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Topic: Long Term Affairs XI
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JoePike
♂ Member
Member # 13207 |  Posted: 10:49 AM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 |     |
Hey, I'm doing boxing in my training sessions. Told the trainer today it was my H's face I saw on his mitt.
It's great, isn't it? I too joined a boxing gym last year, but sadly the journey is a bit to long for me, so I hope I can find a place either nearer to work or home.
And as I would never touch a woman that way, my right hook connected very well with OM's jaw...well, at least that's what I was thinking when I was doing bagwork. 
"Do or do not. There is no Try" - Yoda.
"The term “mistake” infers a level of ignorance, innocence and naivety. And a lack of intent and planning." - Craig Harper
Posts: 3952 | Registered: Jan 2007 | weepy
♀ Member
Member # 8790 | | Posted: 11:12 AM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
fnf: I would say he was lucky too.
H and I did that questionnaire right after dday too. On he he put sex like 5th out of 6, said he'd be happy with once a month, that family time was the most important thing to him.
I just wanted to barf when I read it.
Dday: 9/12/05
M: 29 yrs( me anyway )
BS(me): 55 And I'm ok with that
FWS: 57- Multiple PAs, LTA 7? yrs.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try. -- Yoda
Posts: 9340 | Registered: Nov 2005 | From: SE PA | BorrowTrouble
♀ Member
Member # 2435 | | Posted: 12:21 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
OMG FNF. What fucking nerve!!!
D-day 7/29/04.
Posts: 5711 | Registered: Oct 2003 | UKgirl
♀ Member
Member # 17062 | | Posted: 1:21 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Well, I’m busy just reading and catching up on how everyone is. My parents have gone off further up north. My dad, aged 83, is asked back by the health and computing lot to attend their seminars and conferences as some kind of revered elder statesman. Quite nice for him, really. My mum (80) seems to be recovering well from her heart surgery three months ago and did half of the driving up here (it’s about 260 miles). She managed a stroll around town as a practice for their little jaunt. They’re back tomorrow before doing the longer haul back home.
Sooooo. Meanwhile, I’m still feeling disjointed. Maybe I haven’t quite removed the facia of pretence that everything is fine while awaiting their return tomorrow.
Where has all the emotional turmoil gone??? There have been triggers, sure. But manageable. Like when certain records come on the radio, I just turn it off nowadays. But this one, not quite. When WH was having his affair, he completely neglected the garden, so I sort of took it over. The summer of 2006, it was looking very pretty, lovely lawn, climbing roses and honeysuckles, trimmed victorian bower, troughs and baskets full of flowers. I’m a fair weather gardener, so made a start a couple of days ago by tackling the lawn, mowed it, racked and scarified it, chatted to the blackbird who’s nested in an arch. He wanders in and starts trimming. I get a little annoyed. The last time I sorted the lawn, he was having his affair and couldn’t give a fuck. Oh yes, he’d say how nice the garden was and all of that, but he spent time in HER garden, he didn’t WANT to have anything to do with our garden. I did it all and he let me do it!!! And then, having got it all so nice and all, it’s all gone to weeds and moss and ruin because I haven’t touched it since July 2006. All because of that fuckwit. I wanted to yell at him “get out of my garden!!” I’m assuming that feeling is normal. >>>sigh<<<
D-Day: 30 July 2006 LTA: 5yrs
Me, BS, 55 y/o Him, WS, 57 y/o
MOW, pathetic ex-fiancee.
3 grown boys and one 18 y/o
I don't consider myself married anymore.
There are some words once spoken split the world in two. Before you say them and after.
Posts: 3172 | Registered: Nov 2007 | From: UK | UKgirl
♀ Member
Member # 17062 | | Posted: 1:27 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Okay. Little rant over. Hey Lostsuol, love the group hug!! Come in a bit late, but I’ll take any going.
My SIL has a place in OC. I'm thinking I'm gonna need a few days of sun and surf there before I go back to work FT.... Soon.
Weepy, the sooner, the better. Getting away (FWH calls it running away!) is good for me. I mentally toss out all the baggage on the way and a curse or two as I go past OW’s place.
his wife was now doing something that she obviously found painful just to keep him happy.
Can’t help it, I wonder what she did that I don’t do or I won’t consider doing. He says nothing, but even so …
cook up gourmet meals in the kitchen and fuckfests in the bedroom
Kind of like the Jerry Hall quote: You must be a maid in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a whore in the bedroom. Didn’t work for her, did it?
I liked having some time just to be a normal person.
That's the good thing about being away. Feeling normal.
