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He started coming out with all the nasty stuff after he got caught. I really don't know how one recovers from hearing your H wishes you had died. But then again, I'm in no position to talk.



"Don't look back, you aren't going that way"
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Despite 10 years of infidelity and what amounts to almost one illicit partner for each of those years, I have decided for the time being to stick things out. W says she has been humbled and believes I am the strongest man in the world, and that she now sees what true love is. She acknowledges that I may wake up weeks or months from now and realize that I just can't do it anymore and decide to leave.

My friends all think I'm crazy for staying, or for not making W leave. W's parents think I'm an amazing man. My MIL told W that she always loved me but in light of how I'm handling this and my decision to stay she loves me even more now, and that while W's father (who W always put on a pedestal) is a great man, W needed to bear in mind that I am just as good if not better.

Our MC thinks we are amazing in that we can even be in the same room with each other, never mind being committed to working this out. She said 99.99% of couples would have been easily undone. MC asked me how I was able to come to the decision that I had, and I told her this: For the past few years of my life I have been on a spiritual journey (not to sound too cheesy). I am committed to getting "this" right..."this" being life in general and everything in it. I don't have the existential doubt that I used to have. I know what the meaning of life is, for me. And that is to always try to act from a place of love, no matter what. I have seen a massive transformation in my own life and in all of my relationships as a result of this endeavor and the proof is in the pudding that it is the right path for me. If I give in to the anger and hostility and self-doubt cause by my wife's infidelity it would be ruinous... Instead I continue to choose to act from a place of love, with my eyes wide open. I am no dummy; I know the road ahead will be rocky and difficult at times, but I will walk it with love and see where it takes me and my family. If I walk it with pain and anger and fear and resentment...well...I know where that leads, and it's nowhere good.


H: 43
W: 37
M: 11 years
T: 12 years
S: 11
D: 8
ILYBINILWY, "I want to move out" and "I want a divorce": 3/23/14
MC started: 9/22/14
Affair and past infidelity discovered: 9/26/14
Piecing: 10/20/14
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Good luck, stumps!



"Don't look back, you aren't going that way"
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Originally Posted By: rppfl
Good luck, stumps!


Thank you, so much. It's funny... I have less doubt about my own ability to move past this and "fix" what I contributed to the mess of our "old marriage" than I do about my W's... She knows she is dealing with a deep compulsion to act out sexually and that lying and manipulating and, perhaps most importantly, dissociating herself from her actions, had become completely normal for her.

But, like I said... eyes wide open, with love.


H: 43
W: 37
M: 11 years
T: 12 years
S: 11
D: 8
ILYBINILWY, "I want to move out" and "I want a divorce": 3/23/14
MC started: 9/22/14
Affair and past infidelity discovered: 9/26/14
Piecing: 10/20/14
Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 209
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stumps Offline OP
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Joined: Mar 2014
Posts: 209
Journaling...

I am proud of myself that in the midst of this betrayal and profound hurt...and sometimes anger...that I feel, I am still able to find sympathy/empathy for my W.

Because she gave her therapist permission to do so, W's therapist has revealed to me some of the information that has come out about W's past, particularly in regard to her sexual behavior. W disclosed that during her sophomore year of high school she slept with at least 25 people and was promptly branded the school slut. Later, during a period in her late teens/early twenties when she worked at a hotel catering banquets and weddings, she said she had sex with so many random people she met at the events that she had no idea what the tally was, but she estimates it in the hundreds.

When W and I discussed it, she said she slept with someone new pretty much every weekend, sometimes more than one person in a weekend, so that could easily be 200-300 people that she's had sex with during the time she worked at the hotel and over the course of her life. That is staggering to me. And she has had sex with almost as many people during our marriage as I have in my entire life before meeting her.

I do not judge her for her sexual history. I honestly do not. I feel bad for her. She seems tortured by it at this point. She has admitted that hers weren't the actions of a sex-positive person who merely enjoyed sex and meeting people or whatever positive spin you could put on her behavior. She says that at the time she told herself it was empowering, but that she sees it now as the behavior of someone who was lost and empty inside, and trying to fill the void with drugs and alcohol and sex.

For as much pain and anguish as I continue to experience at times due to the revelation of my W's infidelities, I wouldn't trade places with her for the world.


H: 43
W: 37
M: 11 years
T: 12 years
S: 11
D: 8
ILYBINILWY, "I want to move out" and "I want a divorce": 3/23/14
MC started: 9/22/14
Affair and past infidelity discovered: 9/26/14
Piecing: 10/20/14
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