I will eventually D him and move on...as of right now it seems its just not gonna be him that does it, maybe he will suprise me, IDK....I am really not ready to date yet, I still feel married, I know that is stupid....I have had people interested, but I just have no desire to date, IDK why. And I wouldnt date until I am divorced anyway, so when I am ready to date, I will file.

Right now my DS is 8 and I am just kind of wrapped up with him, which my therapist says I will regret because I need my own life....but I dont think I will regret spending all my time with DS. I am lonely when DS is with WH....I do go out with my friends and stuff, but they are all married and sometimes I just feel like the loser of the bunch.

Hi Atena, checking in and glad to see you are posting.

I am almost 2 years since D day. My D was final end of the year. I too have no desire to date. I feel as if I am a married single.

I have some good friends that I make plans with going to dinner or the movies. I have a couple of guys that seem interested in dating me but I give them no encouragement. One works with XH which would be an interesting concept.

Feel I have nothing left emotionally right now. DD16 has been through enough. I don't want to have her deal with a new man in her mother's life. She is finally doing well and is happy again.

For now this is enough.

Yeah, I am with ya hope.

I was just thinking if it might be better for our son if H and I just talked on a very business like basis. My son is 19 and is in college and he never really sees us now except for holidays.
In a way I would just like to have a talk with my H and ask him what he is envisioning for our son. If he has totally checked out as a father...in other words..where does he stand..If I could convince H to meet with a good counselor who could mediate between us and make our relationship as parents more bearable.
I cannot stand putting my son thru this: your father and I do not speak and so who knows....
I have no interest in R the M so for me the issue of losing love for my H is really not one because, in fact, I hope to lose all of it as fast as possible.
I am not sure if I am doing my son a favor by keeping up a wall with my H. (????)
blessing

Yeah, thats a tough one...Me and WH text about our DS....but sometimes other stuff is snuck in there and it upsets me. Just remember you didnt do this HE did.....If not talking to WH is gonna keep you mentally in a better state then it is not worth it, ya know?

I saw H again today on the stairs. We looked at eachother and he smiled at me. I was laughing with a collegue and continued doing what I was doing as if he did not exist.
The funny thing is that I felt almost nothing. In the past I would have felt sick all day. But I am fine. I released my emotions about it and now they are gone.
I think that in a few months of this I will be able to face him and talk to him about our son with my chin high...totally uneffected. My goal is to achieve imperturbability and not give a hoot about him, his toughts, his goals in life and who he sleeps with. Not care about what he did to me and not make a victim identity for myself out of having been betrayed.

I want a new life, free of the past and what H has done to me.
Scr*w him and how messed up he is. I do not want to allow him to mess me up or to control me any longer. I am working on getting my power back to where it belongs. TO ME>
blessing

It feel so good when you are getting to this point, doesnt it?...My hope for so long was for me and WH to get back together, now it is just to feel indifference toward my WH. IDK, but have you seen your WH with OP?...See, I havent seen them together yet, as a matter of fact, I havent seen OW at all...Thats the thing I am scared about now, I dont know if I am ready for that yet...or if I will ever be.

But I guess, one day at a time, thats all we can do. At least every day we are getting better, ya know?

Yes I have seen them together in her car, she was driving as he does not have a licence. It hurt me. But that was 3 weeks ago and I had not started my release technique that I have been doing daily for at least one hour. Of course I cried but the releasing made me get rid of all the pent up anger and hurt.
I cannot tell you what my reaction will be should I see him with her. My goal is to feel good and not have this situation hurt me any further.
I do not want to continue not speaking to H for the rest of my life. I want, at some point, to be able to talk to him with detachment and not give a damn about him. That is my goal.
I can't ignore that he is the father of my son and will be that forever. I cannot hurt myself by having to constatly battle feelings for my H and find myself 10 years from now still harboring resentement and not talking to him because it would create avoc in my life.
I will not give him that power. Not now that I decided that my M is over and I am ON.
Blessing

Can I ask WHY you can't ignore him for life? Isn't it best to ignore things that cause you trauma and grief?


I think it is unrealistic to believe you can ever not have feelings for him, unless you get a lobotomy. Feelings just ARE. You could bury them, but that is not a solution. It only leads to depression. Exposing yourself to reminders of traumatic situations will always trigger you to some degree. Dr Harley mentions in numerous places this is why he does not dredge up the past wiht his clients: its only result is to bring pain from the past into the present.

I learned this with my XH and it has been 10 years now. I have no wish or need to be "friends" with someone who treated me so despicably. I want to avoid such a person for life. We don't have good memories, we have NIGHTMARES, and why would I want to relive nightmares? There is absolutely no reason whatsoever. My life is so much better not being reminded of what he did to me.



Being around him does him that power. Staying away removes that power.

Yeah, I guess atena and myself also needed a smack back into reality. Thanks ML, you are right, as usual. Those feeling will never go away completely, will they.

Your son is 19 years old. He's an adult. He has his own life now. He may come home for a while after college but not to stay. Your work is is done - it's time for him to to spread his wings and make a life for himself. Now, do you want to risk taking all that away from him because you are a wreck because you are continually beat down by your WH? If you don't keep up that wall, that's exactly what you will do! In fact, your son will actually blame himself for it!

My son was one month shy of 19 on D-day and also off at college. The first thing he did was come home and then he wanted to quit school so he could work to support me. Sweet gesture, but I didn't spend 18 years raising him so he could turn around and crawl back up in the womb!!!! The product of good parenting is a productive, well adjusted adult ready to take on the challenges of the world and prepare it for the next generation. Would I have done him any favours if I prevented that in the final stages when it was about to be complete????

