As some of you have read in my past threads, I am going through my second affair. 6 years apart. I won't go into detail but subtract the affairs and my H is absolutely terrific. That sounds really odd but it's true. Part of me feels like the above statement is analogous to saying "Her hair is on fire but she's got on a fabulous dress!"
All that said, I feel (more so every day) that I have no idea who I am living with. I can't even look him in the eye cause I'm just not sure who's behind there. Is it a monster? Is it just a weak man who succumbs to his lusts. Is it both. Right now I'm treating him like a lepper because I'm so creeped out by what he has the capacity to do.
All the good experiences, times and things we share are completely lost in my mind. The A trumps everything. I feel very unbalanced and maybe it's just a phase but I feel like it's getting worse instead of better. (My D Day was 4/4)
At the suggestion of many, I am waiting 6 months in hopes that the flames of rage will lessen. The first time he did this, I was able to sort of get past it by looking at it as a blip on the screen. Now that he's done it again, I feel like he's got a sickness.
Last night he told me that he would NEVER NEVER do this again. (He's terribly remorseful) My response "I believe that you think you will NEVER NEVER do it again. But I just don't think you're capable of holding yourself to that promise."
Is this the same as living with a substance abuser. I think in their heart of hearts they really really want to stop their behavior but just aren't capable.
Should I wait around for the next landmine to go off?
What you do is who you are isn't it? If you deliver mail to peoples homes, you're a mailman. If you collect taxes, you're a tax collector. If you program computers, you're a programmer. If you cheat (especially repeatedly) you're a cheater.
"All that said, I feel (more so every day) that I have no idea who I am living with. I can't even look him in the eye cause I'm just not sure who's behind there. Is it a monster? Is it just a weak man who succumbs to his lusts. Is it both. Right now I'm treating him like a lepper because I'm so creeped out by what he has the capacity to do."
What you are feeling is normal for the situation you are in. You are living with a "familiar stranger." Many of us have felt this, and it is a confusing state existence to say the least. If it helps, I can say that I went through it. My wife was raised on a farm, she is hard working, intelligent, and has a great deal of common sense. She is a good mother, has good ethics, and is honest to a fault (except for the affairs).
This was so totally out of character for her. I too couldn’t look into her eyes, and that hurt deeply as I used to get lost in them. Now, almost 5 years after D-days, I can look into those eyes again, and I can get lost again. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t get lost in blind trust, and I never will again. But I can feel the love I see in those eyes, and I know it’s for me.
It took me most of the five years to reach this point, and I can finally believe her when she tells me she would never do this again. Yeah, it’s scary to give back that much trust, but after all she has done, after all she has suffered, and she did, and still does if the affair is brought up. After all of this, she can say that and I believe her.
Part of the reason is our level of communication, both verbal and physical, (like body language) are honed to a fine edge. We communicate at a level I would have never believed possible. We think alike and one of us will say what the other is thinking. That may sound boring or scary, but we actually laugh when one of us does that to the other.
Time is your best friend and your worst enemy, and you will learn to hate it when folks tell you it takes time, so damn much time. All you can do is take it one day at a time, sometimes one hour at a time.
I guess if you feel your husband is addicted to sex then the comparison to a substance abuser might be valid. For me, with a mother and brother that are recovering alcoholics it would be a huge stretch for me to make that comparison. I guess there are others here more qualified to answer that.
Keep us posted, and don’t let my style of writing get to you, I am rather blunt, not really “touchy-feely” like a lot of folks are.
The biggest help I got from people on this site was to ask myself questions...and to answer them for myself.
The two questions I see forming (in what you write) are:
1) Who is he REALLY and what is he capable of?
2) Can I live with that person?
Getting at number one, you imply that you could look beyond the affairs and see the good in your husband and hold tightly to that...BUT
And the BUT is, what if he does this again? How many times is too many? You may be asking yourself, "if I do the work to get past this and focus on the future, will he do the work that's necessary to understand what he did and why and take steps to avoid it". What you've reported is a "promise" to avoid a repeat, but you haven't said what he is DOING to avoid a repeat.
