continuing my post----
It was quite a diverse crowd. <p>catnip, when i first read this thread i felt i had many of the same feelings, although grace is an adorable little baby, i feel almost evil, when i think there are times i wish she would just go home somewhere else. <p>wib, i understand about how hard it is for women to choose abortion or adoption, personally i always thought adoption was a much harder decision for a woman than abortion. and although a man may not know what it is like to carry a baby under his heart, i certainly didnt have to wait for my children to be born before i bonded with them. ask fh if i didnt talk to her stomach, sleep with my head on her stomach, the second i found out she was pregnant with any of our children. my bond to them was immediate and i resent any one who tries to tell me that fh's bond to our children was greater than my own. <p>although abortion and adoption are definitely difficult decisions for a woman, both are very much apart of our society in this day and age. early in a discovery in a situation like this, for a woman to choose to carry a child to term tells me that she is willing to gamble her marriage and the stability of a family life for her existing children. it also says, that she probably knows nothing of sacrifice, yet expects her husband to sacrifice, things such as personal integrity, since now to continue in his marriage hes most likely forced to change and live with a whole new set of morals.
will continue this lately, kids are calling, its close to dinner, see you soon--pops

for a woman to choose to carry a child to term tells me that she is willing to gamble her marriage and the stability of a family life for her existing children. it also says, that she probably knows nothing of sacrifice, yet expects her husband to sacrifice<p>Pops I am telling you as I write this that I believe all that you say.<p>I am a woman and would never, ever consider having my lovers child if I wanted my husband to be married to me.<p>But as Marilyn VanSant ? said in today's "Parade" magazine, no one agree's to everything.
I guess it's up to us to accept or reject what we personally can't accept. Right?<p>As far as weddings go, I'm happy your D's was wonderful. Sounds like a fun time.<p>Our son and dil wedding in November was traditional and sacred....worth every penny spent!
It was a beautiful event and when my son and I danced to "You Are My Special Angel" original version...there were no dry eyes...including my H who rushed us and hugged us and cried with us. Everyone knew of our situation too....<p>When we danced with dil...we all cried and hugged...all was beautiful and a memory that God allowed.<p>When d-day happened I cried that h and I would never dance at our only son's wedding...hence a year later we did! A gift!<p>All is well tonight as h and I talked again.<p>Saw ow and oc at drugstore today. Too long to post. Traumatized...oc doesn't resemble h in the least...Blessing #2...she is still as bold as ever and parked next to my car as we all left together in parking lot...<p>God granted me serenity....<p>Came home and talked w/H...<p>He's pulling for me.
I am loved...<p>love
Debi

WIB,<p>I guess what you are missing is that I am not talking about what Pops should or shouldn't do. The purpose of my post orginally was to see if there was something to suggest to FH that would help her in her stated goal to repair the damage.<p>It wasn't to condemn her or Pops choices. My feeling was that perhaps she needs to take the lead on discussing issues like the presence of the OM and the usefulness of CS. When you get to be my age which is still 10 years younger than Pops will be when Grace is 18, the prudence of financial stability for the family becomes important.<p>It is unlikely that many of your friends have had and even in some cases died of heart attacks and cancer. Many of my friends are having those problems and they are only in there late 50's. Then, the question of the OM and the down side of his presence is mixed with the financial needs of the family and pure longevity. That is what makes this even more complex than usual.<p>In your case you choose to bring OM into the situation, but now I am hearing you say you don't think it is a good idea. Perhaps your reasoning on this could help Pops and FH.<p>But, I will return to my original question. Is there we can tell FH that might help her in repairing the damage? <p>So far your responses have suggested that if I tried to help, it would not be understood as that and simply cause defensive barriers come up. That is not the goal here.<p>In any event, now that Pops is posting here, my input is unnecessary.<p>Thanks,<p>JL<p>
Pops,<p>Congratulations on the wedding. I look forward to those days when mine get older.<p>God Bless,<p>JL

jl,,,, please feel free to continue to post here. you have a special way with words that is neither attacking or condeming. where i tend to say things with to much emotions. the counselors we have seen said that i am the type who wears my heart on my sleeve. i feel much of what you said so far was very accurate. it is hard for any of us not to feel like we need to defend ourselves.

