I don't know how to begin this. Guess I'll just dive in.
I'm an older woman and have been on this board since November. I believe I was the first person to answer TG when he first posted his thread. And we continued until he quit posting. And yes, we were also communicating privately.
I knew everything about you, TG, your children, and also the few women that he saw while you were separated. He told me details every time he went out with them. He told me all about you and how very very much he loved you.
I do want to say that your husband helped me tremendously. I was married for over 30 years when my H got online and left me for OW. Your husband talked with me about God, and spirituality, he prayed with me, he gave me strength and inspiration.
The day that he was to meet you for the first time since your separation, I talked with him. I prayed for him, I encouraged him. He was and is a truly spiritual person.
I believe that you have some psychological problems now that you have to deal with. If you don't find the help that you need, you may end up losing a truly wonderful man.
I am almost old enough to be his mother. But we were very good friends. And I know that he has mentioned me to you.
I believe that he was faithful to you, in every sense of the word. I firmly believe that he didn't break his marriage vows. Yes, he was seeing a few women. But because of extreme lonliness and the fear of losing you. He had no intention to sleep with them.
All he wanted was to get you back. This was his main desire, his goal, his obsession. You were and are the love of his life.
If you really believe that God created you and all of us in his image. You will not let this ruin your relationship.
I urge you to go to your Source, which is God. If you can reach for this higher power, you won't feel the pain that is coming to you from YOUR OWN INSECURITY. I urge you to get the help that you desperately need. If you don't get it now, you will probably drive him away, and you will have to work out your insecurities within another relationship on down the road.
We can learn to heal ourselves and our spouses. I know that you went to Retroville, and I know that it is a great program. Howevern there is another marriage program that I'd like to suggest. It's called IMAGO, and there are IMAGO psychologists all over the country. They are much more common than the Retroville programs. Put a search into your search engine and the name of your state and find one.
Again, I'm asking you to give up your sadness and pain, you have nothing to be upset about. Be grateful that you have found a man like your husband. As you know, they don't grow on trees, and none are perfect. I KNOW that your husband loved/loves you, and you are blowing some innocent friendships all out of proportion. Maybe he shouldn't have seen these women, but they absolutely were not affairs, and at that time HE was in such horrible pain that he felt that he had to do this. And I don't think he was deciveing anyone on the board. Yes, this is a controversial subject. Many authorities and people on the board advise against dating. But there are others who advise the opposite. He did want to make you jealous, and he wanted to lift his depression about the separation, these were the main reasons that he developed those friendships.
And think about it, if he were actually having an affair, he wouldn't have been seeing more than one. They were only friendships.
As far as the materials that he bought, he bought them to try to find out how to win you back. This was his obsession. Don't punish him or yourself for nothing. Don't throw what the two of you have away. Please get some help and learn to be happy.
Let me start by saying that my understanding of the purpose of this board was for those in the throws of marital conflict/strife to reach out for help and comfort from loving souls as we strive to repair our damaged marriages through the grace of God. Your post is nothing but a vicious hurtful attack on someone you don't know. You claim to know me through the words of my H...remember, he was hurting over our separation (as I was!!!!!!) when he was communicating with you and the story you got was obviously skewed...as I have read here many times from other posters there are 2 sides to every story and the truth lies somewhere in between. You are being nasty and judgmental toward me based on the things he told you.
I love my H...and we are working through the pain of what has happened. People like you are stumbling blocks though...satan uses people such as yourself to attempt to undo the healing that God is working.
You don't know my H...you were a friend in a time of need. He lied to you as well!! He admitted to me that he slept with these women...and I have the proof as well...as I have stated in my string. So...why you would try to protect him by believing his lies and trying to convince me that I am crazy for thinking that his innocent friendships were nothing more.
You must be naïve to believe that he would give you an unbiased view of our relationship of the past 5 years…and to honestly tell you everything he had done and was doing during your ‘friendship’. What makes you think that he would be honest with you regarding his affairs…he knew they were wrong…you see him just as he wanted you to see him!
As far as the material that he spent hundreds of $$’s on…to “find out how to win me back”…How to get laid on the first date…how to get a woman to do anything you want…secrets to online dating…how to having an affair…just to mention a few…you really are naïve if you think that is the kind of material you purchase when you are trying to heal your marriage. He was reading material about healing our marriage as well…I think he just left out the details of his other resources during his friendly conversations with you!
Something in your post makes me question his honesty even more.
“And think about it, if he were actually having an affair, he wouldn't have been seeing more than one. They were only friendships. “
He told me that he wasn’t seeing them at the same time. Your post makes me wonder if that is another lie.
Actually TTH, this is the kind of thing I was worried about with you, because there HAVE to be people here who supported/support your H's point of view and will take it no matter what, as fact.
