Hope

Life is a bitch sometimes.  It dishes out more than you can handle...it beats at you with pain and disappointment.  Financial troubles eat at your ability to think straight and people shut down.  The loss of pregnancies tore at my soul and I shut down. 

That is what happened to us.  We were a bonded couple and I truly believe that we were meant to be together forever.  But life got in the way.  Stupid unfair life. 

Neither one us deserved this....we worked so hard to get a home, an education, our family and for what?  A foreclosure notice, debt and now a failing marriage with two innocent kids.  It is unreal to me that this is even happening to us.

My husband has now given up.  He no longer wants to be with me because he is "tired".  He wants the same feelings that the other woman gave him.  What he doesn't believe in right now is that I can do that....we can heal from this with time and be the couple we once were; a better couple than we once were. 

I just need him to not lose hope in us so we can stay together and be the family that I always dreamed of, the family that I planned with him. The family that our kids deserve.

I am not weak

I am a woman who didn't take the easy road.  I didn't.  Some may say I did because I was too dependent on my husband....it was easier to just let him come back home.  It was easier to stay married because I would lose my home, my financial security, the person who stopped for groceries in the morning and could help me care for our kids on a daily basis.

Some may say that it was those reasons I choose to work on my marriage and that I am weak. 

I can tell you...I am not weak.  I am not pitiful and pathetic and groveling at my husband's feet.  There was one moment in our initial crisis after I found out and he left that I wanted to beg.  I felt desperate.  I held on to him shaking and pleading with him to stay.  Then after he left I realized I will never do that again in my life.  I will never plead to anyone else, especially someone who had hurt me intentionally in their actions.  So I had a moment of weakness...I am not weak.

I am strong.  I am strong because giving my husband the gift of reconciliation is hard.  I would be easier to just divorce.  It would be easier to just let him go...let the pain go.  I am strong because this hurts every day and I still choose to look at that man and love him for the good that he has done.  I look at that man and I see the person that I fell in love with and choose to focus on that instead of what he did.  That is what is hard and I believe takes a good person with a big heart. 

As long as he continues to stay transparent, to show me that he is remorseful, to show me his love and mean it...I will continue to love him and work on this too.  Because I am strong. 

Perfect explanation of why I need to talk about the affair...

The original link and credit is from the forum Surviving Infidelity. 

http://www.survivinginfidelity.com/healing_library/confrontation/joseph.asp

"The Healing Library
Joseph's Letter

This is a post by Joseph, a member of the now defunct BAN Message Board. He wrote to this letter to his wife to explain why he asked for details of her affair.

