It's been a long while since D-day, 7 months already, time goes by and i am still stuck.
The nightmares of WH and his lies still hover around my bedroom ceiling like old ghosts.<p>I try to trust him, but something tells me there must be something he isn't telling me. Maybe there had been too many D-Days for me. Everytime I had to interrogate him to death to find any truth between his made up stories. I just wonder... did I interrogate him hard enough this time?<p>I know I know, I should "interrogate" him. But I can't keep living my life like this. I feel like I am taking care of this little mischevious kid. I have to keep an eye on him, tell him "Bad Bad H!", tap him softly in the head, and then wait for him to come around and tell me the truth.<p>I feel I am wasting my life this way, sitting there, asking the same old questions over and over, watching him give me the walk around, making himself walk in circles, like a dog looking for his tail, just that it is not a game and neither he or I are having fun just being silly. It hurts, and I am tired.<p>I ask him what is that he remembers. He amazingly remembers nothing, and what he remembers he is not sure of. Reminds me too much of the "I'll be covering my butt now, so don't expect any truth comming out of my mouth", mode.<p>Now I know where the OW is, she is becoming more and more careless, let the place where she works post her picture and e-mail online. I found them and it was sad to see that she wasn't even pretty.<p>I could remember a younger looking person in one of the photos I found while cleaning the house. I guess on my pain I had idealized her or tried to believe she was at least cute, so I could give myself some kind of explanation on why my H would hurt me like he did.<p>Well she is very old, not good looking. Has big fish eyes, and looks like she's been drinking out all night, had a couple of tablets of something to keep her old bony body from collapsing, and dragged herself to work.
She has bushy hair, looks disorganized, unkept and dull. <p>I know she has nothing to do with me, I know I know, let me remind myself again. But it still hurts.<p>I know I am not pretty and all, but she is not cuter than I am. I feel so cheap, I feel like I let myself down by staying. Even H says that he wouldn;t have stayed if I had done something like this to him.<p>I have been asking questions on their relationship. He gives vague answers and I have to ask for extremely specific things. I am doomed, I live by life's details, and I can't understand how others can't.<p>He says he was never really happy, and that any happiness he had she would crush. He says he hated being around her and going home, because she would always be mad and made him do every single chore, even though she didn't work and stayed home all day.<p>He says he was stupid for never breaking it up, and more stupid for still talking to her, and mad for hurting me like he did with her.<p>I just don't understand why, don't get what I did wrong. He cannot find one single thing I didn't do right. I was heaven, she was hell. I was good, she was bad. I made him the happier he has ever been, she made him want to die. I made him laugh and feel good about himself. She made him cry and hate who he was.<p>Somebody please explain me why?, what did I do wrong? Please I need somebody to tell me, I need to know, I need to understand why to get over this, otherwise I will go crazy.<p>Please please please, somebody free me!

alostwife,
I'm not very familiar with your story, but I will try to share a thought or two based on your post, and on your post on zorweb's "contribution" thread.<p>It's important for you to identify any EN's you might not have been meeting for your H. Have you filled out the EN questionnaires? It's also important to identify any Love Busters that you have in your marriage. Remember that Love Busters are defined by your spouse. If you don't have a problem with socks on the floor, HE might, so every time you or the kids leave socks on the floor, love bank units are being withdrawn. This, of course, is a basic example.<p>Once you have identified these, through your own introspection and observation, as well as with the help of your H, then you can work on these things.<p>Other than EN's and LB's, the affair was HIS decision. You didn't cause it. It's about him. All you can do is be the best person you can be.<p>The feeling I got from your post on zorweb's thread was that you felt like you were being a good wife, and you loved him. Unfortunately, that's not enough. I think that's how most of us feel after d-day. It's almost a "fairy-tale" outlook on marriage, unfortunately... isn't it? "and they lived happily ever after..." You must try to look at your marriage from your H's perspective. I have no doubt that you LOVE him, but you have to LOVE him in the way that he wants to be loved. You deserve the same treatment. Hopefully he will learn that.<p>Quit trying to blame yourself. Fix what honestly needs fixing in yourself, and then feel confident that you are O.K. The A was his decision, and your H is failing to see and appreciate the gifts you offer him.<p>What are you doing for yourself? It can drive you nuts-o trying to figure everything out, or waiting for your H to make you feel better about the A. Work on forgiveness, and letting go of the details. In searching for comfort, ask him for his help, instead of "interrogating" him. Find other things in life to enjoy and appreciate. Take care of you. Do you write in a journal? I found this really helps in getting those annoying thoughts out of my head. <p>My H is gone. He can't fix this. He can't make me feel better. He can't answer my questions. I have to let them go. you can too. Work on meeting his EN's, and gently trying to get his participation in rebuilding. Can you call Steve or Jennifer for a counseling session?<p>Hang in there. YOu can do this!