For the record, I don't know WHAT the truth is, but when I was reading her post about how spiritual, honest and "wonderful" your H was during all this, I didn't need you to tell me that it was VERY possibly BS.
Rere, I am NOT calling YOU a liar but just because he helped you and SEEMED to be saying things that made sense does not mean TTH is lying now. IF he admitted to the affairs and IF he really bought those books, then I suspect you may have it wrong.
Now, here's the problem. Rere, you seem to be saying somehow that TTH is logged on here, lying about this sitch to, I guess, get back at her H? Why would she do that? She says they are trying to work things out. If he is a friend of yours, why not contact him and see if what she is saying is true. If he admitted it to his W, he surely will admit it to you now.
I just wish this marriage, like all the others on this site, to work out and I don't think all the he said/she said stuff helps, but what can you do when we now have two sides of the same story posted.
Rere, can't there be a dialog with TTH without accusing her of needing mental help just because she believes differently than you do about a man who exists, in the flesh, in her life?
Grasshopper...thanks for your post. You are right, I didn't come here to trash my H...I was looking for the same caring support that everyone else comes here for...including Rere and my H.
I would prefer that Rere NOT contact my H...We don't need people like that messing up our relationship! We WILL survive...which means we need to avoid people like Rere!
To be fair, I would think, that if my W ever posted to this site, she would have a fairly different point of view than mine, and maybe she would contradict some of my posts. She may believe certain things, and would probably, upon reading my posts here, believe I was creating a character, thus not really telling the truth and the WHOLE truth. She would be wrong, but I can see how she would think that. I would think/hope if my W did come here, that there would be people whom I have helped over the last several months, and who have helped me, that would say much the same thing about me as Rere said about your H.
While I don't think HER attack on you was right, I also don't think your labeling her as someone to be avoided is correct either.
In any event, you are right, this is a place where we ALL hope to get support and I think you deserve it as much as the next person so I hope you and Rere can get past this and get to some real healing stuff instead of throwing barbs.
Wow, I didn't mean to bring chaos to this sitch!!!
Grasshopper, thanks for your support of me. I truly believed everything TG told not only me, but to everyone else on the board. And as I think TTH said, the truth is probably someplace in between.
TTH, Please forgive me if I offended you. I am mostly on the board now to try and help others, and I certainly didn't mean to make you feel bad by coming off as cold and harsh.
Because I suggested mental health counseling shouldn't be taken as an offense against you. You wrote that you were in pain. Counseling is to help people who are hurting so much. I'm in counseling by myself, and also with my WAH. I highly recommend it for everyone who comes to this board. Of course, the right counselor is essential. The wrong one, or one not experienced in M counseling (I feel the person should be married) may do more harm than good.
If God created all things and all things are love and good, then satan/evil is love going backwards. If we look for the good and love in everyone we will find it. If we are on the lookout for bad things, injustices, people who are or have been cheating on us (and I'm not particularly referring to your H) we are sure to come up with these things.
I'm searching for peace and happiness--just like you. I'm sorry if I believed someone who may have been lying. But this isn't the point--for me or for you!!
I still say if you really love your H, give it up!!!! If he bought the materials or slept with the women or didn't sleep with them won't do you any good to know or go over and over. It will only bring you more pain. If you were living with him at the time, this obviously would be a much different story. He led me and others to believe that you wanted a divorce. He said that you talked to him about it and to other people--that you even asked what would be the cheapest way to go about it. I still believe most of what he said to me. He may have been a good liar, but I think that most of the time (yes, there are exceptions) we intuitively can sense when a person is lying.
One other point, which is in no way condoning or taking lightly your accusations of this alleged infidelity, but men and women do see sexual encounters differently.
Basically (not always), when a woman has sex, she usually bonds pretty strongly with the man. The man, on the other hand, can do it without this strong emotional bond, due to his biological nature. So even if your allegations are true, this doesn't mean that he didn't love you.
Okay, can we call a truce. TTH? Your are right I do not know you, but I don't want you to feel that I don't empathize with you. After all, I am a woman who is still trying to win her H back, and much of the time I'm also in pain--though it says in the Bible that we have no right to experience pain and anxiety if we are one with God. I feel that I'm becoming more and more spiritual every day and am on the path to healing whatever happens in my sitch.
I also feel that every negative encounter that we experience with another person (yes, even a thought) makes our seratonin level drop, lowers our immune system, creates more pain and unhappiness in our lives, and basically takes us from our Source/God. Not only does this harm us, but the person with whom we bestow this negative energy upon also reaps this low energy and all of the consequences that it brings.
The tangled web can be straightened if we forgive and make up our minds that we won't let it become more tangled by dwelling on it. If we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
