I knew that someone was going to ask about the stages and they are pretty accurate to a point. The depression is the worst part of it all to realize that life isn't all it is supposed to be and to look at everything you have done wrong and all of the people that have been hurt and to know that you did all that. About being happy that is a crock of [censored]. I thought I would be happy but I never was truly happy. Knowing that the reasons I left my family were simply stupid and childish. How can anyone be happy knowing that their family is suffering and going without and that their children are crying and your wife is crying and that everyone around knows what an [censored] you are. How can anyone truly be happy when they have completely [censored] up everything for the sake of making a statement or getting a piece of ass on the side. It isn't worth it none of it has been worth it. The guilt consumes me daily and no matter what I do it will always be there knowing that I was a SOB who walked away and deserted my family for what.Nothing. I got my space and my freedom and I eat alone and sleep alone. I do not give a [censored] if you think your husband is happy he is not and is only lieing to you and himself and to anyone who will listen. I have money and there is nothing I can buy to make up for what I have done to my family.
Hey F.F. FWIW..I have liked you from the start.Your honesty about your situation shed some much needed light on my life. Thank you for that. Your last post was very insightful. My H left about a year and a half ago to live with his secretary. I won't go into dirty details, but he tried to come back quite a few times but the secretary was always there waiting if things didn't work out..And of course, they didn't..We tried too much too soon.
Fast forward to now. Yes, I have filed. H still living with secretary. No, he's not happy. You described him to a "t". He walks arouund like he has the world on his shoulders and dropped it. As for me, too much damage had been done. Still love him to the core, but until he comes to realize the impact of what he has done, there really is not M left. Now, my question is, even if we are going through the Big D, is there anyway the you can recommend me helping my H through his depression, guilt and anger at himself? It's weird..I am not angry at him anymore. In a way, I am still WAY protective of him, even after all the crap he has pulled. AS for he and OW, it's a match made in hell. But we all new that. She treats him like dirt, he treats her like dirt. I do think he wants to come back. But I see that he hasn't changed a bit. Still thinks everything was my fault, yadda yadda. Sure, I take responsibility for my 50%, but he needs to take his fair share of it too. I admire the fact that you have come to this board and allowed us to get into the brain of an MLCer so to speak. Too often we characterize these WAS as evil, vengeful people who had all this planned out..the stuff they did to their family, etc. Now, after reading your post, I realize it's way bigger than that. Way bigger. I see H as spinning and spinning out of control and not realizing the damage he leaves behind. It's like he has no control, when he really does. As for OW..Well, she isn't going anywhere. I know I can't make her accountable in all this solely, but it isn't easy to build a new R with H when she is there spitting sh"** in his ear about why he should be with her. Well, FF, sorry to hijack. Your posts are very thought provoking which aided in my journaling over here! Hey, as for your wife, hang in there. The ILY isn't on the card not because she doesn't love you, she is just scared to say it. Simple as that. Be yourself. Be honest. Tell her what you are thinking and feeling when the time is right. Remind yourself what you love about her and don't keep waiting for that bomb to drop. You are seeing things differently now and so is your W. I bet you are more appreciative of the little things that a R has to offer. And, she sees it. Believe me, she sees it. I am over on MLC. If u want to come over for a visit, that would be awesome. If not, I will be stopping by to check on u!! Have a good day, FF..You are doing great!
FF do you have faith in God? I don't want to push God on you if you don't. I believe, and I think that you can be helped by Faith in Him. I appreciate your response to me re: my H, still think that right now he is proving or whatever. At the moment that doesn't matter, I want to help you. but please someday take the time and comment upon some of the stuff in the resources thread. It is a gift that you can give. Alright, time to be brutal again. What you did, it sucked, it was wrong. there are no two ways about it. But, we are human. we have a right to fail. its ok, and we have some incredible lessons that we learn through our failures. Often wisdom comes through mistakes. So you were an incredibly selfish man one day and walked out. yep, say that you are sorry, to yourself, to God, and to your family, then it is time to grow from that experience. I told you when I first posted to you that you have the opportunity to teach your children the most incredible lesson of commitment and love. You can teach them about having the courage to admit your mistake and to strive to repair. Your actions and words will ring with them throughout the rest of their lives. Honesty and integrity, humility. Just b/c you are not Ward Cleaver does not mean that your kids cannot learn valuable lesson and be proud of you. Quite to the contrary, your kids (brutal again) can appreciate you, who you have become, more b/c they have seen the worst in you. They can’t possibly take that for granted. It’s like appreciating a hot summer day after 40 days of rain vs 40 days of hot summer days. Your W made changes too. We all have lessons to learn in life. Suffering is part of all lives. It does suck that you and your family went through this. But it is all relative. I was just reading about a 10 yr old that shot his 8 yr old brother, died instantly, and the struggle to remain a family and deal with the guilt, by the parents for not being home, and for the 10 yr old. That family suffered, that family had lots of failures, that family survived. The parents raised that 10 year old and he learned more than not to play with guns. What you do with the suffering is what matters. Your kids are going to learn more than not to leave their families. They are going to learn self worth, they are going to learn pride, humility, introspection, commitment, and that it is ok to fail. Please don’t be so down on yourself. You have great worth, you have compassion, although it took some time for me to see it, I do. You are one of God’s children, He values you, and we here on the board value you, and I am sure that your family values you. Humble yourself b4 God and ask that he forgive you, He will, Ask that He help you with the rest of your journey, He will Then humble yourself b4 your family and ask for their help I bet that you get it.
