Tainted Love

This week has been rather difficult for me. The first anniversary that just passed with me knowing about my wife’s affair. And to know that we’ve shared another anniversary with her secret buried inside. Wondering how the a person you love can do such a thing. How she could look at me or even want to eat dinner at the place I asked her to marry me. These things do not make sense.

Have you ever loved somebody but knew you couldn’t be together? The love is tainted. It doesn’t feel right. You know there’s more out there something else that’s better. You know there may be a special person for you that you perhaps haven’t met yet. Somebody who will cherish and love you forever unconditionally and never in a million years do the horrible things you had experienced with the former person.

My love well feels empty inside. It doesn’t feel right. How has your love changed for your spouse after an affair? Do you feel an empty love? Things feel extremely different. It is confusing to hear your spouse profess their love to you and express how much they love you though they betrayed you beyond levels of most people’s comprehension.

Listen, I can see my wife is trying to show me something but I do not want her to feel like as if she’s “repaying” me for what she has done. I’m not sure what her exact feelings are or what even happened to get her to the place she’s at now. What she did to me was extremely calculated. She knew exactly what she was going to lose and was ready to lose it to go live happily ever after with the other guy.

If I would have never found out, they’d still be talking today. She perhaps would have different feelings today, I don’t know. These are all questions only she can answer. And to be honest, my mind is getting tired worrying about things I don’t have to worry about.

It has almost been a year from when I first found out and it feels like I’m still stuck. This just shows the psychological impact it has caused. Hard to believe millions of people get faced with very similar situations and perhaps worse.

One of my biggest issues with trusting to go forward with my wife is knowing what she is capable of. This woman has displayed two sides that I am now well aware of. I ask myself why I would torment myself with questions, concerns & wonders that she has caused going forward. It’s almost self inflicting.

When things got bad my wife went to somebody else. She wanted to be with him. She carried out an affair waiting for the perfect time to exit. This was all calculated. She was Stringing me along like a puppet and looking at me daily lugging that around. I must have been irrelevant to her to be able to execute this and do it.

See, I believe I caught it at a point it disrupted their plans. I’m not sure what their final plan was. It sucks cycling through the bs over and over again trying to make sense of everything. You start looking at pictures, dates, conversations, things bought, vacations and just analyzing everything until you’ve just about gone crazy!

I know I must sound scattered on this post. It’s not meant to be structured. Most of the things I write on here are mostly just brain dumps of my feelings. It’s about a love my wife has now tainted. A love that she’ll never get back. A love that she stripped away. A love that will be tainted between her and I forever.

Also, last night my wife got a little heated. And she had started to do something of reminiscent past behaviors. Also, I noticed she carries flawed logic about abuse. She used to get physical with me and always test me until she knew she hit a point with me. I’m not sure why she would try to provoke me. I never got that.

Well, last night she started on me again, not as bad, but she did. I took a knee to the balls (it wasn’t too hard thank goodness),  and she tried to pin me to the bed so she could vent her feelings to me. I used to get slapped, punched and pushed. Though she says cause I’m a “man” I can “take it”. I have always hated when she did that. It was reminiscent of two young siblings fighting or something and got extremely annoying.

This post isn’t here to try and tear her down. She’s done a lot lately as far as trying to make me happy and reflect a positive attitude. These are things I do notice. I try to say thank you more without getting complacent with the things she’s doing for me. I hope I receive the guidance and clarity I need soon. Not sure how much longer I can sit and stress myself out over everything. I’m tired of it all.

 

A Letter To My Wife

7 years ago yesterday I thought I was marrying my best friend and a life partner. Somebody who would be there through the thick and thin for each other. 7 years ago yesterday I would have never imagined or even thought of what “could” happen with an affair.

First and foremost, I would like to apologize for the things I have done to you in the past. They weren’t right. All the times I chose alcohol, work and friends over you. Or the times where I perhaps may have belittled you or made you feel not that significant. I’m not sure why I did this. I would teeter our relationship with things I should have never in a million years done. I’m not even sure why. In some strange way I thought by doing some things it would make you “want” me more? I’m not really sure.

