Another Mom knows and I don’t care. Once again I was talking about my anger and someone thought we were going through the same thing.
Nope. Shocked her. but she was kind and we prayed together. She was going through a hard time with her husband, but not like me.
It never gets old the shock in people’s face because they know M’s AP, hell M’s AP and I have blessed and served others together.
I’m angry today. I told M.
This doesn’t seem to get any easier. I tell him I’m not the wife for him seriously because I read this Pinterest article and the wife didn’t even get cray, cray..
Also this video here got to me especially where the husband told the wife I forgive you, and delight to offer you Mercy..
Wow.. I know deep down in my heart of hearts.. in my soul that I scream.. I don’t!!not me!!.. I’m not best friends with M.. I’m not we never were.. I tried, I invited and the asshole that I’m married to refused, sighed, and didn’t care. He thought he was right and knew what he was doing right into his AP’s arms he landed.
Motherfucker..
He’s got to go.. yeah he’s got to go..
Then I get tired after my anger shpeel and I’m tired.. tired of being angry.. tired of causing my kids grief because I am not happy.. I am not joyful because I want to say M’s stupidness saps me of my joy..
But I guess I choose that. I choose to be angry, to feel jilted, to feel dare I say it?? Bitter..
I just don’t understand why he didn’t leave me, just go be with his whore in happy delusion land and leave me the fuck alone..
This limbo just irritates me.
Because sometimes I feel I can give him mercy, grace, and then I take back that gift as quick as I gave it and I want out.
Out of this marriage, out of it all..
I wonder if I ever loved him enough. Enough to love him unconditionally and pick him up with his dumb ideas, his ungratefulness and his stupid infidelity. To be there for him through this. Like the article said she was best friends with her husband and best friends hurt each other, best friends make up. So she made up with her best friend..
I call bullshit for my marriage. My asshole husband slept with mine, well she was never my best friend to begin with. She’s a whore in the making and so was my husband.
So whatever..
I’m completely down tonight… maybe because Rizzo will be out of town until next Friday. I didn’t know that until today.. Maybe my MIL is right I just need to leave. Leave my kids and everything behind for awhile and get the fuck out of here..
I’m tired of being angry about this. It’s stupid anyway. This covenant, this marriage is dumb. Funny how M clings to it now.. mother fucker..
How To Not Hate My Husband 
Don’t hold yourself to the standard you think they set. I call BS and I don’t mean betrayed spouse. Fast forgiveness like that with no reparation and not even knowing the whole story (because you couldn’t possibly in a few days), that’s not real. They might believe it is, but it’s not. It’s what Janis Spring calls cheap forgiveness and it’s worth less than no forgiveness at all. Normal people get angry. If she’s not angry after such a short time she’s in denial. Pretty simple.
I wouldn’t go so far as to say that you “choose” to be angry. You didn’t choose the circumstance — it was foisted upon you. And any person who has not had parts of their brain removed would feel mad as hell if his/her spouse had a secret relationship with their best friend. Enraged.
What Neph and notes said. Far too soon. And there is no choice about the anger. It is necessary. And completely justified.
Nephila is right. I call capital BULL capital SHIT on that article. If you could talk to that woman now, I would bet her story is a little different. You cannot forgive someone in the immediate shock of discovery. I should know, because the VERY first words I uttered after finding out what he did were “I forgive you”. I was in shock. People who move on that fast are lying to themselves. They are moving straight into denial. They aren’t forgiving as much as they are desperately pretending it didn’t happen, let’s have a second honeymoon, etc. The cheating spouse, of course, is all in for this route! But there are many steps to TRUE forgiveness. This man was smack in the middle of his affair. He had just been with his whore, was planning to be with her the next day! So where do those feelings go? Was her husband all tearful because he was caught? Because he was relieved to end it? You simply cannot rush reconciliation. Both the cheating spouse and the betrayed spouse need to process their feelings and emotions. The cheating spouse, if they are caught mid-affair, has some work to do disentangling from this other relationship. Is he still going to go to work and see this woman every day? That’s unrealistic.
What I should have told my husband on d day was this. I want to save our marriage. I am willing to try to forgive you. What I DID tell him was that for me to even CONSIDER staying, I had a list of requirements. In my opinion you have to know EXACTLY what you are being asked to forgive. The cheating spouse has to be honest. This is not a process that happens in just a few days.
She – the In Her Shoes woman – is not describing reality for anyone but herself. If it was that fast, she was never in love enough in the first place. Yes, I’m making this judgement about their marriage… because her version of “recovery” doesn’t make any sense. She seems to base her marriage’s love on God… but happens to be married to her husband. To her, God has not betrayed her; only her husband has. And that hurts, no doubt, but the world hasn’t slipped out from under her feet… because her world [of marriage] has been God, not her husband. He’s only a piece of their marriage – as is she – and God consists of the vast majority of it.
