Actually it IS an issue because she is being driven by her experiences in this area.


Your BEHAVIOUR is what people are judging here - not YOU. You really need to get off your high horse here if you really want people to help you.

However distasteful you find this - it is the TRUTH.

TWO affairs by you and you want to get all sanctimonius about being told it is abuse?

Poor Baby. Are those mean people picking on you? Sucks having the mirror held up doesn't it?

bigkahuna,

You are not the only one who has said this, and I may well do this. W has appointment tomorrow, (and according to wife, she will have to explain why I am still at the house.) W had asked if I would consider going... OH YES!

Oh man... you have an uphill battle to fight and half of it is going to be your attitude.

First -


You are very wrong in this, and I don't think I have the days involved to accurately describe how wrong you are. This line of thinking is abusive and destructive. You cannot CHOSE your wife's feelings for her, you cannot choose to ALLOW her to feel any way whatsoever.

I assume that if you were to chose to not 'let her be mad' you would chose to argue, berate, manipulate or browbeat (chose your abusive methodology of choice) her into NOT being mad.

THIS is the way in which you are abusive. THIS is not in the past, this is today, and this is the type of abuse that has led to the MASSIVE withdrawals from your love banks you and your wife commit on a daily basis.

This attitude must STOP if you have any CHANCE of recovery.

Your wife can feel any bloody way she darn well chooses and YOU have no right to 'let' her feel anything. YOU are not in control of your wife. You can influence her moods, yes. But she doesn't need your permission for her feelings, and you cannot deem her feelings arbitrarily 'right' or 'wrong' based on your assessment of reality and then take it upon yourself to educate her.

Feelings exist. The ARE. There is no right or wrong to feelings. Just as there is no right or wrong to opinions. Any attempt to control your wife's feelings is abusive, manipulative and ethically reprehensible.

This attitude, which is probably mutual is what probably leads to:


I love this - opinionated and strong willed.

I know ALL about opinionated and strong willed. I'm Hispanic, raised by a gaggle of tiny opinionated, and strong willed, amazing Hispanic women who have the >6' tall men in my family wrapped around their fingers.

I know opinionated and strong willed - I drank it in with my mother's milk and it flows in my blood.

However, I also recognize it for what it REALLY is: an excuse to mistreat people and misbehave.

Having an opinion is GREAT, having a strong will to overcome all obstetrical is also GREAT. However, often people use these descriptors in an attempt to explain away abusive and bad behavior. "I'm not a B!&ch, I'm not mean, I'm just opinionated and strong-willed".

Your fights make so much sense when viewed through this lens. You give yourself and your wife a free pass to abuse and hurt each other on a regular basis - hiding behind the screen of 'opinionated' and 'strong-willed'. I am opinionated and strong willed and I have NEVER yelled or lost it with my husband. My husband have never had 'fights' before they start we walk away because we recognize:


Fighting gets you NOTHING. EVER. It never does any good, because all it does is destroy your marriage. PERIOD. That is the ONLY end result of fighting.

I find it interesting how you answered the last question. You say the only reason you don't feel like a winner is because you concede the arguments. The correct answer to the question is to realize that there is NEVER a winner when a husband and wife argue. NEVER.

You're resentful because you always lose the arguments. Boy - you gotta completely change your head, because even if you WIN an argument - you LOSE, because you have further eroded your marriage. If you win, if your wife wins, it doesn't matter - your marriage ALWAYS loses.

The answer is to not FIGHT in the first place.

MB can help you with that.

Finally - as to this last gem of a post of yours:


God has NOT sealed your past. Because your past is affecting you NOW, TODAY. In the end - at the seat of his judgment, you CAN be wiped clean of your sins from this life, but the AFFECTS of those sins will be felt throughout your life unless you address and OVERCOME them.

It is interesting that you use the word reconcile. When something is reconciled, it is settled or resolved. I would say that your issues are no where NEAR settled or resolved. As human behavior is constantly affected by previous actions, knowing the actions that preceded your gross infidelity would definitely be pertinent in CREATING reconciliation.

Nice on the allusion to the fact that the people helping you, those taking time out of their Sunday to HELP you, those who are advising you because they have been where you are and have come out the other side with the type of marriage I hope you dream of - you allude that they are, in effect, the attackers and tools of Satan - Classy move there.


You've done a terrible job of this so far with your affairs. It is going to take YEARS to achieve this goal.


Based on your above description of interactions with your wife, you are CURRENTLY abusing her, thus you are ABUSIVE. Based on when the incident with the contact info happened - you are STILL considered wayward, you are still susceptible to relapsing into your affair. Until you come through your withdrawal you are STILL a danger to your wife. Your affair was one of the most ABUSIVE things you could do to your wife.

The reason you don't deserve to have a marriage is because you have THROWN it away. The only reason you still have a marriage is because your abused wife has decided to give you a CHANCE, because of her GRACE. NOT because you deserve it.

You, quite frankly, defecated on your marriage. You buy your kid a nice new $1,000 laptop and he throws it in the street and takes a big dump on it, you gonna buy him a new one because he 'deserves' it?

Didn't think so.

Sinners love to use the story of the cheating woman who would have been stoned. They forget that AFTERWARDS, Christ's parting words to her are 'Go your way and sin no more.'

Her forgiveness is contingent on the fact that she will cease her sinning.

