SEM, here is what true remorse looks like: here

and here: here

Melody, I know you've been doing this for a while. You are looking way deeper into this statement than needed. I did not think when writing this, should know better by now.

What your reading into, was supposed to be what I am seeing, not a 3rd party assessment of how she is doing. If I were capable of 3rd party here, That statement would have been beefed up a lot, like She has made huge improvements etc. I personally am expecting a lot, and am starting to feel she is willing to do exactly that. She had better be willing to go through hell to make this marriage work, or I, like you, don't feel it would be wise to stay.

Starting to be transparent, is exactly that. I felt like she would skirt the issue or would hold back on her answers to questions 2-3 weeks ago. She has now opened up, has been honest about the details and has stopped with the b-s- WS twist crap around thing, and is now actually taking responsibility for what happened.

AS for the intercourse thing, I have no idea why she would lye about it. Will it make a difference to me, as she knows, it won't. It would piss me off quite a bit if I found out she was lying. I honestly think that poly Q would have been a solid fail if she did. She did say they tried, but OM was too intoxicated to get it up. Imagine that. Perhaps that is why she failed. Who knows.

Gotcha. I accept that. That still leaves the problem of angry outbursts at a time when she should busting her [censored] to earn forgiveness. I do worry about your assessment, Sem, especially coupled with her posts I have seen. Nothing resembling true remorse.

Will you go read the threads I referenced? I want you to see what sincere remorse looks like.

I'm working on it, I have hughesnet and I think I would be better off with dial-up or a two way radio even I have grown to hate using the internet at home, especially after working on a computer that is lightning fast at work all day.

I read the fifteenyears post the other day, and thought, wow, that woman really has it going on. I actually told WW to read it, thought that would be helpful. I do actually get on here and read others post, I refuse to post, as I have said before, I am in no position to help others if I can't even help myself. My time is coming!

The I ruined my life post, was another I read. I read through all of these things and other posts, and think where do I stand on the pathetic level. (I mean absolutely no disrespect to others here, you all must agree if you are here, your life has either been or is currently at some pathetic level) My heart goes out to recoverylady, as I feel that is right around my pathetic level, right at about as bad a marriage to recover as a person can get. I wish them the best.

Why don't you post it here for us?

CV

...and the letter will never be right...

The fantasy of perfection is the killer of accomplishment. Just send the damn letter! If it says, "We were wrong. Don't ever contact me again," that is sufficient! The correct application of the future pluperfect tense of "stay" (away) is NOT critical here.

****,

I am sorry for the pain I caused your family as well as mine. What I did was thoughtless, cruel and selfish. **** and senn did not deserve the pain we caused in our selfish act.

This letter is to inform you that I will never speak, text, e-mail, or contact you in any way again. I insist you respect my wishes. I do not want you to ever attempt to contact me again. This includes any instance we happen across each other around town, please do not talk to me, as I will not respond and will walk away. Any contact with you would be disrespectful to my husband and my family. I can assure you, if you attempt to contact me in any way, or speak to me in any way, I will inform your wife and my husband of any contact with you or by you.

I am focusing on saving my marriage as you should yours.






S


I wrote this, the other letter was crap. I added the I will inform your W and my H part. Cleaned the rest up a bit. I will send this letter. I tried to leave WWs way of writing/speaking in there. I don't want him to think I wrote it.

Yep, I used to say "I'm almost a perfectionist, but I never seem to get it perfect".

Senn,

Something drew me to your forum last night and I started reading it. I think it was the "wife cheated after ten years part" because it sounded a lot like my story. As I finished reading today, I realized that you actually wrote about me. Thank you, but I have a very long way to go before I "get it together".

I thought I would share a little bit with you about where I am right now and how it took actually losing my husband to realize that even though I said I was sorry and I would never do it again, there was no guarantee that your spouse wont. Especially when they do not make the necessary changes in their life.

If you would have bet me a million dollars six months ago that I would be where I am today, I would have taken that bet. I NEVER thought I would cheat again!! I made promises to my husband and kept those promises for a very long time. But then I went back to my old ways. I got careless with both my heart and my husbands heart. You see, even though I caused so much pain the first time, I honestly don't think I truly learned my lesson. You know why, because my husband took me back right away. Yes, he was angry for awhile and I would have done anything for him, but I never really lost him. I never really learned what it was like to lose the one you love. I never truly understood his pain. Because when your spouse cheats on you, you lose them to another person. Again, the pain I am suffering right now after losing my husband, is only minor compared to his pain. I am just now beginning to realize this.

There is no doubt in my mind that your wife loves you. I NEVER ever stopped loving my husband. But is she willing to do what it takes to stop HURTING you? Are you willing to do what it takes to stop letting her HURT you?

I almost look at affairs as a drug. I know that Dr. Harley states that EVERYONE is wired to cheat (and I believe this) but just like some people are more prone to becoming addicts, I believe some people are more prone to cheating.

Like your story, my husband and I married very young. I was only 18 and already had our first son. He was 20. For a very long time, I used this reason as an excuse for my affair. I would tell people I was young and stupid and didn't know what I really wanted. A lot of that might be true, but I DID IT AGAIN!!! What is my excuse now? And my husband has never cheated on me.

