Hello,
There is another thread or two discussing my affairs, and the issues that mamasita and I have been having. If you havent already read them they are here: how do i encourage honesty , high tolerance for unacceptable behaviors

Most of this post is copied and pasted from the last page of the encouraging honesty post. This seemed like a good expression of the timeline, and some of the issues I am having with remembering and coping with it. Some of the stuff in it, may not entirely be about the affairs, but I feel like some background info is important, especially considering some of my issues are about drug addiction, porn addiction, and really the way I deal with people goes back to my fractured childhood... I didnt really delve deep into that, but I did leave home at 15... because I chose not to deal with a lot of things. These sort of behaviors seem hard to let go, although I have been working very hard at changing the way I deal with emotional closeness, and so on. I do not believe these are excuses, but they are ingrained habits that I have to change, and have been changing.

I would like very much to have advice on how to get this all out in the open so it can be dealt with. It seems so tangled up, and hard to explain.


-------- [snip of the other post] ------------


As far as a timeline, there are HUGE issues here. The biggest of which was I was completely addicted to Adderol. I had a legitimate prescription, but I admit fully that it was based not on a need, but a want. I had been talking a LOT of it for several years, during both of the physical affairs, before them for some time as well. The net result of the constant legal drug use at the time, leaves me without a solid timeline.

I had hoped that after some time, its been 3 years now, that I would start to remember things a little more clearly. But, its still a lot jumbled. Working all the time, taking adderol to stay awake later, and sleep away the days. It was several years of bad choices.

A timeline is the way I think this needs to go. I started several attempts at this, and haven't found a good format. Also its like a lot of the addiction issues, were present years before I even met Mama. Do I include my childhood, which was not the best anyhow? I grew up in a divorced home, my mom was also an alcholic while I was a kid, and then sobered up in AA when I was about 14. I left home right after this, because I couldnt get along with a sober mom. It seems like a lot of my issues have been with me all along, the anger and closed book ones specifically.

Really a lot of these issues, are my issues. The inability to open up is a LONG TERM issue. I have known for many years that I was a closed book, with many stories inside that I wasnt sharing. Now I am asked to open that up completely to someone who often times when I start to read the story, takes it very badly. Mama picks apart these things, brings them back up later as leverage etc.

I am willing to talk about it, I dont want to be taken apart though. I want to change, I HAVE changed. Which brings me to my next point. Which is one that she wasnt even going to bring up. I asked her to focus on positive things for a while. To acknowledge that I have changed, and that I am opening up. She ignores me on this, she doesnt say that here at all.

I used to spend 0 time with my family, sleep all day and really I didnt show a care in the world for her and the kids, except for material support. Especially if you take the segment in time, that the affairs were in, it was multiplied by the adderol, I just didnt care at all... I remember that apathetic feeling, and really hate thinking that I was in that state of mind for years.

I would not be able to have the affairs now. My state of mind is so vastly differnt than what it was then. In fact the affairs took years of mental preperations, fights and so on. For the last several years I have been working to get closer to mama. What I mean is that the affairs were the cummulation of years of mistakes. I am not in the habit of making those mistakes now, I have changed my habits almost entirely.

The first affairs, two of them were online in video games. Flirting for the most part. These I feel were preparation to move on from mama. I was still very much in the freeloading state of mind, even though we were beginning to make a family. Both of these were done without the aid of adderol. We had just had our first son, and I guess I was afraid of the commitment, and wanted out some way... its a while back, and perhaps I was just being selfish and not really thinking it through... it may have not been as pre-meditated as all that.

Then the years started piling on. We started fighting and yet we stayed together. We tried all sorts of differnt life changes to try to make or lives together work. In spite of this, we did not find a common ground. Eventually I found a fulltime job, that was with some "old friends". It was working in the porn industry, as a web developer. Making porn websites for a living. This job caused innumerable problems.

Really porn had always been a factor up until when we started working on my issues. I quit that with the adderol, both were hard to quit, and the process involved lying and relapses. Those are back a couple years, but still fresh enough to cause issues constantly.

This job I had, I could drink alchol and work. Take adderol to extreme and work. They just didnt care. They were enabling a lot of bad behavior. Sometime during this, I started the first affair. I talked on the phone a lot with her, I also spent a lot of time playing video games with her.

