My wife and I have been married for 26 years. We have had a fairly troubled(there were alot of good times too) marriage until Jan. 1999 when we started into marriage counseling(things have mostly gotten alot better since then). I grew up in a very cold and distant fanatically religious family. My ability to give and receive love was seriously compromised by this upbringing. My wife was the very first person on this earth that I felt truly loved me. As can be imagined I asked her to marry me, and we got married when I was 20 and she was 17. The bad news is that my inability to give love fully, coupled with a pornography addiction left my wife feeling very unloved. Because she felt so unloved she had a couple of affairs, the first 1979-1982, and the second 1996-1999.<P> Now that the background is out of the way, here is my problem: My wife is under the impression that I don't fully understand her pain from all of the problems in the first 25 years of our marriage. Once or twice every month she feels compelled to rehash everything I've ever done to hurt her so that I will understand her pain. I would agree that I probably don't fully understand her pain, and I'm not sure that I ever could. Just as she will probably never fully understand the pain that her affairs have caused me. I have tried over and over to tell her that these discussions are a major love buster and bring out no new information and solve no problems, and in fact accomplish nothing other than to make me feel extremely sad and guilty. She still insists on doing this and I'm fairly certain that she had no intention of stopping until I fully understand her pain or until my Love Bank is completely empty.<P> I need help in convincing her that we would be better off building a new future, rather than continually reliving the past. Does anyone have any helpful ideas or suggestions?<P>------------------<BR>

My wife and I have had a fair amount of problems but have found that setting a weekly day and time to just sit and discuss feeling thoughts and problems have really helped us. The only way to reach a resolution is to come to a conclusion and that will take both of you. You need to ask her to explain what you dont understand and also explain to her what she doesnt understand. You have to be able to talk to her without any reprocussions or harsh words during this time or she wont feel she can talk to you. Talking isnt the only thing to help a broken relationship but I have found that this type of talking at least in my marrage has really helped us a lot. <P>Hope this helps