What I was trying to say in my previous reply is...oh, there, Wanting2believe just said it so well! <p>Is she more or less likely to cheat...well first off, if your relationship is suffering because of this obsession of your's...maybe. But because of how you may be relating to her, not because of how many or few lovers she's had. <p>It is your relationship and what you do with it that determines that. Take care of it and nurture it! <p>I don't think how many lovers she's had would have anything at all to do with your question. Why do you think she may cheat? Has she? Do you suspect an affair?? If the answer to those are "no", than making a conclusion on the number is just plain silly. <p>I'm sorry, I know how deeply this has affected you and what a hard time you are having dealing with is. It's like you held your wife to an ideal, and when her values fell short you became disgusted. Well, lies or not, you're married now, MAKE THE BEST OF IT. The sex thing I can't relate to, but I've come to realize that my husband's values aren't quite what I've expected of him. And at times it makes me question how on Earth I could have married someone so different! <p>I honestly hope you can come to terms with this issue and have a better marriage.

if you leave, why was i not mistrustful and critical of her for 12 yrs of our marriage before i found out about her past and how she so intentionally misled me about her past.
why did i trust and respect her so completely then? even tho she made me feel as tho she did not love me anymore. i am not looking for a reason to feel this way!
h

HOL, I have not heard from you in a while and just wondered what was up. Also, I had hoped that you would respond to my last post with a little more depth. How likely is it that some of what I said applies? What insight does it give you? In what ways does it help? What questions did it raise for you?<p>Anyway, hope things are going well.<p>[ January 04, 2002: Message edited by: wanting2believe ]</p>

Wanting2believe - I sure would like to respond to your post. It moved me beyond words. I have a hard time believing that you're a man because I was beginning to think that concept was incomprehensible to men. I have also posted on MB's as a wife who's husband has discovered my past. And I can not get him to understand why I did the things I did. Sometimes I don't even understand...<p>Your post is so dead on in lots of ways, for me, at least. I was date raped at an early age and following that also looked for "love" in all the wrong places and in an inappropriate manner. I longed to be loved and desired, and temporarily substituted man's love for sex as love for me. What I came to realize is I didn't even know what love was. Over time I learned the difference.<p>My heart breaks for HOL as my heart breaks for my husband. I never claimed to be innocent, but I outright denied certain questions. I was never asked specifically how many lovers I had, and I don't know how I would've answered - probably vaguely, but played down. I was deeply ashamed - I knew I had so much to offer somebody - if they would only get to know "me." I just wanted to be normal.<p>After meeting my husband, I knew he was the one meant for me. And I truly feel like he is the only person in the world that DOES know the real me. I never meant to deceive him - leading him to believe I was somebody else - but he feels I did. He would never have married me had he known the truth. In hindsight, I guess he was deceived.<p>I'm curious how you came upon your "theory." Do you think it's possible for a man to see the world through a woman's eyes? Especially when it comes to sex?<p>HOL - My answer to your original question would be "no, it's not necessarily true that a woman with lots of previous lovers is more likely to cheat." By the time I said my marriage vows, I knew I only wanted to be loved by one. Sex without that emotional attachment is just sex. Sex with LOVE is a total experience. I wouldn't want to jeopardize our love just to get more sex. <p>Thinking back over the years, the times I didn't want to make love with H a lot were the times when I was doubting his love for me. At times, I felt like that was all he loved about me, too, and there was no way I was going down that road... so sometimes I just made myself "unapproachable." <p>Maybe your wife feels unloved, too. I can't really tell from your posts how she feels about you. I do know this, if you are condemning and are only waiting for the day for her to have the affair, you'll lose her. <p>As an aside, I think her claim to have loved all these men, is simply her misunderstanding of why she behaved in the manner she did. Does she feel her behavior was normal?<p>If my H told me today that he loved me for who I am now and could appreciate how I've changed because of him, that my past is my past and he wants to be in my future - there is no doubt in my mind that I would be faithful to him for the rest of my life. <p>If that helps at all....