To Whomever, I know you are feeling the pain of guilt and confusion. I understand that you wish all this never happened and that you wish it would just go away. I can even believe that you truly love me and that your indiscretion hurts you emotionally much the same way it hurts me. I understand your apprehension to me discovering little by little, everything that led up to your indiscretion, everything that happened that night, and everything that happened afterwards. I understand. No one wants to have a mistake or misjudgment thrown in his or her face repeatedly. No one wants to be forced to 'look' at the thing that caused all their pain over and over again. I can actually see, that through your eyes, you are viewing this whole thing as something that just needs to go away, something that is over, that he/she doesn’t mean anything to you, so why is it such a big issue? I can understand you wondering why I torture myself with this continuously, and thinking, doesn’t he/she know by now that I love him/her? I can see how you can feel this way and how frustrating it must be. But for the remainder of this letter I’m going to ask you to view my reality through my eyes. You were there. There is no detail left out from your point of view. Like a puzzle, you have all the pieces and you are able to reconstruct them and be able to understand the whole picture, the whole message, or the whole meaning. You know exactly what that picture is and what it means to you and if it can effect your life and whether or not it continues to stir your feelings. You have the pieces, the tools, and the knowledge. You can move through your life with 100% of the picture you compiled. If you have any doubts, then at least you’re carrying all the information in your mind and you can use it to derive conclusions or answers to your doubts or question. You carry all the 'STUFF' to figure out OUR reality. There isn’t really any information, or pieces to the puzzle that you don’t have. Now let’s enter my reality. Let’s both agree that this affects our lives equally. The outcome no matter what it is well affect us both. Our future and our present circumstances are every bit as important to me as it is to you. So, why then is it okay for me to be left in the dark? Do I not deserve to know as much about the night that nearly destroyed our relationship as you do? Just like you, I am also able to discern the meaning of certain particulars and innuendos of that night and just like you, I deserve to be given the opportunity to understand what nearly brought our relationship down. To assume that I can move forward and accept everything at face value is unrealistic and unless we stop thinking unrealistically I doubt our lives well ever 'feel' complete. You have given me a puzzle. It is a 1000 piece puzzle and 400 random pieces are missing. You expect me to assemble the puzzle without the benefit of looking at the picture on the box. You expect me to be able to discern what I am looking at and to appreciate it in the same context as you. You want me to be as comfortable with what I see in the picture as you are. When I ask if there was a tree in such and such area of the picture you tell me don’t worry about it, it’s not important. When I ask whether there were any animals in my puzzle you say don’t worry about it, it’s not important. When I ask if there was a lake in that big empty spot in my puzzle you say, what’s the difference, it’s not important. Then later when I’m expected to understand the picture in my puzzle you fail to understand my disorientation and confusion. You expect me to feel the same way about the picture as you do but deny me the same view as you. When I express this problem you feel compelled to admonish me for not understanding it, for not seeing it the way you see it. You wonder why I can’t just accept whatever you chose to describe to me about the picture and then be able to feel the same way you feel about it. So, you want me to be okay with everything. You think you deserve to know and I deserve to wonder. You may honestly feel that the whole picture, everything that happened is insignificant because in your heart you know it was a mistake and wish it never happened. But how can I know that? Faith? Because you told me so? Would you have faith if the tables were turned? Don’t you understand that I want to believe you completely? But how can I? I can never know what is truly in your mind and heart. I can only observe you actions, and what information I have acquired and slowly, over time rebuild my faith in your feelings. I truly wish it were easier. So, there it is, as best as I can put it. That is why I ask questions. That is where my need to know is derived from. And that is why it is unfair for you to think that we can effectively move forward and unfair for you to accuse me of dwelling on the past. My need to know stems from my desire to hold our world together. It doesn’t come from jealousy, it doesn’t come from spitefulness, and it doesn’t come from a desire to make you suffer. It comes from the fact that I love you. Why else would I put myself through this? Wouldn’t it be easier for me to walk away? Wouldn’t it be easier to consider our relationship a bad mistake in my life and to move on to better horizons? Of course it would, but I can’t and the reason I can’t is because I love you and that reason in itself makes all the difference in the world."

Revelations

I have decided that my self worth is more than what I have quantified it in the past.

That I have dignity.

That I am good.

That I am beautiful.

That I am strong.

That I can be independent. 

That I can be a woman that my daughter will look up to one day.

That I have a duty to myself to love myself more than anyone else (except my kids).


This is what I have realized over the last couple weeks.  That nobody can make me happy and that only can come from within myself.  That I can share my happiness with my husband but I can not look to him for it.  It's been an eye opening experience to say the least.

So that is what I will do.  It won't be easy and it won't happen overnight...but little by little I am going to be independent.  I want to become happy again.  I want to find women (probably with children) that I can surround myself with for friendship.  I want to keep in touch with the women that I am already friends with and make sure those ties don't break even if most of them live many miles away from me.  I want to return to the workforce full time or darn close to it so I can contribute to our household as an equal. So maybe the more I work the less my husband has to and we can spend the time that we have so horribly neglected in the past together. 

Nothing excuses what he did to me and his family...nothing ever will excuse it.  It's something that we both will have to forgive.  My husband lost respect for me somewhere along the line and I am standing up for myself demanding that respect back.  I am accepting nothing short of it.

I want to right this ship.  I want to pull it out of the vortex that has been spinning and picking up speed for so long.  I can't do it alone so I look to my husband to do his share.  I ask of him nothing more than what I am willing to give myself.  And if he bails out of this marriage again then I'll pick up the pieces he left and go on without him.  Because my kids deserve it.  Because I deserve it. 

I won't love someone else to my own death.  Not anymore. 

I am trying...

What do you do when someone is about to make the worst decision of their life? 


You do nothing.  You pray they see what they are doing but you do nothing.  Because honestly there isn't anything you can do.  Accepting that fact is extremely hard.  But I am trying.  It's even harder when you love someone....I wish I didn't.  But I am trying.

