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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 5:43:48 GMT -7
Good Morning,
I an new to BG and would like to say that I really appreciate everyone's posts and enjoy reading them. So, thank you for sharing.
My husband has struggled with P, M, and affairs for more than 40 years. I am his 4th wife.... OK, you don't have to say it. I was totally blind to all of this. I really had no idea. P was never even a word in my whole adult life. I thought only twisted, bad people were involved with it. Normal people didn't even think about it.
I found his P 5 years ago. He admitted to his problem and got help, did the meetings for several years and things were good. I was looking forward to the 4th and 5th year of recovery when the brain is healed...or so I read. Then in Dec, because of his behaviors toward me, I asked THE question...and he threw in my face that he had stumbled..only for a few months, then it became a stumble of a year, then well, it seems the truth is his stumble was more like 2.5 years. Then, he admitted to looking at young, but "legal", girls. Then he tried to hang himself. Then he admitted to fantasizing about P girls while being intimate with me. Then he revealed that his family doesn't like me because he blamed his lack of engagement with them on me. Then I found out he was obsessed with my 26 year old daughter. There is more to this but because of legal issues, I can't discuss the situation. The I found his 2.5 year emotional affair.i think I know everything now, but who knows. At this point nothing will surprise me.
He is doing the work to recover. He goes to 6 or 7 meetings a week. He is working on his steps. He has turned his life over to God. He is committed to making our marriage work. We talk more than we ever did. We are working on bonding. He gas no electronics except his phone and tablet which I have free access to and all have Covenant Eyes on them. We don't watch TV and avoid his triggers. He is doing the work. I can see the changes. Things are better than they have ever been. I am grateful and thank the Lord everyday.
I too am doing the work I need to do for me. I am soon much better than I was. I have forgiven and moved past almost everything....except the affair. This is where I need perspective. He shared everything with her on a daily basis. He sought her opinion on our vacations, hotels, our house, our plans for the future, our fights, our dreams, our everything. He admits that she validated him, accepted him and made him feel good. He swears there was nothing physical. He claims he never even thought about her in that way. He claims he had no feels for her except as a friend. She was just one of the guys. However, she is the only person he ever felt safe talking to. Now he says he loved her but like a friend. Like no other friend but never as a potential mate. He called her babe, sweetie, love, honey, etc but that what southerners do. I called BS to that one and then he admitted that he can't "remember" who else besides his wives he called by these names but he is sure he has. I just really feel that he hasn't been honest about the true nature of this 2.5 year relationship. I am struggling with this and he gets mad when I try to tell him why I am struggling. Am I being paranoid? How do I let this go and rebuild trust in this area?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 20, 2018 10:40:17 GMT -7
Hi hon and welcome to BG.
No you are not being paranoid. His relationship with her was inappropriate as a married man. He needs to admit to this, ask for forgiveness and break off the relationship (If he hasn't already). He has to work at gaining your trust back. You will gradually start trusting him again when you feel safe and that will only happen with totally honesty and openness on his part.
If you aren't seeing a counselor, I would recommend you both see one. Individual and as a couple.
Hugs and prayers sweet sister. The road to overcoming this sin isn't easy for the addict or the partners.
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Post by ladystrong on Jun 20, 2018 22:28:35 GMT -7
No, you’re not paranoid. I’d be suspicious, too. That might be the Holy Spirit prompting you to get the whole truth out of him. You’re dealing with someone who is used to lying and it’s very much ingrained in his character to do anything to protect himself by saying half truths. I would not be surprised if it was physical as well so I’d get checked out for STD’s. If he has had other affairs in the past and has continually given you “trickle truths”, it’s highly likely he was intimate with her. If he has not been truthful about this, the door to the enemy is still wide open and the bond between him and that other woman has not been severed. You’re not going to be able to let it go until he tells the absolute truth. Trust won’t be built until you feel in your heart he has told you the whole story.
You’re going to be talking about the affair for a LONG time so he’s going to need to understand that if he wants the marriage to be totally healed, he’s going to need to listen to you and hear about the pain he caused. Not necessarily because you want him to feel pain, too, but because you’re having a hard time wrapping your head around his double life. He will have to understand that you might be asking the same questions for awhile because the trust was majorly broken and you’re trying to figure out if he’s really going to change or not. A good book to give him to read through is “How to help your spouse heal from your affair” by Linda MacDonald. My husband, who had a two month horror story affair, basically did everything in there without having read the book. It was confirmation for me that he had repented.
Forgiveness will release you from bitterness and resentment but in my experience, it’s a process and takes time. I would keep praying that God would help you to forgive and let go, just as Jesus did on the cross.
Trust, on the other hand, which is separate from forgiveness, will take A LOT OF TIME and is dependent on his consistent actions. Do you believe that he has fully repented? You said he went to meetings before for several years and things were good. But something was still there and you felt it. And now he is going to 6-7 meetings but you still can’t get a straight answer from him about this affair. I’d say trust is at a standstill. You don’t want to “rebuild” just to have it all torn down again. Is one of his meetings a one on one with a brother in the Lord, someone he keeps accountable to?
I agree with Amy, make sure you have sound counseling from a Christian therapist. You’ll need that person as a sounding board to your thoughts. Are you both in couples’ counseling as well?
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2018 4:49:10 GMT -7
Thank you for your feed back. We both have counselors. Both are Christian based. We are not doing marriage counseling yet. We have been advised to wait until he has been in counciling for at least a year because his suicide attempt needs to be delt with first.
