TIME for a change

[25yearsmlc]

Brit's posts to you have been spot on. Read them carefully. Often...like when you start getting riled up again, read what she wrote.

Thanks Brit,

You're right I am still working on both of those sets of feelings, I think for the first it's rejection after trying to do what I thought was right to make them happy. My self esteem issues are another ball of wax that I work on.


From what I read, you bought them things...but you were critical of them. And you were abusively obnoxious when you drank, and that was fairly often for a short marriage (you had something like 5 big rows in less than 2 years? For a woman with kids, that is frightening as hell).

I'm glad you see that you pushed her away and by owning your role in her affair, you can see why forgiving her is mandatory and reasonable.

it's also mandatory b/c you cannot reconcile without forgiving. The worst choice to make is to stay married AND stay miserable. She clearly wanted to forgive you but my guess is she did not feel safe with you.


Your self esteem does sound fragile and that's NOT HER fault.

Our adult self esteem comes solely from within us. It may be shaped by our parents and childhood but at some age, you can no longer hold someone else responsible for how you see yourself.

I read what you wrote about your first m. I got no insights from you..."Married the wrong person" Is classic WAS talk.

My intent in asking about what you learned from your first divorce was, What did you learn about yourself?

The reason I want to R is because I love her and my stepkids. I realize that my behavior (my infidelity when we were dating and verbal abuse during the marriage) I am sure are what led her to justify her decision making. This is how I can forgive her. I pushed her to the brink and into the arms of the OM. She had said she forgave me for my missteps during our dating but that obviously not the case. She mentioned this in chats with the OM and brought it up to me multiple times.


She may well have forgiven you in the sense that she wasn't angry about it anymore. Or she wanted to let go of it. And she probably wasn't holding it over your head. But that does not mean she felt the same about you as she did before you mistreated her. How could she?

I mean, she probably saw you in a different light b/c hey, you were pretty unkind.

You resented her for the purchases YOU made, which you supposedly bc you wanted her to be happy. Do you see how wacky that is?

Anyhow, Forgiveness is not the same as amnesia.


The thing was I did change and never looked at another woman during our engagement or marriage.

Hate to nitpick, but Didn't you cheat on her while engaged? As for changing...

Broken, no offense, okay? But when I was dating my H, or engaged &then when we were first married, I never looked at OM either.

Why would I? I was madly in love with my h.

When you say you "never looked at OW", it makes it sound as if you sacrificed something or gave up something or achieved something. Were you a serial cheater before you met her or what?

To me, at that stage of a new R, w/marriage on the horizon, shouldn't fidelity be a given & come naturally?


I still need to work on full forgiveness since holding on to ill feelings doesn't accomplish anything. One thing that makes that difficult is that I alone will be cleaning up the financial fallout from this for at least a couple of years if not more, depends on how much I will lose on the house when I sell it.

Must you sell it? It is possible you can weather the storm til the real estate market returns?


I need to find some good forgiveness books and read them, the last book I read no more mr. nice guy really rang true with me and helped me out a lot.

Good....maybe Try Marianne Williamson's books on Anger and forgiveness. She's a bit new agey for some, but she has some forgiveness exercises in her books and examples, that helped me a lot.

I think I'm finally getting I can't control any of it, it doesn't matter what I do. I can just be the best man I can be for me, and see what happens.


it does matter what you do. But you cannot control the OUTCOME of the situation (which is your chronic issue)

so your actions must be all about you being the best man you can be, working ONLY ON YOURSELF...and then leaving the results up to God.

Thanks again and have a good weekend, new start for me now and new thread to match next week! :-)