SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

i think that me not being able to forgive myself for "believing" all the lies is holding me back. i cant let go...and it hurts. i feel like a pathetic fool when i think about how weak i was..and so blind.

do you ever feel that way?

when i think about all the things i didnt see, pretended werent there...or rug swept, it makes me cringe...and i get upset and angry with him all over again.

i just need to vent...

i would never put up with any of the things i am listing below now...after seeing a good ic for a year...and buying some pretty expensive "bitch boots." but i hate that i wasnt strong enough to see through all of his crap.

i should have listened to my mother....and what she told me immediately after dday1. "if you want him back, kick his ass to the curb."

i didnt listen and did this:

1. had my uncle who married us...he is a pastor call my husband when he left and got an apt. i had my uncle call him to try and get him to see that he was making a mistake. my husband told him he was "enjoying his freedom and liked not have the responsibiliy" this was after dday1. ouch.

2. when i found out about his cheating, i asked for transparency..and he said..."no way. you cant have access to my phone. that is a deal breaker for me. i have too many people calling me."

3. when he said..."i am still out with my friends...i will be home at 3am."

4. after reading an email he sent to a woman he cheated on me with...he said..."dont go in my email! i only am talking with her about business." and then he got so mad and stormed out of the house and stayed out all night.

5. or when i found an inappropriate email to a woman...he swore it was about work...and got so mad at me for snooping and contacting her...he said i was embarrassing him at work...turns out he was sleeping with her since dday1...she was ow2.

6. when i would find something suspicious...he would call me crazy...and tell me i was "driving him away" or making him love me less. and then i would apologize to HIM...omg....he had me thinking it was ME hindering our recovery...when he was still cheating the whole time.

7. him wanting to leave to "go see his friends down the street", or having to "go make a run."

8. up all hours of the night in his garage WHICH HE KEPT LOCKED...and he always had his phone in there...very private...and i couldnt just come in...no key either...ouch.

9. allowing him to blame me for his affair. he would actually say..."if you would have joined the same gym i did...then everyone there would know i was married...and the cheating with the yoga instructor would have never happpend. and i actually believed that...and joined the gym..and humiliated myself by joining a yoga class, and going to the same gym that the ow worked at...just to "make him happy" and get in shape. i actually thought that would keep him faithful...ouch! i actually allowed him continue going to that gym. we both had to check the schedule daily to see if she was working...pathetic...i cant beleive i did that!! i should have thrown him out that day.

10. "blow jobs arent really cheating." after dday1..he actually told me that.

of course 9 months later, i learned i was in false r after finding a dirty text.

it has been a long road since then....mc, ic, him completing rehab...all of it...and we are attempting a true r...but i was so pathetic.

honestly you guys...i just didnt want to believe what was right in front of me. i wanted to believe him so bad...and in my heart i knew that he was treating me very badly. i hate that i was so weak. i should have put him out after the first dday....and held firm on my requirements for r.

instead, i let him come back all wrong...and he acted even worse than before...WORSE.

that is my lesson.

thank god i have learned my worth now.

[This message edited by sri624 at 11:27 PM, June 5th (Wednesday)]

Sri624,

I expressed the same feelings to my IC, "How could I be so stupid?" she told me I wasn't stupid,I just trusted the person I loved to be honest.

It's not that you couldn't see what was going on it's that you were not looking for it. You have done nothing wrong. Your WH manipulated you

(as did mine). It's a form of abuse.

It sounds like you are in R now and your WH is doing what he needs to do. And that's great. But, if you are anything like me, you will trust and verify. It's like getting hit by a car- you can bet that every time you cross a street you are going to look

both ways.

You can't worry about how you handled things in the past it's how are you going to handle things now and in the future.

I think about the same thing too. I am so angry and mad at myself for believing his lies. Not to mention he made me look like the bad guy. New he flirted and chatted with other women, but never actually thought he would cheat on me! I thought he was a better person then that. That we had the same values.

Its not our fault that we were lied to. He wanted to have sex with her, it was going to happen no matter what I did. Once thier mind is set and there into the fog, there not thinking about us, just how to keep doing it.

This all sounds way too familiar...lots of love and strength

I often feel the same way about myself...ie "how could I have been so easily deceived , etc". But as far as your H goes, I would listen to your mother. ((())). Sorry you have to deal with this

sri624l,

I believe lots of us BS have had the same feelings - and NO we aren't and were NOT stupid.

I can still get very angry and cringe when I think back on some of the things I believed, put up with, and tolerated. Your feelings and hurt are rather normal.

BUT you are not stupid.

I'm sorry for the continued pain you're going through.

I do understand.

(((((Hugs))))

We all have wondered how we could be so stupid not to see what was practically in front of our faces. The truth of the matter is we trusted our spouse and never imagined they could do this to us, our families, or our marriage.

