Thank you again, KDU, for the post. I have been spending the last few days being dumped on for disrupting others' posts and verbal abuse and other things. I just wanted to say that I agree with what Chrissy said that I have a lot of anger about relationships. I thought I had gotten over the fact that my WS had lied to me about carrying on an affair for 12+ years with a macho jerk, and my having to hear about it from the OM's wife. I think what brought up the anger was a number of things - the adoration that BF gets when he puts forth his ideas about male superiority and dominance and female submission; the hero worship that Uncle NY gets when he analyzes and spins his webs around the girl he tried to control and then couldn't; the stories I read about here about girls/women who wanted to marry a man they thought would be like daddy and take care of them, and it didn't work out. I thought that my marriage was not like that; that it was more of an equal partnership with mutual respect. Obviously it wasn't, since my wife was carrying on an affair with a "man" who said she was his pornographic ideal, since he thought he could have his stable marriage and also have an ideal fantasy sex life as well. It didn't work out, but not for lack of his (OM's) trying. And reading these stories about how so many men and women lie to each other, and my trust being shattered seven months ago, well, what to think. Can I go back to trusting my WS, given the shock from 7 months ago. Now, on the surface, our relationship is recovering, we are going to an MC whom we like, but now my WS wants to stop the C for awhile because, she says, school is starting and she is too busy. This is a red flag for me, and I have told her so. I had said I don't want to go back to the old days pre-affair when I was fat, dumb and happy, and oblivious. Does this sound arrogant, condescending, like I don't respect most of the relationships I read about here? It is all in the reading. Maybe yes, maybe who knows? I think most people look to their relationship as most important and look at other relationships through the prism of their own experiences. How could it be otherwise? I am just looking for honesty and I think some people here are less than honest, or at least less than candid. I like this board, because I can be completely candid, and not have to worry about the consequences; who knows who I am? Of course, if Tambo finds out who I am, who knows, he might come gunning for me at the OK corral, and I'll be screwed. Others want to make personal connections; that is others' prerogatives. I will stay with anonymous and just call 'em the way I see 'em.
"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." - Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms, 1929.
