... my other bag is Prada...

Pep!

Like General Yu, you had your own battle of Julu.

When I wrote that piece the other week, I started it thinking about broken, but then realized I was really writing it for me - about me. I don't know that I realized that until I read your post to notsotuff. Yes, I am slow...it's not as if no one has said these things to me before. I think V's updates were the first piece that really started me thinking. I know there are some who think V and her H are one and the same, but I just don't believe that...and even if that were true, it is still pretty much a picture of the kind of life I can expect to have now should I choose option #1, a loveless marriage.

Technically, doing nothing results in option #1, so if I continue to do nothing, I am really choosing that option. Option #2 is, obviously, divorce. For broken and myself, there is no option of a loving and fulfilling (recovered) marriage. I still have a lot of guilt about my contribution to that, and I know that guilt, and fear, is what holds me back.

I AM scared. There are many unknowns, where would I live, would I be able to manage as a single mom, I'm scared of ending up alone. I'm worried for broken, still jobless and living in his postage-stamp apartment. I'm scared for my girls, for them being children of divorce and them having to deal with all of the complication that I've caused in their lives. I'm scared because we're skating along the edge of total financial meltdown now, and how much worse it will be when we separate for good.

But by the same token, even though I have more than enough guilt and regret, I no longer believe that the appropriate penance for my adultery is this life that I am currently living.

What can we do to help, WPG?

Do you want us to supply the golden remedy to bring Broken, heart and soul, back to his family? We have previously offered all that we have.

Do you want us to tell you which path before you is the correct one? That, we cannot do.

Do you want us to tell you that taking action to end the (now) loveless relationship will be the key to happiness and joy? We cannot do that, either.

What we can do is assure you that Wulffie and her two darlings deserve a life with HOPE, POSSIBILITIES, and JOY, and that some risks and uncertainties are worth facing in pursuit of those qualities. We can also commit to being here for you, whatever your decisions.

Happy Easter, Wulffie!

hi WPG. i feel kinda odd commenting on your thread, but i've been following it for a long time. it was your post on choice (posted elsewhere than the original, i think) that brought me here. i've always loved rush - and whenever i've had to make a heavy decision, always thought that line: "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." (i always envision geddy singing that last "STILL have MADE a CHOICE" with a "well, duh!" tone!)

you've been living with choice #1 for a long time now. i know that part of your worry has been for your children, and what divorce will mean for them. but i wonder, WPG, if it's occurred to you (as it only just occurred to me) that they are living in the same loveless union? and until you choose choice #2, you are *all* stuck with choice #1?

that was just a thought i had when i read your last, anguish-filled post. not that they don't have a choice, but that they are living in the exact same atmosphere of despair that you are.

WPG, i don't say this to point out a flaw, or to accuse you (which i'm totally NOT doing - i'm kinda panicking over making this post with the possibility that you'll take it the wrong way) of being a poor mom or anything at all like that, so please don't read that into it. i truly just wondered if you had considered that perspective ('cause it's hard wen we're in the middle of it), and if not, if that would perhaps give you a 2nd (or 1500th) wind to end the deterioration of your life, which i know is a great burden to you.

or maybe i'm just projecting. when i was young, my mother was stuck in an abusive relationship. my mom was young (31/32), educated, gorgeous...and stuck. one month we packed up and moved out 15 times (often to a different place than before). and i can (barely, thank goodness) remember the crushing feeling of how powerless i was. the fact that she was also powerless made it even worse, because who would save us?

To "Getty Letty".."Welcome to the limelight....,Put aside the alienation.. the universal dream...

" ( Not bad from memory about 10 years ago..) still missing a lot..

Yeah we all love WPG and she has been honest and true. Yes WPG you have done what can be expected and now its over...

Now what?

Dear WPG.
Happy Easter.
I posted this prayer (Psalm 23) to another former-wayward trying to restore his M (DNT) .... and I immediately thought that I HAD TO post it to you as well.

God bless you, sweetie.
Peace be with you.

"You can choose from phantom fears..." (Well, maybe not so phantom, but a future not yet set in stone).


" and kindness that can kill..."

Although the lyrics are about something else, they seem even more relevant here.

You may feel compassion and sympathy for where he is now, but he could also care about his life enough to turn it around. He will have to decide how to get out of his quagmire, just as you also have to decide what to do about yours.

Maybe you could start working on some those unknowns now to make them knowns. What choices do you have for a place to live? What could you do to stay where you are? What are the monetary costs of divorce? Does the situation now look any different for your girls than it would with a filed divorce?

