I have been reading the Resentment section of Dr. Harley's forum. After 2 years I am still so bitter and hurt. It is all consuming so much of the time. I feel the short periods I do allow myself to feel happy are forced and fake.<P>It is constantly there waiting for a trigger to bring anger and/or tears. I not only resent his affair, but the unloving and belittling way he has treated me for our entire marriage of 16 years.<P>I resent it when he blames the affair on feeling unloved and appreciated, I resent it when he blames the affair on not being sexually satisfied. I resent it when he tries to convince me that he hasn't tried to justify himself. I resent it when he tries to convince me that I should not blame myself.<P>I resent him being able to "be happy with our marriage now and move one". I resent it when he seems to be happy.<P>I resent him when he says he never stopped loving me.<P>I resent him when he says he truly loves me now.<P>I resent him when he says he wants to win my love back. <P>I haven't been happy for 16 years and I am not happy now. <P>The triggers are everywhere, even now after 2 years. Every photo I find of myself, even those taken at our wedding and after the birth of our children, I see the pain in my eyes. I see what my mother has been so worried about even from the time we were dating. She always told me that I wasn't important enough to him to give myself to him.<P>Progress becomes a trigger for pain. Problems becomes a trigger for pain. It doesn't matter.<P>Obsessive Thinking or unresolved issues.<p>[This message has been edited by Tired LuLu (edited February 10, 2000).]

Lu Lu,<P>I don't know your whole story, but I have a lot of the same resentments you have after only six weeks. I am still in the very early "affair" stages. My H is breaking my heart but the "triggers" you describe are similar to what I go through in a day.<P>Hope you feel better soon. Have you been on meds or spoke to the counselor recently?? SOunds like you are in recovery, I hope after two years, it would get better, please give me some kind of encouragement to even get past Plan A!!!<P>Prayers are with you.

LuLu,<BR>I think what you are feeling right now is definitly unresolved issues. It would be real easy to say it is an after effect of the affair, but I think it is from your entire relationship with your h. Obviously your emotional needs are not being met at all. Is your h willing to anything right now to make your marriage better? The difficulty in this is that men do not always see the need. He is probably quite comfortable at the moment thinking all is better since he stopped his affair. The best advice I can give is make yourself better! Do this for you and the effect will carry over to your h. Some books that are helpful in this area are "When One of You Wants to Keep the Two of you Together" by Susan Page. A new one that I am just reading, but looks good is "Sex Begins in the Kitchen" by Kevin Lamen. If you change your attitude, your h attitude will have to change. Go buy yourself some sexy underwear. This not only makes yourself feel better, but is interesting to your h. Find some things that you and your h can do together. Are you spending your 15 hrs of uninterupted time a week with your h? I can guarantee that the more time you spend with him, the better you will feel about your relationship. All you can work on is yourself and that really is enough. I know it does not seem fair, but it beats the alternative!! The next time you find yourself obsessing about h and ow, pray for the ow and your h. I guarantee that is the only way I have made it through this. In my situation, I lost both the ideal of my h and a good friend now known as the ow. God has literally carried me through this and my prayer was one of His vehicles. Of course I don't want to pray for the ow, so by turing to prayer every time I thought of her, the fewer times I would obsess over her. It is the same principles that are tought in the Weigh Down Bible Study only I applied them to this unfaithfulness instead of an obsession for food. If you have a Study in your area, I highly recommend it! Good luck and get yourself out of this pit!!! You owe it to yourself to that

He has been trying. We have read the books. He is really good about POJA. The honesty part is not good with either of us. He is more attentive sexually. <P>He slips back into inattentiveness constantly and especially disrespectful judements.<P>My love for him was very low before I found out about his affair, right after finding out I felt I loved him deeply and would do anything to keep him and satsify him. Now I feel any love that he has for me is directly related to what I can do for him, not for who and what I am. I never felt I gained his love and devotion before his affair and any love he has for me not is contengent and temporary. <P>I feel there is far more devotion to the family than love for me. I feel this is his attitude toward me because that is basically my attitude toward him. There is no emotion. There is no feeling in me. My marriage is just like another job.<P>I was never important.<P>I look back on our entire marriage and remember nothing but pain and conflict. Even the birth of our children brings back the memories of conflict regarding names and belittling regarding the way I looked. The only part I can remember any positive over was that he loved it when I breatfed because it slightly increased my cup size, but that only lasted a few days.<P>I don't want a marriage to an adulterer. That is what it boils down to. It was the ultimate proof of his selfishness and my unimportance.

