it has good articles and lots of excerpts from other books, I thought this one was interesting:
Quote: "This yo-yo up and down in my ability to cope with his affairs continued to keep me off balance for two or three years. There were times when things would be great and I'd think I was over the hump and had adjusted. Then...Bam! I'd get knocked all the way back down into a depression.
Of course each of us is different, but I think I'll stop beating myself up for being slow on letting the A hurt dissapear, it's been barely 2mts since I found out.
And I also found this one helpful:
Quote: One other important factor, of course, with a person feeling sexual is determined by how they feel about themselves. When we feel good about ourselves, we're more likely to feel sexual. When we feel bad, we don't feel sexual.
My H told me yesterday he still feels bad about the whole thing, and I think that also is a factor which affects his feelings for me, but at least we do have a SL and each month he has become more affectionate and more passionate when me ML, I'm glad about that even if the ILY aren't here yet.
And just today I was thinking about the different kind of love that H had for me and the attraction he had for the other (only one one note it said he loved her, all the others only mentioned how much he liked stuff about her) My loved pulled him out of a dark place when he met me, he became a better happy person, he even told me on sat. that it helped him settle down because he was in a bad place at the time. Whatever feelings he had for the other made him feel good..for a while, then he'd sink really low and he tried to get out of it by going on shopping sprees and trying to please her, neither worked.
Once the "romantic" phase dissolved they saw each other's faults and things went downhill from there.
I'm happy to think that the love we had was true love, not the fantasy addiction he had while w/the other
...but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
piecing after separation
I think that one of the important things that was mentioned was about the group they had called BAN and how staying too long in a support group can be just as bad.
I can see one or two posters here in DB that need to start using all the knowledge that they have learned from others and truly start applying it. Some seem to rely on DB as they do their own S's - so technically this BB is now their enabling crutch. Birds are meant to fly when they have grown and matured...otherwise they stay a "duck".
and on that cheery note number lady and others, I'm planning a trip to the bookstore so could I get some suggestions on titles? I have read the 5LL, DB, DR, After the Affair,Getting the Love You Want
Further suggestions? A list would be good for new folks and give less new folks some choices too.
Patience is not only a virtue, sometimes it is an impossibility.
An excellent book I'm reading now is "Healing the hurt in your marriage", a must read.
...but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
piecing after separation
I basically went to a bookstore and bought everything that pertained to how I felt at that time.
What really helped me was DB and Anthony Robbins Personal Power CD's. The cd's brought me back to where I needed to be. They were pricey, but I also use them for work. I have a lot of employees that I deal with on a day-to-day that I need to wear many "hats".
I'm glad to hear others found the site helpful. I thought it had some nice bits of information.
Here are some specific things that helped me with where I'm at:
The slow, jerky road to recovery by Peggy Vaughan
It's easy to get discouraged at the slow pace of progress in dealing with an affair. But no one goes through a neat 1, 2, 3 step process. That's just not the way it works. It's more a matter of two steps forward and one step back—with occasional times when it feels like things are right back where they started!
Surviving this jerky road to recovery may be a little easier to bear by understanding that this is absolutely common. And that while at times it may seem hopeless, with consistent effort at working together to deal with it, you can eventually succeed.
(For a visual depiction of this process, see this Graph of Recovery excerpted from the last page of our book, Recovering from Affairs.)
Here's an excerpt from "Beyond Affairs" where I describe the way it felt for me when we were in the middle of this effort:
"This yo-yo up and down in my ability to cope with his affairs continued to keep me off balance for two or three years. There were times when things would be great and I'd think I was over the hump and had adjusted. Then...Bam! I'd get knocked all the way back down into a depression.
"I frequently wished I could have amnesia. That seemed to be the only way I could forget the past. Also, I wished for time to pass. I'd always heard that time heals, but I never heard just how much time it takes. I didn't know whether I could last long enough.
