I am finding myself thinking more & more about my marriage & what to do.How do you finally come to a decision? I mean,I have been thru hell with Terry the last 3 years & yet I am still here.Yet, I find myself feeling strange when I say "I love you".Do I still love him?What the heck is love anymore? I find myself wondering if I am making a mistake by staying;wondering if there isn't someone out there that would treasure me & that I could enjoy life with.On the other hand, here I am.I must still care or I wouldn't be here. I would probably be doing alot better if I hadn't caught him in several lies the last few years.He started counciling last week but I wonder if it's too late for us.I find myself wondering if I could ever trust him again or ever believe that he loves me after the A & lies.The lying sucks.It shows no regards or respect for me or our children.
We are having more financial troubles & are probably not even going to be able to stay in the house as renters.So, I spend 24/7 wondering what is going to happen to us in regards to finances & a place to live.Plus, if we can't continue to rent here then I lose my job.We have let the kids down & have turned their lives upside down the last 3 years.I am so tired of worrying all the time.Each day is a struggle & it gets really old.Still, I do have alot to be thankful for.It's just hard to be positive after 3 years of hell.I've forgotten what it's like to not worry about my H,my marriage,money,etc.Anyway, thanks for letting me vent.Maybe 2007 will bring some good changes.I do not want another 3 years like the last 3 years!!!!!

I don't know if staying is the right thing or leaving. Could I be happier on my own or with my wife. I don't know. We have been thrown into a world where we are going to second guess ourselves forever. We are going to wonder what-if I left? Would I find happiness elsewhere or will I end up alone? Is staying for the kids the right thing or the wrong thing? This sucks. It isn't fair. Our world has been turned upside-down over selfish acts and we will suffer with the consequences in this relationship if we stay or in other relationships if we go.

BS

Thanks for the reply.You are right,we have to live with this mess no matter what choice we make.I guess that I am having a problem knowing what I really want & how I really feel.I look at my H & I see somebody I don't even know.Our situation is really hard because we never get to see each other.There is no time to even try & be a couple.So, there is not much to work with.On top of that ,throw in the financial mess, & the A & lies & it's a pretty messed up thing.I don't even feel married anymore.The only bright spot in all of this is that he did start counciling last week.Granted, counciling is not going to magically solve anything but I give him credit for seeking help & wanting to figure out why he's turned into such a lier.

I am curious Barb - if you never see him anyway - what do you think would change by divorce?

Kid

Good question & I have an easy answer for it.What would change? I would be done with him & would no longer be tortured by waiting for things to change.I see no change in the job situation right now.It's hard enough to go thru the A mess period but when you are going thru it with a spouse that you never see, then it's near impossible to try & work anything out.I'm alone all the time.It's been 3 terrible years & I'm just worn out by everything.

If nothing would change then there is little to be afraid of. That may help you at some point reaching a decision......

I think you just KNOW when the time is right and the pain of staying is greater than the pain of leaving. You know that your needs aren't being met, you know all the trust you had for the person is gone, his needs are put ahead of your own even after all he has put you through, you don't see any remorse and you still feel caught in that damn crazy making game.....

It isn't the "I'm having one bad day and I'm ready to give up".....does that make sense??

Sometimes it is one event that is so painful and horrendous that you realize you can't live like this anymore. Other times it is the accumulation of smaller things that push you to the other side of the fence.

But I still think that if you work on you and you are moving forward that you will just know when the time comes and he isn't moving forward with you and neither is the marriage.



K

Hello Barb,

It is nice to hear from you

I am struggling with many of the same issues you are.  D-day number 2 was only a few months ago.  But what is keeping me with H right now is no longer fear.  I do not fear what my life would be like without him. I am here now because I do see changes in my H and he is earning another chance. Your H has finally started counseling are you willing to wait to see what that yields? Mind you counseling takes time and people do not usually change overnight but change is possible. Or are you done no matter what? If so, then what are you waiting for? 

Take Care...Carol~

 

I'm not sure how to work on me & move forward.I spend 24/7 dealing with the financial mess,not knowing if or when we will get evicted.Then I lose my job & that presents more financial problems.I worry about my H & what will happen with us.I worry about what we have done to the kids.There is no peace in my mind or my heart & it's been this way day after day for 3 years now.If I didn't have the kids I probably would have left 3 years ago BUT there are still 3 kids here at home.It makes a difference.I just am confused about the whole mess & my feelings for him. I don't feel like I have a husband or a marriage.I'm just here alone.And, I don't actually know how I feel about him anymore.Maybe I don't even love him.Hell, I'm not even sure what love is anymore.For 14 1/2 years I loved him so much.The last 3 years I feel that the love has diminished more & more because of his lies.So, I just don't know anymore.