I was able to carry on with that affair for some time. How long, I dont really know. I really should figure out exact dates on this. After I went out to LA to meet her, I came back and knew what a horrible mistake I had made. In fact I figured it out, in spite of all the drugs I was on, before I even came back. I think honestly I was trying to make mistakes, I was trying to tear apart all of my responsibility. I really was not living up to my families expectations at that time.

I came back and continued talking with the girl from LA, until at some point... I just stopped returning her calls, IM;s and so on. I dont know why, or when... its sort of frustrating. I think she was pushing to make it more real, and I had never intended to keep it real.

Fast forward a while, and then we moved in where we are at now. Back in the city, as we had moved out to a suburb, for a while in the middle there.

When we got back here, I started an affair with an old friend. I guess I had always had a crush on her. Again the freeloading behavior came out. I was still taking adderol and not at all trying to change yet. This affair started with me going over for conversations about her boyfriend who had left her for another girl. BAH! I should have known, perhaps I did and thats why I was there. This affair lasted a couple weeks, and in the end Mamasita found out about it via me leaving IM's up talking about it. I think I wanted to be caught.

There is more details. But now I believe you have the gist of the timeline, without dates and fine details.

Major problems I had
1) Addiction
2) Friends who enabled me
3) Unwillingness to change

Things that are differnt now.
1) No more porn or adderol or anything like that.
2) Got rid of the enabling job and friends
3) Total willingness to change


Things that still need to change
1) Remember the affairs in all details
2) Deal with my anger issues (I still lose my temper)
3) Learn how to open up emotionally in hostile environments


-------- [snip of the other post] ------------

As was stated in the other thread. My view of this is not correct. This is a good overview, but many of my time estimates are way off, weeks and months blended together. Even after talking it out for several years now, I have trouble coping with what took how long and when, and what happened before what etc. I am hoping to start to put this down on paper, and fill in the gaps, and get it to the point where it isnt unclear like this. In many ways, mamasita knows MUCH better than I, when it comes to the timing of things.

I am sure she has much to say about this.

thanks.

i'm worried he just tells me only what i find out on my own already. and that that may be the reason behind him not providing details. that i will know he is not telling me the truth. of course, he could actually not remember clearly, but i want him to really try and not get angry when i ask questions. i will try not to get angry too. i have a strategy to stop when things get angry. but he seems to have a policy to stop when things get uncomfortable. this i can not abide in because i want radical honesty.

i will refrain from posting here if you all think i should but it seems papasita wants me to contribute here, too. still, i am mindful that this is his post and try to keep on topic. by all means if you ya'll have questions of me please come on over to my thread i am using the one about encouraging honesty mostly. i appreciate your input and hope you all feel free to get both sides of the story.

thanks for all the help everyone has already given.

Papa:

I didn't read all that.

I didn't need too.

Most of what I read was an escape from the choices that you are making.

It's not MY Fault. Its the Adderol, or the alchohol, or the childhood, or the whatever.

You say your different NOW.

Good.

Prove it.

Write another post, where instead of blaming all the things above you just simply show where you made these choices and didn't care about the effect that you had on your family, wife, children, friends and future...

Oh, and believe me, I had many of the same problems....

My Affair was for 4.5 years. With one woman. full blown PA, EA and all that entails.

But I learned something... I came here and started putting my life back together and stopped blaming other things for my choices and behaviors.

You can read about my DDay here>>> Curtains for LG

You can read all my posts if you like. I learned alot and changed much.

I STILL have alot of work to do.

Follow the path. It is narrow. And worth it...

LG

Mama:

You stated this:

And the reason, is, he can post WHAT he needs to post and discuss. You can post what you need to post and discuss on your thread.

Usually, it takes getting deep into recovery to allow cross posting. Your both allowed to discuss other threads and post on them.

Stay with your own thoughts/concerns on your own threads.

There will be a time to share.

And the journal aspects of this site are awesome.

LG

Some Details on the affairs:

- Porn throughout until I stopped. This was always a bad deal all around. Everyone was getting cheated. It didnt help that I had surrounded myself with a bunch of enablers on it either.