wib,,, i find it hard to believe that you would think that in this type of situation only one person in the relationship is trying to save the marriage. what if i for instance had not tried to save my marriage and when fh told me that she no longer knew whether she loved me or not and started to see more of and hang out more one on one with the op i had just taken the attitude of just throwing her out of the house. which as a matter of fact was suggested to me by several of our friends. i am very interested to know on which side of the fence you stand in regards to visitation. in a previous post of yours you were talking about how lucky you were to have 2 such wonderful men in your d's life. now i read you saying that i need to be careful for what i wish if fh seeks out cs as i have asked. my opinion of this is for me to ever forget who grace's father is, is absolutely ludicrous. there are manywhat if's that can come into play in the years to come. what if we raise grace as if the op did not exist and in 18 years she all of a sudden wants to find her bio dad? what impact does that have on our family and our relationship so many years down the road? i am the kind of person that likes to meet things head on and not beat around the bush. that is one thing i am trying to deal with on myown is that i didn't handle this the way i felt i should. instead i tried to do as fh asked of me and it bit me in the butt. as jl mentioned at my stage of life other things start to come into play. my father was 2 years older then i am now when he suffered 4 heart attacks. as you may know with youth comes a feeling of invincability. then all of a sudden you are your fathers age and you can't believe it. that is why at 49 i decided to get a complete physical. i made a concious decision to change my diet and get myself back into shape. i lost 40 lbs in a matter of 3 months and have managed to keep my weight down for a year now. it was not a miracle or fad diet just a concious choice to try and prolong my life. to think that this is a matter of getting another $ in my pocket is rediculous. i have managed to raise 6 children and support my family for the most part without the financial help from fh having to work.what is important here is to make sure that every child in this house is provided for in the event of my untimely demise. <p>maybe one thing that is different is that in your case you had actually separated from your husband. in our case we never did. everything that happened here did so in front of my eyes. the sexual part of fh's affair although unpleasant it is the easy part to deal with. prior to our marriage i was unfaithful several times.<p>the question raised about our decision for me to get snipped and fh not to have her tubes tiedwas for a couple of reasons; 1 - in was cheaper for a vasectomy then for her. 2 - it was an office visit for me and surgery for her. 3 - with our past history if anyone were to fool around it would probably have been myself. if i would have thought that fh wanted more kids for any reason i would have been glad to oblige her. it seemed a double slap in the face to not only have her fall into an affair but to throw caution to the wind as well.<p>one thing i realized this pasr saturday was the real reason i am still trying to work this out. 5 words "let no man put asunder". these words are one of the moral issues i am dealing with. when i spoke them i meant them then along comes the only thing that the Lord allows us to divorce for. my whole life i have believed that nothing could separate a marriage except infidelity. no other excuses period. <p> do i want theop in my life? definetly not!! do i believe he needs to be responsible for his actions? most assuridly!!!! <p> as for fh reading this she has. in fact she typed some of it for me. she doesn't like to post here very often. her reasons i am not completely sure of. does she love me? yes i believe so. do i love her? yes i believe so but not in the same way as before. i could lay and rub her back for hours and simply lay and brathe her in as i smelled her hair. i have asked her to try to get me to fall in love with her again. she has responded that she doesn't know how. do i need her for sex? no. i can do without sex as long as you have intimacy. and along with true intimacy will come great sex.<p> i thought i needed to find a connection to grace to reconnect with fh. but as jl said and i am starting to believe he is right. if i reconnect with fh then the connection to grace will be there naturally. <p> i never tried to force fh into either abortion or adoption. i did however let her know in no uncertain terms what i felt best for our marriage. wib, you said that if she had made any other choice it would have probably ended our marriage through her inability to cope. and that this may end our marriage because of my inability to cope. so what side of the fence do we need to stand on? how about we don't throw in the towel as of yet and we just keep on trying something. i am glad to here that you feel lucky to have such a wonderful h. it does however seem that you are the type of person who although you are remorseful of your actions are still thinking that you are the most important person in your relationship. i may be wrong with that statement and if so i apoligize. but for you to think that this type of situation doesn't still weigh heavily on his mind i feel is not giving him much credit for haveing any emotions. for a man or woman to place these situations behind them with a kiss and a hug is not natural to me. unless he is now blowing a little smoke in your direction. <p> more on another day,<p>the grass isn't greener on the other side of the fence, it's greener where you water it.

