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

Hi all,

The Background

I originally began posting in late spring because H and I had not been sexually intimate in over a year and had barely had sex since we've married. At that time, I swore up and down H wasn't having an affair (and, of course, he swore he wasn't either). I figured we'd just grown so far apart that we needed to rebuild the love. He said that he wasn't sure we'd ever be happy together and that while he wasn't saying we should separate or divorce immediately, he wanted to see if we could make it work. We started seeing a counselor and I found this site and the DB'ing books and started DB'ing like a champ. I got really good at making myself the best person I could be. I lost weight, I made friends, I had a renewed spirit, and, because I was DB'ing so well, I was starting to fall in love with H all over again. He was even starting to warm up to me...he was amazed at the changes I was making, he was future planning with me, telling me he loved me, etc. I felt that things were finally getting back on track...except that we weren't having sex.

Fast forward to October 23rd, 2007...

After many strange occurrences (i.e., him needing to switch from our ATT wireless family plan to a Verizon plan because his company offered a 20% discount; him needing to go home to visit his parents after he'd never had to do so before), one night we were watching a football game after a romantic dinner. He fell asleep on the couch and I noticed his new cell phone (the new Verizon one he got) on the stair ledge. Honestly and truthfully, I can say I was only looking at it because I was interested in the phone. But when I picked it up, the front screen said there were two text messages. Now, my H is not a texting kind of guy. Unable to resist the curiousity, I read the messages. One message said something like I miss you and the other said something like I loved the love we made last weekend in Courtland (this was one of the weekends he went home to see his parents). I was immediately gutted and....well, those of you who've been cheated on know the feeling. I'll spare you the dramatics.

Anyway...I woke him up, we were planning on divorce, yada, yada.

I found out that he'd cheated on me once before in December 2006 with a girl he'd met through a telephone chat line. They had sex once, but he wasn't attracted to her and broke it off. The girl he was having an affair with that I saw the texts from...well, he met her in May through a telephone chat line as well (surprise, surprise, late spring) and they had a very hot and heavy affair. He spent two weekends with her and spent countless hours on the phone and sent thousands of text messages (including illicit pictures) back and forth.

He'd also cheated on me once before we got married. So this makes three girls in all. Also, he's never been able to give up looking at porn, and he's been calling this telephone chat line since 2004. But he says he's only ever met the two girls he had the affairs with.

The Present

So now, he's been seeing a counselor, we've been doing Mort Fertel's Marriage Fitness, and he's also been going to SAA (Sex Addict's Anonymous) meetings weekly. He's not looked at porn or called the telephone chat line since the SAA meetings started. He's made full confessions to my parents, his parents. He's shown a lot of courage by admitting the things he did and by seeking out the SAA stuff and freely going to the meetings. He's even going to start a once-a-week 9 month intensive SAA course.

He's saying and doing all the right things. He says that the actions he took were all born of selfishness and that he was feeding his compulsions/addictions with these affairs and that they were always about feeding the addiction. He says that he loves and wants me. Considers me his soul mate, etc. Wants to build a family with me, wants to be a good man, doesn't want to be a cheater. He says he is learing that needs to put me and our marriage as our first priority and that with that mindset, all decisions are easy.

BUT HOW DO I BELIEVE HIM?!? Thank GOD I knew better than to have kids with him. Even though we've always looked like the perfect, loving couple, I knew our marriage wasn't right.

So, now...what do I do. Do I let go and try to live in the present and try to rebuild our marriage? Do I give him YET ANOTHER chance? Do I love him? Undoubtedly. DO I trust him? HELL, NO.

Another thing...we're having sex again. Several times a week and it's good like before we got married. In fact, we've probably had more sex in the past 2.5 months than we had in the previous 6 years. For sure.

I get overcome with the betrayal and with how he could have done this again and again to me. I don't know what to do.

Any and all advice is appreciated and needed and desired. I am confused and would love some some perspective.

Thank you.