- Wandering Eye, always looking at girls. In many ways these are little affairs, and it took me a long time to stop looking elsewhere for what I had in mamasita.

- First virtual affair: I approximate that this was in early 2002. There was some flirting, lots of time spent together in everquest. I found out very little about the other women, her real name and perhaps a location where she lived. Our in game characters were engaged, and then the whole thing was broken off. No more flirting, and the in game friendship was not completely terminated, but nearly. At the time, mamasita found out about the virtual engadgement, I was able to bluff my way out of trouble. It wasnt talked about much, but I lied and said I didnt know the other person very much etc. I am not certain how long this affair lasted, it could have been as long as 2 months.

- Second virtual affair: I dont have a good set of dates on this one. This one, I know less about the person behind the virtual person. There was a lot of time spent in game with her, doing in game things. I dont know what to say, it went on for some time, and there was some cyber-sex. We made our characters in game look like they were having sex. I think I even took screenshots. Looking back I see that it was related to the porn, its hard to explain but I would not even enjoy this sort of thing now. All of this was a huge betrayal of mamasita's trust. The freeloader in me saw nothing wrong with any of this still. I dont think I was caught on this one at the time, and many of the details are slow to come because its a bit embarrassing etc. Well there it is anyhow. I feel like in the end that the person on the other end of that relationship, could have been ANYONE. This sort of sicks me out, but it is important to say that.

- Adderol and Porn: In between these two affairs, there was an accelerating addiction to adderol and porn. My job shifted from working auxiliary to the porn, up until this point I was working on hardware in the server room and coding web tools etc, but at this point my job shifted to cutting up porn dvd's into clips for an internet website. I was fully addicted to this, and really was beginning to lose interest in mamasita, my family, myself etc. It was a horrible time in my life, and deserves a spot in the downward spiral. This period set the stage for the physical affairs. I also was doing more porn that was live webcams, chat with the girls etc. virtual prostitution. It was really a problem.

- Third virtual affair/first physical affair: This is where things got real. After extensive in game time spent together with this person. We exchanged phone numbers and began talking on the phone. I exchanged IM's, emails, phone calls etc for many months. This eventually led up to me going to LA to meet with her, we rented a hotel room and spent 2 days together, maybe 3... hard to remember. I had sex with her several times, but dont recall to many details. I guess I will have to write a detailed outline on this trip out. This will come later.
I returned home, based on a lie I was able to get away with this. I said I was on a trip to florida, which I did go to florida after going out to LA. I was also addicted to getting away with stuff by this time. I often masturbated looking at porn while at work, or at home when mamasita was in the other room, or sometimes even sleeping in the same room. The whole going out to LA and FL was really a big lie, an exciting horrible lie. I have to admit that I had a problem with that as much as anything. I mean, really by this time it had to get bigger and more exciting.
This affair ended, I remember just stopping calling... but this may not be how it happened. I spent a lot of nights on the phone, out in the car parked outside talking to her, but dont remember what we even talked about. I know she wanted to come to see me, but I dont think I wanted that anymore. Something had started to change in the way I was able to deal with all of this.

- Intermission:
So much can be written about this last affair, I want to come back to this later and explain more of the details, and I will. I want to explain the reasons why I was cheating and I think the feeling of what was going on in my head is getting to be more clear.
Sometime in here I started to feel guilt. Perhaps I felt it all along, but it was shoveled beneath a whole lot of other stuff. The pile started to get so big, I just couldnt ignore it anymore. I was wrapped up in my problems, and had to start dealing with them. This was not an easy process, and I wasnt very successful at first. I also chose to deal with it all on my own.
To start to deal with it, I tried to stop taking adderol. I basically weened myself off of the adderol. I was also starting to cut ties with some of the enabling friends, but not all at once. I was fairly successful and had a good couple of months without it. I am almost certain I continued to look at porn, but I was trying to change things.
Well, eventually I relapsed. I started taking a lot of adderol again. With that, I started not caring as much. And with that came the final affair.

