S/A
Its great to hear from you. I wrote this whole long thing and just lost it and about to spit nails!!!
Well let me try this again. Okay. I am so proud of you I think the note is a great touch if you ask me. Its ok that he said nothing about it. Keep doing it. Eventually he will say something to you about it. The big thing I learned in this is Patience with a big ole capital P. I never had it before but I do now. <p>Did he come tell you that he needed admiration or to be affirmed? That is good if he is talking. You can think of many ways to do this, don’t go overboard or it will seem you are trying to hard. You don’t want to seem over anxious. You know how when someone acts that way it gets on your nerves. I think you are doing a great job. <p>One thing that does concern me is when you say you have to stuff your anger. Never stuff your anger, that stuffing of anger could build into an ugly monster called resentment, then you have more problems. Find a way to let out the anger. Come here, go to a friend you trust, cry into a pillow, do something though. Don’t stuff your anger. Watch out about letting it come out too in front of him. When my H did that. I understood his anger because I caused it but when he would scream about it or do something but it would shut me down so fast and I would feel like a scum again and that is not a good thing. That is getting way better now. <p>You see in time…he will see that you are a strong beautiful woman..the one he married. He will see that you stuck by him for better or worse. He will see that you took your vows seriously and that you intend to honor them. He will see you know he made a grave mistake and you will come out on top. She on the other hand OM will probably start acting out, if they are still in touch, because she will be mad that he is home restoring his marriage and in turn that will make her look like the needy/clingy and manipulator. Make sense?<p>None of this is easy S/A. There will be good days and bad days and days you will want to throw him out in the garbage. Be sure of that but you have to dig deep and pull everything you have together and work at this.<p>Main thing. One chance! I got once chance to prove I could change and never hurt him again. I know that if I did ANYTHING remotely distrustful, its over with and I am out of here. That has been made clear. He has checked and checked and I’m glad he has because he has found nothing but a changed, trustful, honest wife that made a mistake. He see’s he has a wife that truly does love him and I think finally he is seeing where he too made some mistakes along the way that he has to work on and is. He has a lot of pain though. In addition to my mess, he lost his dad whom he adored so it’s a double dose of pain but we are working through it. <p>I have a brother in the Marines who is in the war now that he is close too. My brother helps me a lot, me too, he never picks a side because he loves us both so much. Course we don’t tell him a lot right now, don’t want his mind worrying about his little sister right now. I am strong and getting stronger and I know he will be proud of us when he returns. My husband was also a Marine and part of his personality is that tough Marine thing that has never gone away but his Dad was too so it runs in the family LOL. <p>We are going to make it I know we are and I know you are too. You just go to your counseling session.<p>The hard part is you want to say so much. I did too. I wanted to say so much, explain myself but like your H, what good would that do now. You are not going to buy into anything he says until you start to heal and frankly it’s a waste of time to say stuff that no one will listen to. Better to remain quiet and show you are changing by your actions. That is how I did it and its working. <p>The drinking thing is something that I know we can fix. He turned to the bottle to numb pain. He watched his dad, an alcoholic, use it to numb pain and so forth so he is doing the same thing. He should know better because he also watched the alcohol destroy a very successful high ranking Marine, but in time he will come around. I think he will. I took some great advice from someone here the other day on how to talk to him about it and it worked so good. My H called and I calmly told him how the alcohol hurt me because of my love and concern for his well being. Well my H thought about that all day, and that night, last night, we had a way better talk and he had only had 2 beers with his dinner which was total change from the other night when he had about 6-8 beers. I think if I keep that up it will eventually go away, the drinking that is. I don’t pound him about it and don’t degrade him. That is the worst you can do. Being a WS I also know that being degraded does nothing but sinks us deeper into the unknown planet we are already on. My H learned that fast and stopped doing it. That was the first two mos or so that he made me feel like dirt. I deserved it but he saw that it was doing more harm than good and then he started saying stuff that was more positive and little by little it got better and little by little I realized that I had one hell of a man for an H and thanked my lucky stars. <p>You stay in touch okay. You have my email and I hope you call on me anytime for any help. I will do my best with you but I too, am learning and I too have the good and bad days but will always try my best with you. You sound pretty darn special!<p>LisaK