Oh LuLu,<BR> You sound so DEPRESSED to me my dear. Those unresolved issues can become obsessive thinking. Depression can take such a hold on us that we cannot remember ever feeling happy or content or see that there was ever anything good in the past. It keeps us STUCK. If you can't be honest with H now,please seek out a good counselor who can listen to you and help you and please consider the wide range of medication out there. It can make such a HUGE difference in our thinking. It is truly amazing. When depressed we see the cup always half empty instead of half full. It doesn't necessarily mean we are crying and moping all day and can't carry on with day to day life. It manifests itself too often in a continual negative pattern of thinking. Something, that after awhile, we cannot control.If this happens to be the case with you, nothing H does will ever matter or be good enough. After two years of recovery I would urge you to consider the possibility that maybe these feelings are something you need help to overcome(the RN in me talking here). I've been there and know how it feels(in relationship to H's affair and other traumatic life events). H always refused to admit he was depressed and I persuaded him to try meds and after 2 weeks he felt such an amazing effect that he could think good thoughts about our life together and decided to come home and work on the marriage. Don't let yourself suffer, there is so much that can help you. Just reach out! Take care, thoughts and prayers with you!

I'm on meds already, a fairly high dose, the highest they are willing to give me. I am taking sleeping pills nightly, sometimes I take another one in the middle of the night. We have also been seeing a counselor.<P>My primary love language is acts of service (5 Love Languages) so it seems that all my life I have been doing and doing and have never felt loved. I have never felt I succeeded in what I was attempting to do. I am tired of doing. I'm finding that I hate doing the very things thaat I have been doing to try to show love.<P>So now I am expected to continue expressing love to this man who I feel no love for as my part of the bargain to keep our marriage together. <P>To make matters worse, after reading the 5 Love Languages, we are still clueless as what his love language is. So where do I even begin? I greatly question whether he is capable of feeling or expressing love at all.<P>No I do not have a very cheery outlook on life and I grow so tired thinking about the years I have left and the work I will have to do. I grow so tired thinking about how it is almost guaranteed that if I don't continue working on keeping him satisfied he will be unfaithful to me again because he is basically a selfish man.

WOW TLL, you sound like you know yourself and what you want and what you feel very well, and that is a start. Have you voiced your feelings to your H or counselor? I know the goal is to stay together, but it seems to me that maybe this is not the one for you. I HATE SAYING THAT TO ANY MARRIED PERSON! But maybe, just maybe, you married him for all the wrong reasons. You say you have NEVER felt happy with him, but he was happy with you on occasion. That is not a good thing, not a good thing at all. You really have to start to make your happiness come true. Really think about something that would make you happy. Either with or without your husband. It sounds like you do have A LOT of unresolved issues that go back to before you were married, and obviously people around you saw it but you didn't WANT to see it. Maybe you are finally seeing it. If you don't feel comfortable with the counselor you are with now, then find another one, or go to one without your H. Keep us updated! YOU ONLY GET 1 LIFE AND IT SHOULDN'T BE SPENT UNHAPPY FOR A LARGE MAJORITY OF THE TIME! = smile