A lost wife, My sympathies to you. I know how it is to want to drag every single detail out, and when they clam up, you assume the worst. I finally had to tell myself that forgiveness entails ALL of what he did, whether he's shared it with me or not. Sometimes the mere fact that he doesn't come up with some new detail when I ask makes me suspicious. But then I think to my interaction with the men I work with everyday. If 2 years down the line I ended up having an affair, (and I certainly have NO plans to), how well would I remember the little comments etc. that are taking place now? At some point in his relationship with OW, they were just casual friends. I can't expect him to remember EVERYTHING they ever possibly said or did to each other. Sometimes a comment or event jogs his memory and something else comes out. This is where I have to stop and remember that even new details are forgiven. I have to realize that when my WH was having the A he was not planning to write a book report and submit it to me. I must also realize that it IS painful for him to think back. Not the same kind of pain as mine, his pain is shame, guilt and embarrasment while mine is betrayal. As time passes with no new details, I begin to think maybe I've heard them all. I hope I have.

Thanks for the responses I really appreciate. :-)<p>Well my WH has filled the EN questionaires, we are on radical honesty, which questionaire he filled too, (I had to insist on it and he hid info the first time, but then went a refilled it completely *sigh*).<p>On his EN questionaire he stated that he was and always had been 200% satisfied with my performance on every single field. I was even giving him things he didn't even know he wanted.<p>I was a "top of the line" wife, everything was wonderful. I was a great companion, a great friend, a great lover, a great cook, everything he ever desired and more.<p>It blows my mind to see that I never did anything wrong, yet here we are with the A and all.<p>I talked to him yesterday, he still claims he doesn't know why he did it. He had no reason, no motto, no nothing. He didn't want anything out of it, neither he needed it, he just went and did it.<p>He suddenly lost his brains and when he recovered any he decided that making me miserable would cover up for what he did. Yup, makes any sense to you? not to me.<p>I am working real hard with the forgiveness part. I am not terribly angry anymore, I just wish, oh gosh I wish with all my might I could get into his head just then and know exactly what the hell was he thinking. No matter what it was, no matter how ugly, I NEED to know.<p>But alas, he doesn't know, so nobody will EVER know.<p>How could you do something so terribly awful and not even want, need, anything out of it??? It wasn't even fun or fullfilling!<p>He claims it was self-destructive one minute, then he claims he doesn't know, then says it is "everything". What the hell does that mean???<p>GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I just want to vent, I am just soo0ooo darn frustrated, makes me want to kill myself to stop thinking about it sometimes [img]images/icons/shocked.gif" border="0[/img] . Yup that bad it is.<p>I am obsessed. I want to un-obsess me.<p>HELP!!!

Oh BTW my story:<p>I have been married to my husband for 2 years now. Before we got married we were very good friends, I was in other relationships, and he was stuck on the last burns from a dead end long time relationship with a person that, according to him, was unbearale, and terrible.<p>We met each other through the internet, and we started as friends while he was living in the US and me in Europe. After a while he started to declare his feelings for me were changing, that he was falling in love with me. At the time I tried to make him dismiss it since I was already in a relationship and I didn't feel he was ready for any kind of commitment, since he seemed to act kind of obsessive about his ex.
He continued to try to convince me that he was through with that relationship and to please consider him and give him a chance, that he was very deeply in love with me and that he couldn't take me off his mind. Meanwhile my other relationship was stuck, since my bf was away and didn't have a way to communicate with me, and because we had agreed to give each other a long break and see who we could date and if we wanted to continue the relationship.
After a lot of thought I decided that indeed I really liked my H and ok I'd try.