- Physical Affair #2:
Well, this affair was even worse than the whole rest in many ways. The other woman was in our circle of friends. Not a close friend, but a good friend of a friend. I drove over there in the frigid winter dead of the night for several weeks, I remember this as being a couple weeks, but I dont know.. its hard to say. I dont want to get into any details right now. I want to say that by this time I was begging to get caught. I lied, but I didnt really try to hide it too well. This affair was really a slap in mamasita's face, sort of cold and calculated. I have a lot of anger about this toward myself, because I really hurt her with it. She had known for years that I had a long standing crush on this girl, and I went and proved the whole thing true and worse. When she found out about this affair I immediately admitted the first physical affair as well, giving her a few details about it etc. I think in many ways I wanted her to know it all, but just didnt follow through with that, I was afraid that now that she finally knew that she would leave me.

- Aftermath:
This has been several years now. Mamasita has stuck with me. Helped me through many CORE issues. I no longer sleep all day and work at night. I spend time with my kids. I eat a lot better than I used to. She has stuck with me in some of the worst times in my life, and I dont want to lose her. I know I asked for her to leave repeatedly. I have said it during angry outburst's many times. I have locked her out, and called her names, and many things I am ashamed of.

This has NOT been easy for mamasita, and honestly this is why I came her to Marriage Builders. When she came here, it was after several years of reading the site, and the forums. Many of the things that you teach on the website, and also in the books it seems, she has used to help solve some of these issues. I have a feeling as I read these books, that this is all something I have heard repeatedly from her for several years.


- Conclusion(for now):
This could go on endlessly. I guess I do want to talk about it. I have to go do other stuff. Its easter, geez! But, this is so important for me now. Its consuming my thoughts, I cant sleep sometimes at night thinking about this problem, or set of problems. So... enough is enough.

One of the worst parts about this, is the info-trickle effect. There seems to always be more info that mamasita learns from my disclosures. How do we stop this from being so painful for her? When she read my post, she found a couple things that I had not told her, and of course they are painful. I need to find a way to help deal with this aspect of disclosure as if it happens a little bit at a time it seems to really cause her pain. I try to be as complete as I can... but it always seems to be not enough.

Have her write down a list of questions for you and then you go and fill int he things; so that she can get the questions answered all at once.

Death by a thousand cuts is worse than one big gash after all.

Papa,

I once asked my H to just tell me the story, as though he were telling a friend the story of what happened. To take his time, and tell the details of what he felt, what happened, and where. From the time they first met, to when it all ended.

In your case, you would go one female at a time. Mama should just LISTEN as you tell the story, and maybe write down any questions for later, as she comes across them so you don't get off track.

In the end, you will feel like the weight of the world has lifted from you. Your honesty in how you felt with the other women will hurt mama, but reveal to you how stupid it all was. You will find yourself seeing and understanding things about yourself that will open those doors into your heart that mama is looking for, and that you need to open - if only to let this healing begin.

You only think you have changed - because once you tell her the story from this point of view, with this type of open honesty, your brokenness will be revealed.

And it will be then that your changes will really begin.


I'm going to show you a little bit of yourself in my next post. Just to get you started.

thanks to all of you. i am trusting him to you. i am over on my thread about encouraging honesty if anyone wants to find me. you all give great advice. thanks so much.

Papa, I will leave your original words in black. I will tell you more in red.

Most of this post is copied and pasted from the last page of the encouraging honesty post. This seemed like a good expression of the timeline, and some of the issues I am having with remembering and coping with it. Remembering and coping. Interesting choice of words, here. The two are quite closely related for you, I think. You might want to consider that issue. Some of the stuff in it, may not entirely be about the affairs, but I feel like some background info is important, especially considering some of my issues are about drug addiction, porn addiction, and really the way I deal with people goes back to my fractured childhood Everyone's way of dealing with people goes back to childhood in one way or another. You begin the blame game with this sentence, beginning to lay the groundwork for the "reasons" behind your affair behavior. Your tendency is to look to external forces in your world, and perhaps view the world as happening "to you" as opposed to viewing the world as something in which you can make choices which allow for you to have control and direct your own ship of life. ... I didnt really delve deep into that, but I did leave home at 15... because I chose not to deal with a lot of things. You choose not to deal with things. Yet, in a way you do choose. You choose alcohol, porn, and "not" choosing - which IS a choice. Walking away WAS a choice. Do you see that walking away WAS your choice of dealing with it? These sort of behaviors seem hard to let go, although I have been working very hard at changing the way I deal with emotional closeness, and so on. I do not believe these are excuses, You need to rethink this. You are not 15 years old, and should have made changes long ago to making impulsive choices about dealing with other people - and making excuses as to why you continue to make poor choices (such as alcoholism, porn, and pills) is an important part of the process. Face this - and your journey will NOT BE UPHILL. but they are ingrained habits that I have to change, and have been changing



