Cleo,
You said </font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">I don't know what makes me any different than the OM.....I find it interesting that people look upon the OM as the evil one......what about me..was I an angel through this whole thing?????NO The Om is a regular person no better or worse than me......Sorry if I can't look upon him as a bad person......... </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Ah! the joys of perspective. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Wink]" src="images/icons/wink.gif" />
He is the bad guy for your marriage. He is the bad guy for your H. He is the threat to your marriage.
If he were posting here, YOU would be the bad guy for his marriage. You would be the bad guy to his W. ANd you would be the threat to his marriage.
No you were not an angel. You, to this day, have no clue how deeply you have wounded your H, and how much your actions have hurt Om's W. But, you are part of the marriage that is under consideration here. And you are part of the marriage we are trying to save, right? So while you are no angel, you are NOT the bad guy. You don't need to leave to save this marriage your OM does.
Do you see the point?? If you read here long enough some of the most effective and helpful people on this site were WSs. So the fact that you are or were is not the point. We are coming at this from the perspective of saving and rebuilding YOUR marriage, and for that purpose OM is BAD NEWS <img border="0" title="" alt="[Frown]" src="images/icons/frown.gif" />
Does this make sense? Finally, it is clear that if you left your H, and you wanted a stable good marriage, the last person I would be recommending you consider is someone who cheats in their marriage, specifically your OM. Now it may come to pass that you would indeed choose him, but the statistics are NOT in your favor. Only a small fractions of affair partners ever marry their OP and of those an even smaller fraction remain married. THe number is about 3%. THose are not good odds Cleo.
But, the point here is that you need to start to see things in a very different way. Not to hate OM, but to put him in a category marked "dangerous" and "unhealthy". Some of that is because of his influence on you, and some of it is because he doesn't hold marriage in high esteem. And you need to start holding it in high esteem.
What about you? Well, you as you say are no "angel". You and you alone had the power to deeply hurt your H, and you used it. You and you alone had the power to break his trust, his self-esteem, his belief in the goodness of people, and you have done your best. Yet, he still wants to be married to you, and you seem to want to be married to him.
Soooo, since you seek suggestions about rebuilding we offer them, just as you will hopefully offer others your advice to rebuild their marriages. It is not so much a matter to me and others who was wrong, but how to accomplish something you both apparently want: to rebuild your marriage.
You see we are trying to help your H as much as help you. We will do it via you since he is not here, so at least from me you will hear a lot about seeing your H in different ways, seeing things from his eyes. Why? you need to see his "reality" in order to bring the two of you together and rebuild a marriage that sustains you both, nutures you both, and supports you both.
Does this make any sense? I hope so.
God Bless,
JL
