LG, You are in a difficult position. I know that if I saw my OW again I would want her badly. We parted with lots of things yet to discover about each other. Fortunately our lives do not overlap anymore so the only way is if one deliberately gets in touch with the other. I suspect that she (as a separated HD woman) will have found a new partner by now. She has probably had many. Good luck LG. SD - Jesus was a great guy.
I have removed myself from my difficult position of trying to decide if my H's OW should remain as his business manager.
Sunday evening as my H and I were trying to work out the logistics of his OW staying on as his manager, it became apparent to me that it was not going to work at all. As my H talked to me about the situation, he was indirectly telling me how difficult it was going to be and he demonstrated how he was still feeling for her (not that I expected him to turn his feelings for her off immediately) and I was able to sense from his responses and body language to our discussion that we will simply have to make a clean break from her totally. It means more business work for me and him, but we shall manage somehow.
I thought I was being compassionate by even considering keeping OW on in the business, but it would not be fair to me, my H and especially her. They wouldn't be required to interact at all, but I have decided to not even take the chance of the R between them continuing.
LG-who thinks Jesus IS still a great guy, whom she loves very much!
A blessed and happy marriage is a union of two forgivers and Him, because...a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12.
LG, I guess that all of us on this forum married the wrong people although we didn't know it at the time. As life goes by we meet many more other people and there is a good chance that we will meet someone much better suited to us than our spouse. Of course we are no longer young and free enough to "dump" Unsuitable and go off with Suitable without also dumping other people we love dearly (children, in-laws etc.). However if we are working with Miss Suitable and doing all the lovely flirting etc. that we would like to be doing with Mrs. Unsuitable then the temptation to have it all would be just too much to resist. Expect him to take a long time to get over it LG, maybe he never will. SD who believes in Jesus but struggles to believe in God - probably the opposite view to hairdog and somewhat short of lost_girl.
Now, I can appreciate the POV of your last post, but I don't subscribe to it. I don't think I married the wrong person and my H has come to the same conclusion, albeit only lately, that he did not marry the wrong person either.
The two of us each simply got caught up in a season of seduction--him with OW and me with things other than my H, which has been turned into a good thing now really for the both of us, because it allowed us to see what was wrong with our R and M and what it was we really wanted--each other.
My H has shared with me time and again that while he felt he loved/loves the OW and was/is deeply attached to her, he could NEVER live with her and/or raise her kids. He can't stand her family either. She would have always been the OW, never a wife. In time he finally realized that the type of relationship with OW was NOT healthy because he wanted a wife (namely me) and the relationship you have with a wife. I had to change in many ways and did and he is enthralled with the "new" me.
Yes, it will take a long time for us both to get over this past year in our lives, and to heal--the OW must be cut out completely from our lives. I also fully understand that he may never fully get over the OW. But I can assure you that I will do everything in my power to make that happen as much as possible. My H is going to be so well taken care of in so many ways, I hope one day I hear from him, "OW--who is that?"
I pray that you are able to work out your faith issues SuperDave. Faith in God and His promises to us are such wonderful things. You are in better shape than my H though, he does not believe that Jesus is the Son of God, nor does he believe in God Himself. However, he will concede that a higher power MUST exist. Makes no sense to me--it must be a man thing, I don't know. My thoughts are that if you believe in a higher power, why wouldn't it be in the God of the Holy Bible?
LG--who wonders if you are an American living in England or are truly British, because I can't hear an accent!
A blessed and happy marriage is a union of two forgivers and Him, because...a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Ecclesiastes 4:12.
I agree with LG about "marrying the wrong person." I think that almost any marriage can be happy if both people choose to be kind and loving to the other and try to meet the other person's emotional needs; in other words, if they truly live the vows they made at their wedding to love, honor, and cherish (assuming they had a religious ceremony). I'm sure that Michele and other marriage counselors, who are fairly successful in saving marriages, have seen some marriages that would appear to be beyond saving turn around and become strong, loving, happy marriages.
