SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I've been reading through my journal entries here and I'm both amused and appalled.

I was so full of hope that we were going to get past the betrayal and make our marriage work the way it should have that I became gullible.

Back then, I loved him with everything I had and would do just about anything to keep our marriage. I allowed him so much slack. I gave him more chances than any one person ever deserves. I overlooked so many things that should have screamed at me to run away and never look back.

Hind sight is always 20/20. I wish present sight and fore sight was just as vivid and accurate - I could have saved myself a lot of frustration and aggravation.

I don't think so. For me, my hope for the future has taken a major shift. For too long, my hope for the future revolved around the hope that my marriage would work out. Now I realize that whether my marriage does or does not work out, my hope for the future revolves around me. One way or another, I will survive this painful chapter of my life and be a better person for it, with or without my WH. I don't see that as gullible. I see it as sheer determination. I've been through a lot of crap in my life and I have seen the worst side of human nature. I survived it and I will survive this too.

I think if hope isn't tempered with a good dose of reality it has the ability to turn into gullibility. I know because I lived it. I wasn't gullible about what he was doing - I was tracking him as he was doing it. My blindness was in believing him capable of admitting he has a problem and committing to fixing himself. Once I finally admitted those things to myself, my decision was clear.

Hope for another person's behavior when that person has demonstrated that s/he does not value you? yep, that is gullibility, IMHO.

That's exactly what I meant, WB.

I was gullible for 6 years... which makes me feel pretty stupid too.

And the light switch was right there the whole time - all I had to do was turn it on and find the door.