No wonder this guy is still smiling.

If flakiness was a country, Id be China.

Not smart enough to understand your flake/china.

flake

n. An unreliable person; someone who agrees to do something, but never follows through.


Pertaining to my agreement to not bring up the A with my wife and my subsequent bringing up of such. Flakey.

And China being a large country refers to my LARGE inability to not bring up the A.

Got it?

Have to call you on being a little flakey.

Spending good money and using vacation time is not using such time and finacial resources wisely.

Being on vacation for a week does not mean you won't have triggers. Just calls on you to put talking about them on hold till vacation is over.

People put on a stiff upper lip for many a dire need.

I did read this on WPG's thread yesterday, Mike. I took until today to respond. Can you guess why?

Okay, which principle shall we review?

1 - Your FWW did nothing recently to hurt you, betray you, or dishonor your marriage.
2 - Your treatment of her is damaging to her. She may not show it (Strong girl!) but you're scoring hits every time.
3 - These outbreaks are forestalling, and endangering, your personal possible(?) recovery and future happiness.

No, let's not.

Let me open a new line of consideration.

DRIVING for long periods is a disaster for someone with your unmanageable thought-processes. It requires a level of attention that precludes more overt distractions (reading, etc), but not enough to totally obstruct idle wanderings. (Try to imagine thinking of OM if you were defusing a bomb.) Next time the possibility exists of twenty-hour drives, fly, or don't go. Mickey and Minnie (?) don't need your money that much!

Here's a corollary. Do you have a lawn-covered yard, requiring extensive time to mow? GET A LAWN SERVICE! I used to have the worst times while using my lawn-tractor, until I unearthed a study showing that the smell of freshly-cut grass is a powerful spur to MEMORY and IMAGINATION! Exactly what I didn't, and you (seemingly forever) will not, need.

Keep plugging ahead, dude.

My wife is going to some mental trauma lately. Feeling pressure from different places (not just me).

She called our boy "dumb" when he had difficulty this morning answering what i thought was a pretty simple question and he got real mad. He said he hates her as did our daughter the other day and it kind of came to a head today.

She IM'd during work that she in the bathroom crying that she ruined our family and she cant do anything right.

I puts me into an interesting situation that I could have taken in 1 of 2 ways. I could agree and say imagine how worse it could be if I left her. Or, I could soothe her and help her thru a bad pre-menstrual situation with kind words.

Despite in a low mood period myself I chose the latter. Told her that her kids love her more than anything. I told her no one in this house hates her. That she needs to continue forgiving herself for bad decisions and helping me thru this lousy situation. I told her that we cant change the past and Im only damaged and things damaged usually can be fixed.

Its pretty hard to be the nice guy when in reality I want to rub salt in her open wounds at times. Maybe Im securing my cozy space in heaven by trying to rise above this? Maybe Im expecting too much from her and she's simple and got carried away by a predator and as she said lately, she was manipulated?

Whatever it is, this whole thing has really distracted me from my business which in a down economy is least opportune for it to happen. Plus, in a big way, I feel her insisting to remain her boyfriends "assistant" for all those years contributed to our fiscal malaise when persuing a real job and career might have avoided a lot of our troubles.

Anyway, Im rambling today.

I had the boy hug and kiss his mommy just before after he got home from school. And Ill have my little girl do the same. Maybe Ill find it in me to do the same as well?

I always used an analogy to a knee injury when NGB would spin into pity parties;

What you did caused irreparable damage. Neither of us will ever be the same.

It's like blowing out your knee. You will never again use that leg the way you used to, and if you try to all you will do is make it worse and worse as time goes on.

The solution is to strengthen everything around the injury, and learn to walk differently. Eventually, you may even walk better than before - different, but better.

You build strength surrounding the injury to compensate and protect.


It will never be the "same." And it HAS to be better.

Sometimes I've wished to see more of the what-have-I-done attitude from my H in regards to his affair - thinking it would REALLY show how remorseful he is. But, from what I'm seeing, it doesn't really help anything, does it? Doesn't seem to make anyone feel better and isn't especially productive.