If he is ONLY saying, then he isn't DOING, and you probably don't have a reason to feel safe. If he can't answer the question "what will you DO differently this time", then he is only saying. And then it is not in my opinion "living" your life; you would be merely waiting for the other shoe to drop. But will three times be enough to convince you? Or will it take four? Or five? Again, my opinion: if he is not seriously analyzing and changing his life and patterns, then there is no reason for you to wait around for the third mistake. Already you are angry with yourself (as well as him) for letting things get this far.
And then there is your part, question two. At some point, your anger must tell you the answer to question two. Perhaps there are other things that happened in his affairs that are like little barbs: small chunks of unaccounted time, small changes in stories when questioned, vague explanations, or, worst of all, "gaslighting" (denying something you know happened and acting as if you're crazy for bringing it up). Your anger may be covering up these signs that he really isn't the good person you have always thought. This is where you must look and evaluate carefully: what is your anger telling you? Is there more to his life that doesn't add up?
Use the anger to help yourself. After a while, it's definitely not about the affair anymore. Figure out what it is about.
Chris makes some very good points, and points well worth considering. My response to your post comes from my personal experiences, as does Chris's. Although we were both betrayed, the outcome of our experiences is opposite of each others.
To push my initial response to more of a neutral position I will share some of what the first three years was like. Over the course of the first three years I had packed clothes and almost left three separate times. And this was with my wife doing everything right and doing her best to ‘fight’ for our relationship as I reached the point of not caring about the outcome several times.
Had my wife not worked for our recovery every day I doubt we would still be together, she came to a point in the first year of realizing the destruction that she brought to the relationship. In doing so she accepted responsibility for her actions, and responsibility to help me heal. Considering the depression I went through, may attitude of not caring, and at times my giving up on us, she went above and beyond with personal sacrifices.
Your decisions about the future need to come from the logic of Chris’s post, from the efforts made by your husband to rebuild, to help you heal, and to understand the character flaws that he has. He has to find and understand what let him do this to you not once, but twice. He has to prove to you that he won’t do this again, with actions over time, with self awareness and understanding of his faults. Even when he does this, you may find that the trust he has so totally destroyed will not allow you stay together.
Healing must be a personal journey with your goals realized before you can take the steps to heal a relationship with him. Your healing may or may not allow you to proceed as a couple.
"Again, my opinion: if he is not seriously analyzing and changing his life and patterns, then there is no reason for you to wait around for the third mistake."
I could not agree more and we've seen here, for many years, that those who do get through this and survive it together make these changes.
As another guy that stayed with his former wayward wife, I agree with everything Dave said. If you choose to stay you will probably experience similar episodes as Dave and I have.
One thing that can not be stressed enough is that your H must come to a clear understanding of how he allowed himself to have affairs and he must resolve that understanding within himself. My wife had a lot of childhood trauma, issues with parents, dysfunctional household, and to an extent mental illnesses of other family members. She went to counseling and came to terms with most of her issues. It was easy to see that she was really working on herself and that is why I'm still here. If she didn't work on her personal issues, we wouldn't have made it a year because nothing would have changed between us.
One of the biggest things that her working on her issues was her being able to see me in a different light, appreciate who I was/am and most of all have reasonable expectations from me and our relationship.
"appreciate who I was/am and most of all have reasonable expectations from me and our relationship."
H2C that was a mouthful with just a few words. Having reasonable expectations from me and our relationship, I think that is something everyone has to learn or come to understand after marriage. The honeymoon can't last forever, typically 6 to 9 months. Kids, house payments, car payments, the lawn and the laundry...and the list goes on.
I totally agree with what you said in your response to this thread.
I have moved your response to Sandra (emotionalcarnage) to the Open Board per forum policies. The Discovery board is for the discussion of a partner's affair and is for betrayed only.
The Open Board is for the betrayed and formerly wayward to discuss and recover from the impact of an affair. Please see my response to you there.