He has been open about everything else and I am at peace with everything except this affair. He is just too angry and unrepentive. He told me, or should I say screamed in my face, that he didn't think there was anything wrong with it. That they were just friends and that they were never physical. He is also still trying to shift the blame on to me. If I had/hadn't done this or that he wouldn't have needed to .... blah, blah. I reminded him that 1) I was in the same relationship and had more reason to stray that he did but I didn't. He agreed with this. 2) He knew it was wrong because he felt guilty about it but continued. 3) He is the one that turned his back on his vows to me and God. This was his decision. No one made made him do it but himself. He agreed.
I am 6 months into this nightmare and I am just losing hope. I do see improvements and changes I have never seen before but... anyway I need to keep on praying....
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Post by ladystrong on Jun 21, 2018 6:44:42 GMT -7
Yes, I’d say he hasn’t repented if he’s putting any blame on you for his waywardness and getting angry at you for bringing it up. That’s 100% on him and his affair partner. He doesn’t want to take responsibility for his actions. Something in him drove him to do this. It has nothing to do with you, as you already know. Since he’s saying he saw nothing wrong with it, I think it’s hoing to take a very long time for him to change his thinking process.
Escaping the reality of life is why my husband did it. We have three young boys and at the time he was laid off from work so that made him depressed. Plus he was spiritually weak and not really communing with God. It was also an identity crisis for my husband. He wasn’t sure he wanted to live wholeheartedly for Jesus. But the affair made it clear to him about what his life looked like when he decided to be disobedient and live without God’s covering. He felt the rift in our home right away but didn’t know what to do about it so he hid the truth. For him, it was really traumatic and haunted him for the almost two years that he did not tell me. The AP was threatening suicide and using what he had done as a way to blackmail him. In a way, I’m glad she was crazy because it slapped him out of his blindness! I did end up talking with her and she was all over the place with blameshifting, justifying, rationalizing, etc. Anyway, that’s another story.
Now the state of the marriage, that’s where both spouses share the blame. I don’t know what the dynamics where in your marriage at the time of the affair but it’s something that you’ll both need to explore when the time is right.
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Post by ladystrong on Jun 21, 2018 7:34:54 GMT -7
I guess the main thing for you is that you can forgive him way before you ever trust him fully again. Whether you stay together or not, you’ll have to forgive him. But, until you get the whole story, you won’t be able to trust him. Two possible things to do that others have done: 1) polygraph test 2) call the affair partner to confirm what happened. Of course we want to trust God and sometimes He’s prompting us to probe more. I never did either to confirm. I’m not saying you should do either, those are just other options that I’ve read other people have used to get the whole story and be at peace.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2018 9:59:46 GMT -7
I have forgiven him for P&M, for putting everything before me, for never cherishing me, for using me for his satisfaction and an outlet for his fantasies, for gas lighting and blame shifting, for lying, for exploiting my daughter. I have forgiven myself for letting this define me and destroying my since of self. I have even forgiven him for the affair. I understand that all of this was part of his SA. I am having trouble with forgiving him for not being repentive about his affair, for still trying to place the blame on me. I wasn't available to talk to him, he didn't feel safe talking to me because I would call him on the carpet. He could talk to her, she built him up, agreed with him, validated him ... of course she didn't know the truth about his behavior and addiction. I was available to talk to him. I was a stay at home wife.... His thinking is still screwed up and he is still rationalizing it.
As far as she goes, I have no desire to talk to her. She is just as broken as he is. As she proudly stated, she is happily married. Okay, whatever. I did send her an email telling her explicitly what his issues are. I made sure she knew about his preference for younger but "legal" girls and what he did to my daughter. That his disease has progressed to voyeurism. That I am dedicated to protecting my daughter as any mother with a daughter would be. I am pretty sure she will never contact him again. She has an 8 yr old daughter and son.
As far as our marriage, it has always been rocky.. it has always been affected by his addiction, double life, inability to bond, self centeredness and my anger and both of our childhood issues. Only with th grace of God....
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Post by ladystrong on Jun 21, 2018 13:14:45 GMT -7
Yes, his thinking is definitely still messed up. He has a deep heart issue that he’s not willing to surrender to the Lord and that’s a bad place to be for him and for rebuilding the trust in your marriage. I know you already know this: you can’t make him repent. He needs to be convicted by the Holy Spirit. The marriage being rebuilt on solid ground hinges on his repentance because you’re never going to be able to fully trust and reconcile with him without that deep conviction and contrite heart, the same heart that David writes about in Psalm 51. All the actions he’s taking by going to counseling and groups is a bunch of hogwash if he hasn’t started with repenting by seeing what he did as wrong and taking responsibility. A man like that will never truly change until he’s broken. He’ll continue to play the game of looking good on the outside by doing “stuff” while harboring junk on the inside that he chooses to keep from the Lord’s touch. If those things are not submitted under Jesus’ authority he leaves the door open to the enemy to get in again. Based on what you’ve said, I don’t think that he has been convicted of his sin yet.
You’re certainly very patient with him for waiting for him to repent after 6 months of his confession. If it was me, I’d be gone by now! I would continue to ask the Lord to help you forgive him of his choice to be unrepentant. I would not trust him though.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 21, 2018 20:22:38 GMT -7
It takes years of walking with God and maintaining soberity for a sexual sin addict's thinking to straighten out. I can tell you from my own experience that it will probably always be a daily battle for your husband to remain sober. I am 9 years sober and I still have to be vigilant and I still battle urges. The only thing that works...God....a close relationship with my Father.
Now from a wife's perspective...I married an addict. You need to be vigilant about what your husband is doing. I normally don't recommend this but with your husband's penchant for barely legal girls, you need to be watchful. Make sure you and your daughter are safe.
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