I have started typing this message several times now and don't quite know where to begin.<p>My wife and I have been married for 13 years. I was previously married and divorced with no children. My wife had been technically married to someone to help them get a green card when in college. My first wife was an alcoholic and I also have a brother who was an alcoholic at the time, so I have spent a significant amount of time in alonon and attending programs with them. My first wife left me (for someone else) when I joined alonon. Several years later both my first wife and my brother were killed in unrelated violent incidents involving drinking. These events occured during my marriage to my current wife whom I love very much.<p>Three years after my first marriage brokeup, I met my current wife. Both of us had been dating other people pior to meeting each other. We fell very much in love and were married within 6 months. And for the first few years were quite happy.
We have 3 children (10,7,5). We both have professional careers and have had very busy lives. My wife is a very direct person, sharing her feeling, wants and needs easily. I, on the other hand, have difficulty sharing my feelings and take some time to understand and verballize. Especially with hurts and fears. I tend to bury them. This is mostly what I did for the first 4 or 5 years of our marriage, thinking I was making her happy by responding to everything I could.
The experiences of my first wife and brother being killed happened during this time and were no exception. Around that time i began to resent all of what began to feel to me like demands. I began to shut my wife out emotionally and physically. In all of this, my wife became very unsatisfied with our marriage. We went to many counselors, but our problems only got worse. To her, I didn't love her any more. I could only see her as self centered and demanding. Finally, one counselor taught us how to stop fighting, but it was only replaced by dead isolation.
I think we both were so releaved to have the fighting overwith that we mistook it for getting better. We did have some improvement and some nice vacations, the birth of another child, career advancements, new home, but never regained much of a connection. I had begun to think that after the kids were grown and both of our working slowed that we would be able to repair our relationship.
Then on new years day my wife told me that she was leaving me. I was really crushed and pleaded with her to stay. Promising that I would go to any counseling or whatever to make things better for her and us. Afterwards she told me that she was really surprised and was expecting me to simply agree and separate. She left to clear her head for 3 days and when she returned, agreed to give it another chance. It was a real changing point in my life. I began to make myself do things even if they didn't feel good at first to try to show her how I felt. How I wanted things to be better. I was surprised how good it felt to do these things and felt really bad for how long I had not understood their importance. I began to take more interst in the things she liked. Things were not always perfect, but I began to feel really hopefull. My wife was extreemely happy as well. We celebrated our anniversary by renting a very fancy hotel room and having a time like we hadn't had in years. Sex had gotten much better as well. My resentments ebbed away as we began to share things together. I took a much more active role in planning and 'asking her out' to do things that I wanted to do which made me feel really good as well. Then, almost four months later I was given some information by a family friend that things were not as they seemed. My wife had confided (actually bragged) to this friend that she had the best of both worlds. A great husband and a great lover. As it turned out, she had been having an affair with someone from before the time she had wanted to leave. She had met him online on a Fantasy Dungeons&Dragons type game more than a year earlier. She had been sending him thousands of dollars and supporting him since he was without a job. Several of her 'business trips' had been to visit him at his home or buy him a ticket and meet him in some other city. I found much of this out by snooping through all her email to and from him on the computer in our home and work. There were significant amounts of sex speak and descriptions of their past and planned endeovers. Unfortunately i am a computer engineer and had very little problem finding it all.
I went through all the feelings so many have described in these postings. I feel very great empathy for you all so much. I have never posted here but have read your words when i needed strength, so I thank you.
When I confronted my wife with what i knew, she claimed that she tried to cut it off with him and that her 3 day's of 'thinking things over' was actually a trip to visit him to break things off. She claimed that she had simply not been strong enough and was in love with both of us. She said that her first choice would be to have both of us, but that if she couldn't have both then she would choose me.
I spent a lot of time thinking about what to do. Finally I told her that I wanted her to go and be with him, and that if after being with him for one year, she fell 'out of love' with him, that I would be waiting for her. She told me that she wouldn't do that and she went to stay with her parents who lived nearby. After a week, my anger started to settle down and I started to thing more about what I really wanted in my life. It still came down to wanting her. I understood how the years of not having a relationship with each other could lead to what had happened.
That was three years ago.
Since that time, we have started over. We went to a counselor together that helped us a lot. We have had our ups and downs. Me with forgiving and trusting, her with guilt. Over a year ago we took the Marriage Builders seminar. We are continuing to work on our relationship. There have been many many times where we have been near throwing in the towell and quitting, but neither of us has. We have done a lot of work, and have a lot more to do.<p>Way too much background, but here is my question...<p>We have a problem that frequently occurs. It usually starts with me expressing some dislike for something that she does. This is something that I never used to do. I have had to, and still need to, work on how to do this. The problem occurs when she doesn't want to change what ever it is. She feels that I am burdening her with guilt. I suppose she is correct in one sense. I want her to know how I feel about something.<p>Here is one example:
A few weeks ago she got a new body lotion. It was one of those herbal eucolyptus types. I thought it smelled terrible. I told her that I didn't like the smell of it at all. It was new and she had just applied it. I'm sure that I couldn't have picked a worse time to tell her. She felt very attacked and blamed.<p>Another very different example:
When I tell her that I feel that I am too busy and need to cut some things down to spend more time with the kids, she feels that I am blaming her for not wanting this.<p>Another example:
When I tell her I don't like to be rushed at the last minute, she feels that I'm blaming her for being more that way than I am.<p>In many cases she react's with anger. In other cases she tells me that it's unfair for me to guilt her into changing.<p>I know I am not very good at expressing my feelings especially when they are negative. Has anyone ever struggled with this and found any advice that might help?<p>Thanks,
trying to 'saythewords'<p>[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: saythewords ]<p>[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: saythewords ]<p>[ January 07, 2002: Message edited by: saythewords ]</p>