I'm not a believer in soulmates, that there is one and only one person in this world who is right for you; and if you can only find that right person, everything will be wonderful. I've seen too many people leave marriages to marry their "soulmates" only to have that second marriage end in divorce.
What has turned things around for us is that I finally realized how hurt and rejected my husband felt when I'd turn him down. I honestly didn't see it as rejecting him (besides, from listening to married friends, I thought it was the norm). Like some of the wives Michele mentions in her book, I saw sex for him as "scratching an itch" and didn't realize that it was an emotional (and physical) need for closeness and intimacy and one of the ways that he showed me he loved me.
What has turned things around for me was the realization after reading TSSM and some of the posts here from you and the other men in SSMs that I was hurting my husband, that he felt I didn't care about him or love him. If I came up to him and hugged him or asked for a hug, and he told me that he was too tired or too busy or that his arms were sore, etc, etc, etc, I would have been hurt and felt that he didn't love me. Yet, I didn't see that I was doing that to him.
Have you ever told your wife how you feel? Michele has some great suggestions in her book (I believe they're in the second half) showing the steps to take. Despite other issues in our marriage, if my husband had told me (without being accusing) how he felt, I would have listened and things would have changed between us.
There is also a "nuts and bolts" aspect to sex, otherwise known as technique, that came into play with us. A lot of times, I would have ML with him except that it's kind of messy (sleeping on a wet spot, having to get up and go to the bathroom to avoid bladder infections, waking up because of a tickling sensation on my inner thigh from leaking fluid, worrying about "leakage" later in the day if we did it in the morning or at lunch, etc.).
I would happily have given him a hand job except that he, like every other man I knew, was used to the straight up and down motion with lots of friction that you guys probably use on yourselves. I'd find myself praying silently "please come, please come, my arm's about to fall off, please come, etc.) and then I'd start silently counting until he'd be finished. This is going to sound strange, but try taking a good-sized cucumber, put oil on it, set it in front of you and anchor it somehow, set a timer to 5 minutes (of however long it usually takes), and start stroking hard and fast up and down using your arm muscles up to at least your elbow until the timer goes off (I don't think you want to do this in front of anybody else though).
Then, there's oral sex. Again, my husband, like the men I knew before him, expected or knew only the "thrust in and out" movement, which left me with a sore jaw. Again, you can use a good-sized cucumber to get an idea. Only this time, peel most of the cucumber (leave enough peel at one end so that you can hold onto it easily). Again, set the timer, and then push and pull the cucumber in and out of your mouth without leaving any teeth marks on it (that's why it'd be better to peel it so that you can see the teeth marks).
But, this is where a really good book on techniques can help. The absolute best one I've ever found (and my husband would agree) for women on making love to men is by Lou Paget, How to Be a Great Lover: Girlfriend-to-Girlfriend Totally Explicit Techniques that Will Blow His Mind (she's also written a book for men called How to Give Her Absolute Pleasure). The chapter for women on hand jobs is especially great (and there's one technique that she named after the male friend who taught it to her, Ode to Bryan, that works much better than I ever expected and uses a motion using only hands and wrists that I could do for hours except my husband can only stand it for a few minutes). This isn't one of those books that simply give lots of positions (and as she points out, there really are only 6 basic positions). She covers kissing, manual sex, oral sex, positions, etc. She provides explicit, detailed, step-by-step directions with very tasteful drawings, especially in the chapter on hand jobs. The book is written in a very friendly (like talking with a good friend) and tasteful manner but is explicit (and uses the proper names for body parts). Just read the glowing reviews at amazon.com .
I'm not sure how you would give such a book to your wife. I bought a copy myself because of a recommendation and then later bought a copy of the book for men for my husband simply because we wanted to make ML better.
Michelle (who was lucky enough to live in England as a child for several years when her AF dad was stationed there and hopes to return someday, but who doesn't miss cardinal spiders)
Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. Will Rogers
To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. C. S. Lewis