"We spent many, many hours talking about our feelings and trying to get a handle on the whole experience. Little by little it got easier to handle the emotional aspects too...Finally, one day the pain just slipped away when I didn't even notice."
(end of excerpt from Beyond Affairs)
Note: As described above, this entire process took a couple of years, despite both of us making a tremendous effort to do it more quickly. In the final analysis, there are no shortcuts; this issue can not be buried or "gone around;" it just has to be gone through.
While no one would "choose" to go through this; it can, as with many life crises, be used as an opportunity to develop a closer, more honest, more trusting relationship than you ever had before--or than you could have had without doing this kind of joint work in dealing with this issue.
Excerpt from Handbook for Recovering From Affairs
Dealing with extramarital affairs is a life-altering experience. It's more than just dealing with the affairs themselves (as if that weren't enough). It's dealing with the fact that nothing is the way you thought it was. Your dreams of the "perfect marriage," however unrealistic, have been shattered. In essence, your world has been turned upside down and you must begin to make sense of this new world. Your innocence is gone and you need to face this new reality and learn how to cope with it. There's a long-term legacy to an event of this significance in your life. And it calls for a long-term effort.
Long-term Efforts Necessary to Recovery
• Accept the fact that it happened. This doesn't mean "liking" it; it just means giving up focusing on " if only" and dealing with "what is."
• Work to understand what happened in terms of the societal factors that contributed to it—in order to overcome the idea that it's only due to personal failure.
• Talk about what happened—not just for the sake of talking, but in order to move the process along—since hiding it reinforces the feelings of shame.
• Deliberately focus on dealing with it.
• Believe it's possible to recover.
• Allow time to heal. Time alone won't bring recovery, but it does require time and patience to work through this experience.
The importance of this last point—time and patience—can't be overstated. There are no shortcuts; the only way through this situation is to face it head on and deal with it. Even then, it will be difficult for everyone. Certainly, no one (either the one who had an affair or their partner) wants to drag this out; it's so painful and uncomfortable that everybody wants it to be over quickly, but it just doesn't work that way.
The way through the emotional turmoil of affairs is through—not over or around. The process of healing and growth is not the steady, smooth progression we would like it to be. It's more often a series of ups and downs, dramatic improvements and depressing backslides, progressions and regressions—a moving back and forth between periods of clear thinking and emotional confusion—with an occasional plateau thrown in.
By knowing in advance that this is the normal progression of recovery, you can avoid being so depressed or devastated when these inevitable setbacks take place. The moral is, persistence will pay off. Allow for down periods, and view each one as a fork in the road. One path leads to further decline, the other to continued change for the better.
There is no arriving, ever. It is all a continual becoming.
There's some interesting stuff on there - I'll have a good look when I get more time. I'm having a bit of a hard time dealing with my H's affair at the moment.
I liked this bit about what works...
"..making a commitment to honesty (rather than just a promise of monogamy), and engaging in ongoing, honest communication about everything that impacts your relationship, including attractions to others."
I think our problems really started because my H was not able to be honest with me about the doubts and unhappiness he had in the R, so I never had the chance to do anything about them. I've made loads of changes since the bomb, but by then he already had the OW and I'm bailing the ocean with a sieve.
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself. Galileo Galilei
this is interesting too - and in common with what Shirley Glass says
"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."
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself. Galileo Galilei
flip, I think that quote is bang on! MTH I just started reading a book called Embracing Uncertainty by Susan Jeffers. It's not specifically geared towards M per say but it's about, well, just what the title says! I think we can all related to uncertainty at the moment. She also wrote "Feel the Fear and do it Anyway". I'm trying to move into reading material that is directed to improving me versus my sitch. Flip's quote just reinforces the realization that I can't control the way my wife comes to terms with her duties and responsibilities in life, I can only work on how I relate to these things in my life, so I will keep on developing mysdelf into a better,more positive, encouraging person. I will take life for what it is at the moment. Hey, read something just for fun too! Don't forget the pleasure of reading just for the pleasure it brings.
