I feel a major love buster coming on and would like some help in avoiding it. Thought I’d throw this out here for advice. <P>First some background so you can understand the situation. In March of this year I found out that my husband had at least 10 cybersex/phonesex affairs with women he met on the Internet. He also had “platonic” friendships with about 16 others. He admits to meeting about 6 of them in person. Had a weekend PA with one of them and dinner/lunch with the others. I know this because I chatted with about 30 of the 60 women on his IM buddy list. He claims that the percentage for affairs does not hold for the 30 I could not find to chat with. I want to believe him. But, with the numbers so high as it is, does it really matter? The affairs lasted in length from 2 years to 3 month. Since we were engaged in April 1999 and married on 6/6/2000 in this was going on the entire time we were engage/married. <P>Since our 6/6 wedding was before a judge, we redid our vows on March 18 of this year in a formal wedding with our friends and family present.<P>Now for the upcoming potential love buster…..<P> The one PA weekend he had was the week after we got married in 6/2000. At the time we lived 1600 miles apart. He came here for a week to get married then returned to his home state to pack up the house and his children to move here. As it turns out, he got married to me knowing that he had a weekend planned with this other woman. He help pay for her plane ticket to visit him, paid for the hotel and everything else. This was a planned, premeditated weekend. In March, when I found out about his affairs, I found this woman’s phone number and talked to her for quite some time. She said that he never told her that he was engaged or that he’d just gotten married. They met over the Internet. According to her he told her that he wanted to have a long-term relationship with her. She broke it off after the long weekend fling because she did not want a long-distance relationship. She and he both say that the fling meant nothing to either of them.<P>(An aside – isn’t rich that the only person that fling meant anything to is me – and I was not even there. Wonderful how people will just take the BSs along on their roller coaster rides without even asking us if we want to tag along.)<P>In March, when I found out about this “fling”, that it was premeditated, that he married me knowing he was going to do this the very next week, I told him that as far as I was concerned he married me under false pretense. That he blasphemed our marriage vows. Further told him that I never never never want our anniversary date to 6/6 recognized. As far as I was concerned there was no marriage on that date. To make matters worse, I discovered all of his affairs 4 days after our formal wedding in March. So both of our wedding dates are tainted as far as I’m concerned. My counselor suggested that after if we do recover our marriage from this, in a year or two, that he and I should run off to Vegas and have a new wedding on a date after 6/6 of that year. She suggests that we get a license, do the dress, tux, and the entire bit. Just have a long romantic week to redo our vows. Guess if we did this, we’d be the most married couple??? Think so? Lol<BR>So here we are just a few days for our first REAL anniversary of 6/6. I find that I’m in a catch 22 here. And he could not win on this one for anything. There is a very large part of me that wants to just let 6/6 go by acknowledged. But I know now that if he does not acknowledge the day I’ll be angry. So he cannot win either way. I do know that I’m going to have a very hard time on that day. <P>We discussed this today. He told me that he knows he what he did was very wrong and he does not know why he did it. But our anniversary means a lot to him. I could tell that he was hurting over my attitude about the day. I guess I realize that my wearing my hurt on my sleave over this is not going to help us recover but I cannot just stuff it and pretend that I'm not hurting for the day. I’d like to think of something that he and I can do that might be healing for us. I don’t know if I can celebrate our anniversary and just stuff the terrible pain and thoughts I’m having. But I now know that I cannot ignore that day either. <P>We need this to be a win/win day for us. Does anyone have any suggestions? <P>Thanks<BR>Z<BR>

zorweb,<P>I was reading your story, just amazed at what you are having to endure. I wish you and your husband nothing but the best. It is so very painful having trigger dates come up, that I cringe just looking at the calendar. <P>We had our 12th year anniversary just around 4 months after dday, I am the WS. The day went by unacknowledged. I knew full well that it would be. I could'nt say anything. I was in too much shame. But I remember that day. Not that we were real big celebraters in the first place, but it did make a profound impact of what I did had, and what I threw away. My husband and I are coming up on 9 months. <P>What I have noticed is that you cannot hide from those dates. They come up. But, what you can do is talk to him about it. Tell him exactly how you feel. Tell him exactly what you need from him. That way, the feelings of pain lose some of the power. Maybe not all of it, but it may lessen it. <P>I think that it is a really great idea to renew your vows. That is one of my goals. Hopefully, we will get there.<BR>Take Care<P>PJ

I know we all try to be charitable here, but geez, you're married less than a year and putting up with all that? And in response to your pain and the enormity of his betrayal the explanation you receive is "I don't know"? Yet your anniversary means "a lot" to him?<P>I don't believe your anniversary can be a win/win situation because I think your H just isn't "there" emotionally or commitment-wise, and if he is physically there he hasn’t fully bought in to the whole marriage “thing”. Did he feel rushed into the marriage? Which of his needs were satisfied by his marrying you, and how much did those needs have to do with YOU specifically? Did you have a clue as to this wandering side of his character before you married?<P>Please explain why have you decided to stay with this "man" after these revelations. One reason I think I'm shocked is because I always thought the early days of marriage were supposed to be the relatively easy, good ones, with both parties still very committed to each other, satisfied, etc... <P>I am very saddened thinking of the pain you are experiencing, and hope that you are able to retain your courage and self-esteem until you can resolve this situation.