I hope your wife apologized to your son for calling him dumb. We ALL make parenting mistakes - FWSs and FBSs alike. The important thing is to make amends, just like when we make marital mistakes.

Good for you for not blasting your wife when you felt like it! It's important to always be genuine in any kind of encouragement - it was nice that you found it in you to be kind.

I definitely agree with keeping your mind busy! I posted on another thread earlier how bad Fridays used to be for me because it was the one day I was alone a lot with my thoughts. Important to keep your brain busy.

Oh, geez, look what I did, I made someone really mad at me.

Couldnt care less about what you think.

I come here to confess and if you dont like it, tough.

And, by the way, her recent venture in "self mutilation" had more to do with an episode she had with our son as it did with my efforts.

In fact, after better than 9 months of me giving her misery she had not once done any damage to herself. Its only when she has a blowout with Jr. that she does. What does that say?

Its says something to the effect that she's pretty confident that no matter what I say or do that Im not going anywhere and that her kids forgiving and loving her is at her utmost concern. Im secondary. Always have been.

That what it says.

Mike,

I seem to remember you posting on another thread several months back that your wife was struggling with suicidal thoughts (cutting?)? Am I wrong?

I'm sorry, but if you think that you are not contributing to her current state, I believe you are wrong my friend.

CV

Just want to add that suicidal thoughts, self mutilation of any type, etc... Must be taken seriously. They are real cries for help.

CV

Hello Mike,

As someone who has seen the same thing in my FWW, I would like to share something with you, if I may.

If she didn't love you and NEED you, she would have taken the kids and left and not suffer your wrath.

In our society, she WOULD have gotten the kids despite the A and child support also.

I have seen it happen over and over.

She is with YOU because she wants to be with you and because you are WORTH suffering for.

The reason she suffers so terribly when she has an outburst with the children is because she knows that you can take it...

and they can't.

God bless.

Jim

Are you using the MB Recovery Program in Surviving An Affair?

Or it could be a reflection on how a person can only take so much, Mike.

Yes, I know, she was an adulteress. By your accounts, she is not that woman now.

She is a woman struggling with her own demons and losses, and every day she has to look in the mirror and realize that they are self-inflicted. She has no one else to blame for the way her life is turning out.

Just because she has sinned, that does not make her less a human being. Just because you have such intense pain, that doesn't mean she cannot feel pain too. Her pain in no way minimizes yours, please understand I am not saying that!

I cannot speak for your FWW, but I can imagine how she feels. I spent a long, lonely evening not long after H left carving up the inside of my arm once with a screwdriver. One night I purposely went to the store for a bottle of wine and a bottle of sleeping pills. You can be cynical and say that we just felt bad we got caught, but that was not the case for me. I don't believe it is the case for your FWW either.

Behavior like that is a cry for help, for attention, not something to be taken lightly or brushed aside.

Oh, geez, look what I did, I made someone really mad at me.

Not just "one", dude.

I come here to confess and if you dont like it, tough.

No, you came here to bluster, to pontificate. To confess would imply contrition and humility. Arrogance and smug self-satisfaction are antithetical to that concept.

I regret you have embraced the concept of victimhood so ardently. You did not have to.

Mike,

I have written and re-written this several times now, just trying to get the words right here. Maybe I will just go back to my original thoughts...

You're wrong. You are so far afield of recovery right now it's not even funny. What the heck dude? Can you not see that what you are doing is destroying your family? Where do you think your kids get the idea it is ok to continually be ticked at mom? You. You are modeling everything but healing for your family. Right now, you are the agent of destruction.

You are not healing together (that's called recovering your marriage). Heck, you are not even healing separately. You aren't giving her opportunity to heal, you aren't helping your kids heal, you aren't protecting your now FORMER wayward wife (or your kids for that matter).