Caught up, check in later after I have dragged something out of the fridge, showed it some heat and thrown it on the table. I might take the dog out first and let the rest go hang. See? Can’t be bothered. And as to dreams, I wouldn’t dare mention the one I had last night, but I reckon I know what it all meant. Let me just feed your imagination and say that when I woke up, I likened OW's nether regions to a tapeworm head, but replace those hooks with teeth ……
I’m outta here before the questions start!! 
D-Day: 30 July 2006 LTA: 5yrs
Me, BS, 55 y/o Him, WS, 57 y/o
MOW, pathetic ex-fiancee.
3 grown boys and one 18 y/o
I don't consider myself married anymore.
There are some words once spoken split the world in two. Before you say them and after.
Posts: 3172 | Registered: Nov 2007 | From: UK | weepy
♀ Member
Member # 8790 | | Posted: 2:32 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
I wanted to yell at him “get out of my garden!!” I’m assuming that feeling is normal. >>>sigh<<<
Ahh, gardens. In 2004 I took a landscape design course. LOVED IT. That summer I cut two gardens in our front and along the side. I just moved a few plants around and bought one rhody as a centerpiece. I dug up lilies from our back and transplanted them, etc.
In 2005, I dug out a completely worthless garden out back and move things around in our back yard. I also asked for a few larger plants for my birthday and H took me to a garden center and we bought them and I planted them. This is all my design remember....
In 2006, we were lucky to get annuals in. But H also wanted to start a vegetable garden in the back. He started plants from seed and watered them religiously for like 2 weeks. I noticed they were starving for water one day and watered them, then did it again a few days later, obviously, H wasn't doing it. Then I transplanted them into pots when they got larger and asked H if he was going to cut out a bed for them or what. In MC he told her I "took over" HIS garden and he didn't want to do it any more. Apparently he decided that two weeks after planting the seeds and forgot to tell me.
Anyway, back to MY garden. Last year he's complaining how this one centerpiece bush... a crepe myrtle which I LOVE, cause I'm the only one on the street with one, is overgrown and starts pruning it back to nothing. I almost clipped him. Then he complains that the annuals aren't "colorful" enough and why didn't I get some other stuff, then he cuts two beds of his own and tells me to plant things there.
That was all a year out and it's a wonder we didn't kill each other.
Last year, we got veggies in and enjoyed them all summer. I extended two beds this year and he helped me move a couple bushes from the side and cut a new bed around a pine tree for me because I said I wanted it.
There is hope.
Dday: 9/12/05
M: 29 yrs( me anyway )
BS(me): 55 And I'm ok with that
FWS: 57- Multiple PAs, LTA 7? yrs.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try. -- Yoda
Posts: 9340 | Registered: Nov 2005 | From: SE PA | hurtshirley
Member
Member # 16197 | | Posted: 4:11 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Well, shit. My "normalcy" was shot to hell with our standing MC appt today.  I was feeling so good but now feel just beat to crap. We got into some very probing "whys" and "hows" and lets just say the answer wasn't pretty.  I got the truth and I am not sure I really wanted it or can ever get over it.
The answer for my H is that he was so very selfish that he was absolutely willing to sacrifice the one person whom he knew loved him dearly to do what he wanted to do. He didn't care what it meant for me. He only cared that he got what he wanted. This goes for the girls too. At some very base level, I know this is the truth but, shit, it hurts so very, very badly. My eyes are red and puffy from crying. To hear it stated, out loud, in black and white is so painful.
I know I am supposed to focus on the "now" but to know he was capable of essentiially cold-blooded emotional murder chills me to the bone and makes me wonder whether it is possible to change from such a monster into someone who CAN care.
"Forgiveness is the grace by which you enable the other person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew" Desmond Tutu
Posts: 2170 | Registered: Sep 2007 | hurtbuthappy
♀ Member
Member # 14539 | | Posted: 4:44 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Hi all!! Haven't posted for awhile, but I do check in on everyone. ((((HUGS)))) to all that are struggling.
I spent the afternoon with the one friend I have confided in. Hadn't seen her in awhile and filled her in on my Valentine's Day present from WS and OW. 
She asked me why he is still here? Says I deserve so much more and should not be "settling" for this shit. I know no one knows what they would do in my shoes, and she is not judgemental, just concerned about me.
Makes me wonder, am I settling? Am I just so afraid to be alone that I am choosing to ignore the past?
Not long ago there was talk about what our kids might think about our choice to stay with H's that can do this to us. I worry about this as well as what message I am sending WS. And what is this doing to me and how I feel about myself?