Z - wow. Both PJ and gobyfish have constructive comments. Please tell us more of your relationship and the circumstances of his former marriage, if you know.<P>I admire your capability to forgive, but I also guestion this guy's sincerity in expressing remorse (understatement).<P>Regarding the upcoming potential LB, it is not necessarily an LB to express your pain. What you have to try to do is do so without anger and without making judgements about him. Yep, almost impossible. If you can exprerss yourself to him the same way you did to us, I have confidence you'll find your way through this.<P>WAT

Zorweb,<BR>I know exactly how you feel. I don't want to recognize my wedding date either. This year especially, I'd just as soon pretend it doesn't exist. With the wounds so fresh I feel that date was the worst mistake of my life. I even thought I'd like to get a divorce to officially denounce that date. 13 years of marriage is not something I can easily dispose of. This year, I'm going to do my best to ignore it as well as a few other dates that are painful triggers. As time passes and healing takes place we will figure out together what to do. As far as your expression of feelings on that subject being a lovebuster, I'd say your H should be compassionate and unselfish and allow you to express yourself.

x<p>[This message has been edited by zorweb (edited May 28, 2001).]

I literally wrote a book here. Realize that most, if not all, of you will not want to read this. That’s ok – it’s been hard but very good for me to do this. If you think I should delete it because of the length, just let me know and I will. <P>I have discussed the way I am feeling with my H (WS). He understands my feelings and has been supportive. The problem is that I don’t know what I need from him. If he were available for me to verbally bash all day it might help me. But it would not help him or US. If he built the Tajma Hall to show how much he really loves me, that might do. But really I don’t feel that any trinket would help. I know that I could not take any kind of celebration. Not now. I just don’t know what I want. I do know now that if he ignores the day I’ll be crushed. Maybe just a simple bouquet of flowers and pamper me all day? Just something small. <P>I understand how you can be confused by my H saying, “I don’t know” when asked why he did the things he did. And how he can say that our anniversary means “a lot” to him. Confuses me too. Throw this into in mix – as I said earlier in this post we redid our vows in a formal wedding March 18, 2001 so that we could share it with or children, family and friends. Our original plans were to have the formal wedding two months after he moved here in 2000 – so about Sept 2000. But as life often does, it got too busy with merging families, building a new house and selling our old houses. So we kept pushing the formal wedding aside. The early this year HE insisted that we do it. By then I did not see the point – I thought we were happily married. I did not need the formal wedding. But he insisted so I went along with it for him. Now he tells me that the reason he wanted the formal wedding was that he was trying to stop all his cheating activities. That he needed the wedding so he could draw a line in the sand. A date at which all of it stopped. And to his credit he had backed off from most of the women by the time I found out about his affairs - the week after our formal wedding. Though he had not completed the job. He says now that the formal wedding also meant a lot to him - a recommitment to me. For the formal wedding means nothing either – it was a sham perpetrated in front of God, family and friends.<P>Here in a nutshell is what I know of his previous marriages<P>We have actually done a lot of work on the whys and wherefores of this. We’ve discussed this for hours between us and with our individual counselors. So we have some “stuff” but not any one thing. Here is what we know today. A lot of casual events and circumstances may have contributed to his behavior.<P>This is the third marriage for both of us. <P>(As he tells it) His first wife was a childhood friend. She left him less then a year into the marriage. He came home military maneuvers to find her gone having left with only the cloths on her back. He had no clue what had happened, if she was dead or alive nothing. It took him and her father a year to tacking her down to find her. They found her with her biker, druggie boy friend in California. S<P> (Info gathered from him, her and the children). He was married to his second wife for 14 years. He says that they had a great marriage for the first 9 years. In the last 5 years of their marriage she went into a manic-depressive stage. During those four years she withdrew into her depression, started self-medicating with alcohol, drugs and affairs. My H thinks that the depression was triggered by post partum factors and the death of her mother, brother and favorite cousin within months of each other. Eventually she left him and their children to live with the last OM. The OM is an abusive alcoholic (has had 14 DWI’s). By then neither of them were meeting many of each other’s emotional needs. When I met him he was a single dad with full custody of their three children. Actually the oldest daughter is his ex’s daughter from her first marriage. My H is the only father she has only known. She walked out on the children as well as on him. To this day she