I guess I can be here now

[25yearsmlc]

Endeavor, good earlier post. And I think what you said about the remorse is key. I was trying to recall that earlier.

When I found out my ex-bf--- in an EA/PA for the offended to be able to forgive. Of course, you can forgive without it, but May's sitch is so murky - he's denying stuff, they're not talking about it, etc.

Sure it's murky. But He did not deny any type of r before. They DID talk about it and I'd bet anything that in his mind, they had put it to rest & resolved it. And He did feel remorse and made gestures to show it. Go back to the November post to read the tremendous amount of hope in their situation then.

The ONLY thing that has changed is that she recently discovered more about THAT PERIOD OF TIME, which he did not completely disclose to her (past lies about a past event) and which still does not prove there was more physically.

Given how he thinks she feels about affairs, (which she says is an absolute dealbreaker) I cannot imagine him fessing up to a physical affair IF there was one...so there is no "knowing" that is likely in this situation ever.
I'm surprised he even admitted to kissing b/c he knows they'd be done forever for a full blown A.

He does not want that

but he also does not want to be in the doghouse forever for something from the past...and then lying about the past that is over, b/c he fears her present day anger.....I don't find that impossible to comprehend-given the expected penalty.



I think more what I meant earlier was the likelihood of her forgetting about it and letting it go

Extremely unlikely. Did someone suggest she "forget" it? I didn't see that anywhere.

As for letting go, when I say to let it go, I mean that pain and anger are not things to hold onto for life.

May, think about this.

Holding onto the pain and anger of your father's betrayal is what your mother and aunt did, which is a cycle you said you don't want to repeat.

Please take into consideration the theoretical possibility that you are creating some of this very thing...and that you have a daughter too.

I sense a lot of your past is creeping up on you NOW

and that's not your h's stuff; it's yours.

Learn from the women you witnessed who did not handle the pain/anger of betrayal in a healthy way.

ESN, I'm not sure if you are saying anger is something to hang onto

OR if you think some of us are telling May to Repress it, but I don't believe in either of those actions.

MAY,

what you saw/felt as a child must have been terrible for you. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to trust ANY man, let alone choosing to trust again when he hurt you at a vulnerable point.

Though in truth, Most of us have had "trust" issues in some form.

How many people do you know who grew up in the Waltons family? (If I'm dating myself with that reference, try "Brady Bunch" or Happy Days or whatever "NORMAL Family" TV myth you were raised with and dreamed of)

ANYHOW When I first read your story I just wanted to slap your h's face off and help you through a maritally fatal situation. So I probed about what you saw in this man and

YOU said that before the pregnancy, and during your dating years and marriage, you two had some gooooood history. You had FUN. You described his good qualities & your previous dating/marriage, and I believed you. I still do.

You don't strike me as someone who was looking at him with rose colored glasses. You dated long enough and were married and you certainly were ready to be a mother, and at the very least he went along with it. The pregnancy was a planned event and he participated...


During the pregnancy, something sad, scary and ill - happened to him when you began to show

b/c it meant a major, irrevocable change in his life was coming.

(I don't know if THAT is why he changed, but it happens to be true).

You also think he's depressed. Agreed...

Since you've posted more about HIS family of origin lately, it's easier to see where the "sad, scary & ill" part came from.

Please remember that what you do with this episode in your life, is something you can either model for your d as a bittersweet crucial life lesson,

or hide it from her b/c you chose to react poorly, perhaps irrationally or from anger, due to a wounded ego that might partly have been a wound left over from your father, and not your h's...

You're a T. You think People can change or not? You must know they do, b/c your h sure did...


seemed slim since there were so many questions left unanswered, and that it seemed at the very least, she wanted answers, but b/c she didn't I didn't see that as her letting go - does that make sense?

Well no, I don't know what you mean here^^^.

But I strongly believe that there are situations in which the questions-

1) have no answers, or no answers that are knowable;

2) have answers that won't be revealed for awhile - but should not prevent forward movement;

4) have answers that no longer matter, for one of many reasons.

For instance, I still cannot explain WHY my h did or said a lot of the things he did and said 6 years ago. HE cannot explain large chunks.

He genuinely does not recall some of them and I believe him. And there are events he recalls very differently than me. And for some of the events, he has no answer but "I'm sorry"

which I think means he was selfish and is now ashamed...but I am not positive that is the meaning and he might not be positive either. I don't care.

I wasted way too much time as it was, on seeking answers that were not available or helpful or useful.

If I were to have waited "for THE answers" before allowing for a recon, I'd have died waiting and we'd have stayed back there in neutral, trying to see things identically. Trying to determine the proper % of blame to assign...

Endeavor and her h are seeking SOME answers now, together

and working on a future with a new type of m, that may not resemble their old one at all.


May, there are 2 other points I really want to make here. Hope this analogy & version of mine helps.

