Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums Infidelity/Extramarital Affairs/Jealousy Need to forgive OW and move on... help!!!!

I think you guys are right. As the LBS we tend to romaticize the A beyond reality. I think most of us seek out reassurance. We want to hear that our spouses desire that chapter in their life over, finished and long-forgotten. My husband isn't a great communicator so this is probably one reason why I have stuggled with this.

My therapist has had both my husband and I together in her office and she has pointed out to me that he may not be able to tell me what I want to hear. That's just the reality of it. And somehow I need to find peace with that.

I think ultimately peace will lie within me and not from validation outside myself (i.e. husband, or any other man, person...).

Fortunately I'm doing really good and I feel like I'm back on track.

P.s. Sol, I can relate to that surrealistic feeling about the spouse wanting to work on the relationship. My husband was ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN he wanted a divorce for about 5 months. There was NO wavering and he's not the wavering type. So when he did change his mind after 20K in lawyers, etc, and just before the first court date... THAT was surreal!!!

Hey you forgot 'put on MTV very loudly and leap around to some stupid song'. That'll get her out of your mind.

I try not to let myself think the OW is somehow better than me, she was just 'new'. H gets bored easily. No matter who he was married to, I think he would have found it hard to pass up the excitment of the OW. I think in many ways he was running away from what he saw as the more mundane aspects of his life, not just me. Hell, who cares. I have a much more exciting life without him too!

Oh yeah!!!!! Dancing helps... and one more thing to add to the list of things I like about myself. I had decades of dance classes beginning when I was a toddler (from ballet to hip hop) so I'm a pretty good dancer.

Just like your husband mine gets bored easily too. I remember before the A and divorce thinking that he didn't want a relationship but entertainment. He'd complain about us not going out enough with friends or having enough parties. Even though I'm much more social than my husband, I'm the type of person who is very content hanging out with husband at home, taking walks and spending time with my family.

hey root!

When my W started telling me things I wanted to hear, it actually made things more difficult, it wasn't the panacea I fantasized it would be.

Then, after a while, it became almost irrelevant whether I heard them or not.

Now, I hear some things from her on occasion that I never thought of from perspectives I never considered, and you know what? Much more satisfying in a way.

The way I see it, there is no way to heal the past. That will always be a wound. We can heal the relationship, protect it and each other, make sure we don't wound it again like that. All you can really do with the past is maybe learn from it a little, but then turn your back on it, make peace in the present, and make plans for the future that are healthy, sensible, and loving.

Reminds me of something I tell my kids all the time: Life Isn't Fair. It's just not. Politicians make careers and steal our money pretending that they can make it so, but they can't. No one can. It's not designed to be fair.

I think we tend to forget that cheating spouses may hold all the cards, but they're lost. They're so lost that it takes them a long time to come to terms with it. Until they do, I don't care what they say, it doesn't mean much anyway because for it to mean something, it has to be based on their actions, and a history of acting right, and that just takes time for them to get comfortable in.

In other words, they don't like to tell us what we want to hear even if they believe it themselves because they feel like liars and imposters if they do...because they not know what WE know about what they've done, they know a whole lot of things we DON'T know and will NEVER know. It's hard to swallow.

I actually think it's a good sign that they have trouble saying or doing some things (for a time) because it means (to me, I think) that they're paying the piper, balancing the books, taking an honest look at themselves.

When they get there, I believe they crave personal integrity more than anything. In a misguided way that's what "allowed" them to cheat, because they wanted to act on some of their true feelings. Unfortunately, they left out the third part of the equation, which is the values and commitment part which is there to temper the feelings.

Unfortunately, in our world, acting on impulse and pleasure is glorified as the route to true happiness; ironically, it's only by living a life guided by right thinking and allowing values to trump destructive pleasure that people really start getting some payoffs from true happiness.

I don't think about H and the OW a great deal. No point. And I've always thought of time as my ally, because he'll realise it's just the same old thing. Being with a new person doesn't stop them getting old and boring eventually.
But I had a little wistful thought today that they're creating shared memories. They've known each other for over a year now, will be coming up for a year of seeing each other. I believe they spent Xmas together with H's d8. They're building up a proper little R. That's a bit hard to think about.
So I won't.

I hope this will help. I am a recovering, almost no more ow. It is not a person on top of the world who could knowinly make a choice to be romantically involved with a maried person.

For that matter, it is not a person on top of the world who would cheat on their spouse.

In my opinion, 2 weakened people (for whatever reason) come across each other and reason like crazy to justify temporary escape, relief.

People who do what we do are just avoiding the hard work it takes to deal with ourselves. The saddest thing about that is, whatever is bothering us is still there. Also, much of what is bothering us isn't even our fault, but if we don't get to the bottom of it, we don't realize that. But we choose behaviour that is our fault and feel worse instead of better.

I've had to do some major forgiving in my lifetime. It isn't always the easiest thing to do. It is the most rewarding when it has truly happened. I wish you the best of luck with this and every other goal.

that does help, thank you.