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#403285 11/20/00 12:40 AM
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Please bear with me...This will certainly be a "ramblin Rose" post [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com]<BR>Hopefully though you will be able to read through it and take something from it and apply it to your own situations...I hope so and I hope it may save you from making some of the same mistakes that we have made.<P>You see...I KNOW now in my heart that my husband has not been unfaithful sexually this time....I do not feel threatened by another person stealing him away. The only person I have to fear is myself.<BR>We spent a wonderful weekend alone ( the first in many many years) and he told me things that have made me finally believe this without any doubt in my mind at all now.<BR>I asked him questions without accusation and he answered them sincerely and without defensiveness or anger.<BR>I know how to read his face and his face told me no lies.<P>Ten years ago my husband made a BIG mistake. He did a very selfish thing and he broke my heart,broke my spirit, by doing so....He cheated on me. Had sex with another person. He lied and was sneaky, did all those horrible things that you do when you cheat.<BR>He did this yes...I cannot change that.<BR>He sat with me after I had found out....for months he stayed by my side while I cried, night after night. I screamed, I threw things, I got blind drunk every night. I told him how much I despised him for what he had done. I asked for all the details...he gave them to me ( big mistake for me to have asked.) I used those details to hate him.<BR>One night the pain was so great I stuck a lit cigarette into my thigh. He saw me do this.<BR>It was better than what I was feeling inside.<BR>I wrecked the house....physically attacked him. <BR>Eventually the details were burned into my mind to the point where I obsessed about them....not a minute would go by without one or more of those images passing through my mind.<BR>I felt I was going insane. I really think I WAS.<BR>I hated all men....I hated all women. I just hated life. It seemed that all my life people hurt me...my abuser...my father (when he left my mother/left ME), I had had an intense and very destructive lesbian relationship before I met my husband at age sixteen...<BR>Eventually I attempted suicide. <BR>Cut my wrists and took an overdose of pills mixed with alcohol.<BR>I think I did it to hurt him even more...but also because I couldn't deal with what I was feeling any longer.<BR>After that I learned how to bury it...the pain. Slowly but surely it seemed to hurt me less but the anger was still there.<BR>We got on with life...We had two small children. I became the perfect mother...threw myself into that role because after all who is more invisible sexually than a mother?<BR>But all through the years I never let him forget what he had done.<BR>Every serious argument I took the opportunity to throw it back in his face.<BR>I had fears....I was tensing myself expecting it to happen again. I accused him of things constantly...half an hour late home from work and there I was accusing him.<BR>I was like someone clenching their stomach against a blow. I EXPECTED that blow to come.<BR>Nothing else in my life had taught me to expect anything different.<BR>I was angry, suspicious and basically deep down quite unlovable.<BR>My husband felt shut out...rejected emotionally and sexually. He wanted to make LOVE to me for hours on end...He said he felt so tortured by seeing me dressed in certain clothes....when we played in bands and other men looked at me. I was his wife but I was never really HIS. <BR>I had all the excuses under the sun for not wanting to be intimate...but the only REAL one was that "I didn't feel like it".<BR>As I have said , I didn't feel the emotional connection so I never desired sex....he never had the sex to FEEL the emotional connection.<BR>We just got lost in our own hurts and insecurities.<BR>Eventually a person came along and my husband needing to "connect" with somebody poured out his feelings to her...He lied about it yes. He wanted to continue speaking with her over the phone, yes, but he had nobody else to turn to. He has no family, no close friends...besides do men really TALK like women do about their deepest emotions and hurts?<BR>Can I really blame him ? Tell me that ? <BR>It's ok to say, well he SHOULD have shaken me by the shoulders and said "WAKE UP! We are in trouble here! I am hurting!" ...but I hadn't really been approachable had I ? Perhaps he should have tried harder...I don't know. Would *I* have in his shoes?<P>I am telling you all this for two reasons....The more I write it out...The whole story, the more it gets into perspective for me.<BR>And also....there might just be SOMEBODY out there that it reaches...who might be heading down the same path that I did.<BR>I don't believe that infidelity necessarily means the END of a relationship. Sure, some relationships can NEVER recover from it but there are many many more that DO recover and become stronger for it.<BR>Ours could have become stronger but there was never the willingness on my part to forgive.<BR>It starts there.....understanding the reasons...BOTH partners have to completely open up, take responsibility for their actions and then.....forgive.<BR>The person who has been betrayed has to let GO of that pain and that anger. <BR>How you do that I am not sure....slowly...but it is useless to hang onto it. Absolutely useless and very destructive....as you can see [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com]<P>I feel sadness right now. Sadness at wasting all these years being angry.<BR>What we shared over the weekend was a closeness so intense that I cannot even begin to describe it.<BR>It's what we both wanted all along but just never knew how to get to it.<BR>Sure, I am afraid....I still have a TONNE of insecurities. A lot of "what if's?", but I feel I am on the right path now.<BR>I feel very lucky. I have a partner who truly DOES love me, four delightful children...I am thirty two years old, slim, attractive, creative, talented and I have a whole LIFE ahead of me in which to be truly happy.<BR>I cannot ruin it by living in the past.<BR>Wishing you all happiness ahead......<BR>And thank you for reading if you have got this far [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com]<BR>

