Hoosjim's 16th. Looks like we're piecing, folks.

[hoosjim]

hoosjim, this is why lies and secrecy in a MR are never good. And worse, they never get better with time.

So, coupla things: First, absolutely agree, and don't know who wouldn't. Cartainly my W and I are amongst those who now know that "no secrets, no lies" should be the first commandment of marriage.
So, preaching to the choir, here. As to specifics:

The one thing that stood out to me was you blamed:

- Not fully trusting her

"Blamed" is way off base here. I didn't "blame" anything, and i fairly quickly retracted/preempted with her the idea that i was blaming her. I made a conscious decision, and one that i would make again, 10 times out of 10, not to tell her the full truth of this while she was still in the throes of her affair and while things looked grim for us. And, I am convinced that i was right to do so. Our MR hung by a thread, and that, at that time, would have snapped it. Besides, as i noted previously, our MR was, for all intents and purposes, over. I was my own man and owed her nothing at that point.

As to owning up to my own responsibility, i have always done that, even way back when (though, no, i did not reveal the full extent of the damage to her). It has always been "on me" and "my eff up" and I take and have taken full responsibility for the actions that got us into that financial fix. I have also, in MC and to her, owned that my part in the downfall of our MR was ABSOLUTELY that i did not trust her and our relationship even from the beginning, and that i should have been fully open... we BOTH should have been fully open... and trusted in our love for each other and our relationship to get out of any messes TOGETHER. That i hid things as to scope is merely an additional facet of a pre-existing problem that we now, hopefully, are remedying.

So, yeah, i have "owned" it and have not blamed the man for "getting me here", nor have i blamed my wife for either a) "getting us here" or b) me not telling her.

Having said that...

The one thing that stood out to me was you blamed:- The system not making it easy

I have never blamed the system for getting me in this fix. Never. And i have repeated that to her (and to anyone else who has cared to listen) as recently as yesterday. However... That the system makes it harder to get out of debt when you are way IN debt is absolutely NOT, and never has been, "bunk" . Over the past few years i have gained a newfound sympathy for the truly poor, and even the working class blue collar folks who face such circumstances. I will not list all the ways as that would take a book and is outside the scope of these foirums, but I assure you it is the case. In addition to my own experiences, my mentor and first employer, a bankruptcy lawyer and trustee, set up a program not long ago to help the individuals he represented, precisely because it is so hard to navigate the maze of debt reduction successfully, and because he didn't want to see these folks again (folks he had helped to get a fresh start) in five years time in the same fix. Trust me.. the banks and card companies want to get you there and they want to keep you there and they have myriad processes in place to do so. Does any of that absolve me of responsibility for my predicament? No, of course not. But, then again, i never claimed that it did. Just that it pissed me off.