"I'm not sure how to work on me & move forward."  That is an honest statement -- and a place to start.

I see a lot of "worry" and waiting and "wondering" in your posts.  The more you focus on Terry and what he has or hasn't done, the less time and energy you have to focus on yourself and what you can do.  Terry is in IC -- how about you?  Do you go to counseling? 

I am sorry that you are so stressed right now.  It seems easier to look to someone else to fix our problems but the thing is, we can wait forever for someone else to fix stuff.

Jean

I don't have any easy answers. But I would just add a word of caution.
Counseling is not always the panacea one might think.

In our case, my wife pretty much got addicted to therapy, then group therapy, and then online forums. I think the individual counseling with actual professionals had some value to start with.

In the latter two however, she has had to exaggerate and falsify her own issues (and hide her own indiscretions) in order to feel needed and helpful. The online groups even led to further infidelity.

So Barb, what three things do you want to do next?

Chris.

"I think the individual counseling with actual professionals had some value to start with."

Well, yeah, that's what I meant.   I know individual counseling helped me a whole lot.  I went no matter what my (then) husband was doing, or planning to do.

One thing, tho, is that, months later when my former H DID finally join me in counseling, he had the counselor totally bamboozled.  Counselor that that H was "emotionally constricted" and that it would take a lot of time for him for him to realize and work thru issues.  I bought that for a while, until I caught him in more lies, and with more women.

Jean

<Well, yeah, that's what I meant. I know individual counseling helped me a whole lot. I went no matter what my (then) husband was doing, or planning to do.>
<One thing, tho, is that, months later when my former H DID finally join me in counseling, he had the counselor totally bamboozled. Counselor that that H was "emotionally constricted" and that it would take a lot of time for him for him to realize and work thru issues. I bought that for a while, until I caught him in more lies, and with more women.>

<Jean>

Apparently it’s not so tough to bamboozle therapists, even easier to fool amateurs. I’ve never put much stock in psychotherapy, but when my W started counseling some years ago, I asked if I could go along. Our marriage needed work and a lot of it was my fault. She was adamant that she did not want her therapist to ever hear anything I had to say – nor did she want to switch to couples therapy. She said I should find my own therapist if I wanted to. I didn’t. That may have been a mistake.

Later she secretly added local therapy groups and a series of online “counseling” venues to her schedule. Some of her secret online relationships were no more therapeutic than sparking up with her old boyfriend on the sly. Others were seemingly legit, but one eventually turned out to serve as her “discreet relationships” site not unlike the one you describe in your story.
I was oblivious for years.

Recently I learned that in these sessions she had been “revealing” some very inaccurate things about herself, me, our relationship, and our family. That probably happens a lot, and as long as anonymity & confidentiality are preserved, there may not be much harm. But she wasn’t preserving privacy for herself or our family.
In legitimate group therapy you don’t have secret meetings in bars with an OM from the group – no counselor in sight.
She claims the therapist even endorsed such activity.
She was discreet only in the sense that she kept these discussions and new relationships secret from me and the kids.

On discovery, I’ve learned that she shared a lot of true information with these people, but that much of it was harmful bunk – designed to garner favorable attention from specific male participants.

That strategy worked very well for her with one particular net-junkie ... one that I know of anyway.

Ironically, in one of the old posts I ran across she even claimed I had refused to go to therapy with her way back when. In another post I was abusive. In another I had abandoned her and my daughter. (None of these are true, BTW). She publicly posted true personal information about our son that he probably would not want her to share – especially when she wasn’t preserving our family’s privacy.

She consistently modified her description of our marriage and family to match the issues revealed by certain other participants in her groups and forums. Not surprisingly they perceived her as very empathetic. Many of them became her good buddies (though secret from her husband). They swapped pictures, etc. Of course, she had to keep some of them secret from each other. What a juggler.

These “friends” know a lot about my family (much of it untrue), but we never even knew they existed. Even now all I have are fake screen names, while some of them could walk into my office right now, call me by name and bring up personal details about my parents and children.

I’m far from perfect, but the marriage and man she describes to her secret friends are fictitious.

I’m a pretty stoic person (some would say “bottled-up,” I guess). Not much roils me. But reading these false descriptions of our life together really, really hurts.