I feel that the only thing that could make me happy would be for us to have the relationship that we could have now (utilizing all we have learned since the affair) without him having had an affair. I know I am asking for the impossible. I'm also asking for something that we all wish we could have, including my H.<P>I fear sometimes that I am just incapable of the forgiveness necessary to get past this.<P>2 years is a long time, I fear it is too long.<P>I look at him and I feel this pain well up in my chest. <P>I feel that letting myself love him again would be the ultimate admission that I am not worthy of being important to him. That I am not even important enough to have expected him to be faithful.<P>I fear so strongly that I will fail to be good enough for him so it is just a matter of time before I go through all of this again.<P>The minute I stop giving I stop receiving. The minute I get down he gets angry.<P>I know marriage takes work, but marriage shouldn't be a chore. I should not have to fear that if I don't continue to bust my butt to satisfy all of his needs whether I feel like it or not then he will find someone else to satisfy them and that I will have to be willing to continue going without having my needs satisfied if need be while I deposit love units hoping that he will have enough feelings for me to try to satisfy mine.<P>I want to be a Taker for a while, is that so very bad. Don't we have the right to eventually want to sit back and say, I'm tired, you try to win me back for a while?

Dear Tired:<P>Try to make sure that your feelings are based on "I can't" or maybe even "I don't want to" and not "Why Should I?"<P>Your entire family deserves that. <P>This may sound harsh, but I don't mean it to be. I battle with "Why Should I?" every conscious moment, but sometimes my answer to that is "Because I Can" and even sometimes "Because I Want to".<P>When you say "Why Should I" you are basically saying "My decision not to is a way of punishing you" and that will slowly destroy your heart and soul.

Good Post. Good Reading.. Bump for some of my close 'recent' friends.... [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img] you know who you are.. and if you don't.. then its probably you anyhow. [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img]

I'm dealing with some of the same issues and I'm only 3 months into recovery. What if I want to take a break from giving so much? Is my punishment another A? What if he takes a break from giving? Does he fear any punishment? After all he was not fulfilling my ENs when HE had the A.<p>OK, so how do I deal with this turmoil? I talk to my H about it. I get it off of my chest. That's a big first step. When I grow weary of constantly worrying, I talk to him. The pastor we spoke to told me one thing that bears mentioning here.<p>When God created this earth, he established a plan for forgiveness. The ultimate forgiveness being the forgiveness he offers us through His Son Jesus' death on the cross. WE CAN NOT EARN THIS FORGIVENESS. Jesus had to take on the pain of OUR sins, OUR wrongdoings, and in turn offer us forgiveness freely.
This is what I must do for my husband. I must take on the pain that HE brought into our marriage. I must offer him forgiveness FREELY. He can not earn it just as we can not earn God's forgiveness. <p>When this pastor mentioned this, the light just came on for me. I'd never thought of it that way. Maybe this can be of some help to you.

Lu Lu,<p>I feel like you're my twin sister. All I can say is ditto to everything you said about how you feel. Same issues even. From about 2 months into the M on, I felt unloved and rejected. I thought the danger was that *I* would have an A because not only would he not meet my needs, he would tell me I shouldn't even have the needs I have and would punish me for daring to have them. [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] <p>I have to leave, but I'll check back on this thread tomorrow. Hang in there.

I don't know if either of you... Jamup or Conqueror noticed.. my fault.. this is a very old post and I'm not sure if Tired Lu Lu is even around anymore. [img]images/icons/frown.gif" border="0[/img] If she is I hope she lets you know how she handled all of the triggers. I hope maybe someone else can step up and relate to you who is more current here on MB. I feel for you for having some of the same triggers that she had. I know that I have alot and I have a hard time dealing with them also. <p>Anyhow I hope you get some assistance. I thought this was a good source for some of us. [img]images/icons/grin.gif" border="0[/img]
Hugggggs to you if they help [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img]

Thanks for bringing this up H2Y. LuLu's words put many of MY feelings into words. <p>I think getting past the resentment is a necessity to move forward - whether we're in recovery or not. Forgiveness, letting go, releasing the offender from blame, being responsible for your own life and own happiness... all these things are daily battles we fight - IMO - of how to move forward without obsessing.<p>OHMY Marie has recently posted a wonderful testimony on how she's accomplishing this. (For jamup, me, or anyone else wrestling with these resentment issues).<p>OHMY Marie<p>[ March 26, 2002: Message edited by: Faith1 ]</p>