#403286 11/20/00 04:35 AM
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A truly remarkable expression of love...<P>To confess to yourself and to those on the forum... is more than admirable...<BR>...it's human.<P>Go and make your man a human too!<P>Plan A with reckless abandon!<P> [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com]<P>Jim

#403287 11/20/00 06:18 AM
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Ok, so this may help me. We just went to a Marriage builders seminar this past weekend. It really brought a lot of things into perspective. My H now sees reasons to work it out. The only thing is, now and only now, after we talked about working it out and finding out what each of our emotional needs are, did I find out that the best friend relationship has gone further than I would allow myself to imagine. My first emotional need is for affection, my second is for openness and honesty. He met my need by being honest much more than he has in a year or more. It feels both good and bad. Good to know that my womanly insticts weren't all that off base. Bad because now I know that he is in love with her...he's kissed her... and he can't yet tell me if he slept with her or not.(he plans to end the relationship very soon and will tell me as soon as its a done deal) The stipulation of him opening up to me was that he could decide not to answer a question if he didn't want to. I agreed because I know he needs to learn to trust me as well. I was very calm and did not get upset with all the information he gave me. At the end of the conversation he thanked me for not getting upset. Now here I am at 5am awake and wondering. Wanting to know all the details, but like you said, not wanting to be haunted. My problem is that I am haunted by what I still don't know. I will still have visions in my head of what I speculate has happened... wouldn't it be better to just know?

#403288 11/20/00 12:43 PM
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desertrose,<P>Keep posting and writing. As you say it brings things into focus. Overall I would say you are doing very well after all of these years. You have a TONNE (Love that accent [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com] ) insecurities, but I would have to say one of them shouldn't be whether or not your H loves you.<P>He stuck by you for a long time in some tough times. I would suggest to you that many a spouse would have departed by now. As I said to another poster, the protectiveness that you have shown in the past years is the thing to fear. It was what almost lost you a marriage. The openness while making you "feel" more vulnerable, is really your security.<P>So odd isn't? [Linked Image from marriagebuilders.com]<P>Hang in there you are doing very well indeed.<P>God Bless,<P>JL

#403289 11/21/00 01:09 AM
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MIK7769,<P>Go with the worst case scenario. assume your H did have sex with the OW. How, when, and where, they don't really matter. Knowing will not make it any better at all. Believe me.<P>Now the thing you need to focus on is rebuilding. What needs were you not meeting of your H's? Start meeting them. I'm sure you have needs not being met too, don't look for your H to start meeting them right away. It will take time for him to feel sure that the changes in you aren't just to get him back. give him that time. It's a gift.<P>And give yourself the gift of forgiving him. Obsessing over it, and feelings of resentment will hurt you the most. Heal.

#403290 11/20/00 08:48 PM
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Now here I am at 5am awake and wondering. Wanting to know all the details, but like you said, not wanting to be haunted. My problem is that I am haunted by what I still don't know. I will still have visions in my head of what I speculate has happened... wouldn't it be better to just know?<P>That is SUCH a difficult question...It really depends what you DO with that knowledge.<BR>If you think it will become a tool with which to hold inside you and keep you from growing closer to your partner then, no...it serves no purpose to know.<BR>I do understand exactly what you mean though....the not knowing can be just as destructive.<BR>Only YOU can decide what you can or cannot handle.<P>

#403291 11/21/00 01:10 AM
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Dear DesertRose<P>thank you for sharing your intimate thoughts so fluently. It did strike a chord in me as I am still trying to make some sense of not only my WS adultery but the reasons he gave. I find it so hard to even like him as I feel like throwing up everytime I see him. I have made the choice to forgive and will finally forgive completely one day as he opens up more and seek counselling again.<P>I wish you Godspeed in your recovery and rebuilding and am happy to know that you are now SEIZING THE DAY!<P>God bless you<BR>take care<BR>weep

#403292 11/21/00 01:40 AM
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I find it so hard to even like him as I feel like throwing up everytime I see him<P>Weep....Yes I felt that too. I think it was the revultion at the betrayal though.<BR>You know, you DO go through a kind of grieving process in the beginning. <BR>That person that you THOUGHT you knew inside and out suddenly stands before you like a complete stranger.<BR>A stranger with your husbands ( or wifes) face.<BR>Its like you have to learn to first like and then love this "new" person all over again.<BR>Sometimes it feels overwhelming, being the betrayed spouse, at all the things you DO have to overcome.<BR>My husband wrote something to me though today in an email...<BR>He said it hurt him deeply to see me become this cold unforgiving person. It was a reminder to him everyday of the wrong he had done to me.<BR>Yes...we DO have a lot to deal with but they do too in their own way.<BR>Just hearing that from him made me realise that I wasn't the only one suffering.<P>


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