JL and Pops,
I have one thing I have to get out of the way first while it is still fresh in my mind then I have a few things that pops has said that I want to address.<p>JL, You did it. You had me convinced that I was being totally blind where my H is concerned. Though I honestly thought my instincts were right you planted that seed of doubt in my head that just kept growing and growing until last night I had to do something about it. I went back to all the posts you have made to me warning of how my H must be feeling and that there was no way he could possibly be happy in this situation and the future was very bleak. I printed them out. I only wish I could have printed out Pops latest posts also but they weren't there yet.My H sat there and quietly read all of it. Following is our conversation almost word for word as best as I can recall it.<p>H: You're not buying into this crap are you?
Me:Well....no not really.
H: You must be or you wouldn't have given me this to read. I thought it had been pretty evident how happy I've been with the way things have been going between us these last months.
Me: It has been but I guess I just needed to be sure, you know, better safe than sorry.
H: Well, for one thing you need to stop listening to someone else telling you how I feel, someone who doesn't even know me. I promise that if I have any concerns or problems that you will be the first to know and until that time you have to promise me that you won't be creating problems where there aren't any.
Me: OK. Don't be mad. I just wanted to make sure.<p>You and pops seem to think that I am very selfish and think nothing of what I have done. You are forgetting that we have been in recovery for 1 1/2 years and it has only been the last 3 months or so that things have been truly great. Before that(and still now) I did all the things a remorseful WS should be doing. I was trying to win back his love and trust and obviously I must have done something right. But you two can't seem to get past the fact that he might actually be happy now hence your accusations of my blindness where he is concerned. Well at least I have piece of mind now. And pops, I put my H through just as much as you have been through. We were seperated for 5 days. Before that I put him through 3 years of hell. Many many times I walked out the door with him knowing full well where I was going. <p>As far as the decision of keeping my D. H left that up to me and said he would stand by me. Had he felt differently I honestly don't know what would have happened. This is the ONLY decision post A that I have made on my own. But I will not feel selfish about that under the circumstances. Remorseful,yes. Always.<p>As for the OM. We really had no choice. In our situation we could have moved to Alaska and the OM still would have found out and probably tracked us down. I did not force the OM to pay CS and have visitation. I left that up to him. Yes, I am fortunate that he is not a lunatic or an unstable person and that he does love his D. And yes, we do from time to time take advantage of the times when she is at a visit to do things that are much easier to do without a baby. Had the decision of having him in our lives been totally up to me I would have chosen not to (Mainly out of respect for my H and the recovery of our marriage) although I would have always been truthful with my D about it. FH has admitted that when it comes down to it that she really does not know the OM or his wife and she has concerns about how Grace will be treated over there.<p>I am not saying that pops does not have very many valid concerns or that they should be ignored. But just because they are concerns of his doesn't necessarily mean my H has the same ones. He is the only one who can decide what he can live with or not. I guess I'm not understanding too well what exactly he is wanting from FH and maybe she isn't either. If she goes for CS does that make everything hunky dory? Does he want her to show more remorse? Does he want her to be more loving and caring? Does he want her to go back to work? He has told FH that he wants her to get him to be in love with her again yet he can't tell her what to do to make that happen. If she has to guess it's going to be a very long process. He wants intimacy. What does that mean? It can mean very different things to many people. After reading FH's posts I don't think that it's because she doesn't want to do these things it's just that she has no idea what to do and it's being assumed that she should know. She has the desire and the drive to repair her marriage which I think is the most important thing but when I say that she can't do it alone I mean she needs help from pops in knowing what to do. She is flying blind right now and I can understand her frustration. This I think is why she is so defensive. She is remorseful and she does want to give pops what he needs but listening to you two makes it seem like she is being selfish, not trying hard enough or not doing the right things. How can she be doing the right things when she does not know what they are? That is what I meant by only one person trying. Pops can not sit back and expect her to be a mind reader and do all the right things. She needs some input.<p>And JL, You very well may have many things to say to FH that would be very helpful however it is your delivery that elicits so much defiance. You have no "bedside manner" so to say. You sometimes assume too many things that are way off the mark. And unfortunately once you have raised that defiant nature anything else you may have had to say is gone out the window. Remember, I think that in FH's eyes she is trying to do the best she can right now, maybe not the right way or the right things, but you will come off sounding like she is being selfish and is not trying at all.<p>[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: want it back ]</p>