continues to be emotionally abusive of the children by playing the “I want you, I don’t want you” game and then blaming it all on my H and I. For example, we offered that she take the two youngest for most of the summer because they really miss her. She said that she could only have them for four weeks because they would interfere with her work. Then she told them that we would not let them stay longer. Grrrrrrrrrr....... So the kids were angry with us until we showed them proof otherwise. <P>Did he feel rushed into the marriage? If anything I kept pushing us to wait until we both had the time to make sure we knew what we were doing. <P>We met online (are you surprised?) on Catholic Matchmaker in January and hit it off right away. We also discovered that we’d know each other casually 20 years ago when we were both in the Army and stationed in Europe. It seemed so incredible that we’d meet again this way. After meeting online we chatted daily, sometimes for hours. By the end of February we exchanged phone numbers. I felt like I as getting to know this man from the inside out. I fell in love with the man on the other side of the chat/email/phone. The ironic thing is that my friend L. and I gave him a copy of the AOL IM software so that he and I could chat more easily. It is that software that he used to meet the Owomen. At the end of March 1999 he was on a business trip in Las Vegas. We decided that he make the short flight to the town I live in so we could meet in person. We were both nervous about meeting. Afraid that what we felt we had would not translate well into the physical world. Well, not only did it translate well, it was incredible. At the end of that weekend he told me that he’d been sure before we met, but felt like he had to meet me in person before he popped the question…. Would I marry him? My response was that I felt the same way about him but felt that it was a little premature for me to say yes. So we decided that we were “engaged”. What that meant to us was that we were not going to date anyone else and take the time and effort to pursue this relationship. We discussed that we needed to give our relationship everything we had at this stage. Then if we made it through the next year and some, we’d get married in June of 2000. He told me that he would move to NM in the summer of 2000. We also discussed that we knew it would be difficult since he lived in MD and I live in NM. We’d have to take extraordinary measures to keep our relationship going. So the stage was set. We visited each other once or twice a month, taking turns going to MD or NM. We interspersed the long weekend trips with week long vacations. In between we emailed, chatted and phoned to keep in contact with each other. For Christmas of 1999 he and his children spent almost two weeks in NM with my son and me. For Christmas he gave me an engagement ring and officially asked me to marry him again. And I officially accepted. The kids and we were in seventh heaven. After the Christmas vacation, he returned to MD and started to hunt for jobs in NM and get ready for his move. In March 2000 we signed papers to build a larger home here in NM to accommodate our new, larger family. <P>It was not easy being in a long distance relationship for such a long time. But I felt that we were both working on it very hard. I also knew that I was making it through this and he assured me that he was.<P>We got married in June 2000, as was our original plan. He and his children moved here in July 2000. At that time I’d sold my house so we were living in a three-bedroom apartment. It was crowded and the kids were going between honeymoon stages and fighting for territory. The children living with us are his girl 11, my son 12 and his son 13. This was not an easy stage.<P>The job my H took is a dream job for him. The two down sides are that he works from home (good and bad) and he travels 1/3 to ½ of the time. He is a web developer and web subject instructor. So he is isolated a good part of the time professionally and in his off time. And he spends hours a day in front of the computer. <P>“Did you have a clue as to this wandering side of his character before you married?”<P>Nope had no clue what so ever. He says he never cheated on either of his ex wives. I would know by now if he’d cheated on his second wife because she has made sure that I now of all his flaws. She would be screaming it from the rooftops. Right now I’m working with the belief that my H is a decent man who did something very much out of character. That he has now returned to his senses and is putting his all into our marriage. If I am wrong, then I have no doubt I will find out.<P>Did he feel rushed into the marriage?<P>He says that he did not feel pressured, he wanted to get married earlier and was constantly “teasing me” that we should run off to Vegas and just do it on one of our visits together. I made it clear to him that if at any time he wanted out, I would not pressure him. I do not want to be married to someone who is not sure they want to be married to me.<P>What needs of his were not being met by me or our relationship. Or which of his needs were being met by the other relationships.. This leads into what were the “casual”, unrelated things that we think might have come together to contribute to his affairs. This discussion assumes that he is being truthful when he says that he did not cheat on his two previous wives and that he has stopped the cheating now. It assumes that he is the wonderful, loving family man that I though I’d married. A man who fell “from grace with himself” for a short period in his life.