I guess I am looking for some support, whether it comes as a 2x4 or something else. I told her I am going day to day and waiting it out. She wanted to know what I was waiting for? At this moment, I'm don't know. To see if the other shoe is going to drop, or if he gets his shit together. Either way I still feel like the loser in this M.
M-25 years
2 kids
Posts: 131 | Registered: May 2007 | UKgirl
♀ Member
Member # 17062 | | Posted: 5:26 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
I am in an unreal place. I really don’t know what to make of it. Normal? If it is, then that tidal wave is out there somewhere, or that stab in the back, or that rug I’m on is going to be yanked out from under me. I’m still waiting with a sense of foreboding.
Weepy, there may be hope, but at the moment I’m toying between Jeyes Fluid or Weed and Feed.
Oh Shirley, sometimes hearing it out loud is shit. Seeing it displayed in black and white, the truth of it all, it’s a kick to the stomach. I know the same thing. Nothing was going to stop him, I know that now, he had to walk that fantasy path with her to see if their journey was to be rejoined. I know he didn’t care one jot about me or what might happen b/c he was so wrapped up in himself. And he has always been a selfish and arrogant man. He wanted to put himself into a position where HE could make the choice and to be able to do it in such a way that no one would get hurt cos he is such a nice bloke. What a load of crap. He still hasn’t told me that, in fact he still gives me the spiel about how he was never going to leave me – well, why have an affair then??? And I KNOW he loved her, if it hadn’t burned out by its own intensity and I had found out, he would have left. I think I hate that most of all. That he loved someone else and I never knew. I wish he could say he loved her, it would be the reason to have his affair. Instead he fed me excuses about being at an all time low, thinking I didn’t love me (never asked me tho’, just presumed), that he hadn’t been successful enough, provided enough, he needed an escape, a distraction (she was that alright) etc, etc. Pathetic excuses. Why can’t he say; “I loved her once enough to ask her to marry me, I always wondered about her and held a bit of her in my heart and when I found her again I had to find out if she was the one for me.” Give me a reason, not an excuse. I still say he did it b/c he wanted to. So why can’t he just say it?
HBH That VDay stuff was just the addict staring at the syringe. You are NOT a loser and it is not a case of fretting about wrong messages. We all feel or have felt like that. Our FWS’s should feel like they’ve won the lottery, not us feeling we got the wooden spoon. It’s hard to say why we’ve stayed, we all have our reasons - but the most important one is that we love our WS’s. It’s not a case of seeing yourself with that person for the rest of your life, more being unable to see yourself without them. Everything we do from now on is from a point of reflection and we KNOW we will survive without them. We may be heartbroken, but we don’t need them in the same way anymore and they know they have to fix both themselves and us. So no 2x4’s at all.
Back to my glass of wine and watching my back, just waiting ….. and hope OW stays out of my dreams tonight. 
D-Day: 30 July 2006 LTA: 5yrs
Me, BS, 55 y/o Him, WS, 57 y/o
MOW, pathetic ex-fiancee.
3 grown boys and one 18 y/o
I don't consider myself married anymore.
There are some words once spoken split the world in two. Before you say them and after.
Posts: 3172 | Registered: Nov 2007 | From: UK | 25wimsey
♀ Member
Member # 7816 | | Posted: 7:05 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
HBH, UKgirl is right, you are not a loser--you are the strong one who is not willing to give up on 23 years of marriage without either a fight or seeing what your H does to help rebuild. What does he say about the recent developments? Amazing what NC means or doesn't mean to some WS, isn't it?
We all do stay for different reasons--love, the memory of a good marriage at one time, the length of time we've invested in our marriages, hope that the remorsefulness we hear and see is real and that H will continue to act in ways that prove their sincerity--and giving them a chance to prove themselves, even when they fuck up. And also not wanting to give up our lives the way we know them, keeping our families together, lots of different reasons for me at least.
Do you know what you're waiting for? I feel like I'll forever be waiting in some part of me for the other shoe to drop--and I can't decide if that's a rational response to this whole mess or if it's just dithering on my part. I do know that I don't think I'll be free of a lot of the feelings I have whether I'm in the marriage or out of it--and so far the pluses of the marriage outweigh the minuses--and like I said, the minuses will be there anyway, in me, no matter where I am or who I'm with.
No 2X4's from me, just want to let you know that you're not alone, wondering if you're settling, wondering if you're doing the right thing, and lurching along day by day--seems to get better as time goes by, but that might just be getting used to the way my life turned out--which is a good thing for me in a way. Some sort of acceptance and trying to live with the cards I've been dealt. Sounds depressing, I know, but it's not that awful. Just reality.