The thing is, that just like a drug addict, a person who is having an affair has to stay away from the things that caused the affair. They have to work very hard, every day for the rest of their lives for the ones they love. Sometimes it takes a major step by the H or W to really wake up that person and get them to realize that marriage is A LOT OF WORK! But it is the best work you will ever do!

I am sitting here right now, alone! My husband tried to "make things okay" over the Holidays. He even had me convinced that we were going to make it through, again. But the day after New Years, he left me. He said it was too hard and the pain was too much. That he needed some time and space.

This was 8 weeks after D-day. I thought I had true remorse and guilt and felt awful for what I had done, but right after he left I realized that I was angry and wanted someone to blame other than myself. I started to blame him, his parents, anyone I could think of other than myself. I said to myself that I had been doing EVERYTHING for the past 8 weeks to make it better and he "led me on" (those were my exact words to him) into thinking that we were going to survive. I had a number of angry outburst and wrote some very ugly letters (thank goodness I never sent them).

That is when God brought me to this site. Ironically, it was on a Sunday...he he I posted my story and got a lot of feedback. OMG, I was just like you, these people were tearing me apart. They scrutinized everything I said, they made me feel awful. But what they truly did was tell me and show me the truth!

YES IT HURTS!!! It still hurts really bad! But my hurt is very little compared to what I did to my husband. He deserve more than my words and my temporary actions. Because I can assure you that if your wife is anything like me she will do everything in her power to make you happy. I'm sure her thoughts and efforts will be genuine as well. But will they last?

Until I got on here and truly committed to a real change, I could not even guarantee myself that I would not cheat again. Yes, I said the words to both myself and my husband but I had doubt. Thirteen years went by without me even thinking about cheating. The second I started working with another male, I threw everything away! I had an option whether or not I should work with him. If I had set up EP's long before that, I would have said no.

Often times my husband was bothered by the fact that I would go out to happy hours with work groups. I also had a couple of the guys in my departments numbers in my phone. Not one time, did I ever think of cheating or doing anything wrong, but it bothered him. It made him feel unsafe. It put me way to close to danger! I ignored this, and look where it got me?


I really hope for the best for you. I am not going to tell you what to do. I don't even know myself exactly what to do. I do know for a fact though that no matter what happens I am going to change! There is a very strong possibility that my husband wont take me back. I gave him a letter yesterday with my PLAN of action but I know that before he even considers anything, he is going to have to see a permanent change. Your wife is never going to be truly sorry, until she has gotten a glimpse of what she has lost.

She needs to know what it did to you. Do not sweep this under the carpet. That is what my husband did the first time and I never truly felt the affects of what I did to him.

Thank you Fifteen,

I see you did read through my lengthy thread. As I said on your thread, our stories are very similar.

I have come around quite a bit since the above quote. I have changed my attitude and have accepted the fact that my marriage is very likely to fail. After 15 years I feel it would be wrong for me and WW not to at least stick around to see if we can make it work.

When I first started down this road, I didn't see an option, only that I must make it work. My WW has been advised that SHE must make it work, and I no longer have the willingness or ability to changer her.

I am not exactly sure of what you are suggesting, leave her to make her realize what she has done? I have to agree, she probably doesn't have a clue as to what she has done to me. Perhaps it would take a lengthy seperation to make her realize what she will lose. To be honest, I expect in the end she will know what she has lost, as the likelyhood of this working out is slim.

I'm curious, Senn. Why is your WW not posting here anymore? Is she afraid of MB?

MrsRecon, I don't know. I know she was feeling like everyone was picking at everything she said and didn't feel it was productive. I have encouraged her to come here. I told her to continue to post etc. as there is much usefull tips and advice. She just feels it ends up being more of her defending herself and less like she gets anything out of it. She does read here, just stopped posting.

I think it was because people were telling her to do things she really didn't want to do, and asking questions she really didn't want to answer.

That is a big problem with Marriage Builders nowadays. They see right through wayward bullcrap and insincerity. When your wife came here in the past, she found alot of mindless backslapping instead of guidance on how to affair proof her marriage and earn your forgiveness. She is not interested in taking steps to affair proof your marriage and doesn't feel that is "productive."

The pain of this affair is starting to subside, and in its place I am filled whith anger and frustration. I feel like I am loosing the love I had for my WW and cannot stop thinking about leaving for either seperation or plan D.

I am not trying to get WW to kiss my A**, but I have explained that when I am frustrated or in a bad mood, she needs to get past her natural reaction and be nice. This is only met with argument and "that doesn't seem fair to expect me to be nice when your not". My response is, as you can imagine, it wasn't all that fair when you were doinkin my best friend either.

This weekend had a few good moments but ended very badly, and I have never been so close as to just calling it quits.

Any advice??

Does she realize how unintentionally funny this comment was?

Yea that can go down in the funny things WS's say thread.

Senn, I had this slightest moment that maybe, just maybe your WW is starting to come around.

Your recent post about her reactions is very sad and I think you need to really really think what are your conditions for reconciliation. You have to set your bar much higher, nonresponsive or argumentative WW will fill your life with a huge resentment. The pain of her infidelities may fade but this will be replaced by anger and resentment and you will not get rid of this that easy anymore.