<P>My husband had four major rejections that occurred in my H’s life. The first was when his father left when he as 12 years old. He was not seen nor heard from his father in the 34 years since that day. The second was that he was engaged to his high school sweetheart when he was drafted to Viet Nam. He received a “Dear John” letter from her while in Nam. The third was when his first wife walked out on him for another man. And the fourth was when his second wife walked out on him and their children.<P>When we first got involved I was very concerned that he had not had enough time to heal from his second marriage. But after talking to him quite a bit about this I was satisfied. One of the points he made was that their problems had gone of for 5 years so he had resolved most of the issues before she even left. I understood this reasoning because I know that happened to me. By the time I left my ex, I’d had 7 years to resolve things. I was totally done with the relationship and healed from the pain and abuse by the time I left. <P>I think I got caught up in the fall out from his previous marriage. I do not believe that he had resolved the issues. My counselor said that there is a very high chance that a BS will have an affair. After weeks of working with me, she thinks that he was actually having affairs to get even with his ex-wife, not me. I know it sounds weird but it rings true to me. We also think that it may be that he’d been abandoned so often in his life that he was now afraid I’d do the same thing. So he was making sure that he controlled that abandonment. That way he could say, she left me ‘cause I hurt her. So that for once, abandonment made sense to him.<P>Part of the getting even with his ex and resolving the issues left from his previous marriage is dealing with a shattered ego, the feeling that he was no longer lovable or desirable. Well, he was able to prove that one wrong. He had a crowd of women showering him with attention. They all thought he was the most wonderful man they had ever met. The relationships all developed as friends first. The ones that progressed to sexual relationships did so only after that foundation was laid. He was not surfing the Internet looking for cyber. He was looking for friendship and conversation. After talking to the women, it was obvious that he was not the original aggressor; he just followed their lead. If the woman kept the relationship at a friendship only state, then he was content with it. If, on the other hand, the woman opened the door to a more intimate relationship, he was happy to do that too. Though he does say that he was ashamed and guilt ridden about what he was doing. He did it nonetheless. He also says that there was some thrill in taking things to the next level. Such as when he met the woman for the PA the week after we got married. He felt compelled to go to the next step. Says he liked her as a friend but had no emotional attachment to her at all.<P>My husband also feels that a large part of his actions was the Good Lord’s way of making him eat a very vile meal of “crow, humble pie and feet”. He is a religious man who has been proud that he was a better man then many – was a good father and husband. He was proud that he’d never even contemplated cheating on either his first or second wives. When he found out about his ex’s affairs, when she walked out on him, he says he reacted very self-righteous. He went on and on about how she’d defiled the marriage, God’s laws, yada yada yada. And that HE WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING SO TERRIBLE. He believes that this was his comeuppance for being judgmental. Says he now understands what she went through much better and could never again be so harsh with her. <P>Another contributor is that my husband has adult ADD. This means that he’s had ADD all his life but it did not go away as it does in some cases. He has struggled with this all his life and has done a great job of it. He’s a successful and productive adult. However, as is usual for people who have ADD into adulthood, he is having more and more trouble handling this condition, as he gets older. The sheer stamina of youth helped him compensate when he was younger. One thing that is becoming evident is that a person who has adult ADD is more likely to become “addicted” to the Internet and to Internet relationships/cybersex etc. Researchers believe it is due to two things. The first is that the refresh rate on the computer screen has the same frequency as the brain waves of an ADD person when they zone-out. So sitting at the computer for any prolonged period of time can put an ADD sufferer into that all too common zoned out state that has become too obvious to me (our sons have ADD and so do my mother, 2 of my brothers and 3 of my nephews have it too). People with ADD also seek stimulation as it causes their brain to “self medicate”. My husband says that he found that holding four or five conversations on the Internet at one time was stimulating to him. He loved it, was in seventh heaven. And by the way, when we did our needs assessment – conversation was his first need. When one of these relationships went to the next level, there was more stimulation involved. So besides getting back at his ex and reclaiming his self worth he was getting two other very big needs filled from these relationships – conversation and stimulation. He is now being evaluated treatment of depression and ADD. Once he starts on his medication, we hope there will be come positive changes.