My H just recently cheated and in 4 days it is our 4 year anniversary. Yuck! I have forgaven him and he wants to start new with our marriage. Forgiven but not forgotten, makes it so hard for me. I have no desire to celebrate this anniversary, I don't plan on getting him anything and I told him not to get me anything either. He insists on celebrating and buying me a gift, and making this our new happy start. I'm trying to be happy and make a new start but it is so hard when there is no trust. What is the easiest way to overcome this, confused, need advice please!<P>------------------<BR>SillySam

sillysam,<BR> I know how you feel. I no longer care about celebrating our anniversary (# 30 is coming up next June). My H didn't care enough about it to make a special occasion of it this past year, and since he finally admitted to cheating on me 13 years ago (I've known he was lying for all that time), I no longer feel married. As far as I'm concerned, our marriage lasted only 16 years.<P>As soon as I feel that he's told me the entire truth about <B>everything</B>, I want us to have a new wedding, complete with new rings, fancy ceremony, and <B>a NEW wedding date</B>! I told him that as far as I'm concerned, the old date is just the anniversary of the first time I had sex.<P>Why not go ahead and let him make a special day of it? Would he be open to renewing your vows--maybe on a different date?<P>Good luck.<p>[This message has been edited by Sweetpea (edited October 25, 1999).]

Hi, I'm not sure how recent your situation is, but it usually take a bit of time until the trust is back.<BR>SOmetimes it even comes beack before we realize it <P>It took me about 4 months since the affair ended to wake up one day, and realize that I did trust my H again. Everything else was fine for a while, but deep down I was always reserving a bit of space for doubts.<BR>I had made the decision that if I wanted my marriage to work, it was important to trust him again, or else what why rebuild? How can a relationship work without trust? But understanding this and really do it was a bit difficult <BR>Everything wa fine most of the time, but anytime something strange or out of the routine happened, I would start wondering... does it have anything to do with her????<BR>Until even that bit me back. One day I thought I had found proof that he had contacted her trough his cell phone. Got mad, confronted him just to find out that it was actually a mistake, and I had done it myself by pressing buttons without looking at what I was doing. I had actually pressed the memory button that still had her number myself, and ended the call before it was answered because although i was paying attention to something else. the number didn't look like the one I wanted to dial.<P>Sometimes, we make unpleasant things last longer ourselves without realizing it. One of the things that I see the most, and that I also did at the begining, was to link every single problem that happened to us after what happened to the affair. The thing is that I was keeping it alive way after it was dead to him. Not everything had to do with the affair, I just had one track mind at that time <P>SO yes trust can come back, but don't be surprised it it is another "kind" of trust. One that I find much better than the "inocent" trust we had before. This one knows things can and will go wrong, so teaches us that we need to pay attention to our marriage and keep communication open.<P>Hope this helps.<BR>Take care<BR>Kat<P><P>------------------<BR>Each and everyone of us is deserving of a kind word, a gentle thought, and the gift of understanding.