The day started pretty rocky - but things are going pretty smoothly now. We cooked dinner together tonight, that's a cool start huh?
He has also joined the chat room as Praying Husband, and thanks to you we are off to a new beginning. And that's funny cause that's what we called Jan. 1, 2002 - A New Beginning.
I have to tell you yesterday when I logged onto Marriage Builders.com I was on my last rope and I figured if I couldn't find any answers that it was over. I knew I was part of the problem but I didn't want to change for someone I didn't like to interact with. I guess I was like you describe your wife - I blamed everything on him and didn't want to change anything about me. I knew I had issues too but I felt like those would pass once he was gone from the picture.
The first thing you told me to do was to see him as a man and I couldn't before your encouragement. All I used to see was, I was married to, in my eyes, a failure and everyone on the outside appeared to pick on me and praise him. And it really used to bother me, because I felt like, why couldn't they see what I saw - why couldn't they feel my disappointment everyday. And true, alot of our issues manifested from the past issues that I thought I had released not only him, but myself from too.
Here's some background: In the past I used to love my husband to death, I never disrespected or belittled him and at that time my focus was on doing whatever it took to make him happy. That was until we started living together a year ago.
1. He works evenings at GM and was off on disability when one night his cell phone rang in the middle of the night. It was a girl from work who was supposedly worried since she hadn't seen him at work lately. Instead of explaining to her that it was an inapproriate time to call and that we were living together and that he didn't want her to call and disrepect me again - he held a conversation with her. He even had the nerve to ask her was the tv program that she was watching good. After he got off the phone he laid back in the bed as if nothing had happened, and after I confronted him he said he wasn't thinking clearly because she woke him out of his sleep. He claims also that he didn't in the past know how to handle compromising situations - he didn't want to be rude to her but he sacrificed me and my feeling and comfort zone in the process!!!
2. One day we were at Big Lots and he got another phone call, thi time from a different girl. He didn't know that the speaker on his phone was on high and I overheard her talking about how she missed him and he just conversated as if she didn't say it. The killing part to me was after he got off of the phone he told me that his buddy Jerome said to tell me hi. After I confronted him again - he claimed that she was Jerome's cousin playing on the phone and that he did in fact talk to Jerome. I constantly tell him that he makes it VERY VERY VERY difficult for me to trust him cause he has a tendency to come forward with 1/2 of the story. That's how it has come for me to 2nd guess everything that he says to me.
3. He lied to me about talking to the girl from work after he went off disability. He had her # written down at home and I called her and she confirmed my fear that he was lying to me and in fact had talked to her the night before. From that moment on things were in my eyes over between us emotionally. That was around March of 2002 - strangely enough we got married Oct 1, 2002. He knew that I had been emotionally damaged earlier that year by him, but he kept insisting that the Lord would step in and heal us, so we married and yesterday I reached out for tthe first time for help.
How do you forgive and forget? Those 3 things I listed still have a very damaging affect on how I perceive the things he say or actions that I deem as suspicious, causing an emotionally melt down of the worst kind. I feel like he didn't stop to protect me emotionally neither of those times and all he did was add more emotional baggage that I have to deal with and get over before life passes me by. And on top of those let downs - he often brings other people into our problems that don't have a clue of the whole story, like his mom. We had a disagreement one time and he callled his mother and she called me to confirm his story but also added some of her opinion that was not based on fact about US at all. That really made me mad at his mom - I don't think he stops to look at the big picture before he does things. He's always trying to do things to please me, that he doesn't look at the big picture.
Yes I am the one who was steps from walking away from marriage. One day after church he went to the Pastor and asked him to set us up with a couple who could mentor to us. It made me feel good that he thought that much of US, until I realized that I had to open up to these people that I see all the time at church and who thought we had it all together as a couple. Needless to say we have not went to them yet. I'm still not ready to expose myself to them but I am ready to see things going right in our life - even if the couple IS friends of my moms!
I have to commend you for being Christian enough to stand by your wife during affairs. All I have to do is be placed withing a suspicious situation and I am ready to run for the hills to protect myself. From brief reads yesterday within the site I realized that I am in the TAKER mode right now, because of our past. I am also almost always in confrontation mode with him. #1 I get frustrated when he doesn't understand me. #2 I am almost always analyzing what he says to me for 'it's' real truth.
Counseling one on one with someone is the only hope we have of getting this thing right. Sometimes I can easily sypathize with an alocoholic - when things get at it's toughest I wish I did have some one I could call right then that could tell me what to do in that situation so that I won't react emotionally. I have tried something different and started praying at the onset of a problem and because I am not PERFECT often times it doesn't work - I just blow up at the situation anyway. That is another area that the Lord has got to help me clean up in my life.
Thank you for listening - you'll never know how comfortable youv'e made me feel; which has allowed me to receive from you what the Lord has been trying to get through to me for some time now. And I thank the Lord for you and you are definitely in my prayers - hang in there and be blessed.
