Initually, yes, my self-esteem took a nose dive. But it didn't have far to go, since it was pretty much in the tank anyways. Plan A re-established that. I recognized my faults (because lets be frank, EVERYBODY has them.....), put forth the necessary corrections, and then felt better....about MYSELF. Plus, H had moved out 3 weeks after Dday, so everything was placed on my shoulders. And I did a dang good job of holding everything together without him.....another esteem booster for me....

Now, there WERE moments of self doubt, especially when I learned the truth of OW....she was beautiful (saw her in person, can't deny this....), 10 years OLDER than me (42 for goodness sake), and then seeing naked pictures.....oh man...but then when I really thought of what type of person it takes to have an affair, destroy a family, hurt innocent children....well, beauty is only skin deep. And if that was what H REALLY wanted, then it didn't say anything against me.....BECAUSE I was worth more than that.....

The affair was never about me.....

not2fun

ps....I also had my supporters on here helping me through a lot of these issue's....I will forever be grateful for that....

Yep, self esteem crushed!

But I think it was eroded much by the marriage. I always felt very beutiful and confident when we first met. The first thing he did was say he didn't like the way I dressed, I toned it down thinking it was nice that he loved me for the inside.

Then he began with the unrealistic expectations; there are many examples, but the first was when I got probably the worst flu I've ever had; thought Iw as going to die, and was doing school full time and working full time waitressing. I finally got to the point where I knew I had to take a break or else I'd never get better. I was worried he'd be dissapointed in me, but I went to him crying an dtold him I just needed a break. He told me to stop being such a baby.

One of the last things was he expected me to put up a fence around our property; which is more than an acre of nearly pure rock. He said I should be able to do it by myself in one day. So, no matter how wonderfully I did something or how quickly, he was always dissapointed. He said he was just trying to better me, HA!

I the summer when I got fed up with the put downs, the isolation from family and friends, I decided to remind him of who I was when we met. He decided I was cheating and I almost feel that I am being punished by al this.

Don't get me wrong there was another side to my H that was very sweet and kind. He could never understand why I was so frustrated though.

So, yes between the marriage and this death blow, my self esteem is gone. I had it this past summer, but it is no more.

I am hoping to rise from all this like a Phoenix.

Her continued rejection of SF from after DD was born until now is what killed me. I am either stupid or I'm not the jealous type. Maybe I'm arrogant, but I have more assets than 95% of men out there, so it was relatively easy to "get over it", but the SF thing has killed my self esteem.

According to her it is/was always good to great and she blames her aversion to childhood and being raised in a home that encouraged promiscuity. She has since come to her senses and knows that love is an action and not a conditional noun.

I guess it makes me a bit of a jerk for it not really affecting me... but I can't really say that because if I think about it intently I would projectile vomit, I seem to change my thinking very quickly for some reason. Coping mechanism? Probably, but it's been 8 years. Our SF is coming back to life, and gawd it feels good, no pun. I wish my libido is what it once was though and that resentment hasn't died nor the poor self esteem. Am I a saint for hardly making it a bleep in our life? No, I am a wretch that only someone above has the power to forgive.

Best to you guys.

What?????

Honey, if you can do this all by yourself then your self esteem should be through the roof. You don't need this man or any man.

Impale him on one of the fence posts!

Your H sounds just like an abusive NPD, Expects. They are so good at isolating and making you feel deficientI was working three jobs at the end, trying to keep up with her spending> I took a fourth and she was pissed that I had to give it up as I was getting by on about 4-5 hours sleep for years.
Meanwhile she had several hundred pairs of shoes, 50 bikinis and our garage was full fo her hoarded crapola.

Chai, Yes I could have done it all by myself, but I refused. I told him that his expectations were unrealistic. He said I was being negative. I told him to start looking at all the things I do and start appreciating them and to build the fence himself in one day if it was so easy to do.

Zelmo, Sound very similar. What is NPD? Narcisstic Personality disorder?