Mike, you are your own biggest obstacle here. To put it bluntly, you need to get over yourself. You have adopted the same sense of entitlement a wayward does in order to justify your actions and you are lying to yourself about the consequences of it.
Since I on the theme of being blunt here, let me bring something else up that you probably won't like...

I would also posit that at least in part, your wife's preoccupation with "things" (money, gifts, whatever) was either fueled by you, or you have adopted it with this ridiculously stupid notion of getting this blood money. Furthermore it is compounded by your unwillingness to break contact with OMW (whether you have actually done it or not).

It really stinks being cheated on.. I know. So do others here. But let me tell you a secret, one BS to another...

Your entitlement doesn't last forever. You don't get to hold your get out of marriage card forever. You don't get to sit on your free pass the rest of your life... Not if you want to stay married. Not if you want to recover. At some point (and the sooner the better if you want to recover) it's gotta go.

You are pushing your M to the breaking point over and over again. Sooner or later it will break completely.

CV

CV, well put.

Mike, when you decided to recover your marriage, to HAVE a good marriage, you signed for this unit: you and her. This is not that she is your W only when you have a good mood or good day, she is your W every day.

Yes, FWS has amends to do to make it up to you and kids. But you are married, in this together, she needs you as much as you need her. When she is cutting herself, she needs help and you are responsible of her well-being not your son. Your unit gives her necessary grounds to deal with kids. If you are not okay how she handles your son or how they treat each other you have to talk to her first and then with the kids, together. Practise POJA.

Mike, I was rushed this morning, and missed a couple things I wanted to say to you.

When my dad died at the end of last August, I remember sitting in the kitchen at my parents' house, and someone (my mother or grandmother, I honestly can't remember) was retelling me a conversation they had overheard, between one of my cousins and an older man from our church. The gist of the conversation was about the oft-quoted saying, "God doesn't give us more than we can handle." The older fellow stated, "Yes, but the good Lord sure likes to load that wagon up sometimes."

I'm not saying that with any sort of religious implication - I'm saying that because it is really freaking hard to pull that wagon on your own - whether it is the one YOU are yoked to, with the pain of your wife's betrayal, or whether it is the one SHE is yoked to.

It is much easier to share the load, and to work together to lighten it.

Mike, if she was "only" guilty, she would not even try to face what she has done. She would not try to recover the M. From your very first post on here, almost a year ago, you said your W had been incredible. Guilt alone is a poor motivator for change. We can feel guilty for doing something, and yet still continue to repeat the behavior. Remorse calls us to reach out to the person we injured and try to make it better; to change our actions and hold ourselves accountable for our actions...not run from the damage we caused.



FWIW, note that there are two paths out of the bubble markeed "Remorse." Take a look at the line drawn to the right of remorse - it is headed, "Inaction."
I would posit that you and your W, like my H and I, are in this same spot. Somehow, she and I have failed to effectively apologize or make restitution/just compensation (or to accept, perhaps, that we have done all we can, and no "apology" of words or deeds is sufficient to overcome what we did to our husbands).

Mike, I couldn't NOT post, because from what you related to us, I am worried about your FWW. But you have to look into your heart and decide, once and for all, if her betrayal is something you can not forgive.

I wish the best for you and your FWW.

Yes. However, she has apologized and begged for mercy to no end for 9 months. She has met my major needs in a huge way and I have no complaints in that dept.

I find it impossible to forget about the callous indifference to my feelings she maintained for a very long time. No matter how much sex she gives me and complete and utter transparency she maintains cannot override my anger at her ability to do this to me and our kids.

I then factor in a million other tidbits of her A that she, again, maintained year in, year out that makes having to canoodle and be lovey dovey for 15 hrs/week something I struggle to achieve.

This wasnt a few emails back and forth and some phone sex. This was a physical thing that went on forever. In my face.

I guess I am to think of her as someone who WAS sub-human in her thought process capable of hurting a lot of people but is very sorry and then just move on. I stink at that.

But, Im committed to figuring it out. No matter what has been suggested I do.