I<p>[ June 26, 2002: Message edited by: Tina71 ]</p>

Tina, I think you should do anything you might think would help M-MB weekend, counseling with the Harley's, or retrouville.Do whatever you think could help.'<p>IN regards to the 2 OC, I think you should tell your H honestly how you feel about the OC and having them in your life. If you cannot tolerate them in your home, on weekly visits and weekend visits, tell him. I think you are agreeing to visits, but it is eating you up inside. Not healthy for your marriage.<p>I am thinking of you, dear sister in a similar situation.

<p>[ June 26, 2002: Message edited by: Tina71 ]</p>

Tina, I feel your pain.We are so in the same predictament. Have you thought of seeking counseling with Steve Harley or are you and H happy with counselor you have now? What do you think? Do you think you too quickly agreed to accept visits with the two OC without really exploring what your reactions would be? Are you happy with your counseling? Just wondering, --if I may ask, what is going on now that makes you want to throw in the towel on your marriage? I am here for you.

<p>[ June 26, 2002: Message edited by: Tina71 ]</p>

Tina,<p>I am so sorry that things continue so badly for you.<p>I would say "yes. If your husband is willing to go, why not go to the MBers weekend?" What could you lose at this point?<p>I also don't mean to be a Pollyanna and dismiss your pain but the hard ugly truth about some affairs is that they are not just physical. Sometimes there is something between the affairees that is love or resembles love. It is certainly an emotional connection of some sort even if it is just two people's neurosis matching perfectly.<p>I personally have a hard time calling anything that disfunctional "love" but Mr. J says that he loved her and I am trying to accept his expression of his feelings as true and valid. I think it would be a real LBer for me to tell him "That wasn't love, it was just two people rutting" or anything else I might come up with.<p>So, I expect him to have lots of conflicted feelings about her.

• I am sure that they had times that he looks back at fondly.
• I know that he feels a great deal of guilt over "what he did to her life."
• I know he doesn't want her to suffer the rest of her life and hopes, for all of our sakes, that she finds a good man and builds a life.

<p>I think that in this case, our training as adoptive parents help me feel more comfortable with ambiguity.

• Our kids probably both love and hate their birth parents.
• They are sometimes glad we have adopted them and sometimes angry that we went to Russia and took them away from everything they knew.
• I also have a Dad who is not my bio-father and a bio-father I care nothing about. I am a daughter to both of them in very different ways.
• I have an intersex medical condition. I have a purely female body with male (XY) chromosomes.

<p>I live with ambiguity all the time, all my life. I can live with my H having some ambigious feelings about exOW.<p>What I would not be able to tolerate is if he were spending all his time/emotional energy in wishing he were back with her.<p>We all have some soft feelings for our previous boyfriends and they usually do not interfere with our current marriages. Our spouses had long-term affairs. They were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong--an affront to us, our children, our vows and God, BUT long-term affairs usually involve the heart as well and we may have to come to accept that there is some small part of our spouse that has some warm feelings for the exlover. Just like there will always be a small part of me that will remain angry for the rest of my life over what he did.<p>Just so you don't think that I react to all of this with no emotions: Just before his first visit to see OC without me (his mother went), I asked if he still loved exOW. It was a fear I had been holding in for a long time. I was crying and upset. He cried also and said "no." I didn't ask if he still cared a bit about her. I don't really care if he does. He doesn't need to hate her to be happy that he chose to stay with me.<p>I don't know if this helps but I thought that I would try to explain how I see this. <p>MJ<p>[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: MaryJanes ]</p>

MJ,
You expressed yourself perfectly.
<<I didn't ask if he still cared a bit about her. He doesn't need to hate her to be happy that he chose to stay with me>><p>You know that makes sense. He does want the best for her and to find happiness in her life, but with her track record of men, I don't see anyone coming along in the near future. She has no social or religious circles, and has shut herself from all friends during this A so as not to have to explain these 2OC.<p>Tina

