AmyC, how do I begin to start having positive feelings toward my H? I can't imagine ever being intimate with him again? He is so good and yet I feel so turned off by him. Some days I want to run away from my entire family. The OM makes very, very good money and when you don't have any and every problem around you seems to be caused by lack of money...well, the temptation to run to the OM gets big.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
The OM makes very, very good money and when you don't have any and every problem around you seems to be caused by lack of money...well, the temptation to run to the OM gets big.
I read through your whole post and the advice you have been given. I felt great sympathy for you while reading your opening post. I can understand why you feel the way you do from the description you gave. I also admire you for reaching out for help. I wish my Wife would have done the same before she walked out on me. She had her reasons as well, some valid, some not. I am from the other side of the fence, my wife left me for OM.
It's has been a while. My anger, anxiety, sadness, sense of failure, guilt, and lack of self-worth have dissipated and I am able to look at my situation and others objectively now. There really are no bad people in all of this. None of us want to hurt each other. I'm at a better place in my life now and visit this board for continued heeling, support, comradery, and to try and help others where possible. I deeply loved my wife a one time and just about walked through fire to save our marriage. I can tell you, it was pure hell to go through. I was never offered the opportunity to reconcile with me wife despite my best efforts. I no longer have a desire to save my marriage and wish my stbx all the best. I have grown and discovered some things about myself through this experience. I've walked through hell and didn't let the devil catch me. I remain positive about my future and harbor no bad feelings.
The only advice I can offer from my perspective is to please be positive of your decision if you do leave your husband, There is a great likelihood that he won't be there for you if things don't work out with OM. Are you prepared to live and be happy on your own? Whatever you decide, I wish you good luck.
"It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare." -Mark Twain
AmyC, how do I begin to start having positive feelings toward my H? I can't imagine ever being intimate with him again? He is so good and yet I feel so turned off by him. Some days I want to run away from my entire family. The OM makes very, very good money and when you don't have any and every problem around you seems to be caused by lack of money...well, the temptation to run to the OM gets big.
sandi, lack of money is not the problem so om's money won't solve it. And there's that...it's om's money. It'll never be yours no matter how much he says he wants to share it with you. It will be blood money.
Get away from om. STOP COMMUNICATING with him ALL TOGETHER.
The goal here is not to instantly be attracted to your husband again. I've already told you, look at yourself, INTO yourself. Try it through your husband's eyes and maybe you can get some understanding as to just why HE is the way HE is.
The biggest turnaround for me came in the middle of my bedroom floor one night after I came out of MLC. Every night for two weeks I was there. Crying and praying. Sometimes just laying there devastated. I began to see things, our life, through my husbands eyes. I saw how I had contributed to the failure of our marriage, OUR financial problems, our eventual drifting apart. I came to realize I'd never really been a good wife. I'd taken care of the kids and the house but not him. Not him very well at all. I'd never been a real partner. I hadn't worked and therefore the entire financial burden had fallen on him. We had bought a little house on an acre of land that he push mowed for 3 years straight and I never so much as took him a glass of ice water. We were together but the division that existed had become clear to me. I had developed a sick false sense of entitlement, too. So even before MLC, I was far from a good wife. When the MLC hit, I was atrocious. I was adulterous, self-righteous, blamed my husband's drinking for every single thing...It took me having to go through quite a hellish journey before I realized the level of stress my husband had been under for years. He gave me everything as best he could and I spit in his face for the most part. After the MLC and in the growth period since, I have changed, grown up, owned up. In the midst of it all my heart found it's way back to my husband, who at one point I would cringe at thought of touching.
Look at yourself, sandi.
That's where the problem YOU have to deal with lies.
I don't care how big of a bump on a log your husband has become, you are his wife. You helped create what he is today.
AmyC, thank you again and again, because I have read you letter several times today. I know everything you say is the truth. I can't imagine having to go through this hell for 3 years. It is horrible. Did you get back with your H? That is my biggest fear, that I will leave and then regret my decision and my H will never take me back. He has told me if I leave there will be no coming back home again. I am so afraid. I have always been a strong person until all this happened. I was the one that would council others and now I can't seem to make a decision as to what to do. Thank you for your patience with me and please keep talking to me. You seem to know exactly what is going on....because you've been there. You are right, to be intimate with my H is the last thing I want right now and yet I am afraid to walk away. Some days I think I will go crazy if I can't get away from my H for just a few days. I want "space" to be alone so badly, but I know he will not agree to that.
I know I need to look at myself....inside myself, but I'm not sure I know how. I can admit to my mistakes and being a bad wife. I went for years that I would try to do better and make our marriage work. I know I am repeating myself, but I am having difficulty digging up enough "emotional energy" to do what I need to do.
Do you have advise as to how I can get through this MLC faster or put an end to it? Does it seem strange that someone my age (60) would be going through this now?
I sound so sickening. I turn my own stomach. I know you just gave me a entire list of advice and here I am asking for more.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
Thank you for your post. I read it several times. Maybe I am not truely in MLC, I just don't know. As far as the things rooted in childhood, I came from a good home, but I always seem to have self-esteem problems. Not being intimate with my husband the past decade did not help at all with that issue. However, the thing I beat myself up over was the fact that I knew in my heart that if I had went to him (made the first move) to have sex, he would have done it. Why could I not do that? That was what I kept asking myself. If I really loved him, why could I not make a move toward him? Because I did not really want to have sex! There were times I needed the closeness, but I did not want the sex. So, I began to doubt my love for H.
When the OM came alone and fed my ego, it was like a drug that I kept going back for more and more. I am so afraid of an unhappy future with H and yet I am afraid to walk away and take a chance with OM. I'm a mess.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
Amy, read your letter to me ....again. When you said you were in your bedroom crying when you came our of your MLC ...it sounds like it happened all at once. Can you expound on that a little more for me? Thanks.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
Just wanted to let you know that I ordered the DR book and am downloading the tapes Michelle offers. So I'm trying. As Amy told me, my heart is not in it, but I have to go by logic right now.
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