Since you don't have kids it's a question of forgiveness. If you want to forgive him, then do. Explain that you will need assurances from him that he will never do it again. You may also tell him that you may need assurance from him on a regular basis that he is being faithful. Make sure your sex lives are fulfilling and move on. Let him know that "one more time and it's over"...and you should stand by that. Don't dwell on the infidelity too much if you can help it. It is alot easier realizing it was just sex and it's over.

Thanks Patrick325...

I do want to forgive him, but I also want to know that he's never going to cheat on me again. And I guess I am looking for an iron-clad when there really isn't one.

I have been trying to make our marriage loving...but every time things start to feel really good, like we're working things out, like we're reaching our long-held goals, I get scared. I start thinking about all the things he did to hurt me and I pull myself away. I just can't get over that fear and I can't allow myself to just BE. I keep sabotaging the happy times and it's making the piecing process hard. But I can't help feel that I need to protect myself, too.

as someone who's BTDT (H saw ow 2x after I told him never to see her) I can tell you that I too question myself, if this is the right thing. Unlike the first 2 times, my H has truly been repentant and is doing stuff to hear the M that he wasn't doing before, and that;s the reason I took him back, not because I trusted him and believed him, but because I saw that this time around things were different and a light bulb finally wen on in his head.

I understand too well that trust will be super slow to come this time around. The betrayal truly hurts, I know, but you can get past it, I will post here again some awesome advice I got when I found out about my H's 2nd A this past summer:

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Your H probably did a LOT of things while he was gone that is hurtful to you now. The hardest thing to remember is that he did it to himself, not to hurt you. Moreover, you will get over this, while H has to live with it and likely screwed himself up more.
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Listen to me....you need to relax....you need to stop casting blame....you need to realize that he is back with you and it is going to take time...my H has been back for 6 mos. and still can't say "I love you"....but he is here and we are getting better....it is hard to see as it goes along...it is when I look back that I see how far we have come....
Get control of your emotions....if you can't control them then take a personal time out....let him know why....tell him you feel out of control and don't want to make things worse...he will respect you for this...
Let you husband keep his dignity...no more quizing...it will only make you feel bad....him feel bad for making you feel bad...and in the end you both have gained nothing for it....what's done is done...you can't change the past but you can change the future...look to the future....the only time I look back now is to see how far I have come....how far we have come..
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"The very nature of being the "third party" (OW or OM) instead of the "spouse" means it's a fantasy relationship. When people are in affairs, they present a side of themselves that's not representative of the whole person. It's a special version of their best aspects, free from the normal responsibilities involved in sharing a total life situation; whereas the roles and structure of family life create many restrictions and responsibilities. A person's affair is not so much a rejection of the mate as a rejection of these role restrictions. This awareness can be especially helpful in dealing with our feelings of comparison with the third party."
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As I have said before, maybe in a different way, it's not usually the affair that ends the marriage, it's the LBS's ability to control the anger long enough to move forward that does. The blame for the rift belongs squarely on the WAS but the blame for it's enlargment often falls on us, the cheated on. Getting past that was the hardest thing I ever had to do but so entirely necessary for my own personal growth.

Thank you, cat03!

Those nuggets of advice are so good. I often struggle with the comparison aspect. Is she smarter than me? Kinder than me? More fun than me? A better lover than me? and so on and so forth, as nauseum.

H keeps telling me that the other person doesn't matter and that the thing he was really having an affair with was his own compulsions and addictions and that he had objectified her to the point where she was a means to an end. At the time, he says he thought he had a real relationship, but now realizes he was just using her to feed his addiction. He thinks the idea of a comparison is silly because I am so much more.

But I don't think it's silly...I can't help but wonder what made it seem so magical to him. And why that affair was so easy and this is so hard. When I ask him that, he says the affair wasn't easy and that he was in complete mental turmoil but didn't know how to get out of the fog.

Like I said...it all sounds good...

But I am falling in to the same pit as before. I need to meditate on these DBing principles. GALing really saved me this past spring. I think I in need of getting back on that track.