Yes lets..(or you..) have to start with what you have now and not mess with "Mr in-between"

"Eat the meat and spit out the bones".. is the best advice any other human being can give someone who is spiritually starving for forgiveness..Yes God has already given that to us...We could never earn it anyways..no matter how hard we worked..

Have a Glorious Easter WPG

so many rush fans! bravado is one of my most faves; such a lovely, lovely melody, but these lyrics:

and if love remains
though everything is lost
we will pay the price
but we will not count the cost

have especially resonated with me the last few years.

^edit

So, an update, of sorts:

I've finally gotten the ball rolling on the 2 options available on the house - 1) I�ve been approved to refi our house on my own, and 2) meeting with our realtor tomorrow night, to look at how much we might be able to list our house for should the appraisal not come back as good as I hope.

The easiest path - although I realize it is not ideal - is to refi and stay where I am for the next 2 years, until DD#2 finishes elementary school. It means a lot of coordination of schedules for broken and myself, but it would save the cost of before/after school care. It would also give extra time to try and make some repairs and improvements to the house in order to sell in 2 years. If we listed now, it would have to be "as-is." Once the refi goes through, then I will file for D myself - no more conflict-avoidance by doing stupid crap like I did when I gave the papers to broken and told him to mail them.

A refi pre-D would benefit broken by 1) leaving him on the title, thereby retaining his existing marital interest in the home and 2) waiting 2 years, he hopefully will have steady FT employment to where he will be able to qualify for a mortgage for his own place. He does have a job now, but it's just PT. His unemployment runs out soon. In 2 years maybe the real estate market will improve and the profit on the same of the house will give us both a nice downpayment on separate places.

Yes, I realize this means he'll be my exH and still in and out of the house for the next 2 years. Even though I can't fix the damage I did, then at least I can help to give him a decent foundation for starting over.

I am sad for my children. Sad because my choices have led to the loss of their family, sad because even though they see their father every day, he's just not the same with them as he used to be. He blames me for that, and even though I know he chooses how to behave towards the children, there's a part of me that agrees with and accepts his blame. Yeah, that's a part of me I still need to work on. But yes, they are stuck in this atmosphere of despair as well. They have no idea what a good marriage looks like, how a husband and wife are supposed to treat each other. My parents were probably the best example they had, and even though they weren't perfect they don't even have that to look to anymore.

I did, however, try one more olive branch. I can�t engage him in any talk about our �relationship,� he simply says �I don�t know� or leaves. I heard a song on the radio yesterday morning and sent him this:


Since I�ve seen him since then, and not had a response, either in person or an email, I�ll just take the silence as further affirmation to stop being so damn stupid.

He is still angry. He was prone to anger before my A, but afterwards it became worse. I blamed myself and kept thinking things would get better, but they really haven't. I stopped posting about the AOs but the laptop throwing incident of last summer was not the last of them, even though he moved out shortly after that. I admit that my own LB's have probably prompted some of the AOs but others come out of the blue, including one a couple weekends ago at a school function. Thing is, his anger used to only irritate me, but now that he has no more love for me, I fear it because there's no love there to make him stop. I feel stupid saying it, but he intimidates me now and I believe it is because of my tendency to feel like a second-class citizen with him. And in a lot of ways, because I am such a conflict avoider, I've simply continued to reward him for bad behavior.

And I realized as well that I have been here for almost 3 years, and I'm not really in love with broken anymore, just a memory...or maybe I'm only in love with hope or possibility. Yes, I wish someone could just tell me what to do, and guarantee a happy ending...but none of us are assured of that as so much of our lives are beyond our control. But that which we can control are our choices, and sticking with the Rush theme:
The path might not be clear, but it�s a start, and at least I am finally making some forward movement.

"Just keep swimming" - Dory

Just keep swimming - Pep, love it!

Wulf, your situation resonates with mine. ((hugs)))

As always, WPG:

SKM�s thread was bumped this morning. I�d never read her posts before, but the part she posted about �What I�ve Learned� resonated with me. Whether or not her story is a �true� success by MB standards, it certainly seems to have turned out differently from mine. Since, from time to time, we have some very stubborn WW�s and potential WW�s land on the boards, I thought I would post my own �What I�ve Learned � The Unrecoverable Edition.� It has been about 3 years and 10 months since the ending of my adulterous affair. With apologies to SKM and JL (miss JL around here):


The definition of success for me will hopefully be personal recovery. It has been difficult for me over this journey to separate �personal recovery� from �marital recovery.� Since I last posted on this thread, I�ve made a lot of progress towards building my own life, but am still stuck in many ways�which is why I don�t come around to post much anymore. I�m OK, really�resigned and moving forward�maybe at a snail�s pace, but still moving forward. Someday maybe I�d like to have a partner in life, someone I could talk to, someone who wouldn�t look at me and see only my failures, but until then I have plenty to keep me occupied - I've got my girls, I've got my job, I've got my mom - and I�m�OK.