Pops, I have to assume that you are sticking things out with FH in the hopes of truly being happy and in love with her one day so you must think that it is possible. God willing, you will find it. Imagine, you and FH have worked through alot of issues and problems, you are now both comfortable with being yourselves around each other, you are truly happy and playful together and in love with each other. You both feel confident that after all you've been through that the two of you can now handle whatever problems or issues that may arise in the future. Now imagine FH telling someone that although it was not easy and that there were a lot of hard times that the two of you are now finally very happy and in love again. Now imagine this person telling FH that she must be delusional, that there is no way you could ever be truly happy or in love with her now in the situation that you are in. Further more how selfish it is for her to even think you could be. Does she really think that you could ever get past everything that she has done? You certainly must be blowing smoke at her. How would that make you feel? <p>If you don't believe that it is possible for things to be so good again then why are you staying?<p>
I am not the only person on this forum who has a BS dealing with an A and OC where things are also going very well so why is it I'm being made to feel like it is so impossible??? Granted it's not the norm but it is possible.<p>There are far more BWs on this forum dealing with these issues and there are many of them. You can see from their posts the vast differences in how they each feel and are handling the situation. So I assume there must also be vast differences in how each BH would feel and handle the situation and actually have seen that right here on this forum. I am done defending my Hs and my ability to have come so far and refuse to feel guilty for it because some don't think I've worked hard enough for it. Fact is you have no idea how hard I've worked for it.
[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: want it back ]<p>[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: want it back ]</p>

WIB,<p>You continually misread or fail to read what I have said. So I thought I would repeat part of my last post.
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>I guess what you are missing is that I am not talking about what Pops should or shouldn't do. The purpose of my post originally was to see if there was something to suggest to FH that would help her in her stated goal to repair the damage.<p>So far your responses have suggested that if I tried to help, it would not be understood as that and simply cause defensive barriers come up. That is not the goal here.<hr></blockquote><p>I repeat this because it also applied to my responses to you. But, I can see and will accept that you cannot see what I was trying to say to you . I suppose the only good thing that came from my response to you is that you did talk with your H and confirm his feelings for you.<p>
You said: <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> JL, You did it. You had me convinced that I was being totally blind where my H is concerned. Though I honestly thought my instincts were right you planted that seed of doubt in my head that just kept growing and growing until last night I had to do something about it. I went back to all the posts you have made to me warning of how my H must be feeling and that there was no way he could possibly be happy in this situation and the future was very bleak. I printed them out. I only wish I could have printed out Pops latest posts also but they weren't there yet.My H sat there and quietly read all of it.<hr></blockquote><p>I would respectfully submit to you that you did a very good thing. His response should have made you feel very good. I congratulate you on your strong marriage. <p>Now I have two questions for you. 1. Where did I say your marriage couldn't or wouldn't work? This is marriagebuilders after all.<p>2. Why are you here, if you need no help ?<p>In any event I take your criticism seriously and I definitely won't post to FH. Since you feel all that I post to you is attacking you, which was/is not my intention I will also refrain from posting to you as well. There is not need for people to feel harassed on this site.<p>Good luck and God Bless,<p>JL<p>PS: Now we can turn this thread back to Catnip. [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img]

