LRT UNDER SAME ROOF II

[craig54]

Cog, thank you and praise the lord for your post from yesterday.after the first time i read your post my intial reaction was "well that's a little harsh". then i read a couple of more times and realized how real your words were. i was asking the Lord for a sign, i just did not realize i would run into it at 90miles an hour. a real wake up call. i thought and prayed about what you wrote for most of the day and night. i redicated my self to loving my wife unconditionally. this is what she deserves. God does have a plan, and it is in time frame , not mine. a huge weight was lifted off me when i really turned it over to the Lord and stopped trying to do it myself. i truly love my wife. a lot of great things have happened during the last 11 weeks since the bomb. i would not change any of what has happened. God bless you Cog. thank you again. your wise words are greatly appreciated.

[craig54]

Cog, an after thought, i checked the website for Retrouville. it looks like a great place to start to rebuild a marriage in trouble. i just don't know how to approach my wife with the idea. she has been pretty adamant about not going to counseling . she is pretty stubborn. i have suggested a few times, but she always said she has been thinking about it but has not had the time to call. she is pretty confused, and i don't think she is ready to face her issues. i will pray about God opening a door to introduce the retrouville idea. any suggestions.

[COG]

Craig:

I have pretty good intuition, can read sitches and get to the heart of the problem fairly quickly. As such, I tend to go right to the heart of the matter. Sorry but I don't have enough time for much else.

My comments are met with denial and defensiveness much of the time, but I'm usually right on target. I'm not a professional, but I've lived through this nightmare and came out on the other side. I'm not here to be popular, but to speak the truth as I see it, hopefully in words that are not my own. So keep an open heart and mind, and pray about the meaning behind the words. My motivation is to help restore your family, not to feed my ego.

i thought and prayed about what you wrote for most of the day and night. i redicated my self to loving my wife unconditionally. this is what she deserves.

Easily said. Now, you have to believe that, and live that to the deepest core of your soul. It's easy to say it, not so easy to live it.

Here's some examples from your last post.

she is pretty stubborn...she is pretty confused...i don't think she is ready to face her issues

And that's just from one paragraph that you wrote. You have a very negative vision of your W. I sense it, and believe me, she senses it. If you're thinking it, she's hearing it in your words, your facial expressions, your body language. When you learn to accept her as she is, not judge her, speak about her in loving terms, then you will have grown. You will have a different spirit around you that she will also sense. But it can not be faked, it has to be real.

I recommended Retrouvaille mainly for YOU! I think YOU are the one that requires fixing here, not necessarily your W. I can say that with confidence because I've lived through it myself. I see myself in you and it took a very long time for me to realize my sin. False Pride!

I hope you can learn to love your W like Jesus does. Trust me, when YOUR heart changes, your sitch will change.

God Bless,

COG

PS My W only went to Retrouvaille because I wanted her to. I also believe she went so that she could say she tried everything to save the M. Retrouvaille was not the silver bullet I had hoped it would be. We separated shortly after and stayed separated for four years. But I learned so much about loving. It made a huge difference in ME, MY life, MY actions, MY thoughts and words. So your W might be open to it if you can somehow realize and admit that it's mostly for YOU and not to fix her.

[craig54]

cog:
i won't disagree with the fact that i need fixing. both w and i do. false pride, i understand. you're right sometimes i do have a very negative view of my wife. there are a lot of emotions mixed up in all this. i guess it is just a matter of sorting them all out. with prayer all things are possible. i hear you as far as my heart changing. it won't happen overnight, i need volumes of patience. i need to let go of all the pain involved in this. i need to completely forgive my wife. i know i have a long way to go. she can read me like a book. i cannot fake anything. but with Gods help i can learn to love my wife completely. my sitch is alot more complicated than i can write. we both need to do some soul searching and be more open with each other. but i cannot do it for her. that is where i get frustrated sometimes. i can only work on me. that is what divorce busting is all about. but i know , i love my wife and i want our marriage restored. i want a completely new relationship. thank you Cog.