Lost, what is it he did that made you feel un loved? why did you think he wanted you just for sex is it because others did? My wife says she thinks it was normal. she says i just don't understand the restaurant business. thats what she says<p>hol

HOL - I just finished reading the book The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman. It occurred to me as I read that my H and I have been speaking different languages all these years. <p>My H is a guy's guy and I would feel like because he went fishing all day that he loved fishing more than me. I didn't feel like he was making an effort to spend time with me, to make me feel appreciated (for my job, my household responsibilities, etc.) Especially after I became tied down between work, house and kids. I just didn't feel interesting anymore.<p>To him, the best way for me to show my love is through physical touch, 9 times out of 10 culminating in sex. I remember I would get upset when we couldn't just kiss or hug. It always lead to sex. That would reinforce my belief that I was just good for sex and then I wouldn't want to please him that way. This vicious cycle continues into now. <p>He can't believe that I could have sex without love (although he did with 4 others prior to marrying me). For him, sex IS love and for me, FEELING LOVED makes me want to have sex.<p>When I feel loved by him, meaning when he shares his feelings with me, lets me know how I am important to him, and on the rare occasions lately when he says the past shouldn't matter, I feel so full of love that I want to show him in the way he needs. <p>Unfortunately, this feeling is always short lived - we seem to be coming together and getting closer than ever - then his mind wanders, he ends up in a funk and says things to me that I'm having a hard time forgetting. Every time the knife just digs a little deeper...<p>I don't think that it's normal for a person to sleep with the number of men that your W or I slept with. I don't care what business you're in. Sure, some people mess around, but not to that extent. Ask her if she knows anybody else that has messed around with so many - if not, then how can it be normal???<p>[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: lost ]</p>

Lost, you are discribing our marriage exactly. things seem really great and then i catch myself feeling that maybe i can trust her and instantly i shut her out. i won't let myself be fooled again. she has not had an A as far as i know but she can be very deceitful. she says "but you know me better then that" and i say oh i do? i did not know you had sex with most of the men you have ever met now did i or how could i know you when you've been lying to me all of these years about who you are? i never would have quessed by the way she had discribered herself to me, so proper! i wish i could speak to your H. we have something in common that most men don't. i also for the first time in our marriage take more of a notice of other women. how is you H doing now? i know how he feels, it is so consuming. Why did you lie to you H? of course its not natural or at least common. it is a small % of women that have that many lovers but if thats what you want to do fine just don't lie about it.
h<p>[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: h o l ]</p>

Dear HOL and Lost,
I feel for both of you and know that you have a heart wrenching struggle on your hands. Lost, I have come to this theory several ways. First, I know a little about people and the factors that influence who they are and why they do some things that they do. I have taken a number of psychology classes and studied a good deal on my own. But perhaps the biggest clue to it all is that I have some struggles in this area in my own life. My wife also with-held some things from me that I have had and still do have difficulty with.<p>Infact, I do not deserve the praise that you have given me, for I seem to be able to have more understanding for your and HOL's situation than I do for my own. I have written about my struggle on a couple of different posts, but I do not know how to tell you where to find them.<p>I am convinced that sex is a very intimate exchange between people and that it was created to be just that. Our culture has taken something that is sacred and made a meaningless hobby out of it. The only problem is that we have been tricked by the cruel dishonesty of our cultures morality. No one told us how we would one day hurt to discover that we had trashed the most intimate and meaningful exchange between true loves.<p>The cry of the 60's was "free love",and "if it feels good do it". But nobody told us how it would hurt to awaken one day and find that we had trashed the most beautiful gift we could ever share with the love of our life.<p>Hurt, brokenness, and loneliness sometimes drive us to look for love, unfortunately as the song says, we go "looking for love in all the wrong places." A culture like ours, that is not just amoral(where nothing is viewed as wrong) but immoral (where wrong is encouraged), sets us up for heartache that we were told nothing about. One day we wake up and find that our hearts have been robbed or raped by something we believed was harmless.<p>Where am I going with this? I was hoping that you would know. I don't. I guess I am still rambling on about where or how I came up with my theory. I guess I came up with it out of reading, studying, and trying to dig my way out of my own heartache. Maybe I have said nothing new or helpful for you, or maybe I have just helped myself, for it does seem to help me to be able to say something. <p>Thanks to you both.<p>[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: wanting2believe ]<p>[ January 05, 2002: Message edited by: wanting2believe ]</p>

Is there something that triggers your negative thoughts? Seems everything triggers my h's. It's like for awhile when we're closer, he's distracted, but it pulls him back in shortly thereafter. And it is consuming him. He doesn't want to do anything - just sleep. I know he's very depressed and I don't know what to do to help him.<p>He says the same thing - he doesn't want to be a fool again. I have never been unfaithful to my husband, either, although a couple of years ago, I put myself into a situation where I could've been. It was at that point where I realized I couldn't jeopardize the love he had for me and I remained faithful. Still not honest about the past, though...<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>"but you know me better then that" and i say oh i do? i did not know you had sex with most of the men you have ever met now did i or how could i know you when you've been lying to me all of these years about who you are? i never would have quessed by the way she had discribered herself to me, so proper! <hr></blockquote><p>This does sound familiar. To this day I don't feel like I was lying about who I am - he was the only one that ever got to know the REAL me. Maybe your wife thinks the same.<p>My h, too, has begun to take great notice of other women. All of a sudden, we're very interesting creatures - I think he's trying to figure out if we all lie and we all sleep around. I try to tell him no and the reasons I think I lied and why I think I slept around, but he continues to only think of it his way.<p>I lied to my h because I was ashamed. Sleeping around was not something I was proud of and in hindsight, I don't even think that it was what I WANTED to do. It never made me happy - it was just a vicious cycle that never ended. I lied because I didn't want to appear "unworthy" because I truly loved him. Maybe also partly because of society's standards that he should be more experienced than I - I honestly don't know. I guess I still didn't have enough self-worth to come clean....<p>What could your W do for you now that would help you? Does she want to work on your marriage? Have you given up?<p>[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: lost ]</p>

