I still disagree about the guilt and the religion. I’ve tried to address these before, but let me try again. As I’ve said, one of the problems with written communication is that tone is so hard to communicate. Sincerity is another.
First the guilt. I think part of the problem here is that I keep acknowledging that what I did was wrong. Maybe I’m too strong in that acknowledgement, but it just seems wrong to me to just say that I don’t feel guilty and leave it at that. In my mind, if I were to just say that I don’t feel guilty, it would sound like I was either refusing to accept any responsibility for my own actions and their consequences, or like I was so callous and heartless that I just didn’t care. By continuing to acknowledge that I was solely responsible for my decision to have the A and that that was wrong, I’m simply trying to communicate that I know I’ve played a part in the problems and that I’m not unaware that there are consequences of that bad decision. I’m not saying that it still bothers me. I’m not saying that I need to be punished for my transgressions. I’m not saying that I owe W anything to make up for it. I’m just trying to say that W is not the only one responsible for the problems in our M. But the cold, hard fact is that I simply don’t feel guilty any more.
Let me tell you another personal story to try to explain myself. Years ago, not long after college, W and I decided to stop paying rent and buy a house of our own. We looked and looked and finally found something we liked and could afford in a new subdivision, but there were warning signs that should have set off all kinds of bells, buzzers, claxons, and what have you. The builder was a crook, plain and simple. The guy was selling houses to people who couldn’t afford them and who couldn’t qualify for them. He was inflating the prices, offering phony gift letters from some out of state source, and paying down the interest rate for the first couple of years. So a house like we bought was $89K, but he was telling the mortgage company that it was $114K and using these phony gift letters to make it look like the buyer had put down $25K. So with a 20+% down payment, these people were getting loans. They were moving in to these $89K houses with no money down and payments under $500/month.
W and I didn’t do that. We played it straight, bought the house for $85K, and got our own (conventional) financing. My house payments were a little over $800. Maybe you can see what’s coming here. Within two to three years, my neighbors, who really couldn’t afford and shouldn’t have been in those houses had $1200 house payments that they simply couldn’t pay. One by one they all went into foreclosure. I lived at the end of a cul de sac, and I went for an eighteen month stretch where you couldn’t see even one single occupied house from my front yard. Not one. HUD got the houses and started selling them for $45K. I still owed around $75K on mine and had it on the market for a year and a half asking $55K for it. During that year and a half I had one family look at it. One. As HUD sold the houses the neighborhood started looking like a ghetto. Loud music, cars on blocks in the front yards, etc. I tried to get them to accept a deed in lieu of foreclosure, but I finally just let the bank have mine as well.
What does this have to do with my A you might ask. I see lots of similarities. I made a bad decision that resulted in lasting consequences. I should have known better than to get involved when I saw what was going on with the builder and his out-of-state partner in crime. But I let the desire for the new house sway me. I ended up with a foreclosure on my credit. Then the PMI sued me for some $37K to cover the shortfall and their legal costs which resulted in my filing for bankruptcy. Another ten-year credit hit. So now, I can look back and say that I made a bad decision. Maybe several of them. It was my own doing. I saw the signs and chose not to heed them. I suffered the consequences. But do I feel bad about it now? No. It was a long time ago. My credit is fine. I have a much better place to live. It was a bad decision, but it’s long past. Just like the A. I was wrong. It was a bad decision. But it’s long past. Life has changed since then. I have changed. The M has changed. It’s not an issue any more.
Now for the religion. You may have me there. Religion may be hindering me from doing what you perceive to be the correct thing to do. But I’m not hiding behind religion; I’m struggling with it. I admitted to HP a couple of posts up on this thread that it may not be living a Godly life when you carry Biblical precepts to unhealthy extremes. But it’s so difficult to know that or where to draw that line. I’m not going to quote you chapter and verse, but you know that the Bible speaks directly against divorce. We can all try weasel-wording about separation, divorce, abandonment, …, but the Bible says not to divorce. It says to honor the wife of your youth and not to “deal treacherously” with her. It also says that there is a way which seems right to a man but which leads to damnation. Maybe I’m misapplying it here, but my take on that is that I shouldn’t do what I think is right, but what the Bible tells me. I’m not looking for you to answer me here – I just want you to understand where I am coming from and how I am struggling here.