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been different" - Oprah

I love that.  And I am so so not there yet.

I'm done

I'm done.  I'm done feeling like I'm the only one trying to fix this marriage.  I'm done pulling my weight and his...he did this.  He made this mess.  He decided to have this affair.  I did not.  He did. He destroyed our relationship even if it was already on it's way down.  He did THIS!

So when I am the one that is talking to him openly and honestly...of reassuring him that I'm here to stay....of reading articles about infidelity to understand....to stalking an infidelity forum....to sending texts to him saying I appreciate him doing xyz....to trying to act normal for his sake....to understanding that working out at the gym is important to him and allowing him to continue at the same gym that he found "her"...I'm just FUCKING done. 

He should be doing all of these things.  He should be the one spending every minute of every day figuring out what to do to make me feel loved and secure...to make me feel that our new marriage is off on the right track.  He has chosen to not do any of these things. So I am done. 

If he wants this to work then he needs to decide how important his family and I are to him and start doing what he needs to.  Because soon he is going to look around and I am not going to care anymore.  I will have given up on us as sad as that makes me.

Because I am done and I am tired.  I feel like the weight of the world is on my shoulders and it's crushing me. 

I know my thoughts seem disjointed from day to day...they are.

12 years will not be destroyed by 2 weeks.  It will not.  It can not. 

I have to hold fast to the idea that those 2 weeks of the affair and the 2 weeks of him not wanting to be married to me can not define the man he is.  If he is willing to work on this marriage...the one that he vowed to cherish in front of our family and friends then I have to do whatever I can to help myself forgive him.  To help myself try to heal this relationship. 

This doesn't define the man he is.  This doesn't define the marriage we have.  This will not define our love. 

It will not because we won't let it.

Soul mate

I wish I had a marriage untouched by infidelity. 

The innocence of it.  The feeling of "you are my best friend and you will never hurt me". 

It's gone.  Does it come back?  I have no idea.  I can't say my husband is my best friend like I used to say...because right now he isn't.  I can't say he will never hurt me...because he did.  That thought that my marriage is beautiful is foreign to me now.  It's not beautiful.  Can it be?  Maybe.  I hope.  I wish.  It's not secure.  My vows were thrown in the dirt and spit on.  How is that beautiful? 

I feel like my faith in marriage is shattered.  I find myself seeing people get married and post their photos on facebook and I think to myself "just wait".  How horrible.  I can honestly say that I thought my marriage would never end...that my husband was my soul mate.  He was my soul mate.  Was I wrong?  How can you be so very wrong about someone you love so much?  God damn it he was my soul mate I thought. 

I think I am just angry right now.  I'm angry that this is my life right now and I hate it.

My husband's pain

As hurt as I am I try to take a little while each day and think about my husband's feelings.  What is he going through?  Does he hate himself?  Does he not think about his affair and what he did to his family because it hurts too much?  Is this why he doesn't want to talk about it with me even though I want to and need to?

I mean, a man doesn't do this to his family for nothing right?  What was going on in his head at the time?  During that week of "talking" to her (aka lusting after/fantasizing about a life with her) leading up to the kiss what was going on with him?  How could he do this and not think about his wife and kids even once?  He must have had extreme stress and pain of his own to do this.  Had to of.  Because a happy person doesn't do this to their family.  He was clearly not a happy person. 

I am so incredibly sad that my husband wasn't happy.  Really neither was I but in my head it was all external factors with money issues and time issues that was making me unhappy so I was "okay".  I knew there was an end to the unhappiness.  He himself and the family we made made me happy.  That was enough.

I hate even now today he seems so incredibly unhappy.  He's quiet.  He's tired.  He hates commuting.  He hates being in his car.  He hates where we live.  He hates the stress of our 3 year old being a 3 year old.  Our infant constantly cries and I can't really think of a moment where he seems to be enjoying her.  I remember seeing such joy and love in his eyes when he held and looked at our son at that age but I haven't seen that with our daughter.  I know he loves her...but it seems different.  

What does he love?  I want him to love life.  I want him to love coming home to us.  I want him to look forward to tomorrow.  He doesn't and it kills me.  I never wanted my husband to hate so much. 
 
And I don't know what to do.  I don't know how to help this.