If I can help just one WW � or potential WW � then that�s all I�ve really intended here. Love, peace, and chicken grease, y�all.

Hi, wpg. It's good to see you posting again. I hope you are in Plan B from your abusive husband at this point, as Dr. Harley advised, and as he advises for any wife with an abusive or neglectful husband who refuses to correct the issue. Prisca and I were horrified at some of the things we read here many months ago, that your husband was doing.

I heard a great Marriage Builders radio broadcast this morning that would probably be good for a lot of folks to hear. In it, Dr. Harley spells out clearly that "just compensation" does not mean punishment for the wayward spouse. After all, such punishment will NEVER make the betrayed spouse whole. It's better for both husband and wife (and I hope lots of lurkers are listening), for both wayward and betrayed (of either gender) to REBUILD THE MARRIAGE, which is what Dr. Harley is getting at by Just Compensation:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/radio_program/play_segment.cfm?sid=04924

No, markos...I never went into plan B with broken. For better or for worse, I didn't...our lives are still very much enmeshed in certain areas, and even though I've done a lot financially to facilitate a divorce, neither of us have filed.

Where things are now...about a week ago, I got the first hopeful sign. I had said to broken that a year had gone by since he had moved out and asked, had anything changed? He didn�t respond at the time, but a little later he made the statement, �If we were going to make this work, it would have to be slow. It wouldn�t happen overnight.� I asked how he visualized the first step. He said �I don�t know.� I asked him if he thought we needed help and he said he didn�t want to �jump into� that right away. But that has been it. No other comments or discussion, and essentially everything between us is the same.

The bigger problem now is me. At this point, I am not even sure anymore what I want. I definitely don�t want the marriage we had. I wasn�t happy. I�m not convinced anymore that he and I can ever really be happy together. I wish we could be, I want us to be, but I no longer completely believe that it would be possible. Certainly not without two people willing to do the work, not one person carrying the load for the rest of their life.

This next bit will probably sound like a bunch of disrespectful judgments on my part, so I need some help trying to frame these differently. They are my fears, but they are my fears that he will never truly be able to forgive me, and as a result he will always treat me like a second-class citizen. I do think that part of it is my own personal hang-ups�I take his anger and moods personally. I feel like he blames me for everything that goes wrong, big or small. I am afraid I'll always be the one doing all the "work" of the marriage, and while yes, I hurt him terribly and need to atone for that, he has also hurt me over the last 4 years and even though my hurts were nothing compared to what I did to him, I don't know that he believes that I have the right to feel hurt at all...granted I did deserve some of it, because of how clueless and lacking in empathy I was in early recovery...but it continued and continued and I guess I am not convinced it will ever stop.

I wonder if I really just need someone I can make a fresh start with, someone who won�t hold my past against me and will see me for the real me�be able to look beyond the scars and accept me for who I am. Does it make sense for me to say that I no longer feel good about myself when I am with him? I need admiration from my spouse, which obviously I am not getting and have not been getting for a long time. I don�t believe he admires anything about me and I don�t believe that any of my positive qualities can outweigh my adultery for him�so I suppose I have this sense of shame when I am around him and I just don�t like feeling that way anymore. I want to be with someone who makes me feel good about myself.

And broken should be with someone who makes him feel good about himself too - maybe no matter how I treat him now, him being with me, looking at me, and being reminded of how I treated him like garbage, well, maybe he needs a fresh start too.

And no, before anyone asks, I�m not allowing any other men to make deposits. Honestly I don�t even feel interested in or attracted to anyone right now. I just feel empty inside and I am afraid I�ll feel that way forever. I would love to be in love with someone, to have someone to be my partner, but don't trust that I will find that with anyone, including broken. I feel like everyone has an ulterior motive, and I'd like to be valued by someone for more than my body and my earning potential (I wanted to say that in a much cruder way - that's how I think of it in my darker moments).

On a side note, it's been a lousy week. Got passed over for a promotion at work (I found out at the same time as everyone else, too, even though I'd interviewed - got called together for a special public announcement), and it's the anniversary of Dad's death. Just...melancholy.

Standoffish malaise is our way of reminding you that we screwed up for life.

If I remember didn't your BH post here for awhile?

Did you ever get the Dr Harley books?

Would your BH be willing to read Surviving An Affair and or talk with Dr Harley?

You can agree with your BH that you should go slow and use that as a lead into emailing Dr Harley. It's free. So we can help so that things are done the best way possible.

As to motivation you have 2 DD's.