<P>In addition we were not together. For the most part, between 3/1999 and 7/2000 1600 miles separated us. He says now that our relationship was real when he was with me. But the rest of the time it was a wonderful dream. That he knew what he was doing was wrong, but was compelled to do it. He also felt justified in not telling me because he wanted to protect me from the hurt. (Protective dishonesty.) I think that this one simply that many of his needs were not being met by our relationship because we were not together. Once he moved here, we were still not together as much as we would have liked because he travels so much. So his needs were not being met. To top it all off, he already had the habit of lying to me and the habit of going elsewhere to get many of his needs met. I believe that the one reason he only had one affair that went totally to the physical stage is that we have a very active sex life. His needs were being met there.<P>So maybe when I said that he says, “I don’t know”. It is not quite fair. He feels that all of the above contributed. But he just cannot believe that he did such a thing. He says that it was as though an evil side of him took over. He (the good part) could sit back and watch what was going on in disgust. But the evil side had control. He further says that in March his better side won out. Sounds weird but I take it as an analogy.<BR>I don't believe your anniversary can be a win/win situation because I think your H just isn't "there" emotionally or commitment-wise, and if he is physically there he hasn’t fully bought in to the whole marriage “thing”. <BR>Boy were you right with this statement. Until March of this year he was not “here” emotionally and commitment-wise. I do feel that he is “here” and “bought in today” – totally.<BR>Which of his needs did his marrying you satisfy, and how much did those needs have to do with YOU specifically? I’ve asked this one a hundred times. Also asked why did he marry me instead of one of the others. For quite some time, and even now at times, I do not feel that I am unique or special to him. I’ve told him this. His response, after mulling it over for days was two fold. First that he has felt an emotional attachment to me from the very beginning that was not there with any one else. He says that he truly loves me and always has, despite his behavior. Says that he loves me and wants to spend his life with me. He also says that all of the other women together to make up what I am.<BR>Please explain why have you decided to stay with this "man" after these revelations. At first I stayed because I was too numb to do anything else. I prayed a lot for guidance. It was very hard for me to reconcile the wonderful man I’d come to love with the liar and cheater I found in my bed. I found “Surviving an Affair” and we both read it. Somewhere in those first few weeks I came to this:<BR>When I married him, I promised to stay with him in “sickness and in health until death do us part”. Because of the analysis of his live’s circumstances at the time and the “fog” WS go through and what I now realize as the fragile nature of long distance relationships I consider this to be “sickness”. We are all human and as humans can make mistakes (or stupid, terrible choices). There has to be redemption in this life. If there is not redemption then we all may as well give up right now. If I had done the things he’s done, I’d pray that my spouse loved me enough to give me another chance. Further, that my spouse loved me enough to help me walk the path to find our live and myself again. I feel in since I take my marriage vow seriously, I have to give it one good try. If it fails then I will divorce him.<BR>The MB principles gave us both great hopes that we will be able to recover from this and have an even better relationship then we’d ever have had without discovering this information. I feel that my husband is now doing everything in his power to repair the damage he has done. He is courting me again. He is actually the one in our relationship who is leading the way in doing the work that Dr. Harley suggests needs to be done. <BR>For example, upon my finding out about his affairs, he was the one who said that he’d cease all contact with them immediately. He gave me all his email and computer passwords. He has answered all of my questions, etc. and is loving to me when I get upset about things. In addition, at my request, he installed monitoring software on all our computers (we have 6 in our house – we both work in the software development industry). <BR>Yes, I am aware that I could still find out that he has not changed. I believe that if that is the case I will find out sooner then later. And he knows that if it ever happens he will be asked to leave. No’s and or’s or but’s. This is his one shot. <BR>I pray daily that since the beginning of our marriage is so difficult, that the remaining years will be the easy, good ones.<BR>I realize that I’ve taken an awful lot of your time with this posting. But incase curiosity has the best of you….., my husband has posted on this site a few times. His name here is “SeenTheLight”. <P>Thanks all<BR>Z<p>[This message has been edited by zorweb (edited May 28, 2001).]