The facts are they manipulated and lied to us to cover up what they were doing. They actually didn't care about any of those things while they were still involved in the A. They only thought about what they wanted and needed to make themselves feel good. Only after their bubble is burst do they start to actually see the damage they did. Some such as mine took several DDay's for what he was going to lose to sink in. We also had to realize that we couldn't love them back to us or make them fix their issues. That is all on them and the longer it takes them, the less likely that you can have a successful R.

I have realized after all this that I wasn't stupid, he was. He threw away a good marriage and a good wife and the longer it takes him to actually "get it" the more detached from the marriageI become. I am forced to think about this everyday and to try and heal myself from the pain and blow to my own self-esteem that his A has caused me. Sometimes I wished he would have just left me for the OW. Then I wouldn't wonder everyday if he was just here out of guilt and finances (cheaper to keep her) which is what OW has said is the reason he is still here with me and not her. I also wouldn't have to wonder if there will be yet another DDay soon due to my serious health issues since this all began. I partly blame my health on the stress, anxiety, and infedelity diet that his good time brought into my life. It has caused hidden bleeding problems to surface that I never knew I had before the A because of my weakened immune system.

Why should we have to forgive ourselves for being loving and trusting spouses??? Because thats what we are. If we give them a chance to try and make it right it is only because we meant our wedding vows.

Oh man was I stupid! I even considered myself good at spotting patterns, finding people's motivations BUT FOR TWO YEARS I didn't figure out what was going on with my husband. I would have never thought him capable of this until I found that fateful email from MOW! Yeah, stupid. Now I know how stupid I can be so I have learned that I can't trust my own feelings. I just have to watch my back around him. My problem was 50% being stupid and 50% trusting him in the first place. Some people just don't deserve trust, love and devotion.

thank you guys for responding. i cringe thinking about how i acted and what i believed. but you are all right..i am not stupid..i believed him blindly..because he was my husband.

if anyone is stupid...it is him. and at the end of the day, he got away with nothing...

i am in ic trying to get help letting this feeling go. i am appalled at my behavior...my co dependency, my low self esteem, and insecurity that i felt at the time. if he ever did any of the things i listed above, he would be gone, and he knows it. i love him, but i will let his ass go and move on. it isnt a threat..it is just a boundary that i have set for myself. and i dont want to live with a monster.

i am pleased that he is trying to r with me in a slow, healthy, honest manner. i still dont trust him...no matter how many mc, ic, rehabs, or tranparent behaviors he does...that will take time. and i dont want to be pathetic anymore. never.

one thing i realized about my husband and it is this:

he is "just" a man...a man...nothing special, or magical. and he is an immature man on top of it...who is just starting to grow up at 40 years old.

thats one thing i am not stupid about for sure.

If someone wants to cheat, they will find a way to cheat.

You cna't feel stupid for not acting like some super parole officer. You have every right to expect to not have to watch over your spouse like you would a toddler in a china store.

Could you have missed signs that would have given him away sooner? Yeah, we all could have I am sure.

But, a lot of us had to resort to things we were not too proud of doing in order to discover the truth.

My hope is that one day I can trust again (with another partner). I hope I have not been damaged to the point that I am obsessed with snooping or reading too much into things.

I trusted my gut to get to this point, I hope my gut does not start playing tricks on me down the road.

oh my goodness, it is so easy to think that we have been so stupid. But we trusted, right? That's that we are supposed to do. And given the number of people here and at other infidelity sites and stats, you are in really great company with likely 50% of the world. Anyone who had withstood a WS's affair is kept in the dark. That's half the world. You are not stupid; he's just acting like a teenager conning his folks.

Please forgive yourself; in fact don't even need to forgive youself, becuase there is nothing to forgive yourself for!! you weren't stupid. You were normal. He was criminal! ((Yeah and I know for a while it is just so humiliating because we do - feel - so - stupid.))

I could have written most of your post.

I beat myself up for a long time for being "stupid". I gradually came to the realization that it wasn't stupidity. I simply trusted the person I had invested over 30 years in not to deliberately destroy the M and me. I dismissed and rationalized the lies, gaslighting and verbal abuse because they were incongruous to the person I thought he was. It was necessary to my healing that I truly forgive myself for trusting him. These are "lessons learned" as I move forward in life. Fortunately for our healing, he has taken complete responsibility for destroying that trust and repeatedly helped me not beat myself up.

You are not alone, I feel that way too sometimes. You were not stupid, just trying to be a good wife to someone who was not working with you. This is a blessing in disguise but the next time, hopefully there won't be a next time, you will know better and be a lot stronger. I too apologized and my fiancé said almost word for word what yours did, " you're pushing me away and chasing ghosts" when he learned I was on to him. I told my IC and she said to trust my gut and I was right.

Since you've learned your I would say that you're in a better place now then you would have been had this not happened.