Tina,<p>I am glad I didn't offend. I too had to find a way to come to terms with the fact that you don't have a significant relationship with someone for 7 years without your feelings following where your body had no business being. <p>No offense to "our" great exWSs on this board, but some OW are better candidates for normalcy than others. Our exOW was 23 years old (and Mr. J 32) when this A started. Her previous major relationship had also been with a married man. Her high school gym teacher. He was 41 and left his wife for her. He eventually went back to his wife and kids but the damage was done and the marriage didn't survive. I hope that she has learned her lesson this time and this is the last time she will choose to feed herself from the scraps that fall from a married couple's banquet table.<p>So, if I may suggest. You might jot a note to Mr. T71 and tell him you don't need him to hate her, You need to know that he isn't still loving her. You need to know that you are the chosen one, the one he loves now and the one he wants to spend the rest of his life with. That is something he can give you--your future together. Fixing the past is something that no human being can do and when we ask our formerly WS to do that we are asking them to do the impossible. <p>The problem is that our formerly WSs think that they fact that they have hung around is proof that they love us and we think that letting them hang around is proof that we love them (no matter how many LBers we might clobber them with to "get even" for the pain they have caused).<p>MJ<p>[ June 14, 2002: Message edited by: MaryJanes ]</p>

MJ,
Thank you for the advice. I think I will send off a note right now to H.
Thank you for all your time and responses, you have helped me more than you could ever know. <p>Tina

Tina,
I think there is more to your pain than the fact if he cares about OW or not.It is the issue of 2 OC-and how open you want H to be in his relationship with them. He seems to want complete openess in his relationship with them, where you and your children are horrified, appropriately, about all this. ANd do not want involvement.<p>
I think Steve has said-not directly, but in so many words-that having the H decide about contact with OC without the wife's consent or willingness for it to happen will harm the marriage-as you see in your own situation, and mine. I don't seeit healthy at all-I liken it to my H starting the A and having a separate life from me and our 3 kids as he did with A and then OC. It didn't work then, and doing it now won't work.<p>I know my H is mad about no contact with OC, and in fact may still hope for contact, or having contact with OC-but I think he and I both have our anger and pain at what he and OW did-both of us have to endure something to keep our marriage intact for our kids.That may be the price he must pay, that is what I think.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by unhappy wife:
<strong>Tina,
I think there is more to your pain than the fact if he cares about OW or not.It is the issue of 2 OC-and how open you want H to be in his relationship with them. He seems to want complete openess in his relationship with them, where you and your children are horrified, appropriately, about all this. ANd do not want involvement.
</strong><hr></blockquote><p>UW,<p>Am I misinterpreting something here or did you just try and dismiss any help I may have been able to offer to Tina? I know that she has pain about many aspects of Mr. T71's affair, but we might have just had a small breakthrough about one small piece of this and I feel like you just came along and slapped the ice cream cones out of our hands.<p>Did I get the wrong impression?<p>MJ

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MaryJanes:
[QB]Tina,<p>I am so sorry that things continue so badly for you.<p>I would say "yes. If your husband is willing to go, why not go to the MBers weekend?" What could you lose at this point?<p>I also don't mean to be a Pollyanna and dismiss your pain but the hard ugly truth about some affairs is that they are not just physical. Sometimes there is something between the affairees that is love or resembles love. It is certainly an emotional connection of some sort even if it is just two people's neurosis matching perfectly.<p>I personally have a hard time calling anything that disfunctional "love" but Mr. J says that he loved her and I am trying to accept his expression of his feelings as true and valid. I think it would be a real LBer for me to tell him "That wasn't love, it was just two people rutting" or anything else I might come up with.<p>So, I expect him to have lots of conflicted feelings about her.

• I am sure that they had times that he looks back at fondly.
• I know that he feels a great deal of guilt over "what he did to her life."
• I know he doesn't want her to suffer the rest of her life and hopes, for all of our sakes, that she finds a good man and builds a life.

<p>I think that in this case, our training as adoptive parents help me feel more comfortable with ambiguity.