We started "dating" through the internet, mainly talking and playing online games, and then talking on the phone for hours and hours every day. The relationship seemed to be growing strong, so i felt comfortable and fell very much in love, I just needed a little push of tenderness to do so anyways.<p>A month into our engagement he was already calling me wife, in front of anybody, his family considered me their in-law, and I had prospects to move to the US, leaving my family, friends, possesions and a promising career, all for him, all because I loved him more than anything.<p>A month into our engagement his ex (who was supposed to be just a friend), gave him a call asking him if she could come over and visit some friends and old professors and stay at his place. He then phoned me and asked me what I thought. I didn't want to be jealous or controling, I thought "Hey this is the man I am going to marry, if I don't trust him, then what the hell??", so I told him it was his call, that I loved him and trusted him completely.<p>He decided to let her come over and stay at his home. The first day he slept on the couch, everything went ok, I called him as much as always (3 times a day), we talked our regular 5 hours and then the next night he had sex with her ex. The next morning I phoned him, like always, to say good morning and that I loved him. Someone picked the phone, didn't talk and hung up. I tried again but nobody answered, so i thought he had left already,and that at first I had dialed the wrong number. Later that afternoon we talked on the internet, he was acting different, so I asked if someone was wrong, thinking his day at work had been hard (but scared since I hadn't been able to sleep at all that night, holding the phone on my hands, trying to decide if phoning him would damage our relationship, making him think I didn't trust him).<p>He told me finally that he was awfully guilty because he had shared bed with his ex (just shared bed, no sex, no nothing). I was hurt, but I didn't leave him, I thought that him feeling guilty enough just to torture himself about sharing a bed was more than enough proof that he could be a decent man.<p>Unfortunatedly I felt awful about this because in the back of the head I couldn't understand why he would do such a thing and something was telling me there was some detail hiding somewhere and that he didn't want to tell me.<p>Before I moved to the US he came to visit me after christmas, to meet me IRL for the first time, meet my parents and ask for my hand properly. We couldn't have a more wonderful time, we were actually so much in love (or at least i was), that when we saw each other for the first time at the airport it was like... if he had always known me and he had been gone just for a very long time.<p>It all went perfectly and when he went back I felt so lonely I asked if it was ok for me to move (telling him that if he didn't want to to not worry since I had to finish school anyways). He insisted on me moving with him, he bought my plane ticket and arranged everything. I was so happy!<p>Things changed radically when I arrived. He was always grumpy, I tried to dismiss it on his work, and I kept on trying my best to be a great wife. I did all the chores, I refined my cooking into the most elaborate dishes I could come up with, I tried to adjust to his tastes without loosing myself into it, I tried to be happy and always smiling and pretty when he was around, even though I missed my family, my friends, my school and my freedom, I was happy... because I was with the man I loved.<p>We got married after 2 months, in a very small and not pretty wedding (a friend of his organized it since he had a complete lack of interest about it, again i asked him what was wrong and if there was anything he should tell me, because I'd rather he called off anything than marrying an unwilling husband that would make me miserable forever). But he was smiling and seemed so happy I decided to set it all aside and be as happy as a bride can be.<p>A year after his ex had visited, for some reason, the night he cheated on me came into one of our chats, no resentment, just curiosity, he then admitted he had forgotten about me and thats why he had agreed to share bed with his ex, because "It was like the old days". I took this very bad, thinking my husband could completely forget about me, and it really caused a lot of long term damage to my self-steem as a wife, (I thought I never had been good enough, and since he stated he didn't know why it happened I thought it could happen any time if I wasnt good enough), this caused me to be depressed when alone, and into inflicting physical pain to myself, I started cutting my arms, my legs, and torso just to make the sense of failure and depression go away.<p>Another year passed, and by then my feelings of insecurity had changed, I was feeling better, just shaken by a miscarriage of a baby I really wanted to have, but trying to move on, starting school again and having great marks like before gave me a great boost to rebuild myself. Then, after a month into school he told me (because it came into our conversation, and it was sounding fishy) the truth, that he had had sex with his ex, because a part of him had wanted to get back with her, but that just after it happened, after they joked about it (ugh), he was brushing his teeth and felt awful, that he had lost me and that he didn't want to be with her.<p>Of course that sounds stupid now, since they continued to talk on the phone nearly everyday untill I came to live with him.<p>With this revelation on came "new info" about his past, awful things he had done (related to relationships, including an affair with another married woman who was family to him and way older than him, but that took place years before we met, BUT that is a problem since everybody on his family knew and treated me with pitty because of etc), and that I just can't finish to swallow.<p>I have lost my life, my family and friends for the last two years. Anything good we ever did was contaminated by his bad mood caused by being always lying to everybody and his "traumas" on relationships, which he could have told me about mind you!<p>He has really made me go through an extended hell of doubt about myself, or building myself and tearing me down because he wasnt happy enough, and as much as I ask and try to understand... he says all I did was be a wonderful wife and do all that he ever wanted me to do or be, that he always thought I was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes upon, the greatest wife-lover-friend he could find, just that he was a sick sick man and that he thought he was loving me while he was hurting me untill I wanted to die.