I wrote:
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>And JL, You very well may have many things to say to FH that would be very helpful however it is your delivery that elicits so much defiance. You have no "bedside manner" so to say. You sometimes assume too many things that are way off the mark. And unfortunately once you have raised that defiant nature anything else you may have had to say is gone out the window. Remember, I think that in FH's eyes she is trying to do the best she can right now, maybe not the right way or the right things, but you will come off sounding like she is being selfish and is not trying at all.<p> <hr></blockquote><p>
I understand what you are saying but I don't think you are understanding me. You want to help FH without causing her to be defensive. I suggested that you probably have a lot to say that could help her but that you would have to change your approach or it would cause her to be defensive. Apparently you are unwilling or unable to do that. A lot of what you have to say is helpful, it is how you say it that negates it.<p>
Answer to #1
<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Given that you have had an affair, this is not going to be good for you, your H, or your children because if H feels he has lost control in his OWN house, the marriage is likely over.
<hr></blockquote><p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> there can be hugh problems that will lead to the end of your marriage.
<hr></blockquote><p> <blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr> Frankly, I doubt your marriage could survive that right now. <hr></blockquote><p>I believe there were a few more also.<p>Answer to #2<p>Even though I couldn't be happier at how far my H and I have progressed I am not foolish enough to take that for granted. There is still much information here and in these forums to help keep up this progression. And although we haven't faced a major problem is some time it helps to know how to avoid them<p>[ March 25, 2002: Message edited by: want it back ]</p>

WIB,<p>Not a single quote was a statement that your marriage couldn't or shouldn't work out. Please not the "IF's" and the other statements about if these statements are true. <p>You complained that I made assumptions there were not true, and then you act as if I believed they weren't assumptions and they were true. So dear your missing something. If the assumptions were not true, THEN the topic of that sentence didn't apply. If they weren't true it is expected, that the response would be that they are not true, but rather another situation exists.<p>As you have now confirmed the assumptions weren't. That was the point then and now. Make sure you KNOW what your H is thinking and why was the message.<p>As for my "style", you are right it is not a bedside manner in the sense of a counselor trying to console someone. I am not a counselor and I have no intention of consoling you. That is the job of your H or your family. On the other hand, I don't attack people either.<p>The problem may be my style, but the issue at hand is that FH needs advice on how to help her H. Do you have any??<p>Anyway see if you can help her and Pops. You have been where she is. But do remember that Pops just like the ladies that post here, are not your husband. It is a challenge to get it right.<p>God Bless,<p>JL<p>PS: Don't worry you are not the first that thought I was attacking them, when in fact I was trying to establish the basics of the relationship. But, in over 4000 posts, it is not surprising is it?

Wow, JL & WIB! This turned out to be an exciting, excellent and informative thread of working out issues. I have enjoyed reading the points and counterpoints with much interest.<p>I applaud you both for your abilities to stick with it to come to a higher understanding in spite of a little defensiveness and misunderstanding. I know the two of you are extremely articulate and intelligent individuals who are excellent at healthy debate and are working through this misunderstanding. I think once the two of you have come to terms with your differences, you will both agree that there are significantly more similarities. The rest is symantics.<p>This has been a most respectful and invigorating debate and I have enjoyed the exchange. Thanks.<p>Catnip =^^=