Please bear with me...This will certainly be a "ramblin Rose" post
<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
<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
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