Your son, at 19, is perfectly capable of maintaining his own relationship with his father without your assistance or interefance. Or not. He's old enough to make that choice. So is your WH. It's no longer up to you. There's no custody and no visitation schedule. Just adults here. If your son needs anything at all from you, it is the respect of one adult to another. Don't let adultery prevent or delay this most important milestone of his life!

I feel sad reading much of this; I still continue to hold out hope that the A will end, the alien will vacate from WH body, OW will shrivel up and go away, and that WH will come begging for forgiveness. Hmmmm....fantasy I guess.

I feel like many of you, would it be easier to date, but then again I am not ready for that. Besides then I would be having an A. I have found that living alone is much like being married; he was always so busy that I seemed to always be waiting for him to spend time with me. Now I feel like I just always waiting.

WH has not attempted any contact for almost 3 weeks now. I know that is probably a good thing, it just doesn't feel that way.

Dstep daughter20 and son20 home from college this week, WH continues to push them further away with his BS and lies. I try to remain a stable part of their lives.

They are also adults and have decided to stay at school for the summer, they don't want to deal with the BS at home. I feel sad for them that they have to choose like that; but am also grateful they are adults and can make that choice.

Mymissy, I feel like that the affair ending and WS wanting to come back will happen...unfortunately it might happen after too much time has passed for us and we have already decided that we cannot open that wound back up, It will just be too late for us.

Atena, I agree totally with Abby.
My DD16 has no R with her father as of now. It is one year since she has seen him and he lives in the same town.

When all of this happened she was very angry and her grades, sports everything was crashing in. I brought her to a IC.

This wise woman sat me down and said "the purpose of DD coming here is not for her to have a R with her father but for her to be happy with her decisins that she makes about her father. DD16 was taught well by her father to be honest, have integrity and values. She is now living by these principles even though he has not."

I backed off and now DD is doing well with school again, is happy, has a BF who treats her with respect and is happy.

She blocked her phone so XH cannot call her. We don't speak about him unless she brings up his name. She is a good kid and I want her to stay this way.

She is in her own Plan B -- totally dark. This is her choice and for her it is the correct one.

You need to stand back and let your S19 decide what kind of R he wants with his father. I know you don't want him to get hurt and he might but let it be his decision.

It is a tough road and we can only work on ourselves. Blessings

Melody, I agree with you that I do not have to seek my WH company nor his friendship. I could never do that.
All I am saying is that I can already see that feeling towards him are fading quickly to the point that I am not influenced by his presence. That said, I am certainly not planning to spend any time with him. My plan is to avoid him at all cost.
However, since I started this release technique I saw that I am not my feelings, that feelings are just like passing clouds. Pent up energy that can be released.
I also noticed that if I avoid being "my story" meaning identifying myself as a BS and instead see myself as much more than that,...I feel more empowered and do not give a damn about WH and what he did tome.
I will not forget it, but I will not let it rule me.
Regarding my son, you are all right. He needs to have the relationship with his dad that he chooses. I have been interfering too much by telling him to stay away from WH and OW and not come over for the summer. I want to protect him, but I am wrong doing that.
Blessing

Thank you Tabby, but i do not agree with this and with the people who posted along the same lines.
This is the exact way my WH is thinking...and this is what he used when he announced to me he wanted to separate back in July 2008 (when he was already in the A but denied it).
He said that now our son was almost ready to move out and be in college and it was a good time for us to split since our son WILL NOT be needing us to be together any longer, that he is an independent kid (which my H always encouraged...just to get him out of his air he sent when my son was stillin HS he sent him on vacation 3 times with his best friend against my will...)
Sorry, but I do not support this kind of talk. Kids always need their parents to be together.
blessing

While I agree that kids do need their parents to be together, regardless of their age, your 19 year old is still ready to be treated as an adult. Like I said, he may come home and stay for a while, but not permanently unless something happens to prevent him from completing this final milestone. Of course with today's boomerang generation, that happens all the time regardless of the marital status of the parents. But if you look closely, in every case the adult child was denied critical skills, usually in independence, to make that final step into the real world. If you have ever met someone in their 30's still living with their parents, you can see it immediately.

This was my biggest fear for my son when this all happened to me - because he immediately wanted to come home. He felt he was being noble and doing the right thing, but in the end it would have been far more harmful to him. This is not to say he didn't suffer, nor was his life unscarred by the adultery. In fact, I'm pretty certain that his decision to marry young and rush the wedding (only a 6 month engagement) was strongly influenced by his father's adultery. I'm convinced that they though if they wait until marriage for sex that their marriage would be able to avoid this fate (her parents are also divorced). By rushing the marriage, they could have sex and still abide by this rationale. Six months is a much longer time for the young than for the old. Fortunately, my DIL as a lovely young woman with a good head on her shoulders. But I am still concerned about the level of commitment they made with their youth and inexperience in the world. As we've seen again and again on this site, it doesn't make a difference if you waited until marriage or not, nor does religion or any other attribute make a difference. Adultery is a disease that can affect anyone, regardless of age, gender, race, religion, sexual orientation or any other demographic division you can think of.

Hi Atena, I don't think that was the intent of earlier postings.
We want our kids to grow up and be happy, independent and stand on their own. That is not being disputed. What I tried to express is that you cannot influence or interfere with your son's R with his father. There are days I worry that DD16 is "missing out" not having her father in her life but when I think of the drinking, bloated and selif entitled man he has become I think God is protecting her from seeing him in this condtion.

I do agree that kids want their parents together no matter what. This is what the BS want also but it is not our decision and we can only protect ourselves right now.

Blessings

If your son is 19, I can't see why you and your husband need to confer about his future any more. Your son is a grown man and should be making his own decisions. He can seek your input and your husband's input when he wants it, and weigh each according to his own value scale, and make his own decision.

Aren't you in Plan B, or was I confused?