Ok, so one of the things I listed that my H can do to gain my respect back is to stop looking at naked pictures of other women. Is that so much to ask?? I really, really would like some other POVs on this one because it's really interfering mentally with progress in my M. Like I said in an above post, I should be really happy right now b/c H and I are talking again for the first time in almost two weeks. But I'm not happy. This is why: H leaves his laptop out, which he can't get online with anymore, something went wrong with it and he needs to have it fixed. It used to be pretty easy for me to monitor his online activity (which I started doing in about January), but that is not the case anymore b/c he uses a desktop at work now instead of his laptop. Yes, that is one of the things I discovered in the early months of snooping, is that H views quite a bit of porno at work. I have no idea how he manages this since he doesn't have his own office, just a cubicle. Now, it is the only way he can view it b/c our home computer is in the room I sleep in and his laptop is incommunicato with internet. But he saves some of his [favorite?] pictures on his thumbdrive. He used to have them on his hard drive, but while snooping, I realized that he deleted those Friday night and now just has them on the thumb drive that he takes with him everywhere. He's named the files professional type names and buried them 3 folders deep, so as to hide them. I first found those pictures months ago. Some of the pictures go back to 2001. But what I found Sat morning was that some of the pictures have been swapped out with new ones, which tells me H is still viewing. His favorite site is sublimedirectory.com. It kills me every time I see stuff like this....I am so many things, I cannot decide on a single emotion. I always knew pornography was an issue, but I tried not to think about it. Only when I accidentally (yes, truly accidentally) came across it, did it become an issue in the past. I was never a snooper, honestly, until these last few months. So, it's come up on more than one occasion pre-affair and a few times since the A. I've expressed my feelings on it but apparently, his desire to do it matters more than my feelings. And of course, now that I've been snooping, I'm finding that he was doing it a lot more than I ever realized. I started to get really bitter after I kissed OM and a year later he's still carrying on like I had a full blown affair. I'm not trying to downplay what I did, but it seems there is a double standard here, no? When I realized how much he was honoring his feelings about what I did, it really made me do a double take on what I've been holding in, my feelings about his "other women". Plural. Of course now he says that by bringing up the pornography issue, I'm just trying to justify my own actions. A week after I told H about OM, we have a talk about the pornography thing. He tells me that he likes to look at beautiful women and if we reconcile he'd like it to be something we can do together. WTF???? From my perspective, he's saying, "I'm tired of hiding this from you. I want you to know how often I do it. And I want you to approve it also so I don't have to feel any guilt whatsoever. Ok?" I was thinking "my H just told me that he likes to look at beautiful women. I cannot remember the last time my H told me that I was beautiful". Is anyone feeling my pain here, or am I just too overly sensitive????? So, here I am trying to outline goals to make him feel that he can trust me again. What about MY trust? MY feelings?? Yesterday we were at the mall. D2 is on my shoulders, messing up my hair, my back is killing me from carrying her around. H is with me and S4 is on his shoulders. In front of us walks this hot girl in tight clothes. My blood pressure went through the roof. All I kept hearing was "I like to look at beautiful women"....why would that just be restricted to internet viewing?? Duh, I'm not stupid. I was thinking to myself, if this was internet, I bet you'd double click on her, huh??? H doesn't understand that I NEED to be that girl and that I WANT to be that girl for him. But you can't dress like that when you're toting kids around!! I love my kids and love being a Mom, but I want to be a woman too!! I've tried so many times to tell him this. I want to go OUT without the kids, dress to kill. Come home and have hot sex. Before my A, I would ask H for time out, time alone. And he would just tell me how selfish I am, why I can't I just be happy with our family time? He won't even leave the kids to take me to a movie for crying out loud. The pornography is just SO unjustified!!! He won't let me be that woman, he'd rather look at someone else's tits. I don't know how to empower myself on this issue. I'm proactive. If I feel stupid in an area, I take a class. If I feel like my M is in trouble, I read books, go to counseling, etc. Get the picture?? What can I do about THIS though? I think that in the months before my A, I was acting out, really struggling with finding a way to empower myself against this insecurity that I HATE feeling. I suppose that's when the attention thing started~I thrived on attention from other guys to reassure myself that I am to them what pornography was for H. That was my way of "getting back". I've been upfront and open about my betrayal and I haven't seen or talked to OM since I told H. But his betrayal continues. When we've talked about it, he tells me that he doesn't see pornography as a betrayal, but he can see where I might. But he says I shouldn't take it so personally, that all guys do it. He has never once said he would stop doing it, I've never straight out asked him to (should I have to ASK?). But he's never said he would stop, he won't tell me when the last time he looked at it was. He won't deny or confirm MB to these pictures. He has personal lubricant in the top drawer of his dresser, although he doesn't know I know that. You know what I really want to do? Have a professional photo shoot, nude pictures of myself. And post them to sublimedirectory.com for him to find. He can download them and add them to his collection of pieces of @ss he'll never get. Am I crazy???
"Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."