Yes, Expects. And, you cannot reason with these folks. See, the thing is that they really beleive their weird outlook on life. In your H's warped world, you really should build that fence or work with the flu. Funny, but they seem to have a different standard for themselves, though. You'd be expected to drop everything to help him when he is sick.
Here's abpout the best example that happened to me in my first marriage with a NPD.
I tracked the number of nights out in 1994, as I was home almost every night , alone, caring for our boys. She was out 224 nights.
So, in a relatively calm and tactful manner, I pointed out the disparity in both the number of nights off and ht espending associated with , unbeknownst to me, drinking and having affairs with strangers she would meet in bars at a local hotel.
There was no debate about the accuracy ofmy figures. Instead, I got indignation and incredulity. I was told "of course i ma going to spend more nights out than you. I have more friends than you."
On the spending , I got a similar response. We were fldegling lawyers at the time, making 37,000 and 38,000 respectively. I was told that " of course I get to spend more on myself. I make more than you."

These folks will drive you nuts. My magna cum laude wife really beleived her arguments were perfectly fair. Thye truly look at the world differently through a lense of huge entitlement.

Zelmo, Very similar to my H except for the being out so many nights part.

He actually did catch that flu from me and couldn't even work one day with it; he thought he was going to die. He apologised, and I cared for him.

My H didn't go out to bars and such. He's an alcoholic and so neither of us drak for most of our marriage. he did have a lot more friends than I and would go play sports with them. That never bothered me, but he'd always tell me I should get friends. I had lost contact with most of my friends becuae I was so busy I never had any time to do anything with them. I had been friends with my H friends, but he badmouthed me to them. The part that is similar to your wife though is that every time he'd go out of town, he'd either drink or drink and cheat; he probably did both all the time I just didn't ever know about it.

The money thing is very similar too. Although when I met him he had terrible credit and a bankruptcy. I reapired his credit and I handled the money and paid the bills. It's funny, when he left me and switched bank account he didn't even know how to write a check. Anyway, he did the same thing to me as your wife had done to you. I was a full time student with straight A's, cared for the house and kids, paid the bills, took care of the yard, vehicles, grocery shopping, cooking, and worked nearly full time waitressing. He'd tell me that none of that counted becuase he made more than me. That I needed to do more. He'd get home from work and nap or watch football or play, and I'd be up til all hours of the night trying to get it all done. Then he'd complain.

Funny though, becuase he says I'm spoiled and should be more grateful.UGH!

Classic disordered, IMO. Pretty intractable, too.

Oh yeah and when I got friends he was jealous of them.

Yes, my self esteem has been completely obliterated. I have serious doubts that I will ever feel whole again. This 2nd round has taken so much out of me that I don;t think that anything can be said or done to get it all back.

I am kind of in the same boat as Zelmo in that I have been down this road before. Except my W and I are still together trying to make this M work.

My first marriage ended in '93, and it took me a long time to recover from that, about 5 years. In the mean time, I made the mistake of thinking that companionship would be enough, and I got married twice between 1st W. and and the love of my life.

I tried really hard not to make the same mistakes in this marriage that I did in my 1st. I was a good husband, and father the 1st time around, but I'll admit that I could have been more attentive. It was one of those situations where I was pretty much blindsided by how much I failed to meet her needs until it was too late. She fell in love with a co-worker, and they are still married.

The only clue I had was one day a couple of month before the split, she said "You only see me at the end of the day when I am not as fresh and pretty, and my hair is not as nice",..."It's ok, I understand". I really failed to read between the lines on that one. Then in late may of '93, after over 11 years of being married, and 2 amazing kids, she told me one night that she didn't love me, and was leaving.

I tried to make this marriage very different from my 1st, and ttfwife's previous. I guess I missed the mark on this one too. The mistake I made was believing that I was the kind of man that my W would always want, and never even give someone else a second thought. I thought that I was being a good husband to her, and a good dad to her kids. Her A spoke volumes about how miserably I failed.