Posts: 695 | Registered: Aug 2005 | lostsuol
♀ Member
Member # 13706 | | Posted: 7:27 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Is 'Welcome Back' a "p-c" phrase when we are in the club nobody wants to join? In any case... I'm glad to see familiar names and know we are all still muddling along a day at a time.
Interesting thoughts about the dreams, HurtShirley. We seem to be sharing the same brain! (dreams so much alike). I will see if I can follow your advice of "Try to go with the dreams, not fight them and let them do their work."
{{{HurtShirley}}} I'm so sorry for your pain. I think that's what I will hear if my FWH ever gets to truly looking into his motivation for the A. The fog is still lifting.
UKgirl: Where has all the emotional turmoil gone??? There have been triggers, sure. But manageable. I hope that feeling holds for you.
I'm trying to stay stable while knowing OW is working in FWH's bldg this week. I'm told that he avoids her but that's not enough to calm my nerves. I need to find something to do that will keep me from this obsessing. So far... I'm at a standstill. It's too soon for gardening here; we could still have snow. I find that I'm sleeping a lot; not at all energetic. Maybe tomorrow...
Posts: 797 | Registered: Feb 2007 | From: Canada | BorrowTrouble
♀ Member
Member # 2435 | | Posted: 10:33 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
UK,
I think his real explanation, if he was honest and insightful about himself, would be more like this:
"I loved her once, when love to me meant only the chemistry of attraction. When it had few responsibilities to it, and little to no emotional depth. When neither of us needed anything much from the other except adoration and sex. In short, when it was almost entirely fun and feeling, and very little giving.
And now, when I am entering my fifties and realizing that most of my life is gone I yearn for that free-and-easy type of love and life. I want to go back to being a kid because I deathly fear my own aging and my future failings. I look at my parents and see everything I don't want to be. I look at myself and see all of my early plans that are left untouched. And I look at OW and see myself 30 years ago, with all the possibilities I had then.
She was a fantasy of what I might have been. Nothing more."
[This message edited by BorrowTrouble at 10:54 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday)]
D-day 7/29/04.
Posts: 5711 | Registered: Oct 2003 | runoverbytruck
♀ Member
Member # 11752 | | Posted: 10:34 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
(((((((((shirley)))))))))
That had to smart. But it's real, and I value realness. My ass is awfully raw from the smoke blown up into it. Take the real if you can get it.
You can't change what you don't acknowledge, and he's acknowledging it. There is more hope for him than a smokeblower.
LTA BS
If you think the grass is greener on the other side, it's because it's fertilized with bullshit.
The best protection a woman can have is courage.~Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Posts: 6814 | Registered: Aug 2006 | BorrowTrouble
♀ Member
Member # 2435 | | Posted: 10:38 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
You know, Run, after listening to my husband, I'm not sure that what you said is 100 percent true.
My H says he acknowledged a lot of things to himself over the years and worked to fix them when he never admitted those things to me. So, it may not be as black and white as we want it to be. (Black and White queen speaking here.)
Basically, what he said was that he knew he was a shit in many, many ways, and he worked to change that. But he believed that if he admitted to me that he was a shit, I would just leave.
He lived in perpetual fear of abandonment, which I can totally sympathize with.
D-day 7/29/04.
Posts: 5711 | Registered: Oct 2003 | runoverbytruck
♀ Member
Member # 11752 | | Posted: 10:56 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
I didn't necessarily mean acknowledge it "out loud". Shirley's H's just happens to be doing that. I just mean acknowledge it period--be it to yourself or whomever.
You don't know it needs fixing if you don't know what "it" is. You may know "something" needs fixing because you feel "broken"...but I guess it's easier to do when you start with acknowledging the "it".
Am I making any sense?
LTA BS
If you think the grass is greener on the other side, it's because it's fertilized with bullshit.
The best protection a woman can have is courage.~Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Posts: 6814 | Registered: Aug 2006 | BorrowTrouble
♀ Member
Member # 2435 | | Posted: 10:58 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Not to me, but I've had three glasses of wine tonight, so I'm not making much sense either.
D-day 7/29/04.
Posts: 5711 | Registered: Oct 2003 | BorrowTrouble
♀ Member
Member # 2435 | | Posted: 10:59 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
Actually, on subsequent read, that does make sense.
I guess that means I have either had one glass of wine too many, or one too few.
D-day 7/29/04.
