Basically, things are going well with us despite regularly having to deal with ow at church. It is hard when she shows no remorse and continues to appear to be the paragon of virtue.

I have had a backslide of anger and resentment this week. I suppose that may be because their affair started exactly 3 years ago.

At a relatively early time in our recovery, our counsellor told me (in the presence of my h) not to talk to my h about my negative feelings. She told my h that all he could do was to let me hurt. Well, that probably would've been ok if the feelings had ever been dealt with. Instead, my h had just ducked & dodged the truth with comments like: "As much as I'd like to I can't rewrite history," "I was a real jerk, I have no defense for the terrible things I did and said - I did and said those things because I really believed I wanted her at the time," and "I just don't remember anymore so I just can't tell you anything that I haven't already said...." He managed to delay so long that he never did have to deal with the issues.

It is my belief that suppressing anger and resentment may have kept it from going away. I am pretty sure that has been true for me. I suppress anger and resentment now because I feel that nothing positive will come from talking with my h about how I feel.

The questions I had/have do not involve physical interactions during the affair(ow would not let it become sexual).. I had so many questions about how much he considered me, our children, our family and friends, his expectations for ow's children...... the full list is much longer. I still feel when I see ow that she knows so many things that I don't. I think that open & honest discussions would've helped me understand how seriously entangled they were or whether it was more like verbally "playing doctor." I think that there would even be some mitigating circumstances that on their face seem so bad (for ex. they only did/said this when they could've done that).

At first, I backed off believing that, when my h had healed, he would be better able to discuss my concerns and I would be better able to handle the painful answers. However, the truth is that once time passed, he took the position that I should be over it. Also, a new excuse was born - lack of memory. Now when anything comes up, H just blames ow for being so cold-hearted toward me. He'll routinely say we should leave the church or our town. Neither of these are remotely practical or possible for many reasons. Neither his blame nor her cold-heartedness helps.

My h's inability or unwillingness to help me with my concerns has been hard. Seeing & interacting with ow regularly has been difficult. Because of our unavoidable continuing relationship with ow, I need to deal with this. It is pretty clear that my h will never be able to help me.

This has been longer than I intended.
I seem to have no choice but to deal with my feelings myself (with the help of these boards). With time, the occurence of the negative feelings and their intensity has greatly diminished while my ability to cope has greatly improved. However, my anger and resentment remains a significant blemish on our recovery.

[This message has been edited by wesse (edited 03-03-2001).]