Thank you so, so much for responding!

Regards,

ntl

darn it! my post didn;t work, I posted yesterday and prob closed the window too soon.

Anyways, in a nutshell, it is a very very good thing your H acknowledges how messed up his thinking was, it is a good step towards healing and moving on.

You are not being silly, it really hurts and it is very hard to control our imaginations (they tend to run wild and create all sorts of scenarios, quite a few prob worse than what really happened, btdt) The A was so easy because it was an escape route, a fun ride w/out responsibilities, now, piecing, is facing his mistakes, admit his failures and work hard at gaining your trust and build your M again.

YEY! I found this great article I'd post to lost of people which isn't online anymore, I looked for it to post it on your thread:

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About the only people more dangerous than philandering men going through life with an open fly and romantic damsels going through life in perennial distress, are emotionally retarded men in love. When such men go through a difficult transition in life, they hunker down and ignore all emotions. Their brain chemistry gets depressed, but they don't know how to feel it as depression. Their loved ones try to kee from bothering them, try to keep things calm and serene - and isolate them further

An emotionally retarded man may go for a time without feeling pleasure, pain, or anything else, untd a strange woman jerks him back into awareness of something intense enough for him to feel it - perhaps sexual fireworks, or the boyish heroics of rescuing hff, or perhaps just fascination with her constantly changing moods and never-ending emotional crises.

With her, he can pull out of his depression briefly, but he sinks back even deeper into it when he is not with her. He is getting addicted to her, but he doesn't know that. He only feels the absence of joy and love and life with his serenely cautious wife and kids, and the awareness of life with this new woman. It doesn't work for him to leave home to be with her, as she too would grow stale and irritating if she were around full time.

What he needs is not a crazier woman to sacrifice his life for, but treatment for his depression. However, since the best home remedies for depression are sex, exercise, joy, and triumph, the dangerous damsel may be providing one or more of them in a big enough dose to make him feel a lot better. He may feel pretty good until he gets the bill, and sees how much of his life and the lives of his loved ones this treatment is costing. Marriages that start this way, stepping over the bodies of loved ones as the giddy couple walks down the aisle, are not likely to last long.

Thank you so much for this article. This really sounds like my H. I really appreciate all the great words of advice. I am on the run right now, but I have a lot more to say in a bit.

Again, thank you, thank you. It feels so good to get the support.

ntl

You have GOT to get this book about male depression, it helped me to see so much and to stop asking myself "why did he do this?" I love this book, I'm barely half way but I will also share it with H, he's asked himself thousand times "what is wrong with me? why do I keep doing these things?"
"Is He Depressed or What?: What to Do When the Man You Love Is Irritable, Moody, And Withdrawn by David B. Wexler

I certainly feel he is dealing with some esteem issues. He's a smart, smart guy who wouldn't steal a paperclip from work...and now, he's got to face the reality that he's got this slimy, shame-ridden part of himself. He's been very open about how he really had compartmentalized this philandering despot and this clean-cut, well-mannered, seemingly highly-ethical guy in two separate and distinct beings. He really did create a whole separate world for himself.

And now he's also got these very strong fear of failure issues that he's dealing with. I often wonder if that's why he wants to save the marriage so badly...because he's afraid that people will think this perfect guy has failed at something (they don't know about his cheating).

He's constantly assuring me that isn't the case, and I am trying to take things minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour.

We'll see, cat03!! I've got prayers in my heart for both of us...the prayer is always happiness, regardless of what happens.

Regards,

ntl

ntl, Creating a fulfilling relationship for the long term is what true intimacy is all about. Yet, so many people are unprepared, unwilling, or simply emotionally unable to do the neceesary work to get there. It sounds to me like your H is stepping up to the plate big time. It's only natural that you feel guarded and want to self-protect, but I'd hate to see you miss out on experiencing this type of growth with him. I am not saying you should take a blind leap of faith, but everything you've posted gives reason for optimism. Good luck to you!