We are still together.  Surprising I know.  I've been struggling lately and my husband doesn't understand why I am.  Well, let's start with the coldness that he displays.  The disconnection that he exudes.  The same quiet "nothing" that was happening before the affair is happening now.  It sucks.

Expectations of what a marriage should be like and reality are totally different beasts.  I often wonder if I am expecting too much.  That our marriage will never live up to what I would like because it's warped in my head of what it should be like. 

But then again, other marriages have these qualities that I want.  I don't feel like I am asking too much. 

I want a hug.  Unprompted and unexpected here and there.  A hug to let me know that he wants to feel me in his arms and feel my heartbeat against his chest.  I don't ask to snuggle for hours.  Or minutes.  10 seconds of "I love you and I want to feel your warmth".  That's it.  Is that so hard?  Why on earth do I not deserve that? 

The answer is I do.  I deserve to be hugged by my husband.  When he doesn't hug me, when he returns from work and doesn't do it my expectation of what is right in a marriage gets violated.  I get upset.  His coldness and distant attitude is painful for me.

I want kind words.  I want simple little phrases that would make my heart swell in happiness if he said them.  A simple "you looked really nice today, just wanted you to know"...."I can't wait to spend friday evening with you and the kids".  Simple right?  What on earth do I not deserve that? 

I feel so alone.  This is a lonely  marriage right now and I hate it.  I want a good husband and I want to be a good wife.  I want a good marriage for our beautiful kids.  

"Bad" days

"Bad" days suck.  Really bad.  You feel like you are doing soooo much better and then one thing can happen...one bad dream about your husband being with the other woman...one awful trigger can spiral you back down to feeling horrible.

My husband still thinks about the other woman here and there...he doesn't want to and is trying to make it stop.  But yet she still persists in his brain.  It makes me sad and pissed.  How dare she inhabit any part of his mind still.  I want her gone and I want it now.  I know that's not how it works but oh well...I still wish it were so.

He still wonders what "could have been?"  That hurts even more.  Why does he care?  I wish he'd focus on what he could do for OUR relationship.  What he should have done at the time of the affair to save OUR marriage.  But he still wonders what he could have done differently with HER. 

It's painful.  This whole thing is painful.  I just want to feel secure and loved and good enough.  That's it.  It's really quite simple when you think about it.

Love is a Choice

We are doing tiny baby steps and sometimes great huge strides and choosing to fall back in love with each other.  I have realized that love is a choice.  It is a choice to love him.  It's a choice for him to love me.  I wake up and think of all the reasons that I married him.  All the reasons I choose him to be the father of our children.  I could think of all the reasons I could hate him and all the reasons why I shouldn't care anymore...but I don't. 

I look at our wedding photos and realize that the love I felt for him on that day is the same love I feel now...even with the affair.  The affair rocked our world but when it comes down to it the adoration and love I felt then is the same as now. 

It's a comforting feeling...it makes me think that we will be okay in the long run.  That we both are choosing to look at all the great things about each other and our relationship instead of the bad.  It's not naivety per say...it's the choice we are making.

We still have a lot of work to do but I think the hardest part is over...we made our decision on what we both want and it's each other.  Now it's just time to do what needs to be done to ensure that happens. 

I am so excited for our new beginning...our fresh new start. 
 

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.