Our real life has had some bumps, but much of it was really nice. We’ve raised terrific kids, weathered crises, death, and hard times, and there has been a lot of love. But the marriage she describes in her groups isn’t worth keeping, and the real one looks to be pretty much over now.

One forum storyline that really got to me was when she saddled our teenage daughter with the responsibility for a decision my W made to stay in our old house while my job moved me to another state. In actuality my W had been urging me for years to switch jobs, move out of “this damned town,” earn more money, and especially to buy a fancier house. I was disgusted with some of the people I worked with, so I also felt we should move.

Eventually I found the right job: more money, promotion, nice town, etc. My W gave it the green light.

On a spring’05 house-hunting trip my W picked out at least three nice houses that suited her fancy. But, I’ve now learned by that time she had already targeted an online buddy in one of her “therapy” groups for an emotional affair that could turn physical if I weren’t in the way. So she reversed course and decided she wouldn’t move right away. I moved in June, but they would follow in August. In August she said wait for Christmas. By then she started telling people that “we” had planned all along to have a “long-distance marriage” for three years (That’s how much school my daughter had left).

But her posts from that time reveal that she was never planning to go with me in ‘05, and wasn’t really sure about joining me in ‘08 – I guess it was dependent on how the A turned out in the meantime. In ’06 she bumped up the EA to a sexual one with a 3-day resort rendezvous made possible because “guess-who” pays all the bills for both households. Good thing I got a better paying job, what with all these new expenses, eh?

All of this has really soured me on the validity of therapy, especially group, amateur or any kind that invites violation of anonymity, confidentiality, privacy, and professionalism. I’m probably overreacting re. mainstream therapy. But that’s where I am on the subject right now. Still, I’m trying two new things: reading this forum and writing consistently in a journal.

Smrsh

I attended therapy and it worked well for me. The thing about therapy is......a therapist helps you figure out where you want to go and gives you a roadmap on how to get there and little exercises to work your way toward your goal. I found mine able to ask questions in a way that I would still be thinking and searching for answers for the next week or two until I saw her again.

Like everything else, there are good therapists and bad therapists. I was lucky to have found a good one for me since I do live in a smaller community and there aren't many choices.

If you aren't willing to do work on yourself, then therapy is likely not going to do anything for you besides maybe give you a place to vent now and then.

K

<I attended therapy and it worked well for me. The thing about therapy is......a therapist helps you figure out where you want to go and gives you a roadmap on how to get there and little exercises to work your way toward your goal. I found mine able to ask questions in a way that I would still be thinking and searching for answers for the next week or two until I saw her again.>

That’s great. She must be a good one. I may start up soon. Better late than never. Professional individual counseling had helped my wife too (she didn’t want to make it “couples”). Our marriage was in a very good place two years ago – at least I thought and she said it was. That is until the secret online “therapeutic” relationships started to consume so much of her time and she decided we should live 1000 miles apart. Living apart sparked deep deep depression for me – much worse than I expected -- and I thought she could see this. I called and went home often at first, but she wouldn’t visit me at all, not even briefly when I was very ill. She always had excuses – usually work, which I should have seen as odd because she has a very flexible job. Years of progress went down the drain fast. I can see now that at that very time she was concentrating on her EA with the online OM. Hurt, I withdrew -- the opposite of what I should have done I guess, because that gave them the excuse they needed to move to the next level.

<Like everything else, there are good therapists and bad therapists.>

Yeah, and I’m pretty sure good therapists don’t court and sleep with their married patients. Online forum administrators who posture daily as therapists shouldn’t either, in my opinion, anyway.

<I was lucky to have found a good one for me since I do live in a smaller community and there aren't many choices.>

Did you go to group in the small town? If so, were you encouraged to meet and socialize with group members outside of therapy (while still keeping those relationships “confidential” from your family?)

<If you aren't willing to do work on yourself, then therapy is likely not going to do anything for you besides maybe give you a place to vent now and then.>

K

A very good point.

Thanks

I never went to any group therapy. The only group therapy I could locate was run by the Pastor at a local church, although they did say those who were not religious were also quite welcome to attend. Since I don't attend church regularily I just thought it may be focused more on religion than I would be comfortable with.

I did however take a course at our local community college on personal growth - life after a death, divorce, or other major trauma. It was an excellent course and I did meet a few guys there who were just finding out about their wives affairs - one did suggest we go to a singles dance together but I declined since he was obviously not in any shape to start a new relationship, neither was I at the time.

I did meet one female in the class that I clicked with. Turns out her H has also had an affair, but they are still together. We keep in touch and go for coffee occasionally.