Quote: I had another thought that will probably cause me to get lambasted. I think all of my hanging on to OW is an attempt to keep those positive feelings I had about myself during the EA alive. I can feel those positive thoughts slipping away every day as the memory of the EA fades and the reality of my marriage problems sets back in. I'm trying to convince myself that I need to find strength of character in myself and not in someone else's opinion, especially not OW, but it is just going to take time, if it happens at all.
This brings me back to my point that you do not need the OW or even your W to have these good feelings about yourself. You permitted yourself to have these feelings in the presence of the OW. You FORBID yourself to have these feelings about yourself in the presence of your W. You can CHOOSE to have these feelings about yourself in a vacuum, if you so desire.
You are the same person as you were in high school, the same person as you were before you married, the same person before and after the A. All of those good qualities were/are always in you. You are the one who chooses to permit them to come out or to hide depending on who you're with.
Find another counselor, print out your last post, and tell him/her that's what you want to work on. The fact that you can't get in to see this one IMHO is a message direct from God that this is not the C for you.
Stop dwelling on the A... give yourself a break. ENJOY your family!!! Change your perspective. Look at the horizon occasionally instead of at your shoes, k? (Take a break from this board, too... although I KNOW how hard that is, esp when everyone is so invested in your sitch. But GAL for a while.)
