that her threat to me of moving out was enough and as her eyes had been opened to my/our long term issues that was enough, but in the end the truth prevailed and she has done everything she can to prove that to me time and again.

My insecurities have been around for far longer than I have been married either times and looking back, I have treated women the same way since I was a young boy. Learned behaviour.

The last year has been an immense learning curve but one that I am truly grateful to have been able to have been given the opportunity to have been able to take on.

As I said earlier we both had compasses that were truly $%^&ed when we met and wrote rules that worked for us and did so for some time, al be it, in an imbalanced way. When DD came a year ago we realised that what we had written so far was wrong, or not working, and as such looked at our relationship with fresh eyes and started to write the rule book of our foundation again. Three months of day in day out talking got us to the point where we KNEW that we wanted the security and loveliness of marriage for both us and our kids and every day since we work to ensure that there is a balance in our marriage that means we work as a loving team and that there is no more controlling and we fulfil each and every one of each others personal needs both emotionally and in every other way.

What I missed in all of that, and I truly believe whether an affairage or not, we have a strong and wonderful marriage ahead of us, is that I had not repaired the broken bits of me enough to sustain that strength.

So where does that leave us. Well, I start with remorse, work backwards a bit to enable me to look forwards with a clear head and soul. I will do my best to ensure that any fortune I have takes care of not only US but my past as well. I ensure that my ex is never in trouble as it is my responsibility and I ensure that everything that I have done wrong in the past, whether I think it was right or not, is looked at with scrutiny and righted.

It is now far too late to CHANGE the past, but I can certainly go a long way to make those who I may have hurt feel better about why it happened and do everything in my power to ensure that they are taken care of.

What then has to happen is that I have to do a great deal of work on myself as well as my marriage to ensure that history does not repeat itself and that my CW, who has deserved better for the first 8 years of our relationship, never, ever feels so lonely again that she is put in a position of doubt about US or anything else for that matter.

My CW fought very , very hard for US and I did not for 8 years and took her and pretty much everything else, except my children, for granted. I have been spoiled, selfish and truly awful, but that is not where it has to end.

My mistakes have been a million times worse that my CW's and yet I dwell on her one and only moment of selfishness. Why, because that is the way a broken mind works.

That is not to say that I am in the wrong place, I truly having thought hard about even the most hurtful things that have been said here, KNOW I am in the right place however I got there.

BUT, to ensure peace for US and myself, I am going to have to did a little deeper and look back at history, make the puzzle again, look at it long and hard and learn from it.

I came here with all of my emotions in a very tightly strung bag. I came here thinking that all was OK except that I had a WW.

Nothing could be further from the truth. I don't have a WW I have someone who ran out of fight and for a moment thought there was an answer, but it wasn't where she thought it was. It was exactly where the fight was still occurring.

Everything is not OK, far from it. But that is not in my marriage, it is within me.

I need to spend time repenting and looking deeply at what makes me arrogant enough to think I have the answers. I also need to hear what my CW has said all along as in reality she had been proved to be right in our house continually and I have ignored it. I don't want a stepford wife, I want the person who is asleep right now with our child in her tummy to be who she was and has continued to be all along. I know what I said to her on the night of the ONS and in reality just from those hurtful words I do not deserve her. She loves me so much and I rejected that for so many years. That is not the case now, but that is not the end of the repair.

Mountain......yup, it's huge, but I will walk every step hand in hand with her, carry her if I have to, deal with pressure sickness if it comes and one day in the not too distant future feel the security that we did it together and that is never a journey I or she would wish to do with anyone else again.

I am blessed with all that I have and have not been thankful. We have all that we have because I have been smart, but not in the right areas an have neglected the very one thing that could really be the glue that sticks this whole thing together forever........myself.

I have never felt so humble and vulnerable in my life. But belief now, with much gratitude to those who took the time out to bang their heads against the wall that I had built around me, is that my life will change for the better for this and most importantly those of my children and wonderful patient and ever loving wife. They all deserve better.

Finally, I am truly grateful for everything that I have read here. I apologise wholeheartedly to those I have offended and would not wish this to be the last word, more the stepping stone to a greater and more fruitful life ahead for all of us.

You were right to judge........we all need a dose of that occasionally.

Love and Peace

bingo, I know that feeling well. It took me about a year here to get to that humility. You're doing great!