Or, at least, that’s what she’s telling herself now. Maybe that’s why her husband felt bad yet was able to do it… her intimacy is with God, not with him, and he felt it. If she and he are able to foster real intimacy in the future, she might find herself in a surprising tumult… and feel that REAL pain. The betrayal…
It hurts US so much because we LOVE/D them that much. And they betrayed us. It’s harder for you (and for me too, with my own husband) *because* you loved him so much, not because you didn’t.
I know it’s so confusing. I get whiplash when my thoughts decide to attack me, especially in the middle of doing something and being happy. My husband can see the cloudiness come over my face and my eyes go dead and he rushes to just hold me. He doesn’t ask anymore… just holds me, sighs into and kisses my neck, and repeats “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I love you, babe. I’m so sorry…” He knows what’s happening and that it sometimes doesn’t even require a trigger. I’ve told him, repeatedly, that it’s not that I hate him. It’s not that I doubt he loves me. I’m just overwhelmingly sad, and angry, and depressed, and disappointed at the man he WAS. That he *did* not love me the way I assumed he did, *then.* That 11 years of us together was wasted in less-than love. That the closeness and intimacy we share now did.not.exist until he f*cked up. That it took HER and his a$$hole-ishness to make him realize how much I loved him… so that I could be loved as much as I deserved. Deserve. He’s trying to make up for 11 years of not loving me enough… and sometimes, that alone is a trigger.
Anyhow – now that I’ve rambled on about my own feelings, sorry! As long as he’s showing remorse. As long as he’s being tender. As long as he’s still fiery, whether it’s flashes of passion or anger and then apologies… I think you’re okay. Passion is something to work with… use it, please!
Your second to the last paragraph sums up for me so much.. I hate the marriage I was in I was living in some sort of 1/2 love and it took this to get him to wake up..
Please ramble anytime here. 🙂
I disagree with all of the responses to this I managed to read. Were 7 months in and I have forgiven my husband. I love my husband and I enjoy his company. I call bs on saying being able to move on faster than others means there was no deep love. You can’t imagine what he meant to me. His betrayal ripped me hard. Some of us simply grieve faster or harder or quieter of louder. NH, don’t hold yourself to anybody’s standards but your own. Listen to your heart. I still get angry and hurt and insecure but on the whole, his affair stays in the back of my mind. I can still see him as my friend and so I chose what I wanted. There are still days I feel like snatching the forgivness and recommitment away. I don’t and I try not to rub his face in it too hard anymore, but it’s still there.
To clarify, I wasn’t saying what the timeline for recovering from an affair “should” be… just that a few days is NOT it. (As in, “I don’t know all the elements on the periodic table but I DO know that the color pink isn’t one of them.” THAT sort of nonsensical.)
For myself, D-day was this past July 8th.He did not have sex with her. They were both married. Co-workers. I encouraged them to carpool together because it was stupid, in my mind, for them to both be driving half an hour away – bumper to bumper in winter weather – when we live in the same village. She’s 15-20 years older than we are and in a loveless marriage (separate bedrooms for over a decade.) He kissed her. He tried to make a relationship of it… and she let it continue until he kissed her. Until he told her that he loved her (he says it was to gauge where she was, in her own feelings, and I believe it… but I still hate that he was able to bring himself to say those words.) Then, she decided she didn’t want to stay in it and the carpooling stopped. They stopped. She still sent him messages and if he hadn’t been offered another job, to work closer to home, I don’t know what would have happened. He says that – and the honesty broke him, to admit it to himself – he truly doesn’t know if he would have engaged a full-blown affair if she’d completely accepted him. He says that the moment he told her that he loved her, he was afraid she’d say it back… and then what.the.hell would he have done? I didn’t find out until months after it was over.
I feel like I don’t deserve to feel half as distraught as most of the women I read about, on these blogs… but I am anyway. My timeline is probably shorter than a “real” affair’s would be. I read other emotional affair blogs, where less has happened, and it’s taking longer. I often wonder if we’re still so broken because the only reason it wasn’t a full affair was because we found out soon enough. They intended to have an affair, they just happened to have not f*cked her yet.. I cannot imagine NH’s situation… no, I can. I imagine myself in her shoes. Our backgrounds are similar. We’ve been together 11 years, married for 9, and homeschool our 7, 8, and 9 year olds. I’ve sobbed, reading this story. And other stories. Putting myself in those shoes and wondering where I’d be now if that had happened to me.
Reading these stories have opened my eyes. I can see the boundaries now for every relationship I have – or my husband has – with literally everyone. It takes time and perspective to see reality.
And that is impossible to do in a few days after D-Day, even without it having been a full-fledged affair. I was still in denial then – well, sucking it up anyway. I SAID I forgave him. I didn’t understand what that meant, at the time. I’m still trying to understand it. If by “making up with my best friend,”.she means that she didn’t murder him as he lay beside her? I believe that. But I don’t, for a second, believe that she – by the time she wrote that article – had even begun to open her eyes. Or, she was simply afraid to… that’s where I was within a few days of D-Day. I was terrified to see the reality of our marriage. I could have absolutely let it slide and continued to suck it up… but that would have been a lie.
I’m writing too much. I’m sorry – again! – NH. Maybe I should blog it. Ugh.