I’m not sure why I did these things. I know it caused a lot of hurt and for that I do apologize. With that being said, I do love you. Just with a different kind of love. I’m not sure what that love is anymore.

We have both done things to each other to cause a lot of resentment. I am glad I have a power of self reflection to realize the mistakes and hurt I have caused instead of just lashing out at you and accusing you for all of the faults of our relationship and marriage. With this being said, I want you to understand this in no way, shape or form condone what you have done.

You have updated your blog and I know it’s easier for you to communicate through words than in person. It is something you grew up with cause I know your parents liked to communicate with you like that. This is also another reason I decided to mind dump on here.

You say ” I love you because of what he has done for me; for how he makes me feel; for how he strengthens me, motivates me, inspires me; for how his courage, strength and love drives him to live a life more powerful and beautiful that he can ever describe.” – To me I make no sense of this. If this were remotely true you wouldn’t have been with another man both emotionally and physically and come home to me living a double life. For that long. It is still perplexing to process almost a year later on how you did that and hear you say things like this.

You may be in some sort of fog. I’m not sure what it is. My definition of love is completely different. It doesn’t involve dabbling with other people outside of a marriage to find out perhaps that other person isn’t their soulmate. No, that’s not love. Love is working out your problems and meeting in the middle before you let that intrusion happen.

Love isn’t betraying your spouse repetitively on those types of levels for so long without having the guilt just rip you apart into a self confession for what you had done. No, I didn’t get any of that. Instead, you decided to go out with your “bestie”, have drinks and invite your affair partner along for a great date.

Then come home and face your realities of what you were “stuck” with. These hard realities to this day you would never in a million years admit to me. You have a great way to hide things, lie and do things to cover other things. It’s called manipulation and you’re great at it. Gaslighting, manipulation, lying these are all things I have taught you to do that much better now now that you have been caught.

And if I didn’t “catch” you, things would have been all my fault. I remember this clearly. You were gearing up to spin everything all on me. You made me feel like I WAS THE PROBLEM. Yes, I had my own set of issues. But you RAN AWAY FROM THEM to another man. You left me alone for ME TO FIGURE OUT MY OWN PROBLEMS.

Trying to change and be a better person for you and my family. Asking myself what else I can do to show you I could be a better person. Nothing happened UNTIL YOU GOT CAUGHT. You know what happened? I remember that night so vividly. I left to go to the bar and drown my sorrows behind a bottle while you and your affair partner corroborated stories. It’s ironic that if you read this you’ll probably be stunned at the truth that resides in this letter.

Where would we be at if I didn’t find out? Considering you were talking to him daily still and your affair went on a lot longer than stated I don’t think we’d be in a good place. See, he gave you attention that I “tried” to give you but gave up on. You went to him and got your daily fix emotionally and physically.

I am here now to work on me and figure my life out. Your actions have given me options, self reflection and time. The door is open for you to walk out of any time you’d like. In some cases I wake up I feel like it has all be a dream. I am tired.

Each day is a new day. I still cherish my life God has given to me. I will now be utilizing my time and energy in doing “better”. I’d like to leave this earth a better place leaving it than coming here and leaving it worse than it was before I got here.

You say you’ve found God and he has forgiven you and you have forgiven yourself. See, God forgives expecting you to change. Is it real forgiveness when you keep doing something though ask for forgiveness? You still have open lies to “minimize” your damage. This is lying.

This defies the principles of your beliefs. Though you speak about God and forgiveness but TO THIS DAY DO NO INSTILL THEM. And you know exactly what I’m talking about. So I look at this person in front of me each day and ask myself who you are.

Many days I wake up asking this question. Who you are and what I’ve even meant to you and what feelings you really have for me. Perhaps you think it’s true love but I beg to differ. True love would prevent you from placing yourself in the situation you did. You knew exactly what you were doing and wanted it.