As far as a timeline, there are HUGE issues here. The biggest of which was I was completely addicted to Adderol. I had a legitimate prescription, but I admit fully that it was based not on a need, but a want. An interesting addition to this little part here is that you found it very important to note that you had a "legitimate prescription" for the drug. Kudos that you admit to the abuse of it, but you find that you need to qualify it, somehow, by legitimizing the script. Do you see how you pulled yourself back from the confession? You almost came fully clean on owning this, yet, you pulled it away just off the mark. Mama probably sees this in the affair confessions, too, because of the same behavior - you come close, Papa, but NO CIGAR.


I am willing to talk about it, I dont want to be taken apart though. Here, you do it again. You give, then you take it back again.


Really a lot of these issues, are my issues. The inability to open up is a LONG TERM issue. I have known for many years that I was a closed book, with many stories inside that I wasnt sharing. Now I am asked to open that up completely to someone who often times when I start to read the story, takes it very badly. Mama picks apart these things, brings them back up later as leverage etc.
Here you say that the issue of opening up is a long term issue. Then, you turn this into a blaming issue - blaming Mama for picking you apart and bringing things up later once you do open up. I think you have something confused here. "Opening up" does include talking about your faults, your lies, the things you have done completely wrong and stupid and idiotic in your life. You will, by the very process of opening up, tell Mama things that will hurt and anger her - the affairs you had have hurt and angered her. SHE WILL bring them up again. Your expectation seems to be that you should be allowed to "open up" and be done with it?

Doesn't work that way

because the listener - in this case Mama - has the right to pour over what you have said

to sift it

to let it gel

and to come back and ask you about what you meant, thought, felt, and why you did or didn't mean, think, feel.

Opening up is a two-way street, Papa.

And yes, it WILL hurt.


It will come back, until you two are through this process.

Opening up is a process - and you cannot open up only what you want or think you need to let her see.


Or you will fail.

Hello,

This post above by Schoolbus is very very wise. I had an A four years ago. I was planning to expound on the things in my life and point out that other things are never an excuse for an affair. But I think I will just reiterate one of Schoolbus' points. You have to OWN 100% of your choices. The issues "surrounding" my affair were - in the final analysis - irrelevant. The only real relevant fact was that I CHOSE to betray my marriage, and it was wrong.

The good news here is that 4 years later we are still married and working on having a great marriage. The A really isn't even on our radar anymore. We are in recovery. But there were lots of talks, lots of questions, lots of emotion, and there was lots of time. Your W has the right to ask questions, analyze the answers, to expect remorse and real change. In addition to complete honesty, the WS has to have a large dose of humility and zero defensiveness.

I hope some of that helps.

I usually learn well from my failures. In this case, it has been a poor teacher.

I appreciate the insight.

I have to learn how to own my decisions I think. I constantly, am not doing that. Damage control, at least thats what I guess it would be called. I think I do it sort of automatically. Because I didnt really look at it that way when I wrote it. There are always these reasons, and conditions that things happen in.. and I spend way to much time on explaining those parts.

This seems like a really hard thing to change, I need to think about this.

I have asked her to write down the questions she has, we have a notebook that I started. She can write in it. It was supposed to be the story, but it hasnt gotten very far yet. This was my attempt at finding a common ground to write this stuff down, before we came here. I found it very difficult to write about, and now I am very happy that we have been spending time on the tools here, and also posting etc. Because it is already helping.

I will also start to reiterate each affair in full, this needs to happen until its all out there. I have been avoiding it, thats what defensive means, at least imho a good defense. However, in this case avoiding it is the last thing I want. I want to dive head first and not come up until this is all clear to her. My minimizing is the issue.