You, sir, have yet to prove that you can 'Go your way and sin no more.' Until you have proven that to your wife, she would be stupid to forgive you. You CAN be forgiven. But this isn't an over-night process. This is a YEARS long process.

Let me say again:
a YEARS long process.

YEARS.

And you have a LOT of changes to make.

The first is to eliminate your Love Busters and remove the excuses you give yourself for bad behaviors.

Brian, you weren't throwing around bible quotes when you were involved in your affairs. Your use of them now seems far too convenient and more than a little hypocritical. However, hiding behind one bible quote unfortunately leaves you at odds with other bible quotes and stories.

As Christians we are commanded to judge right from wrong. "Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment" (John 7:24). Our prisons are full of people that cannot judge right from wrong and that is right where they belong. It was a lack of judgement that led to your serial cheating and dishonesty.

The truth of the matter is that a serial cheater is an extremely abusive spouse. If you cannot face that truth and admit it then I question your sincerity. But don't try to shut down board members when they simply point out the truth. That manipulative tactic won't get you too far here.

Dr. Harley, the founder of Marriage Builders speaks of the abusive nature of adultery often:

here

Be assured you are in a place where folks are not going to mince words with you nor can they be manipulated into silence.
sorry

After writing this post I realized- dh and I have raised our voices to one another and almost lost it... I can think of a few times. I don't need all the fingers on my hands to count them and I bitterly regret them for the failures they are. It's been a while and I haven't thought of them in ages, but my conscience nipped me after I hit submit.

Just wanted to be upfront about that and not give a false impression.

Vibrissa, you have nothing to apologize for. Neither do the others.

I sat back and did some thinking last night and saw what is said as it is, truth.

I truly love my wife and want what is best for her. I came here for help, and then did not like what was said. As the saying goes, truth hurts, but truth revealed can also heal. And truth has to be brought to light. Perhaps a few baseball bats to my head would be in order.

Are there any other WH here? Specifically those who are/ were serial cheaters? What did you do to break the cycle? I know it's possible, but need direction. I am reading the basic concepts and will soon get back into the book, "His Needs, Her Needs." Along with "Surviving an Affair" and soon to have "Love Busters." What though is the starting point for me?

Brian, did your last marriage end over an affair? Did you have any affairs in your last marriage? What about your wife? What ended her last marriage?

Religious babble. Never a good thing when it is used to obscure truth. I suspect God frowns on that.

Your past - both of your pasts - are absolutely issues. You may be building your house on sand, friend. You may be forgiven before God, but you won't be reconciling squat if you don't use the brain He gave you, and continue to hide behind dogma.

Listen to the posters here, especially Kahuna. Pray in the closet. Come here to listen to honest, hard-won advice on how to save your M.

And dump that counsellor. She's worthless.

Was she having an affair with the person she emailed the topless video to?

Are both of you in or have been in affairs?

My first marriage left after ex had an affair and left me.
My wife's last marriage ended over abuse and his having an A with another man.

After my first wife, I started being quite promiscuous. I really have to look at this as a possible starting point for my behavior. We did not divorce for several years after our separation, so yes, I was having affairs the whole time.

Not so surprisingly, during my second marriage, I again had an affair after 6 years into the marriage. Up to that point I thought I had had it kicked, what a lie I had told myself. The affair lasted about 2 years and was the final straw in an otherwise marriage that was doomed from the beginning as the second wife left her then husband for me.

My wife and I met online while second divorce was in court. I had told her about the affair during second marriage and how things had gone downhill for that marriage. All classic signs, or should have been, that I was not a guy to marry... (I can say this now.)

Someone asked if she had an A since her and I have been together/ married and the answer is yes she has. The details are hers to post if she so chooses. I did not want to answer the question earlier out of what I hoped was respect for her.

It was an EA as he was in HI. They were HS friends. He had just gone through a divorce from his W whom he was cheating on from what I had been told. Also, according to my wife, he had pressured her to send him the video.

Neither of us is involved in an affair now. I have completely cut my contacts with OW. As OW lives in MT and W and I are in IN chance of an accidental meeting should me non-existant.

BorD:

You have a handful here don't you?

There are a number of FWH (Me and GloveOil come to mind) here that can help.

It is hard to change behaviors that have been ingrained aver 20 years. Stopping in at MB was a step in the right direction, that you were willing to change these behaviors going forward.

Becasue you have to make the decision to change, and then learn NEW bahaviors that help you to support that decision.

Your in the right place to fix all this...

LG

Fortunately, we also have numerous FBS's who have recovered their marriages who can be just as helpful, if not more.

Hi Golfer,

Thanks for the response.

Yes, I have been more than a handful. And I have more than a handful of issues.

If you don't mind, could you share your story with me. It is great to hear that a marriage, and myself, can be fixed after such a horrendous assault I have done to my wife.

If you wish, my email is brian.derby@yahoo.com

Thanks Melody, and I wish to apologize for earlier.

???
Are we back to being the only true oracle again, Mel?


Near as I can tell, both parties cheated here, and both parties are betrayed and betrayer. Seems that he was wondering if he could read some stories here from the perspective of the betrayer. So, I offered some names of those around here who seem to have "gotten it"

But, on to our regular programming...

LG

Gee, I sure hope not! That is why I took pause at your comment!

Apology accepted, Brian. Thank you for that.