It didn’t take long either. As soon as he got a job at your place I’m sure you both looked at each other and KNEW what you both wanted to do. The gut wrenching feeling you must have had every single time I asked about you two. That sixth sense I had when something wasn’t right.  I learned a lot about that extra sense. How spot on I was with you looking me in the eyes knowing what you had done and were continuing to do and saying “eww that’s so gross I’d never do that”. Yeah, well you did do that not only once but many times. Your lies have progressed and gotten deeper.

See, we have many differences. I don’t need emotional support and self validation from another woman of some sort of abnormal insecurities about myself. I love myself. I love who I am. I don’t want to sound conceded here cause that’s not what I’m trying to do.

You had asked me why I took my ring off a couple times when I went out a couple times. I am pretty sure I answered that but I’ll say it again. Listen, I had tried to show my love for you to get our marriage back on track. I didn’t understand but now I completely get it. I was so confused, manipulated and everything inbetween.

All those times I tried to “buy” you love. Which, those weren’t my intentions at all to be honest. I really thought that getting you things would open your heart to me. Instead I created an entitlist monster. I even got to hear you affair partner read an emotional letter to you even him describing how you “like the finer things in life”. When I heard him read that letter to you that day there were many more red flags but I didn’t want to admit to myself that you had the power to do that.

What is the point of being married? Anyways, getting back to my original point about the ring. You psychologically messed with me so much I self confirmed what I had already knew. It’s not hard for my to walk in the bar and walk away with another woman if I wanted that. Of course I never let it go that far. Most were just casual conversations and I left it alone when the body language got too heated. I know, it was stupid. But emotionally I was beat down cause my wife wasn’t responding to anything I was doing. Of course that all makes sense now.

I just hope one day you could offer me a full disclosure of what you have done. Not sure how you expect to even move forward when your lies are still scattered all over the place. Why don’t you put your new found peace in God and find the true forgiveness you may be looking for.

At times I feel as if you’d lied so much to me, your family, my family and everybody in between so much that you’ve revised items into things that you made truths to yourself and almost tricked yourself into believing. It’s disappointing and unimaginable to say the least.

 

 

Today I Come First

Today I Come First. Just wanted to post this. I read this today and this really stuck.

Anniversary

Well, today is another wedding anniversary that has arrived. Though today is very different. There is nothing to celebrate. Today I popped on to Facebook and started looking through old pictures. My wife has lots of them on her Facebook. Going through the pictures what you believed to be real and knowing what was true is a hard punch to the gut to say the least. And I only know “some” of the details. So I’m pretty sure the conclusions I’ve come up with are more than likely true without verification through my wife..

Today would have marked our 7th wedding anniversary. It’s a day I want to put far behind me. The meaning of today has nothing and holds nothing to me anymore. I feel as though many things have been a lie and I’m sure that is pretty natural when events like these unfold.

My wife has been pretty busy doing things around the house and taking care of me and our daughter. I’ve been sick and she’s gone out of her way to do a lot of things. I am appreciative of what she is doing but feel she’ll soon burn herself out.

I’ve seen this before and it may be a trend who knows. She was similar in different ways years ago but things seemed to have changed at some point. Probably from faults of my own behavior. I started to try and attend church and yesterday’s service was a good one. The pastor talked about substance dependency and even got to hear a young man talk about his issues with heroin and how he almost lost his life before coming to God.

I’m trying to replace all the negative with positives. I want nothing to do with the bad stuff anymore. It has been a part of my life for too many years and I’m going to finally try and stick the nail in the coffin. That road is going to be hard and have many bumps in it. But my hope is to one day look back at it all and finally make sense of my life and take this present to make a better future. Not only for me, but my kids.

With that all being said, I’m not even sure how my wife feels about this day. I still don’t understand her feelings or what her feelings had been for me or what they are now. Going back through everything it is clear her respect for herself and the people she “loves or loved” was brought down to nothing.

I can’t be one to talk about much respect though. While albeit a little different, I had little respect for my family for years. I really didn’t look or even think I was disrespecting her or my family repetitively for years. This holds true to Andrea a lot. While I didn’t really “knowingly” think I has disrespecting her I WAS 100%.