There were times that I tried to let her know that I didn't feel like I was being treated with respect, and that I didn't feel very appreciated for all that I did for her and the kids. She was not all that big on SF either, at least not enough for me (about once every 2 weeks). She pretty much ignored my attempts to express my feelings about all of this. That all left me feeling like I just didn't matter very much. Who knows maybe I could have done better at giving, if I had been getting more in return. How can I see it as anything other than I just wasn't worth it.

Through, you need to lighten up on taking so much of the responsibility for the problems in the marriage. Sounds like your first wife had clairvoyance expectations.
Your current wife sounds like she has plenty of issues, as well.

Okay Zelmo, now I'm feeling stupid. I took psychology too. What is intractable?

Yeah, Through, Im with Z. I mean come on...all these waywards seem to have problem with the fact that their spouses were not clairvoyant. You did not fail miserably, she did.

But sadly, I feel the same as you, like I just wasnt worth any effort for my WH to try and save the M...He threw me away like I was a worthless piece of garbage. That he couldnt stand me so much that he left his DS too.

Buuuuut, when I hear YOU say that you were not worth it, it frankly pi$$e$ me off. Listen the way I think of it is, were you gettin all your needs met? I know I wasnt....But I am a faithful, loving, loyal, honest and trustworthy human being. Cheating never even entered my mind.

And even if I did happen to cheat to get my needs met...I love my WH, still do....I would have givin my H every chance to meet my needs if he would have given me the chance. Like I offered him. I know I would NOT have thrown him away like trash.

He was my H. We had a child together......You and I, Through, deserved more than we got....we deserved an honest spouse who would not have snuck out cheated and lied to us...one that if they were not happy, would give our M a chance to recover, a chance for us to fix it....

I read som einteresting stuff on this clairvoyance expectation in an e-book by a woman named Michelle Langley, entitled "Women's Infidelity II".
In summary, she had talked to lots of WW's amd found that the clairvoyance expectation was very common(She makes no comment on WH's, but I bet they have it, as well).
Often the WS thinks he or she has expressed dissatisfaction in a clear way but, in reality, this is seldom true. They hint or use passive aggressive communication methods. Then , they tell themselves and the Bs that they clearly communicated the dissatisfaction. These boards are full of BS's who heard from the Ws how he or she tried to convey disatisfaction but who were completely blindided by the cheating because , in reality, the Ws did nothing of the sort.
Intractable, as i understand it, means it is not all that amenable to treatment and resolving.

IMHO it's actually your self confidence that has taken a big hit, not your self-esteem. Self esteem comes from being a good person and doing the right thing ~ things to be proud of.

Self confidence is different...it's what makes you feel good or bad about yourself, often based on what you believe others think of you.

Mmmmm, MF....good point...so what I am getting from that is that waywards are FULL of self confidence...and Betrayeds are NULL of it..well at least I know I am

....I have none, zippo, zilch left. everytime my WH comes to pickup DS I dont even see him and I immediately feel like a worthless piece of garbage, withering in the corner, not worthy of his almight love....but that might be just me.

Not just you! When my WH comes to get DS, part of me want to see him, but when I do; no matter how great I look or confident I pretent to be, I feel as if he just knows I'm crushed and I really think he derives pleasure from it. So the other part of me wants to hide. He never lets me though, he can't ever seem to wait in the car for DS. I will watch for him when I know he's coming and have DS ready to send out the door running off to the car. But, noooo he always has to get out an come up to the door for his fix of seeing me miserable. Ugh, I always try to look great and smile and act so happy and be kind and thoughtful, but it just kills me inside. That's usually when he starts acting really nice and buying us the "guilt" gifts. Then Monday comes and the influence of the OW and the BFF and he's back to his demon self.

Z: clairvoyance expectation was a HUGE problem in my M. WW would get angry out of nowhere about how I didn't do some thing or another...well, you never asked me. I don't know how many times I said "I am not a mind reader." It was a problem from the start and it got old quickly. It'll be one of the major flags I look for in the future.