HOL and Lost,
I am back with hardly a minute between this post and the last. But a few more thoughts. I think HOL, you will be most helped by attempting to understand what was going on with your wife, in her head and heart, in the years before you. You must come to understand that she picked up some devastating ideas from the world that she was raised in. Those ideas, morals, and the rest led her to live a life that breaks your heart. It rips you apart from deep within. I know. I am with you there.<p>I also know the despair and heartache of being lied to and deceived. I too have been there. It does shake the foundations of your world. The questions that never end about their honesty with you and their faithfulness to you come from deep within our hearts, we do not want to be a fool again, neither can we dare allow ourselves to be hurt so intensely another time.<p>My friend, I am there with you in my own marriage. But I know I will not find help or healing obsessing on these things. Now, I do obsess on them, but I know it hurts me even more. <p>It is no wonder that we bought our cultures lies. They come in such a slick ad campaign. Every body's doing it aren't they? This is the life, and we are not going to miss it. Maybe if we could turn our anger on our culture it could allow us to see our spouse with a little more understanding. I don't know, maybe.<p>I don't know what I am saying, so you all take care, maybe I'll figure something out and get back with you.

Lost,
Yes many thindgs trigger my thoughts. Whwn we,re at a restaurant i think, i wonder if our waitress has slept with most of the waiters/bartenders/customers here (i doubt it). T.V. shows and movies and of course just looking at my wife. There are times when i think oh well so she had other lovers (i knew she had) thats normal but then i think of how many and how she liked being surrounded by people she had slept with and how important it was to her to as she wrote "live up to her sexual obligations". to bad she didn't feel those same sexual obligations toward me, her husband. i too sleep a lot when i go into one of my funk's, i lose all motivation. When we are at functions were there are other couples i think, i wonder if any of these women here have slept with as many men as my wife, i wonder if all of them put together have slept with as many as my wife.it goes on and on LOST. it almost never leaves my mind.<p> another question i have for you is if your husband made you feel so unloved and all he wanted you for was sex then how did your previous lovers make you feel? does your H have to make you feel like some dude made you feel the first time you where together. How can this be done? your past men only had to make you feel loved for a matter of hours or maybe days. i can see how you would get used to men making you feel this way. how could your H make you feel this way all of the time? how is he to know that he needs to make you feel this way all of the time when he doesn't know that this is what your accustom to. Guys can make you feel pretty special when there trying to get you in bed thats easy because a few hours later there gone but what about the schmuck(your H and i)that after those few hours has to get up and go to work so he can support his family and devote his life to you. he better not slip up or what? you'll just cut him off and go on to the next or just begrudge him because you can't just go on to the next like before.<p>i don't know what she can do if anything. Honesty would be nice but she can't do that because as she has told me "You couldn't handle to truth" (nice)<p>W2B sorry your in this same situation. i knoew it is easy giving advise and yours a especially good but it's not so easy controlling your own emotions.<p>Some where along the line they figured out the lies of T.V ads and our culture in general because they knew they'd better lie about themselves. not good enough "sorry"<p>h

hol,
I am new to this chat room, but after spending quite some time reading your posts on this, I feel that you are leaving out a great deal of information. You never say what other areas of your wife's life you want to have complete information about, and you never say why it bothers you, just that you fear that there are other things that you think she lied about...I am a woman who was very sexually active in the early 70s and had many sexual partners. I also know that the men that I was having sex with were with many women, and not once did I ever feel that I was obligated to tell them how many people I had sex with or ask them for numbers. To believe that piece of information is more important than your life together, your child, your goals, the wonderful experience of marraige and family life leaves me feeling only bleakness for your wife. How would you like to be badgered day and night, every time there was a squabble or a little spat with the same question over and over and over? Does the woman deserve to have the proverbial scarlet "A" marked on her? Her demons are probably large enough to burden her with guilt and emotional desolation without your insecurity added to them. How many times a day do you ask her these questions? How many times a day do you think of these things? It may be that you are the one having the problem, and she would never have told you if you hadn't kept asking. How many sexual partners have you had? Did you tell her before you married? Why does it even make a difference if she is a good wife and mother? As one who has been approached with these issues, my only response is, that if the answer matters more than the person, you already have your solution.