GT
This message has been edited by gettingthere on Jun 15, 2007 2:41 PM
I totally empathize, but in my case, my husband who was also my high school sweetheart, has never admitted to anything, never apologized. The first time I had no concrete proof, just a coded message on his beeper that he said was sent by his co workers who were playing a practical joke on him. Although I did not believe him, the next few weeks, he went into his "smooth operator" mode by coming to my job everyday to have lunch with me, buying me presents and reassuring me that he has never been unfaithful. Approximately a year and half later, I became suspicious but I did not freak out or confront him like I did before, I hired a private investigator who suggested that I call him on a Friday afternoon to inform him that I'll be working late. Our son told me, he rushed home from work that day, showered, changed and went out again (unaware that he was being followed). He was videotaped that evening going into a house with a bottle of wine, coming out with two females, going to a video rental store (no doubt to rent porno movies) and going back into that house. He came home at 1 in the morning, when I asked him where he's been, he calmly told me that he was with some co-workers discussing investments ideas. A few days later, I showed him the video tape and all he could say was "Why are you having me followed?" When pressed for answers, he told me he befriended this woman who was a single parent and he just went to her house to fix her computer. Needless to say that I did not believe him then I later found out that he was calling a woman he met when he visited his brother who lives out of state, I'm pretty certain that he was sexually involved with her and countless others. To make a long story short, he saw the heartache that I went through, I even told him I thought of killing myself at one point because my pain was so unbearable, yet he did not try to make things better. It's like he watched me die and did nothing about it. I could not understand how a person could so baldly hurt someone he professed to love yet not feel remorseful until I stumbled upon this web site "www.takeback your heart.com" that list the 18 character traits of a sociopath. I am convinced that my husband is not only a sex addict but also a sociopath who cannot express remorse for the pain he has caused. I feel no love for him only loathing and on rare occasions pity because he's such an emotionally stunted individual. I'm looking forward to being single again, I know it will be hard at times, but at least I can look at myself in the mirror and know that I did not compromise my values and my standards .
This message has been edited by moncoucou on Jun 17, 2007 12:37 AM This message has been edited by moncoucou on Jun 17, 2007 12:33 AM
I know it might be a necessary stage in order to move apart and end a relationship, but it seems to me that carrying around that much negative emotion could damage a person.
I am with you completely on that one. I have a dear friend (male) who carries a lot of hate still and I have been working my hardest on getting him to release it, not for his FWS but for himself. I don't think he'll ever be in a really good relationship until he does. It seems to me, he is too preoccupied with what she is doing to realize that he needs to pick himself up and live up to his own expectations and making himself happy rather than spend fruitless time hating her.
moncoucou
Your right, being single can be a really good thing sometimes!!!
Charlie
This message has been edited by charlie288 on Jun 17, 2007 10:40 AM
Thanks for your concern Chris, I do not plan on spending the rest of my life loathing my husband. I guess this is my way of insulating my heart against future heart aches caused by this man. You cannot begin to imagine what the depth of my love for him was, we started dating when we were both 17, we were referred to in our group as "Love story". I am a hopeless romantic and I thought we had a beautiful, precious gift and he threw it all away for some cheap thrills. He's now involved with yet another woman who is the same age as our oldest child. Once I get him out of my life and move on, I will take time to heal my broken heart, my wounded soul and ready myself to live life to the fullest.
Thanks for amplifying your comments. It is scary to fact a life-altering change...a change in status, a change in circumstances, and a (forced) change in one's view of life and love. Some of us (me included) have dealt with that by remaining stuck in anger for quite a while.
I found the biggest hurdle to get over was simply accepting that those changes were coming whether or not I wanted them. I found that navigating those changes was a whole lot easier when I let go of anger and frustration over what I would lose and focused instead on being positive about what I might do and all the choices now open to me again.
It turns out that a good attitude really is an attractive trait. So I can only imagine how I pushed people away with a negative attitude for so long.
Actually my favorite song right now is "I hope you dance" by Leanne Womack "Living might means taking chances, they're worth taking. Loving might be a mistake but it's worth making. Don't let some hell bent heart leave you bitter, When you come close to selling out, reconsider. Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance, When you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance, I hope you dance!" I plan to do just that, dance.
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