I don't want to clog up Sadforever's nice post so let's just duke it out here .<P>I have not made a decision, but there are a lot of reasons why. I just started a thread Mad Again - Ready to be told how unreasonable I'm being. That should be plenty to get us going.<P>I will not make a final decision to stay as long as my H is continuing to belittle me. There is no way for me to develop and maintain any amount of self esteem while this is going on and without confidence in myself I and our marriage is doomed to failure anyway.<P>Maybe it is because I am emotionally unstable right now. Maybe I am incapable of being rational, so how can I make a "rational" decision about whether or not to stay.<P>You may feel you know what he is feeling and thinking, but until you have lived with his condemnation and "superiority" then you do not know what I am feeling and thinking.<P>Stopping the affair and staying with me doesn't make him a good husband.

Essyboo,<P>You are right!!! Does that shock you? I agree with you. Ending the affair does not make him a good husband. You also will not change his behavior. He has to be willing to change it and then do it. I know I am speaking/writing heresy here, but if he is not a good husband then it may well be time to pull the plug.<P>You see it is not about the affair anymore is it? It is about him and your reactions to him. You cannot change him directly. You can change how your react or whether or not you will stay. He may decide to change if not doing so means losing you. He may not.<P>But no matter how he feels, you hold the key to your happiness. Turn it and see what is behind the door. That is really all that I am saying. As you so very correctly pointed out, I do not know your H and how he acts. I also do not you, other than by what you say, but I do know that limbo is not a good place to be and you have control over that.<P>Essyboo, I don't know whether I am helping you or hurting you. I really don't want to hurt you. I'll bet your H doesn't either, but he obviously is and maybe I am too. I am sorry if I have. <P>Please get some help in decyphering your reactions to your H and his toward you. Then decide if you want to live that way. If not change something. But it does seem to me reading this that your issues are not really about the affair. They are about what has happened before the affair and are happening now. If this is true, you might want to state to him that this is not about the affair. He is probably operating on the assumption you are hung on the affair and doesn't see the connection to his behavior before and after the affair to your present feelings for him. Give it some thought.<P>Good Luck Essyboo and God Bless You and Your Family<P>JL

The affair is still an issue in that it was the ultimate insult and the ultimate comdemnation by him. His unrealistic view that I should be able just move on is more proof of his thoughtlessness. He hasn't been telling me that he wishes I could, he has been telling me that if I truly loved him I would and since I don't I never truly loved him and so he is more justified in what he did. Can't you see how that would immediately make me defensive. His accusations of me being unable to move on because I am inferior to him works right into the problem. <P>Then there is the issue about how considerate he was of her feelings and how "wonderful" he said she was for so long. He was able to give to her what I always wanted and still can't get now that he is "doing his best to make me happy". That doesn't help.<P>Another major issue is that I have always had an extremely limited view on what was considered a scriptural divorce in the eyes of God. I'm not sure I can scripturally divorce at this point. I didn't divorce him after the affair for the infidelity so maybe I no longer have scriptural reason anymore especially if it is because of the way he treats me separate from the infidelity. He knows I feel this way and that may be why he doesn't feel compelled to change.<BR>

Essyboo,<P>I am no biblical scholar, but my recollection is that adultery is justification and there was no time limit put on the response of the betrayed. The bible does not say that if you try to get over it and cannot that you have lost your justification for getting a divorce. In fact the whole bible is rather vague about time as we know it. Suggests that God works on his own time scale.<P>But we coming back to how you wanted to be treated before the affair and after the affair and are not being treated that way. Are you saying that if he had not had the affair and treated OW in the manner you would have liked that you would be happy in your marriage? I think you have me confused. I keep thinking your issues are how he is treating you and how he treated you before.<BR>Am I right. I know that the affair, is a major event in your life and does affect your marriage but it seems to me that something more fundamental is a problem. <P>Maybe I am wrong.<P>Must go and do some work. Hope you have a good weekend.<P>JL

I feel the affair was such an overwhelming blow because my trust and respect for him was so overconsuming.<P>I had such a low self-esteem. I believed I was mentally inferior. When he insulted me I believed I deserved it. When we argued and he started the cross-examining I knew I had lost because he was smarter than me and he would eventually trip me up so I would pull out the ammunition I knew would hurt. <P>I firmly believed that I was still ultimately a very lucky woman to be married to a man that atleast would stay faithful to me and thus would stay my H and take care of me til death do us part. I was unhappy, but amazingly enough I still felt secure. That may not make sense. It actually is making less sense to me now that I have developed a little independence and self esteem. <P>I didn't realize I was being verbally abused, I just didn't feel I was living up to his standards and was thus a failure and so I deserved to be put down.<P>There is no way for me to know for sure how I would have reacted if our marriage had atleast at one time been what I wanted. I don't know if I would have reacted differently if I had felt respected by him. <BR>I do feel that the problem I am having with these issues now is not being caused by mental illness, my H feels they are. As long as he feels they are caused by my mental illness then he will not feel any need to change himself, only me.<P>I feel the stress and the atmosphere may be contributing to my mental illness. There was certainly some depression and attention deficit before, but I was and still am able to function. I recent his attitude.

There is another reason why I still feel this is directly related to the affair.<P>We didn't have the marriage I wanted before, but I still loved him, for the reasons I spoke of above (security, faith and respect). I didn't show it the way he wanted, but I showed it the way I show love. In retrospect and considering the 5 love languages I still can't identify how he showed it. He said he shows love through personal contact. I guess with me this meant sex. If this is trully his method of showing love then the only people he truly cares for are his children. He doesn't even hardly hug his mom and dad and when he does it is obviously uncomfortable for him. Our marraige was bad. <P>We don't have a good marriage to go back to we are having to start over. We are starting over with 0 or even -0 balance, atleast on my part. I am having a terrible time deciding to start (continue) a relationship with him knowing what he is capable of. Not just the infidelity, but also the belittling etc.<P>I have been considered by him to be such a failure for so long, how can I possibly feel I will succeed this time? <P>How do I get past this hurt and humiliation? There is more to this than the affair, but the affair was the culmunation of his selfishness.<P>Even now that we are trying to figure out what we did wrong he is continuing to say that I was unreasonable for thinking that I was even trying and that I should have known my way wouldn't work in the first place. He doesn't apply these same rules to the way he acted for those first 14 years.<P>If I leave that too will be my fault for giving up.<P>I know that in a lot of ways I am still seeking his approval and that is part of the reason I am staying. I also have a hard time giving up. I have trully started believing him, that I am dillusional and mentally imbalanced and thus couldn't care for myself and my children on my own.<P>He will tell me he needs me to need him and then in the next breath he will express such disgust at my neediness and weekness.<P>He will tell me he wants me to be more confident, but if I show confidence he insults it away.<P>He will say he never felt that he was justified in his actions, but in the same conversation will tell me what I did to cause it. He has never admitted to a bad decision. The closest he comes is to say that his good decision turned bad through things that were not within his control. He will tell me that he could never say that about the affair, but then he says it.<P>Until these issued are resolved I cannot commit to this marriage. Until I can feel I am capable of leaving I cannot decide to stay. Until I feel that my emotions are being manipulated I will not let down my emotional guard.<P>If I tell him any of these things then I must subject myself to his moods and his mouth.