Living with disdain (OK, I avoided the word hate)

[FaithfulH]

Bworl,

Thanks for the response! As always I agree with much of what you write. Thanks for not making your response a personal attack on me....as mine was not intended that way either. I don't want to get into a point by point discussion....suffice it to say that everything I see as a positive...somebody else would see it differently. Most importantly, FIB is not seeing these things as a positive right now. My ONLY goal is to help FIB consider looking at her actions differently.

Yes, some find a way to forgive and move on, somehow finding a healing place. But I submit to you that MANY, perhaps even MOST, do not. And for those that do, a STRONG statement of commitment by the offending spouse is almost always a need before the left behind spouse can be moved to trust again.

This is probably the one part of your post that I am 180 the other direction. The idea of an "offending spouse" is foreign to me in that I believe that describes ALL of us. But if you insist on classing the WAS or MLCer as the "offending spouse", in my experience they will almost NEVER make a "STRONG statement of commmitment" early in the restoration process. If this EVER comes, it will be well down the path of restoration. And the trust thing...goes both ways. Believe it or not, the "offending spouse" often has as much mistrust of the LBS as the other way 'round. It's either a vicious spin downward...or upward if one spouse decides to stop it.