• Our kids probably both love and hate their birth parents.
• They are sometimes glad we have adopted them and sometimes angry that we went to Russia and took them away from everything they knew.
• I also have a Dad who is not my bio-father and a bio-father I care nothing about. I am a daughter to both of them in very different ways.
• I have an intersex medical condition. I have a purely female body with male (XY) chromosomes.

<p>I live with ambiguity all the time, all my life. I can live with my H having some ambigious feelings about exOW.<p>What I would not be able to tolerate is if he were spending all his time/emotional energy in wishing he were back with her.<p>We all have some soft feelings for our previous boyfriends and they usually do not interfere with our current marriages. Our spouses had long-term affairs. They were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong--an affront to us, our children, our vows and God, BUT long-term affairs usually involve the heart as well and we may have to come to accept that there is some small part of our spouse that has some warm feelings for the exlover. Just like there will always be a small part of me that will remain angry for the rest of my life over what he did.<p>Just so you don't think that I react to all of this with no emotions: Just before his first visit to see OC without me (his mother went), I asked if he still loved exOW. It was a fear I had been holding in for a long time. I was crying and upset. He cried also and said "no." I didn't ask if he still cared a bit about her. I don't really care if he does. He doesn't need to hate her to be happy that he chose to stay with me.<p>I don't know if this helps but I thought that I would try to explain how I see this. <p>MJ<p>MJ,<p>I wanted to quickly comment on your post to Tina. I am very amazed by your wisdom and wanted to thank you for allowing me for the first time, to read a BS's perception of A, and feelings about it after D about what is was, and say, yes, that is exactly how I feel from the WS side.
You have given me alot of inspiration today in believing that my H can come out of this without the anger and misconceptions that I've read here by other suffering BS. Thank you. You are so on the mark, at least in my experience. Your husband is a lucky guy to have a wife with your insight and understanding. Tina would do well to listein to you. Just my FWS input...

CM:<p>"I also don't mean to be a Pollyanna and dismiss your pain but the hard ugly truth about some affairs is that they are not just physical. "<p>SOME affairs?? I would argue that MOST affairs are emotional first, and physical second (if and when they are at all).

MJ, I didn't mean to sound as if I was dissing your input to Tina. I think you had some great th ings to say.<p>But, the fact remains, it is not merely what her H has done to Tina,twice, that hurts. It is also his lack of consideration of her feelings regarding visitation, and what he chooses to do about it. I think that contributes to her pain.

CM,<p>If you think I am always this wise and put-together, go see my greeting card thread. Scary, scary indeed. [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] <p>MJ

CMiranda,
Nice to see you post, I am glad that MJ helped you a bit in your recovery also. She does have a lot of down to earth wisdom that sometimes I am too close to see whats happening.
2Long,
Yup, probably EA with H for at least 5 years before PA, they were each others best friends and confidents, so it has been explained to me.
UW,
I understood what you were saying. Too many special days have come this month and are just taking their toll. Wedding, father's day, anniversary, OCbirthday. I need to refocus, think positive.
I took MJ's advice and typed a little email to H about her comment about "feelings" for OW. I also used your homework assignment and asked H to write down the affects of A and OC, we will see what type of response I get, after he toddles home after the big father's day picnic at D/C (still fuming about that one)<p>Thanks everyone for your caring to respond to my ranting and venting. <p>The Tazmanian Devil/Tina71

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by 2long:
<strong>CM:<p>"I also don't mean to be a Pollyanna and dismiss your pain but the hard ugly truth about some affairs is that they are not just physical. "<p>SOME affairs?? I would argue that MOST affairs are emotional first, and physical second (if and when they are at all).</strong><hr></blockquote><p>Actually 2Long, this was not my quote, it was MaryJanes. I know, you probably automatically presumed it was something a FWS would say.
Once again, my utmost admiration to MJ, for having the heart and intellect to wrap herself around, what in my experience has been, the TRUTH of many affairs, well, at least mine, from my perspective. She has given me hope.

<blockquote><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by MaryJanes:
<strong>CM,<p>If you think I am always this wise and put-together, go see my greeting card thread. Scary, scary indeed. [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] <p>MJ</strong><hr></blockquote><p>I already had, and got a good chuckle. Humor, that is a good sign, I don't see anything wrong with your card.

