Regarding your wife's unwillingness to admit affair was wrong, even Michelle and DB team (which are big on patience) will say that remorse and being able to say your sorry is key for reconciliation.
If the affair was not wrong, then what your wife (and my wife) is saying is, "It's OK for me to stray when I'm not feeling connected to you." There is no covenant, commitment or promise aside from, "I'll be faithful to you as long as I feel like it." Well, that's fine in dating, but not in a marriage.
Some say that it's kindness that leads to repentance. And perhaps it takes re-connection, love and the lifting of the fog for the wayward spouse to say they are sorry and the affair was wrong. But, virtually EVERY book on the subject require some measure of remorse and an admission of guilt.
My therapist put it differently. He said living with an unrepentant adulterer is like living with a member of the mob. You need to pretend everything is OK, but the person you live with murders people for a living and thinks nothing of it. You either need to be afraid, amoral or insane to ignore that.
Isn't part of the DB process developing self-esteem, strength and attractiveness?
How attractive is someone who says, "Hey you cheated on me. No big deal"?
In some sense, I feel that capitulating to the lie that our spouses claim (the affair was OK, it's no big deal) will erode our self-esteem and our self-repect.
Don't our wives want men with backbone? If we don't respect ourselves, how will they be attracted to us?
This doesn't mean I don't believe in forgiveness. I'm big on grace. But reconcilation requires repentance.
2. The affair, in all cases, thrives in secrecy. The unfaithful spouse will seek out "permission givers" to support their affair, or at least provide euphemistic "non-judgement, we are all on journey" rhetoric. Once it's public they will have to face people who might not think their affair is a good idea. They will face reality.
Amen to that, Theo. Tacit approval in these statements. The LBS ends up almost completely alone, isolated, stigmatized for not being perfect enough to provide everything necessary to prevent an affair. Victimized for being victimized. Which also further strengthens the affair-pursuing spouse's position and resolve that they're being perfectly reasonable and everything is fine. My H even has the nerve to tell me he's the victim in all of this.
Lost another friend over the weekend. He was with H when he picked up D13--but couldn't even come to the door to say hello to me. I've known this friend for 18 years; he works for the church; nevertheless, he's more comfortable with H than with me. I truly don't understand. I had no idea that our overall morality was so very situational. I wonder what euphemisms he's used to justify his support.
M60 H52 D20 M14 yrs OW-old gf from 1986 bomb-5/18/08 H filed for D-9/10/08 D final 4/24/09 xH remarried (not OW) 2012
A friend once told me one of the reasons I am having discipline issues with my children is that I am living with an unrepentant adulterer and they have no idea what happened. The dark secret effects EVERYTHING. My children's desire to emulate their mom's free-wheeling non-Christian "self-actualization" is not informed by the fact that their mother cheated on me and tried to replace me with OM in her bed and in my children's life. They don't see the dark forces that lie beneath the "turkish delight" of new freedom.
It is hard enough to raise children as parents when both of you are consistent and 'singing from the same song sheet'. It is hard enough to be consistent when you ARE getting along as parents and co-parenting well. Children sniff out cracks in their parents armour from quite a distance and they have very strong Bsh!t meters. I have seen some consequences of my M problems emerging in my children, but it is hard to establish how much is down to general teenage angst and how much really is due to the M breakdown. All one can do is pray that the morals and principles we laid down for our children when they were small will shine through eventually. We cannot protect them forever from life and it's consequences.
Do not let your anger and hurt detract from the R you can have with your children. If telling the older children will reduce your anger and bitterness then perhaps you should do that.
As you know, I worry about you and your children continuing to live in such a toxic enviroment.
Saffie me 46 H 46 M in 1986 D20,D18,S16,D13 H's A 01/05 to 07/06 H recommitted to M 07/06 renewed vows 09/06 Going from strength to strength
Well, it seems that the WAS/adulterer often has a support system in place to justify and coddle their actions. Very few people can carry on an affair long-term without secrecy or tacit/overt supporters. Loyalties often blind people to injustice.
Onc of the great traumas in many affairs for the hurt spouse is the sense that moral/ethical "gravity" has been suspended and that the obvious injustice of the whole thing is being supported by people you thought were friends. Not only does your world fall apart, but it begins to lose meaning, as people you love betray you. A great term for this is de-narration -- a feeling that we have lost our story, that everything we live for and love has been swept out from under us. It's a very lonely feeling. I, for one, have felt that the last 15 years of my life have been wasted.
This is often the case with men, when they face the significant loss of their childrenin addition to the loss of their marriage and, perhaps, the betrayal of a friend, who might be the OM.
It's compounded when one's religious community is either uninterested in your spouse's affair or ends up treating you like a pariah.
