Wow, that would certainly be incredibly hard for you to attend the same church if she is also bringing OM! That's like having your face rubbed in it in front of all your brothers and sisters. That would be quite humiliating. I just wonder why she would think it made sense to bring OM to a church where that behaviour would result in her being asked to leave the congregation. If that's the case, you didn't have to do anything, natural consequences would have taken care of it, would it not? But then, I don't know your denomination and I'm not the one who had to live with the humiliation. Anyway, if you're happy with your choice then so be it. Time to move on.
There are multiple OM, but I do believe this man was just a friend. Who knows what to believe. I have no idea why she felt the need to go to church with him, or to take the kids.
All I know is that when I explained how this would make me feel and asked her not to do it, she told me that she would do whatever she wanted to.
I did nothing more than communicate her intent to do this to church leadership. They did not take my word for it and asked to meet with her. Apparently, in their meeting, she gave them the same "I will do whatever I want" response that she gave me. I believe her being asked to leave was a "natural consequence" of her choices.
I absolutely agree with the use of the term humiliating. The whole situation of your spouse having an affair is humiliating. Publicly displaying it in church makes it even worse.
I dream of the day when I can co-exist like Mr Bond describes. It is going to take time to get there.
It would certainly be a very difficult situation. When I first married my W was a Christian and I wasn't. When our marriage ended I was a Christian and she wasn't. She blamed me for her loss of faith lol! I'm not sure what I would do in your sitch. I'd probably just find another church...and I'm not saying that's the right thing to do either. In tough times your church can often be your lifeline. Tough choice.
I just had the strangest conversation with my W. We were arguing about some of the things going on in our life. The subject of sex came up. I told her I would be a fool if I believed that her relationships were not sexual. She denied it.
But then she said "Your my husband and I won't even have sex with you. I hate sex." Then I said "We used to have sex". And she said "We have not had sex in a year". Our sex life has been awful, but we have had sex a 1/2 dozen times this year, as recently as 2 months ago.
She continued to deny having sex with me. I asked her about specific instances. She denied them. She had no recollection of them whatsoever. I think she was being %100 sincere and honest. She has suppressed the memory of the last few times we had sex.
See this is the part that you didn't understand. Your W is going through things and sometime she needs to have some kind of normalcy to hold onto through her confusion. In some cases, the guilt is so overwhelming that they really do block out anything good in their lives.
FWIW, that's why I thought kicking her out of church was a bad thing. The fact that she wanted to still go, showed that she was still looking for some kind of direction. The more you eliminate normal ties to you, she will drift even further away and look more towards OM because HE will become a rock for her rather than God or you.
Just my 2 cents.
M-43 W-40 2D - 9 and 5
Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet a new life.
Sorry for the hijack, but MrBond I very much agree with your last post (I also secretly believe Mrs Rock has not left the building yet) However I do try to understand MLC but am always left a little bit lacking when statements like this are made
“In some cases, the guilt is so overwhelming that they really do block out anything good in their lives”.
How do you explain or how should I understand this part about their guilt.
//FWIW, that's why I thought kicking her out of church was a bad thing. //
I think it is a terrible thing too. But, it is unavoidable. She can't continue living like she is and attend the church at the same time. She has to make a choice and she has. She has left the church, she hasn't been kicked out.
//See this is the part that you didn't understand.//
I'll admit, I was dumbfounded by our conversation last night. I still don't understand. She says so many things that make no sense whatsoever. Most of them are skewed perceptions of who I am and what our relationship was like. I understand how she can devalue me and our relationship to justify her affairs.
But her statements last night were different. They were truly delusional. I can't understand how she can completely reframe the factual reality of our lives.
I was there, we had sex. How can she honestly deny it?
It was the same with finances, parenting, and her affairs. She has a recollection of factual events that doesn't match reality. Maybe the guilt is overwhelming. There is something going on in her head that I just can't understand.
I hope that once we are divorced and I move out of the house that things will start to get better. Right now she is a mess. My kids need a mom, and I need seperation.
"How do you explain or how should I understand this part about their guilt."
No problem. Although let me preface this by saying that it doesn't happen in every instance.
On a number of the forums (not just this one) and private research, they have shown that MLC is a period that is marked by depression. People who get triggered (death of a family member, getting older, loss of job, etc.) will tend to revert to a period in their lives where they felt the most safe. Sometimes it's said that if you want to know how a person will act in MLC, all you have to do is see how they were in high school.
One of the behaviors is the mental block of all things that may disagree with the depression. Have you ever noticed how many LBS's on here have heard there WAS say that they were "NEVER" happy? Or that the M was a mistake? Obviously that's not true, but in order to perpetuate the new lifestyle that they feel safe with, they have to believe that they were miserable.
Part of that is the guilt. They know that they are wrong, but they have to justify it to themselves so they can follow through on the behavior that makes them "feel" good. Depression is the absence of feeling. So they fill it with material things that will hopefully make them feel something. Have you ever noticed that even those WAS who are living worse off than they were, are saying that they are "finally" happy? They could just as well be happy, if not happier with the WAS, but they feel that the WAS is the cause of their unhappiness rather than themselves.
For those who come out of a bad MLC (remember, everyone goes through midlife "transitions" and not always a "crisis") some say that they felt like they were in a dream or "fog" and they knew that what they were doing was wrong but they felt like they couldn't get out of it. It's like they fell in a hole and are looking only in certain directions around them so they feel they can't get out. They don't realize that if they just looked up, they will see that there is a way to be happy.
Look at how many WAS's say that it was because of the LBS that they are in lousy jobs, etc. They don't and don't want to take personal responsibility for it. And that's what it comes down to. Personal responsibility. We've all learned it from being on these boards. They have to discover it on their own. Some don't want to because they are running off of what the "feel". But if they bothered to stop and look around, they would see that there are other alternatives.
The depression is a powerful thing to get out of. That's why things like church is a great starting point to get them to think. It's like going to therapy. If there was a church teaching that showed them a different way, then it could lead them out of the depression.
M-43 W-40 2D - 9 and 5
Emotion, yet peace. Ignorance, yet knowledge. Passion, yet serenity. Chaos, yet harmony. Death, yet a new life.