Tina,
Since I have you attention on this thread, can I ask you something? I noticed that you mentioned that your H affair was over a 5 year period. Once of the questions I've had for along time is this, how does the duration affect how you process it's discovery?
Or anyone who can give me some feedback, whose spouse revealed a long term A, how did that fact factor into your recovery?

CM,<p>When I first learned of my H's affair, he lied to me and told me it was of an 18-month duration.<p>I was transferred for my company, a move that we both wanted and had sought for many years as it would move us closer to our families. I moved 6 months ahead of H. We were not separated emotionally or legally. In fact, one or the other of us was flying cross-country every couple of weeks. He gave up our house at our old home and rented a room from a woman with a live-in finance. He told me he lived there only three weeks because he couldn't stand the fighting that this woman and her financee did. He then, supposedly moved in with a mutual (male) friend of ours. His story was that the rest of the affair occurred on business trips back to our old home town. All of this story was a lie. He moved in with his lover of (then) five years. She was pressing him to divorce and he (maybe) moved out with a friend (or not). It is still quite unclear to me what happened during our cross-country move and he says that he has forgotten the details of where he moved and when, when the argued, when they split up. I think that the only way he could live with what he was doing was to put himself on some sort of autopilot and try his best not to think of what he was doing.<p>I lived this story for four months before exOW asked me for a photograph of myself before our first visit to see Precious. She said it would help prepare her for our visit and since Mr. J had been a big part of her life for so long she had always wondered what I looke like. (She had actually been in our house twice and had seen my portrait over the piano.) I wrote back and asked her how long she had been such a big part of my H's life. She responded "7 years." I nearly dropped over dead. <p>In my mind it was like D-day all over again. I had thought the affair started while business kept us living at two ends of the country. I rationalized to myself that he had two separate lives on two sides of the country. <p>To find out that he ate dinner with me and then when out and slept with her (under the guise of playing on his pool league) creeped me out no end. There is something much, much wormier about screwing someone else and then sleeping with your wife the same night. This version of the affair enfringed on my private, personal life in a way that the first story never did. It mixed his affair and our daily life in a way I never imagined.<p>CM, I have been worrying about something about you over the weekend. Please don't take my understanding that my H had strong feelings for exOW to be an excuse for his behavior. The affair was sexual thrills before it became an emotional entanglement. However, whichever order in which it happened it was unexcusable, deplorable behavior of the lowest, cruest type possible in a marriage. It was dispicable, self-indulgent behavior of a spoiled petulant child-man. If he had not entered a sexual affair, he would not have gotten his emotions tangled up in his underpants. Please don't use my understanding to excuse his (nor your) behavior.<p>I would be very, very careful of letting your H know how much you love/loved exOM. Not many people get to the point where they are willing nor able to look at the fact that their spouse had strong feelings for another during their marriage. My H never really did much 'fessing up to how strong his feelings were toward exOW. He told me that he had told her he loved her. He said he loved her but he never stopped loving me. He said he was confused and didn't know what was real. <p>I deducted the strength of his feelings for her from his behavior and torturously slow removal of himself from his continuing role as her "friend." I watched how he acted in the months after D-day and tried to figure out an explanation for his ongoing behavior. He nearly lost our marriage because he was so slow to recommit to our recovery. <p>I have no great sympathy for his feelings toward her. I understand them and accept them as a fact of this affair. If he found his affair to be painful, if she was hurt by entering (a second) affair with a married man, I am not sorry. He (and she) brought this on themselves. They must shoulder the responsibility for the mess that they made and the disservice to Precious to be born in such a situation where she will never know a real father. I am the injured party in this and the one deserving of tender care and compassion. I was robbed human right to make informed decisions about my life. I have to pray daily to keep God's forgiveness flowing through me because forgiving this horrible affront is more than I am capable of on my own.<p>I am at heart a realist. I want the cold hard facts and if that includes that he loved her, at least give me the whole story. I want to know what I am up against. I want to decide for myself what my life and my future should be.<p>MJ