Guilt can make us defensive which in turn can make us angry. I guess that since that is what I am dealing with now, that is where my head is at. Probably not relevant to the conversation, but was where my head was at this AM
The guilt for what my H was doing with OW, showed in anger. He was angry at me all the time, angry at the kids, short tempered.....the guilt made a huge difference in how he acted. And in hindsight, that anger was still prevalent when he was insisting that he WASN'T with OW - hmmmmmm.
Denise
"Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things"
The guilt for what my H was doing with OW, showed in anger
Yes - here too, the guilt/anger became the justification.
If we had the SLIGHTLY of differences of opinion, it bacame a basis for a whole new "issue" that strengthened his feelings that "this A" must be right and "we" must be wrong.
But that guilt was during the affair and during the fog. The anger he felt after was more of an anger that he could actually believe he used these issues as a wedge.
He confessed to our MC by himself sometime soon after I had proof it was really a PA. Our MC was very clear to him that I would be angry and I would be angry for a long time. Our MC told him that if we were to survive this, he had to just 'take it' because the A was all his fault.
Any issues he had used for justification could have been something he could have chosen instead to talk to me about - instead of talking to the gutterslut and getting her version of sympathy instead of actually working to resolve the issue (something married people are supposed to do)
I am so had he listened to MC, but this caused him (right or wrong we'll never know) to turn his anger inward.
He had huge guilt - but then he SHOULD have huge guilt. He broke a lifetime promise. He broke a vow. That's the kind of thing that makes someone guilty.
I think the anger used a wedge was easier than the guilt so that's what he picked for a long, long time.
Once that avenue proved unproductive, he only had himself to blame. Anger turned inward. He had to accept that he crossed his own boundries of what made a man honerable - and he had become a liar and a cheat.
"Anger is a natural response to having your boundries violated." There's no mention here of who did the violation.
I think the WS needs to feel guilt and anger because they violated their own boundries of what makes up a decent human being. Someone who feels no guilt for cheating on their partner - someone who feels no anger at themself for letting that happen.... is someone who has not felt the consequences of their actions.
-Susan
This message has been edited by stillkickin on Jan 14, 2008 6:49 PM
Guilt certainly promted a defensiveness within me, prior to dday, to the point that I went way past angry to stoic, stone-faced, unreachable. I'd never experienced such anguish in the midst of such depravation. But my affair was something that wasn't supposed to hurt anyone, so I did my best to just lock away all the negative emotions I was feeling, to supress them. What I ended up doing was locking away all emotion altogether - good and bad, positive and negative. At that point, I wasn't angry at all, but the real "me" just almost disappeared.
Wow, David, that sounds very much like some of the things my WH has said. How did you get beyond the guilt and find yourself again? What brought you back to reality and give you the courage to face yourself and look past your guilt, and the strength to do what was needed to be done to get on the right path to healing yourself and your marriage? I know this is not an easy question to answer.
~ CAL
"You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection" ~ Buddha
This message has been edited by SoCalGal on Jan 15, 2008 4:44 PM
Wow, David, that sounds very much like some of the things my WH has said. How did you get beyond the guilt and find yourself again? What brought you back to reality and give you the courage to face yourself and look past your guilt, and the strength to do what was needed to be done to get on the right path to healing yourself and your marriage? I know this is not an easy question to answer.
Cal, I am somewhat hesitant to respond to your questions because my answer is of a highly spiritual nature. I am not sure I ever did find myself again...I learned that I really do not have anything to be proud of, in my own self. I am that depraved person all the time - the one capable of far worse than I really want to think about - and have nothing to boast in except for the grace given to me through my relationship with Jesus Christ. I don't know if I would've been able to get past my actions if I was not able to realize total forgiveness in Him, also extended through the words and actions of Tiffany.
At the same time, Cal, Tiffany had every societal and moral reason and right to walk away. It was totally up to her. If she had walked away, no one would think any less of her as a person. Even if she decided to forgive me, she didn't have to give me another chance. I feel certain that your husband is not unreachable, but you don't have to be the one to reach him. I think you've been very gracious, and you're learning how to consistently administer "tough love", how to define and keep your boundaries. Who knows, one of these days something may break through the shell and reach the man. My experience is that nothing does it like totally unmerited grace.
David - Please can you explain a bit more for me how you see your "self" here. You see I have noticed how my WS wife seems to have acted as if she her-self was not something she liked or had confidence in. Also, the result of the A has broken the back of the confidence I had in my-self too. I have been wondering how important the concepts of myself are. My problem seems to be that if I dissapear out of the equation then there seems to be nothing to base action/ decision etc in life on. It feels firstly a bit of a relief but then I get sense of may be I am avoiding facing up to my existence here. I end up trying to live a life based on love for all as a starting point but this immediately requires me to manifest myself into the world. As soon as I act my-self then it all gets very difficult and I notice how I may be becoming self-ish. This "self" thing seems to have selfish habits (needs/ wants etc.). It seems very difficult to love and be "I" or "me" or "my-self"!
Can "you" help me here please? Does this make sense - I am a bit confused my-self here!
I viewed your message this morning, and have been pondering it since. I really think it's a paradigm issue, but fail to find better words to explain it...yet. I am still contemplating, and hope to have more of a reply sometime soon.
Thanks David - I appreciate your thoughfulness as always - and will look out for your response.
I suppose in my case I am recognising these days the way that "I" is a notion of myself that I now can at least view with perspective and understand that the concept is just that. This is manageable for me and helps me. From this view-point I can see my habits and have a chance to influence events (ie my intentions and actions from them). This is how I am seeing things these days. But I am keenly aware of how easy it is to slip into thinking a kind of "unconscious" view of me where I become potentially more of a victim of my habits/ tendencies etc.. In other words I can see a way of moving towards a different way of living. At the heart/ base foundation of this way of looking at things is something like you describe though and this is a realisation that "I" am not so substantial as I thought and that becoming more connected with the universe and everything in it has great beauty and potential for understanding and healing. Well.. something along those lines. May be this helps explain a bit more where I am.
