Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Piecing Our Marriage Back Together Again Piecing is hard...should I even do it?

Thank you, RJ. I need to hear things like this. He really has done some hard, hard things lately and I respect him and admire him for putting himself out there to really examine himself (and that can be a scary thing for any of us to do!).

I truly believe he's a good man. Not just because I married him and because I want my marriage to work, but because I have witnessed him do many great things for people...and for me.

He's a nurturer by nature and he wants to protect, protect, protect. Because of that, instead of ever bringing up conflict with me, he would bury it. He would never discuss his feelings, never tell me anything was wrong. All this burying of feelings eventually led to anger building up...on both our sides. I was resentful and angry at the lack of connection. I couldn't give the nurturer in my life the one thing he needed: LOVE.

He was angry and frustrated at not getting love from me and that coupled with his already hidden and secret complusive actions led him to seek "love" or affirmation from the only place he THOUGHT he could: a phone chat line, porn, and then, sadly, affairs.

It's very clear that he has spent his life moving from thing to thing seeking a way to fill this very deep need for love and affirmation...first it was working out, then it was me, then it was an affair (when we were separated for the summer and he was in CA while I was in NJ), then it was work, then it was the porn/chat line, and then the affairs.

He's got a hard, hard job to do, but I can really see him working hard at it. It's only been three months, but he has made great strides in self-reflection and in setting things up for himself so he can identify "triggers" and start opening lines of communication with me. So he can tell me what he's feeling and needing instead of burying everything.

This is a guy who needs LOVE. I am trying to give him that, but, yes, I'm being fairly guarded, too.

Thank you, again, RJ. Really and truly.

Regards,

ntl

this is literally crushing my H, plus the fact that ow told him off that he ruined any R she could ever had and that she will go full swing back to her porno picts to make $$, she supposedly had stop that 'cause of him, so now H is fighting with that guilt.


Ouch, same here, that's our story in a nutshell, H became a ticking time bomb.
On that book I mentioned, it says how different male depression is, how men are at some point unable to see what ails them, so they proceed to distract themselves and in the process make lousy decisions (leave, As) in an effort to stop the pain that eats them, that they dont' want to admit they have D, can't sort their feelings like us women, so that makes it harder to deal with the real issues.

It is hard to let them work it out and remain unaffected. I think the whole thing came crashing down on H again, he was xtra quiet and wanted to be alone yesterday, I am trying to understand. He does talk to me (but feels ackward) about the anger/guilt feelings towards ow, he is now putting two and two together and realizing the full pict of ow and her means to make $$ with her body and he is totally disgusted, he really didnt' know the whole thing until now.

I also remain a bit fearful, It will take us both a few months to put our defense walls down hon))))))))))))

I hear you! Everyday, every interaction, I have to tell myself: Do the loving thing, do the loving thing! At the end of the day, when I put my head on the pillow, I can rest easy because I know that I am working hard to bring loving interaction in to my life.

I can CHOOSE...every day, every hour, to be mean, spiteful, hurtful, resentful (AND NOT ONE PERSON WOULD BLAME ME!!!), but I am choosing a different path. One that requires me to set aside my hurt, my anger, my pain and to focus on love. And my soul feels bigger, brighter, stronger, and more beautiful because of it.

If I let my H's affairs make me a mean, resentful, depressed person, I've let the affairs beat me. And I am a fighter, not a loser, so that ain't happenin'.

We'll make it! One way or another!!!

Thank you for keeping tabs on me and helping me!

Regards,

ntl

ntl,

Just cruised your thread after your comment on the article I left. I'm not sure where your H is at spiritually, but I will offer a couple of great resources that have helped me:

http://www.bebroken.com

http://www.everymansbattle.com

They offer daily Emails that really keep one focused.

I'll offer another link to an article (for you) that made an amazing difference to my perspective during my early walk through some difficult times:

http://www.masteryoflife.com/resentment.html

You seem to have a great outlook. That is key. Sadly, there are many here that take years to get to that point. Remember to take this as a process, one day at a time. It's not a sprint, it's a marathon.

One additional reference I'll offer is the companion book to the one that was recommended to me: "For Men Only" by Shaunti Feldhahn. Naturally, it's titled "For Women Only". FMO was an interesting and easy read. I highly recommend it.

God Bless,

N.

ntl, I left a message for you on my thread about my own experience with this issue. I agree with RealJourney, wholeheartedly, your husband is stepping up to the plate big-time, and from what you have written about him, he does seem like a man worthy of putting a bit of work into! (he sounds like my own H)

I did a lot of research into the porn issue. It is huge. This is one of the most important un-talked-about issues in the country today (and I used to think it was US foreign policy that took top prize). Porn is emasculating a whole generation of young men. For some reading, google for "The Impotence Pandemic" by Judith Reisman. She has testified before Congress on the porn issue -- little good will it do though, porn is Big Business, and it is mainstream big business investors who hold the stake.

Also see the website, ObscenityCrimes.org Dr. Mary Anne Layden (U of P professor) has an article there: "If Pornography Made Us Healthy, We Would Be Healthy By Now". ntl, what is happening to your husband is not uncommon. It is as if our men have been preyed upon, have been made ill for profit. Your marriage is worth working on. Also, you might want to look into the idea of couples therapy with a credentialled, experienced sex therapist -- likely you can get a contact through SAA.

hijack to cat03 -- thank you for your posts on this thread, I found them personally very helpful.

Thank you, again, for your feedback. I am going to check these sites out. I've realized that I am definitely a researcher! I feel like I need to research these things to death...I just have such a strong need to understand what the heck is going on with this stuff and how powerful the draw is.

And you make a great point about the sex therapist. We've got a great one. She's a psychologist who studied at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. She's been working with H on helping him figure out what healthy sex/sexuality looks like. She's been really pushing the idea that we have to define that for ourselves, but that one of the keys is that there should be no shame in it.

When I think back to our relationship before we got married, I now remember how preoccupied my H was with sex. We had sex all the time. Sometimes several times a DAY. It freaked me out sometimes because I felt like that was such large part of what we had going that we never had time to develop anything else. And then...we got married and it was like someone turned off the tap. And then he drove all that need in to work.

*sigh*

Complex and confusing.


ntl