Dear 4Give,

You wrote:

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial"> Yes, we are still basically the same people we fell in love with. He is the same easy going,positive, spontaneous,people person. Lots of acquaintenses. (Not very vulnerably open with his male friends though) He's usually been a friendly person who smiles quite a bit.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">This part about not being very vulnably open with his male friends is really important in the affair factor. Men that are serial cheaters, such as ours, often have a sort of false friendship with other men. They don't trust them and they don't look to them for accountability and deep friendships. Instead they keep looking to women for that and it just doesn't work! The intimacy he really desires is another man's friendship. He just doesn't know it, nor does he know how to get it most likely. It doesn't seem available to most men from other men. That is what my H has finally found in the Mankind Project listed in my signature line. It's been a life saver! I'd highly recommend it to any man, but especially those who need to learn to trust men.

Many of these men have never really left their mothers in a symbolic sort of sense. They just move their feelings for their mom over to their wives when they leave home. The wife then struggles because she wants to be a wife, but finds that he seems to want her to mother him. After awhile, she learns what he needs, but then he rejects it or rebels against it like a teenager would! He actually resents her for being the mother!

He has affairs, isn't sure why they happen...why he so easily falls in love with any woman who pays any attention to him. He is looking for the perfect woman, etc. What he is doing is trying to find the perfect woman to complete him, but she does not exist!! What he NEEDS is to be initiated into manhood and taught what it means to be a real man. He needs to find out who he is without a woman...without a mother...a man initiated into manhood who spends time with other men and looks to them for guidance and acceptance. He needs to face, explore and control his shadow side, instead of ignoring it and therefore letting it rule his life.

Believe it or not, he is likely to repeat this affair behavior at some point if he doesn't deal with these issues. Until he completely understands his own behavior he is likely to repeat it...just like an adolescent would. These guys can be business geniuses, CEO's, excellent fathers, etc. and still be little boys inside. They become masters of deception in this area because they are ashamed that they don't really know what it means to be a man. They fake it and sometimes don't even know that they are doing it.

Just wanted to share that with you. I don't want you to have to go through the pain that I have gone through. You've been through more than your share already!

Stillwed

Wow stillwed! You really seem to have nailed the problematic environment I was creating in my marriage!

It's kind of embarrassing to even admit it, but that really seems to describe how I was treating WW. Take care of things for me...baby when I'm sick...I don't wanna go to the Doctor, but she makes me go anyway...blah blah blah

Boy, looking at that stuff, I feel kind of pathetic. Not in a bad way so much as just seeing how that cannot possibly help to build a healthy adult relationship.

JL,
We were also surprised and thought it made sense that we try to meet our own needs for each other and that it doesn't work that way. That was an eyeopener.

Good advise in your golfing analogy. Thanks.
Oh, I by the way, I grew up in the SF Bay area.

Stillwed,

You had lots of food for thought. Several months back I went to your link for the man project. My H read the site too. There is nothing near us at this time.

I think he could still get more insight into himself as we all can. It is a lifelong path.

I may have him read what you posted. I did talk to him about it while we were out tonight.

A while back I was encouraging him to find a male friend who he felt he could be completely honest with and maybe they could be accountability partners.

He has a friend/neighbor he's known for 30 years that he walks with sometimes who is open with him. But my H mainly listens to him and gives feed back but seldom shares any of his own personal truths. The only reason that friend knew about his 2nd A is that I informed him. I don't think they talked much about it. He really doesn't trust any male with his feelings and his story. So you may be on to something there.

We do talk so much more than we used to. He is so much more attentive to my needs as I am also with his.

I really hope you are wrong that he may have other A's. Of course he says he won't. He is 54 yrs old. We are looking forward to being grand parents together someday. But then we said that to each other after the 2nd A. The 3rd one really saddened me but I wasn't nearly as devastated as with the prior one(s). I think I could have moved on. His remorse and repentance helped but so has his willingness to take a more active part in working on the marriage with MB and a few MC sessions etc.

I think it is very sad when I read that some people have such a difficult time in forgiving. They don't realize that the main person they are hurting is themselves. We don't even have to remain married if we forgive. It is first and formost for our own health and well being.

You found out about the eight affairs after the fact right. How many did he have after you found out about those or when you knew he was prone to them...was it the last one. My H and I don't think that his thing is SA (sexual addicition) although sex usually played a part in them they were also very highly charged EA's.

I have looked at the aspect of him not maturing in his view of relationships beyond that of an adolescent view. But I think that now has changed after the last one.

Best to you and yours.

L

Dear 4Give,

Thanks for your response! I'm so glad that he's being so open with you now! That's huge! And, yes, at 54, he may have finally come to the point where he doesn't want to be that person any longer. My Uncle did this after years of infidelities at about that same age.

I agree that sex isn't the main ingredient that they seem to want out of it. Sex is sort of the "deal sealer"...it's mostly about an emotional connection. My H fell "in love" almost immediately with several of these women simply because they paid attention to him. Very adolescent behavior if you think about it.