All the times I left her at home to go party or do whatever. Or putting in long working hours and putting my family on the back burner. Today I will be making index cards that will hold bible verses that pertain to my daily struggles. When I feel I am getting weak I will pull them out and read them to keep a constant reminder to stay on a clear path. I know this road will be difficult for me to get on but the outcome will bring many rewards.

My Self Reflection

Over the years I’ve wronged my wife in many different ways which caused TONS of resentment towards me. This wasn’t built up over night. See, in my mind I wasn’t doing anything wrong cause I’d “ask” my wife if it was ok to go and and grab a few beers with friends. I’ve been doing it most of my life so in a way it felt normal to me. And going out and doing it with her blessing was even better. I had a kick ass girlfriend, fiancee and wife who I thought really didn’t care if I went out. And anytime I’d say something about it she’d just respond with “you really need to get out and hang out with your friends”.

I didn’t really pickup on this that much during the course of our marriage. I’m not sure why she would always suggest this and not just tell me her true feelings. I know I caused a lot of hurt from my actions. I have stripped countless hours from my family to go hang with friends and drink. It wasn’t fair. While I can’t justify my actions for my wife’s affair I can say that these actions helped create the perfect storm which lead up to the affair.

My 30 years on this earth have taught my some valuable life lessons. I can usually overcome just about any obstacle in my life. This is just another one of those obstacles albeit a little bigger. Reflecting back on my family and the people I’ve hung around with all my life I noticed a trend. Most of the time these were some deeply depressed people. You don’t really realize that until you sit back and think long and hard. I would like to say I haven’t been depressed and if I told you that I’d be a liar.

I’ve hit low points in my life and typically hung out with people facing their own struggles. I’m sure from an outside perspective this was self evident. I to many have probably looked like a low level functional piece of shit. The ironic thing is through the years I’ve always carried personal goals and have been about spot on hitting them. Great career, house, family etc. I would create a vision in my head and execute it. While those things didn’t happen over night they still happened.

Today I envision myself being a completely different person and I’ll make that happen. I’ve already started spending more time with my kids and it feels great. I’ve missed out on many things for one reason or another. I’m going to focus on myself getting myself to generally be a way better person. I’m stripping unhealthy things I’ve carried with me for many years and have been slowly replacing them with way better alternatives. Lately I’ve been working out, “trying” to eat healthier and want to pickup hobbies that I can enjoy as well as get my kids involved.

I have a set list of goals I want to hit. First and foremost I’m going to conquer the gym. These results will come over time but I’ve always wanted my six pack abs. That’s a lifestyle change in itself. I’ll be adding more to my self reflections in the near future. There are many aha moments we all have. It’s ironic that through many years of repeatedly doing stupid shit and saying to myself “never doing that again” I kept doing it until something happens that makes you have a self reflection. I want to correct that. I want to alter things BEFORE they happen. So my new life will be filled only good things. I will try my hardest to let go of all negativity and depression. It’s not good for not only me but the people around me.

How Many Lies Does It Take To Annihilate Your Marriage?

If you’ve been following blog you’re witnessing a small glimpse of my chaotic life. I’m not trying to garner sympathy from writing to this blog. It authentically feels good to express my feelings anonymously to the public and offers myself to destress as well as offering some sort of hope some of my information may perhaps help somebody else in a really bad spot.

Each day now that I wake up to Andrea (my wife) I think about EVERYTHING. These things will never go away. And to be honest, I’m not sure which is worse when your marriage is hit with an affair. The lies or the physical/emotional aspects of it. Andrea, understand that the questions I have asked you were supposed to help in building some sort of trust.

When you stack lies up to my questions how do you expect me to trust you ever again? When there’s no trust how do you have a marriage? How can one go on in a marriage without mentally torturing themselves each day? I wake up with the same unanswered questions. Perhaps they’ve already been answered but I know most are all lies.

Lying about these things will only kill off any hope you may have left. I cannot go on with lies. You’ve shown me what you’re capable of and all I’ve done is create a better liar. So my question to anybody who’s been in this situation. Have your spouses lies to you post affair killed off any hope to reconcile your marriage?

False Reconciliation

I’d like to touch base on this topic. I’m sure many people have the same questions going through their problems day to day. Is your spouse trying to reconcile for all of the WRONG reasons? Have you ever thought about that?