HOL,
I wonder those things when I go into a restaurant as well, or at church or up at the school. I look at older couples and wonder if my H will ever look at me the same. I never before ever really thought about it. I, too, am consumed by this.<p>I don't understand why your W would want to surround herself with the same people she slept with. Does she have any answers for you? Does she even try to explain? Does she care that you're hurt? Does she have an answer why she didn't want to be sexual with you as much as you've liked? My H had the misconception that it was because I had so much before, that I'd had my fill. <p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> it goes on and on LOST. it almost never leaves my mind. <hr></blockquote> This is very discouraging - do I dare to hope things will ever get better? Or is this it??<p>You are rightfully angry. My previous lovers wanted me for sex and it took me awhile to realize that just being good for sex was not good for me. Yes, I did expect more from the man I married. It was very hard for me to believe that he loved me - from the very beginning I was always insecure that way. I had incredible emotional walls built. I don't want my H to make me feel like "some dude" from long ago - I want him to feel like he's the ONLY one for me. Which of course now is impossible...<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> what about the schmuck(your H and i)that after those few hours has to get up and go to work so he can support his family and devote his life to you. he better not slip up or what? you'll just cut him off and go on to the next or just begrudge him because you can't just go on to the next like before.
<hr></blockquote><p>How about neither. I never meant to hurt my H although I know I did very badly. I made a HUGE mistake. But, I also get up and go to work to support our family and I've also devoted my life to him. I just said I had thought I realized what made us start to drift apart there for a bit... I don't want to cut him off, I don't want to go on to the next - I want him to love me for who I am today so I can give myself freely again to him.<p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Some where along the line they figured out the lies of T.V ads and our culture in general because they knew they'd better lie about themselves. not good enough "sorry"
<hr></blockquote><p>I feel like I should defend myself, but what could I say? <p>I'm really struggling, though, with your W's reasoning for not wanting to explain herself. I am continuously trying to make my H see it thru my eyes. Does she love you? Does she think it's just hopeless so she doesn't even try?

I am really sorry for what you are going through.
I cannot believe after everything you have found out and how she has virtually cut off from intimacy and she still refuses to tell you the truth. Her comment that "you could not handle the
truth" tells you all you need to know. She does not care for your pain and clearly there is only one way to interpret this comment. I do not blame you for feeling the way you do especially since her marriage to you was based on fraud. I know
myself that I could not be in a relationship if my spouse responded to me that "I could not handle the truth" and refused to be honest with me.
I feel really sorry for you and hope that you are not forced to spend the rest of your life with this very cruel and mean spirited spouse. You deserve to feel special and clearly it now will never happen with her. I wish you luck.

i,m not trying to come down on you LOST. i'm just telling you some of the things he might be thinking based on my thoughts only. i think it's great that your trying to figure out what to do about it. i will help any way i can. <p>h

Lost, i don't know about your H ability to over come the disappointment but i am having serious doubts that i ever will. i was doing ok the past couple of days but something came to mind out of the blue (i won't go into details) and today i am feeling sick to my stomach, in a daze.
what do you do when your H gets this way?
w2b, what do you do when you get this way?
hol<p>[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: h o l ]</p>

w2b/lost<p>did you guys give up on me?<p>h

I'm still here, HOL. I've been in a state myself these last few days as my H has also been in a mood. A discussion we were having Tuesday really struck a nerve. We haven't really talked since. I just don't know what to do anymore. I guess for now I'll wait for some kind of sign that he wants to make up again. I know when he can't or won't look me in the eye, that something is going on. My biggest fear is that he will decide he just can't love me and leave me.<p>I'm also starting to worry about my emotional health. I feel so unworthy and unlovable. Sometimes he looks at me like he has no idea of who I am and I feel so distraught. H would say, 'yea, because you got caught.' Maybe to some extent that's true. Nothing I wouldn't give to turn back time... Disappointing him this way about drives me crazy. I love him and he is disgusted with me.<p>Please answer questions from previous posts. I'm interested in what your w says. Is she anything like me?

<small>[ July 21, 2004, 10:59 PM: Message edited by: Roscoe ]</small>

<small>[ July 21, 2004, 11:00 PM: Message edited by: Roscoe ]</small>