What is it exactly you want me to comment about on the MLC resources? I thought I had done that but maybe I didn't understand. I do believe in God but I don't want to go into that right now. And yes I do pray daily.
you did comment here in this thread, perfectly well. What I was suggesting is that you actually post your thoughts in general terms, ie "through the eyes of a MLCer on the other side of the tunnel" some cool title like that. Stick it in the MLC resource thread for future reference. You may have done that too. It was just a thought. I will not ask you to discuss anything that you are not comfortable with. I do believe that you are a valuable person, please do not remain down on yourself for your past indiscretions. You are doing so well opening up here. I only want the best for you, just as I do for everyone on this board. I may be more of a burden than anything to you, I don't mean to be. If there is ever anything that I can do for you, I will. I had no right to ask you to do anything, I am sorry, but I am pushy, when I see a "talent" and a need, I like to help facilitate the connection. How are things going for you?
FF- thank you so much for your honesty. You seem to worry that you have done too much to be forgiven- if my H came to me and said what you did in that post we would be back to work on our M. It is great to see how much you have grown since you got here and so quick!!! I hope one day my H will grow up and figure this out- but not all MLCers do or it takes a long time. Anyways thanks again for all your insights- it helps to remind all of us LBS' that there is a chance!
Hi FF, Do you feel like you are being pulled in a million different directions? I also appreciate your perspective as a WAS but hope you don't feel pressured by all the questions. You have enough on your plate right now and I think you are doing a fabulous job with your W. Here is a post from another forum from a LBS that I think is beneficial to everyone. Quote: I think that sometimes when we are DBing we make a huge effort to surpress our anger. I think that feeling that anger and realizing that what this person did to you was absolutely unacceptable and pure BS helps us to let go of seeing them in the glow of a memory we wished we still had. So feeling some anger can be useful in a sense. But anger isn't a primary emotion. We feel angry and resentment because we feel so hurt. We feel that what happened was so unfair. Somehow we do expect life to be fair and when it isn't, it is a hard pill to swallow. I think writing a letter to express how unjust you feel these manipulations, betrayals and letdowns of broken promises have been is healthy. Feel a little anger. And realize this anger comes just from the feeling of being let-down by the one person you believed in enough to make yourself so vulnerable to them. And then work on accepting that life isn't fair. It's not. We can affect our lives by making good choices ourselves, by having a positive attitude, but things will happen, good and bad, that have nothing to do with whether we deserved them to happen or not. That's just life, unfortunately. When those good things happen, we know to appreciate and value them. When the bad things happen, we learn to not take it as a reflection of our worth and don't personalize it so much. Then remember your H when you married him. Know and recognize that even though he did these aweful things and even though he knew he was hurting you, his goal was never to hurt you. It really wasn't. He failed himself too. For whatever reason, he didn't have the stamina to face whatever seemed overwhelming to him and he ran away from his problems. In doing so he hurt you and your kids and himself. But know that when he promised to love you and be faithful to you forever, he meant it. He never imagined he'd do the things he has. And I am sure that even though he did have the power to not do these things and he chose to do them, he would change it if he could. This isn't what he hoped for. He just isn't as emotionally strong as others are to endure the hardships of M. And that is about his weakness. So forgive him because he never went out and planned or intended to hurt you. He was just too weak to even do what he knew to be right. He's just a human and he's made some terrible, short-sighted choices. That's all. I had a lot of anger and resentment built up towards my H. I struggle a litttle bit with resenting the challenges I face now due to the choices H made. But I don't have any anger in me anymore. It happened. It [censored]. But that's how it is. And the difficulties I have today will be less difficult a year from now, and so on. We are resilient and we do heal. Part of working through the anger I do believe is working on acceptance. It's hard to not feel angry about a situation you do not want to accept. It's part of still being in shock and denial about what has happened in your life. It's hard to truly accept and be at peace with. But as you work on this, you are working towards acceptance and peace with how the chips fell. And once you can accept it and no longer resent it, you will start living the life you now have and enjoying it. You won't be living in a past or with carrying the burden of broken dreams and promises. You'll be free.
I didn't mean this to sound like when it's done, it's done...but when both sides accept what happened...they can move forward...whether as a single person or back into a new loving M. LR
_________________________ JT71 02/23/06 11:32 PM
FF, thanks for the comment on Pete's thread. I posted something to you on my thread....not sure why there instead of here. Guess it's where I was. You are doing ok. Really. _________________________ shocked_and_alone 02/24/06 08:11 AM
FF I can't help myself. Although I try not to hi-jack. I know that I did. I would welcome your input, but do want your thread to be for you. I am sorry. I was actually pleased that you posted on my thread last week. I responded, but was disappointed not to hear back again. Could be b/c that thread locked. I am sorry for pressuring you. Sometimes I get away with myself. I just see value in you, not that you couldn't figure that out yourself. I do want to see things work for you, and I do want to hear about your thread. none (most?) of us are not your wife, but most of us are LBS's so, we can give you some prospective on what your W may be thinking or going through. and hopefully that will help you. Although most of us here aren't as far along, seemingly, as your W. We do have some idea about the emotions and cationary stance. Best to you.
Last edited by job; 09/26/1606:31 AM. Reason: Deleted personal email address