I think exposure, to some small extent, aside from it's strategic value of causing the affair to sour, it a way of reaching for help, gaining allies and trying to re-narrate one's world. It's a desperate attempt to try to restore law and order -- to bring accountability to bear upon the WAS. It's a way of creating a small community that says, "You are not insane, the WAS is wrong."
The real question is its effectiveness.
We want to attract our spouses, not shame them.
An interesting essay would be how to determine when/if it's best to expose or not, to whom, and under what circumstances.
My friend feels that if the kids know what happened, how related this is to my wife's new "sprituality", how willing she was to discard me and replace with with another man who she wanted to become their step-father, they might be sobered and made aware of the unhealthy/dark side of my wife's new beliefs.
Well, it seems that the WAS/adulterer often has a support system in place to justify and coddle their actions. Very few people can carry on an affair long-term without secrecy or tacit/overt supporters. Loyalties often blind people to injustice.
Onc of the great traumas in many affairs for the hurt spouse is the sense that moral/ethical "gravity" has been suspended and that the obvious injustice of the whole thing is being supported by people you thought were friends. Not only does your world fall apart, but it begins to lose meaning, as people you love betray you. A great term for this is de-narration -- a feeling that we have lost our story, that everything we live for and love has been swept out from under us. It's a very lonely feeling. I, for one, have felt that the last 15 years of my life have been wasted.
This is often the case with men, when they face the significant loss of their childrenin addition to the loss of their marriage and, perhaps, the betrayal of a friend, who might be the OM.
It's compounded when one's religious community is either uninterested in your spouse's affair or ends up treating you like a pariah.
I think exposure, to some small extent, aside from it's strategic value of causing the affair to sour, it a way of reaching for help, gaining allies and trying to re-narrate one's world. It's a desperate attempt to try to restore law and order -- to bring accountability to bear upon the WAS. It's a way of creating a small community that says, "You are not insane, the WAS is wrong."
The real question is its effectiveness.
We want to attract our spouses, not shame them.
An interesting essay would be how to determine when/if it's best to expose or not, to whom, and under what circumstances.
--Theoden
I know exactly how this feels... people who I devoted a lot of time and emotional energy into helping through a difficult period (in-laws) are circling the wagons to 'protect' my WAW because they don't want her reputation sullied, and they believe whatever story she tells them.
"You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."
One of the great traumas in many affairs for the hurt spouse is the sense that moral/ethical "gravity" has been suspended and that the obvious injustice of the whole thing is being supported by people you thought were friends. Not only does your world fall apart, but it begins to lose meaning, as people you love betray you. A great term for this is de-narration -- a feeling that we have lost our story, that everything we live for and love has been swept out from under us. It's a very lonely feeling. I, for one, have felt that the last 15 years of my life have been wasted.
Wow, theo, is this ever true, and what an articulate way of stating it. In many ways I feel I have "lost my story." I had a simultaneous but unrelated betrayal in my previous ministry position, and I probably feel it there more than in my marriage. All that I had built my life around, that gave it meaning, that felt most solid suddenly shifted like sand under my feet. And with the loss of my job and my marriage, I also lost almost my whole family and my faith community and many friends. It is, indeed, a very lonely feeling.
And to add to it a "blame the victim" mentality is infuriating. If I hear "an affair is a symptom of a bad marriage, not the cause of its end" one more time, I'm just gonna have to throttle someone. Yeah, it was a bad marriage, and I would have loved to have worked on it; but before the affair he shut me out, and when the OW came along there was no hope of healing it. But he has "moved on" and is "happy" and while it's sad, I'd "better learn to move on too." Well, yeah, I'm trying, but when his financial greed results in virtual poverty for D13 and I, and his profound narcissism results in D13 being forced to make friends with the woman who broke up her family--it's not quite so easy, is it? But who's the one with the supportive friends and family? Even those to whom I've exposed the affair have hardly batted an eye about it and seem more concerned that I read H's email to find out the truth, than that what was in those emails was the deconstruction of my marriage.
It just seems another way of "gas-lighting" us, making us think we're the crazy ones.
Exposure did nothing for me. However, I would never say it's the wrong thing to do because each person's situation is different (in spite of so many commonalities).
M60 H52 D20 M14 yrs OW-old gf from 1986 bomb-5/18/08 H filed for D-9/10/08 D final 4/24/09 xH remarried (not OW) 2012
The LBS is reluctant to expose because of what they think the adulterer spouse may do. Well, what are they going to do? --- get mad and go off have have an affair. Hey, we are already there.
the LBS is reluctant to expose because they are carrying shame and, maybe, guilt generated by the affair. I say let's spread the wealth around. A person who has an affair is a self-centered dirt-bag. Expose, Expose, Expose.
BS (me) 57 WW (her) 51 M - 27+ years Sons - 34/21 daugh - 32/26 D-day - (A#1 Apr 98) (A#2 Oct 08) Status - minimal contact (me) living with OM (her) Divorce - Scheduled for Apr 09