I will have to learn to let my defenses down, I dont want this to fail.

Papasita

I guess it boils down to copouts. You know, making excuses instead of owning. At the same time, you grow, baby steps, as you assume responsibility for who you are and what you do. And what you did. Some folks grow up early, some late. Some never. Up to you. Everyone makes progress at their own rate. I see your progress. Progress is a good thing.

A famous actress and very intelligent woman said recently: "Our past generation has raised a bunch of brats." Or words to that effect. It is all around us, the me, me, me.

And the fear.

We have the fear as men when we have not adopted an honor system, and that is my main point to you. When you adopt an honor system, you leave behind all the guilt and all the shame and all the "Excuses." Why? Because an honor system changes a man and makes him a man instead of a male. The adoption has to be for life and it has to be real, or it doesn't work.

Let me give you an example: I took wife and two kids to the dentist. As he was working on wife, he asked me when I was going to come in and let him work on me. I said when we got a bit more money. He said, "Yea, dad's last." And I knew what he meant.

Please tell me if this resonates or not.

I won't embellish on anything anyone else is saying. I agree with Schoolbus and others. You are a really intelligent man, I can tell by your language. What you now need are "Emotional Tools" to use as you deal with growing pains. Plenty of those around along with instruction manuals and support by the forum.

Larry

Papa,


It seems like you don't fully understand the reason WHY you've had multiple As. Your starting point should be to understand WHY you've repeatedly have taken the decision to betray Mama. Ironically enough, thinking that you would not be able to have an A now makes you even more vulnerable.

The reason WHY you've had many As should not be explained away with the situation surrounding the As. You need to look inside of you and own it without justifications. The real answer may be a lot simpler than looking for the reason to be in childhood issues or addictions.

The MB program has a clear and simple definition of WHY we're all vulnerable to As. Once you understand that, you'll be in a better position to move in the right direction. I suggest you read the following series of articles:

Escaping the Jaws of Infidelity: How to Avoid an Affair

Once you get Dr. Harley's explanation, your answer to having the As should be much more concise.

--ElCamino72

Here are two parts of this article that I want to point out.
We implemented this a couple years ago. Although it took me a while to accept that it was right. This is one of the MAIN reasons I would not be able to have an affair. Without these steps, or a much stronger bond I think I would be as vulnerable as anyone else. It really is only because of these rules that I feel strong about not being in a position to have an affair.


Mamasita has for a long time been much more dedicated then me and this article and how it has already been gone over several times(in our conversations), and the key parts of it are already a part of the process that has lead us to posting here. I am making best efforts to do her efforts justice.

Thanks. I had read this one before, of course. I re-read it carefully. Time for some popcorn and a movie. Its hard switching back and forth between part of the family with kids and being happy and talking about this. But, its worth it.

ITA

Larry

thank-you all helping me get thru to him. i would like him to go thru the affairs one at a time- not glump them all together. in some ways, the first one is most importnant because that is when he gave himself permission to go thru with it. i wonder what he was thinking then.

One caution. He may have blocked some details. This is common for people trying to shed guilt and shame. He may have to really think and rethink before he can come up with some details. And he might miss a few, either because he blocked or because he wants to avoid the hammer.

Larry

i am not a hammer , i assure you. if anything, i avoid conflict- which i am learning to change. i will try to not lovebust.

in fact him not telling me is what makes me upset. if we have proper undivided attention and i can witness growth and introspection on his part, iam so much happier. it was when we don't communicate that i feel anxious and unsure. when i know he does not tell me the full truth, it is hard to trust him. the truth is what we need, and a promise to care about eachothers feeling at all times- that policy of joint agreement and radical honesty along with the elimination of lovebusters and the promise to meet eachother's Stated emotional needs. this can work . i know the truth is hard to face but there is a saying that the truth will set you(and us) free. please keep it going at a nice steady pace, papasita. i don't expect you to necessarily keep up the pace from yeaterday. once a day is good for us because we are busy parents and try not to spend too much time on the computer outside of work. we don't want computer networking to fulfill our need for socialization- for obvious reasons, thanks everyone. i so appreciate the visible effort to deal with our problems by daily reading, writing, and takling . i love you..