A good question for your H to think about when he has these type of feelings is to ask himself, "How old do I feel right now?" I recall once when I was tempted to stray. It was with a much younger man and he was coming on to me big time. I was away from home and with my family of origin which I've "escaped" in my at home life. They are very different than me, but when I'm with them I become one of them. I didn't succumb to temptation, but when I recall the temptation, I would have to say that I felt about 15 or 16 years old. I felt adolescent, but I made the decision not to participate with my adult. I saved my own integrity and didn't hurt my marriage as much as I would have if I indulged. We were having a rough time in the marriage at the time anyway, but this just made me realize that much of my unhappiness must lie within myself. For my H, unfortunately, he looks outside of himself automatically when he's not happy. He thinks, "I'm not happy...who's fault is this?" We are very different in this way. He's really made a turn around in this particular area and has taken responsibility for his own happiness.

You asked about the revelation of the eight affairs at one time. Wow, that was quite a week...it started on 1/4/03! He first revealed the exit affair he was having. (He was madly in love after only a 3 week affair.) Then when I didn't cave in to let him go, he told me about 2 more (in 1995 and 2000). It was heartwrenching to say the least. I told him to get out. Then he said he'd get a hotel for the night. I knew he'd go to the OW so I told him that if we were getting a divorce that he couldn't afford a hotel so he could sleep on the couch. He lasted a very short time there and came to our bed and held me and cried all night long. He wrote her a NC letter the next day.

I found out about the rest a couple of days later. I got into his e-mail (he'd given me the password years ago, but I'd never had any reason to use it until then) and found an e-mail to a co-worker (a good female friend). He told her in that letter that he'd told me about the main three, but didn't have the heart to tell me about "the rest". He had told her about all of them about a year before when they were traveling together. He had lied about that too and told me that this gal only knew about the most recent one. I confronted him and he was pretty freaked out. He said if he confessed the rest that he might kill himself. I said, "Oh well." I was so upset! I screamed at him asking him what he was thinking? How could we rebuild our marriage on more lies? I was fit to be tied! He then confessed to 5 ONSs. They were what he was really ashamed of because they didn't involve "love".

A couple of strange things we noted in review of his affairs. He never bought any of the women any gifts, flowers or cards...not even a free e-card was sent. He did write e-mails to them and with the last one, he was working so hard to convince himself that he loved her that he wrote her a couple of pretty intense love letters. Unfortunately for me, when he confessed a secret e-mail account about 3 days after d-day, I found a draft of the e-mail he had been writing when I woke up on d-day. At least he never sent it. It makes me sick to think of it today. It was very poetic and dramatic.

He determined a few weeks after d-day that he was not going to blow this second chance with his family. His kids knew what he had done and were profoundly disappointed in him. They thought that I should leave him for the most part. They didn't think that he deserved another chance. We have two grandchildren and he was terrified that the kids wouldn't let him see them.

He found the men's group and got involved and it was a huge turn around him. He is now very uncomfortable sharing any private information about himself, his marriage, his kids, etc. with ANY woman. His therapist is a woman right now and at first that was even hard for him....lol! He is very comfortable with this group of men now and shares freely with them what he has done and has asked them to keep him accountable. I asked recently if they were really doing this. He said that one asked him the other day if he were keeping to his promise of being "clean". I was impressed.

He has really grown up finally. I don't think that he would let himself go back to that place any more. He doesn't want to be the man he was, but at the same time, he's making peace with that man and forgiving him. It's his shadow and it's a part of him. He has to keep it in check and he knows it.

I can't tell you how amazing our marriage is! It's really something to feel this loved after 27 years with the same man!

I wish you all of the best! I really do believe that your H can do this without the help of other men, but it sure would help him if he'd learn to confide in men and share his heart with them and never with another woman! It would take something that he's been comfortable with (sharing with women) and change it to the point that he would never be as vulnerable to it as he has in the past.

Take care and have a wonderful Christmas!

Stillwed

<small>[ December 24, 2003, 02:16 AM: Message edited by: stillwed ]</small>

Dear Uncomfortably Numb,

If you are interested in this train of thought, there is a book by Michael Gurian called Mothers, Sons and Lovers .

It describes how a man's relationship with his mother affects all of his future relationships with women. Check it out!

Take care!

Stillwed

</font><blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr /><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Originally posted by 4give:
<strong> At the end of the appointment he asked if I had considered what in me created the atmosphere that allowed this to happen again and again.</strong></font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial">Hey 4give - just wanted to weigh in with the karma theory as well (if you're the type who hates the whole flakey new-age stuff - skip this post now).

From a reincarnationist perspective, I recognize that I may very well be setting myself up for situations where I need to deal with infidelity. There are valuable "soul" lessons I have learned in these experiences, albeit quite painful along the way. In some ways, I feel I am a better person for having learned these lessons, and that's pretty much what life is about in my view: honing the soul to a more god-like image.

So, I don't know what I may have done in past lives, or exactly what I needed to learn that led me to be in this kind of situation, but I usually accept that it was meant for me to live through it. Doesn't mean that I don't fight like hell to avoid it - I'm just not that evolved yet!

Anytime I see someone recommending hypnotherapy to review childhood issues, I also think about reincarnation based issues as well. It's as good an explanation as any.

And my FWH also benefitted tremendously from the Hendrix books.

K