As you know, there are many bad childhood events to heal from, that are not part of a marriage (E.g., Maybe having things stolen a lot as a kid can screw you up, but it MIGHT not hurt a marriage, per se).

Other childhood events, unfortunately, do/ CAN creep into the marriage even where it does not really belong.

For instance, childhood Sex abuse, even if you got t for it, could still haunt your present day sex life, & it could ruin a marriage.

AND it might not be your h's fault at all even if he made a foreplay mistake...right?

By analogy here, in this scenario, your h did make a terrible mistake with a co-worker while he was away from home travelling. He gave into temptation and at least behaved inappropriately & kissed.

Also, This happened while you were pregnant, which triggered some weird unexpected negatives in HIM, that were not helpful to the marriage and which made YOU feel that much more vulnerable.

In sum, HE had an issue from childhood mainfest in a very unexpected way during the pregnancy, (which I think contributed to his behavior)

AND THEN

YOU had unresolved issues of your childhood, complicate the crap out of handling this. When you were at your most vulnerable, i.e., becoming a mother (and becoming your mother...??)

Hence the anger you yourself feared would ruin things. You even said that before you learned for sure of any OW involvement.

To me, that part DOES NOT fairly belong your h or your marriage, but belongs to your father and your mother's marriage.


You had both answers *and* remorse, and now an understanding H. Not that that makes it any easier, but I trust that would make it much more possible for May.

No doubt it would make it way way easier. Clearly. But it's not always shown in the same way, or felt the same or expressed the same AND we're not even sure there was the same "crime" committed...

Also in Endeavor's case there was the double edged sword of having a truly wacky OW. It's bad news b/c she's potentially dangerous in several ways AND public...

but the "good news" is that truly Wacky OW's are no threat to their marriage, per se, when they are batchit crazy,

I doubt Endeavor's h "struggled" with the dilemma of wanting to leave his family for the star of "Fatal Attraction" in Nutsville.

That could have made Endeavor's choice harder, b/c it is infuriating to see the dangerous side, but she let it make it clearer, MAYBE b/c she didn't feel threatened by OW...I don't know, not sure it matters here.

(OTOH would it really be better if OW looked like Catherine Zeta Jones, had the brains of Condolezza Rice and earned Angelina Jolie film demands? I mean, would ANY of us feel great competing with that?)

Finally May, along with whatever Endeavor says about it, (do you live near the Big D, Endeavor?)

Retrovaille will NOT hit him over the head with religion (l posted somewhere about this and forgive me if it was to you and I'm repeating...)

ours was nominally Catholic and but for the visible presence of a priest in the background, who spoke maybe 30 min the whole weekend...I just didn't feel that way. Does your h hate ALL religions or just Catholicism? Does the word "God" turn him off? They do discuss spiritual connections in a marriage.

There is NO PUBLIC disclosure.

Only the couples leading it, or guiding it with their stories talk in public (their stories are inspiring and so valuable they are worth hearing even if your spouse did nothing BUT hear them...very moving)

Oh--- yes You can ask questions. But otherwise, I never heard anyone there as a couple, share anything in public.

The guiding couples will share something or their story or a topic, and then propose an exercise and then You do that stuff on your own, or together as a couple in privacy. Then you re=group and they do it again. They don't ask you to share what you "just learned"...

in that sense it's like no other workshop I've attended b/c of the privacy aspects.

I liked that in some ways b/c there was no weird social issue or peer competition or tension.

Some couples had more anger visible in how they left a room and some seemed to be joking more together but mostly I felt like we were "alone" with the guiding couples and us.

I say get him to go if you can do it within reason. Once there, he can choose to do the work or not

But if he does do the work, then who cares why he went originally?

And the follow up will keep the momemtum going. We felt a small miracle had happend that weekend, which got us to a place we had not been since the workshop we went to a decade earlier.

The last day began & I already felt good, renewed, saw a few things from h's eyes in a new way, and took in the feelings he had about his mother's cancer which I had not realized before...

THEN the last morning came and we had an exercise and returned to the room to discuss it.

May, I do want to tell you all about it and I could describe it =

but I might build up your expectations too much

OR I might be betraying my h in a way, too. He really opened up.

So let me just say that the ONE hour talk that morning, was the most important meaningful connecting hour, of the previous 4 years of our marriage crisis.

I felt he really truly "got it". And as for me,

The forgiveness I thought I had already given, was then truly completed.

May,

I pray you and your h heal from the wounds of your childhoods, not letting them haunt your marriage/life today...and I pray that

you can break the cycle your parents passed on, (unintentionally, I know )

and that you leave a legacy of redemption and forgiveness and commitment, to your d. Whatever form that takes...

In sum, I believe in the power of redemption and forgiveness.

And As Endeavor pointed out, if we don't believe that people can change it's pointless to be here.
We are all rooting for you.

((( )))