Here’s a series of questions you should be asking yourself if your spouse has betrayed you with infidelity. Is she currently only committed to you now (I know what a joke right, since they decided to step out of the marriage what makes you think they’ll “now” be only committed to you) ?

Do they deep down inside only want to stay due to fear? Finances, kids etc? Do they fear the outcome? Do they fear the questions that will be asked by family about the divorce? There are many questions. I guess one has to ask themselves if it is worth it to even move forward.

If you know somebody to be a liar and deceiver cause you’ve witnessed it all before how can you begin to even think if something is really true or not. Most likely you’re still living in a world of lies.

Infidelity

It’s such a dirty word. And to be honest, never in a million years would I have thought I would be where I’m at today in life. I typically overcome some of life’s obstacles then get slammed with another. It’s been about 7 months from d-day and my mind is still riddled with questions that I know will not have answers. These are answers I have already answered for myself but never in a million years would probably ever hear them come out of my wife’s mouth.

What causes an affair? Well, it is obvious something is missing from the marriage. It’s an easy for for somebody to fulfill their needs for self validation most of the time. Though there are many who self indulge and only stay with their spouse maybe for the kids or an image that would be tainted if they ran away with their affair partner.

It’s hard day to day looking at somebody who made the betrayed you not just one time but many times. The person who you thought you’d be with forever. Your forever ever. Your security your future. Everything you planned with this person. The kids, family, friends everything attached. Then you ask yourself WHY. WHY would he or she do this to me? The same person you took to the alter of God and made a commitment before God, family and friends. So I do still ask myself what would make somebody want to stay in the marriage.

Like I had previously said, it is most likely fear. Those who do get caught most likely understand they cannot run away with their AP and live some sort of fantasy life. Those who do most of the will never work.

After I found out I pondered how my wife treated him and how she treated me. Needless to say it hurts to think about it but it is unfortunately most likely true. The way I see it is they were in a dating phase. Something new and exciting. Something I had with my wife. This phase does wear off in the end when two people become very comfortable with each other.

There are so many little questions as well. Did he shower my wife with gifts, how did she look at him? How did she talk to him? Never once will I get those answers. Did my wife really love him?

Why was my wife treating another man so good and coming home to me with resentment and disgust? Does she even truly love me? I could only imagine to begin to understand the true scope of my wife’s affair. These are details I have almost resigned myself from. I have built up probably the most naughty things in my head and ran with it thinking most likely it has been done.

Why do you choose to stay with your husbands?

Hell, I’ll try and give myself the answer to this question. When a cheater gets caught especially in a marriage it is daunting. In my opinion it is far easier to accept the devil you do know than the devil you don’t. And I’m sure they have weighed their issues thoroughly. Kids involved, financial mess, families, friends and everything inbetween. Those are too many negatives to overcome running away with an affair partner. They can’t predict how it would have worked out. So at the end of the day they’re left with this decision – “Should I really toss all of this away when I am pretty certain the deck is stacked against success?”.

Living a good while with the lies and what made them cheat in the first place should make it that much easier to live with it in the future going forward.

 

True Recovery

So this morning I thought I’d post something about what a true recovery from an affair might be. Millions of people are faced with the hardship of an affair. Most end in a divorce and only a small % survive and recover. Some may say an affair has even amplified their marriages and made them better than before.

How does true recovery happen? I have pulled some interesting information. True recovery starts from the heart. I’ve read many stories online about affairs. Some differ from the other. There are a select few who’ve messed up big time and come to their spouses with full disclosure to what they’ve done. I read a sad story about a woman who had cheated on her husband once with his good friend.

She knew it was wrong after it happened.  Her husband didn’t hear it from his friends or have to do any investigating. She knowingly came back to her husband and let him know straight up of her betrayal. That in my opinion is true love right there. Her husband did leave her but you can sense a true regret. She mustered up the strength to come to her husband and tell the truth. She didn’t know which way it was going to go.