[john210]

Cog, Craig,
I am in the same boat when it comes to negative feelings toward my wife. How can you not have those feelings with a person who is willing to throw everything you have built together away because.......fill in the blank here. I understand what is being said here but I hold a grudge and will probably hold one even if our marriage stays intact. Last night e were out for supper with oldest daughter and her boyfriend. Everything was going fine until discussions regarding the holidays began. I did a very poor job of hiding my resentment at the whole situation. It was very visable. I can not help it. Are we supposed to continually turn the other cheek becasue WAW woke up one day and decided she needed a change. Ef that, i've spent the last four months thinking about how i can be a better husband.....but it's not all about me!!!

[I_Wanna_Make_It_Work]

Craig - I'm following along here. I think Cog is spot on. But he usually is. The anger toward your W is natural at first. For me it was a brief period of anger and then months of disappointment. But as time goes on, you do learn to accept their character issues lovingly.

One of the great scriptural lessons for me on this subject was the story of Noah. No, not the ark. But later in the book, there comes a point where Noah gets drunk and is laying in his tent naked. One son sees, runs out and expoits what he saw. He ends up being cursed forever. Noah's two other sons walk in backwards, so as to not see him, and lay a blanket over him. That's our job as husbands. To turn a blind eye to our W's shortcomings and cover their nakedness.

I am my W's biggest defender in all of this. I defend her to my family. To our common friends. And to anyone who seeks to lay all the blame for the seperation on her. I think COG wrote it. You have to love her the 1C13 way. Once you can get to that point, there is nothing she can say or do that really matters. And how can you not reciprocate Love when someone allows it to flow so freely?

[craig54]

john210, it is not all about you, but you can control only you. i understand the feelingsof resentment. but you need to let it go as i do. she will not want to come back if she shes a very resentful man. we have to let go.

[craig54]

i wanna make it work, i get it , the story of noah is a great example. i believe it all comes down to making peace with the situation in my heart and soul.peace in the knowledge that God is control of the situation and i need to seek him. i understand the defending of my wife, no matter what happens. the Lord works on this bulletin board, he is doing surgery on my heart as i write this now. it is very humbling. it does come down to faith. i see fellow db'ers in the beginning of their odyssey all doing the same thing. i think after reading DR everyone starts working feverously on the concepts hoping for a quick fix. after 3 months, i can honestly say, it takes time. the book talks about being patient. it only touches the surface. this will be the hardest odyssey i will ever face. harder than losing my parents at 19, harder than first marriage ending up in a divorce. but i love my wife more today than 3 months ago. i will not give up.

[COG]

Craig,

Don't count the days, just live one moment at a time. My W and I were the perfect couple, as most of our friends told us regularly. Needless to say they were all SHOCKED to hear we were having problems. It took us about 5 YEARS to work through our issues, including four years of separation. It took that long because it too ME that long to admit, accept, and take responsibilty for MY sins.

But it was my W that left ME! But it took me many years to realize and accept that she was RIGHT in leaving me. I wouldn't listen to anything else, but the searing pain of loosing my family opened my granite heart, and leveled my giant ego.

This struggle you are in is not about your W my brother, it's about YOUR salvation. Can you love as Jesus loves? Can you see your W through the eyes of her creator? Can you see Jesus in her face? That is your struggle, that is your calling, that is your challenge. If you are successful at it then as IWMIW said your W will reciprocate love when you let it flow so freely. Unconditional, without expectations, without ties and strings, without reciprocation. Give it freely as our saviour does.

God Bless the Struggle,

COG

[craig54]

cog, the Lord works in mysterious ways. my salvation is assured, but my sins of failing to walk the walk has untimately damaged my marriage, my w deserves a fully committed God fearing man, who leads . this whole situation has brought me to my knees asking God for forgiveness. my lack of faith has hurt my entire family, i have been a weak man. pray for me cog, i have to be torn down before i can be rebuilt. cog, thank you brother.