Posts: 5711 | Registered: Oct 2003 | runoverbytruck
♀ Member
Member # 11752 | | Posted: 11:02 PM, April 22nd (Tuesday), 2008 | |
LTA BS
If you think the grass is greener on the other side, it's because it's fertilized with bullshit.
The best protection a woman can have is courage.~Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Posts: 6814 | Registered: Aug 2006 | UKgirl
♀ Member
Member # 17062 | | Posted: 5:10 AM, April 23rd (Wednesday), 2008 | |
I’d like to have a garden big enough to warrant going on a landscape design course! Mine’s a hankerchief which is typical of the time the house was built (Victorian 1978). I guess marriage is like a garden. It needs tending, otherwise that bindweed is gonna take over. I think H stopped gardening b/c it gave him thinking time and seeing as he didn’t like thinking about what he was doing, he concentrated on watching the sports channels instead.
But I sway with my feelings about this m of mine. I know those of us who have long m’s are not going to just throw it all away, but I wonder if my H ever really loved me. I threw out some books OW had given H, one of them was given to him in 1976, the year before he met me. He had kept it. Back in about 1981, after we were married and already on our second house move, our dog chewed up some books while we were out. He was furious. One of them was a nauseatingly romantic one from her. He had to throw away the dust jacket, but the book wasn’t too bad. But his anger was unreasonable and instant. I remember it b/c it was so OTT. I think he was holding on to her memory even then. She was married a year or so before we were. I think he felt a sense of loss and “what if” at that moment. And then he went and got the job working for the same company her dad had worked for and went off looking for her brother’s grave which was round there somewhere. And then, of course, he found her on FRu. And then he was GONE. For five fucking years he was completely gone. And stupid me never saw it.
And so, BT, it seems you’re more or less right. But I hate the idea that she has always been there, tucked away in some warm part of his heart while he just got on with his life and the convenience of me while he waited for her to maybe come back one day. Hate it that I wasn’t enough until DDay, or whenever he had his moment of realising his fantasy did not measure up to reality. Can I be satisfied with being enough for him now when I wasn’t for 29-odd years? Is he just a head-in-the-clouds fuckwit poet?
Yep. Exposure hurts. Honesty can hurt. Openness may make us see a harsh reality. But at least it is real. And that is easier to talk out and deal with. But we have put our split open hearts on the table and our WS have to be very careful how they handle them from now on. Honesty, yes. But gentle, not brutal. It’s more important they are honest with themselves.
D-Day: 30 July 2006 LTA: 5yrs
Me, BS, 55 y/o Him, WS, 57 y/o
MOW, pathetic ex-fiancee.
3 grown boys and one 18 y/o
I don't consider myself married anymore.
There are some words once spoken split the world in two. Before you say them and after.
Posts: 3172 | Registered: Nov 2007 | From: UK | snowbaby796
♀ Member
Member # 13882 | | Posted: 7:46 AM, April 23rd (Wednesday), 2008 | |
Hurt shirley, I know how painful your WH acknowledging that your feelings didn't really matter all he cared about was himself is.
We did a Divorce Busting session recently and my WH kept said he went away by himself 5 months after dday because although I had told him how much it hurt me how much I didn't want him to go how he should take me away & put me and our marriage first, I did not tell him our marriage would be over if he went, so he did. You see, he didn't have all the information to make the right choice, it was my fault because I should have told him if you choose to ignore my feelings and hurt me again so soon after finding out about your affairs I will never forgive you and I will leave you. So, it's not his fault you see, he didn't have all the information! (un-fucking-believable!)
Anyhow the couselor/coach whatever told him what he was saying is "it was fine with you to hurt snowbaby, but if you thought it would hurt you you wouldn't have done it"
and he said "you're exactly right"
That was so painful.
However, it did clear up a lot of issues I had. Like why nothing I ever did was good enough for him to be a considerate loving devoted person, why no matte what I said or did it did not matter to him and he would do whatever the hell he wanted. He never cared about me, my feelings or hurting me. That was fine. He was going to get his way and I did not matter. That's when I knew for sure this marriage is over. There is nothing I could ever do or say to get that man to choose me. He does not care, the therapist called him on it and he agreed. So, there is nowhere to go from here.
Anyhow, hurtshirly, I understand your pain. but, in my case the pain brought about clarity that I did not have before, and for that I am grateful.
"Betrayal of yourself is still betrayal nonetheless, it is the highest betrayal" Neale Donald Walsch
"State the obvious I didn't get my perfect fantasy I realize you love yourself more than you could ever love me" Taylor Swift
Posts: 563 | Registered: Mar 2007 | | Topic Posts: 1000 | |
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