It ended up with a divorce. I hope one day they may be able to get a reconciliation as they do have kids. She approached her situation head on with truth. Not trickle truth but the truth. I have read your blog and you speak about “The truth will set you free” though you take an opposite approach. Here’s some good information I found about trickle truthing.

”

2.   Providing critical information about your affair only reluctantly and in dribs and drabs (“trickle truth”).  The revelation of an affair or sexual addiction is a frightening process, but one of the worst mistakes is trying to hold back the whole truth.  Similarly, spinning the truth so your mate won’t be so upset is just as damaging.   I know why most former cheaters are reluctant to be 100% candid — fear.  They are already under assault and trying to save their marriage, and believe that too many details will derail any potential reconciliation.  They want the pain, yelling and anger to stop.  Controlling the “truth” about your affair is not the way to do it, however.

The problem with leaking information is that it delays your mate’s ability to learn to trust you again.  If your mate believes that you’ve laid out the whole truth and nothing but the truth, that there are no more surprises or painful revelations yet to come and then your mate encounters multiple “oh by the ways” or other discoveries as time goes on, then it will eventually destroy your mate’s ability to believe a single word you say.

For that reason, it is best to lay it all out on the front end.   Either your mate will be able to handle the truth or not. Getting the truth out, all of it and unvarnished, to your mate is a great opportunity to display real integrity.  Something you may feel you’ve been lacking if you’ve had to hide your actions or lie.  Don’t miss your chance.  Tell the whole truth about the affair (eg, when it started, how long it went on, how it was kept a secret, how it ended — if it’s ended)  as soon as you can.  Your Betrayed Spouse needs and deserves a timeline.

That being said,  telling the whole truth about the affair has been widely misinterpreted by some Betrayed Spouses as meaning they can demand the answers to any and all questions about the affair indefinitely.  That’s not the case if you want to recover.   There needs to be a time limit to when discussing the affair ceases.   You Betrayeds should get your answers early and then focus on the marriage (the cause usually) and not the affair or the OM/OW (the symptom).  Asking new questions a year or more after D-day won’t help you but will only retard progress and discourage the Waywards.“

 

Lies on Lies Does No Good

I’ve had ample time to think things through and through again. It’s heartbreaking to know your heart is still riddled with lies. Last night you opened up just a tad more about your affair. I want you to know this… It hurts more when you lie than when just telling the truth. This is something I thought you’d had figured out on your own by now. Your story changes day to day, motn

For some reason it doesn’t seem like you’ve learned that yet. You’re only accessible to information you deem necessary. A true recovery comes from the heart. I have been more hurt by the lies. Those lies are very real. But for some reason they keep flowing. To be honest, I’m not exactly sure why there are still so many lies. They won’t ever help you but continue to hurt you and our marriage.

You opened up slightly last night to me. I’m not sure why the lies are still with you. I ask that you can just release your guilt. I want you to  understand you can open up to me. Understand it hurts more knowing that you’re still lying. It hurts looking you in the eyes and receiving these lies. It hurts knowing that somebody with continued lies like this isn’t look for a true reconciliation. 

Know this. I do love you. I have a love that reserved for you to this day. It’s hard to believe what has been done. It’s something I don’t wish upon my worst enemy. It is something that cannot be taken back. The hurt, pain and everything in between is a horrible pain. It’s like a death..

I only hope one day you can finally get everything off you’re chest. Believe me, it will feel so much better. Sometimes I ask myself if you’re really sincere about your ambition to reconcile our marriage. True reconciliation starts with 100% truth and humility which you have not shown for some reason or another. Only you can ask yourself why. Maybe your vision of true love is blurry.

True love would have shown through. True love would have prevented this all from happening. So my question to you today is do you in your heart truly love me? If you say yes to that question I want you to think long and hard about what true love is. I want you to ask yourself if you truly in your heart do really love me.

I ask myself if I can go on with you. How does one go on with so many lies? If you were truly sorry you’d be an open book. It is unfortunate you decided to take a very dark one way path that is going to nowhere. If only you understood that it does you no good to lie. You go to church say you’re saved yet still lie. I guess I don’t get it. One day I hope you can open your heart.