SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Oldwounds

Your father was a Jarhead? Outstanding!

Well dang, back in my day, referring to a Marine as a "Jarhead" was cause for setting down one’s beer and giving the dude a slap down. Funny how things change.

Yep, we have that in common. Thanks for the heads up on the "lifer thing". My dad was anything but unsuccessful at life before, during and after his service. At 14 years of age and a 4th grade education under his belt, he ran away his home that mustn’t have been good (Never talked about it) but I was never to meet any side of that side of my family. He made his way in the mountains of North Carolyna until he was 17 and WWII broke out. He lied about his age (the only time I think that man ever lied in his life.) and joined the USMC. He went on to earn the Bronze Star along with many other medals of valor that now hangs in a shadow box on my office wall. After the war ended, he stayed in and would eventually cross paths with his future wife and her daughter, they married and soon afterwards he was off to another war (Korea). Barely survived that brutal situation and came home and had three kids. He stayed in the service until a heart condition forced his retirement at 21 years’ service. He didn’t miss a heartbeat and opened his own successful business. He was a good and honest, self-made man. Makes what I’m dealing with pale.

Thanks Oldwounds for taking a moment and listening to me reminisce and thank you for your service.

Asterisk

I needed to tear down every strong, positive thing I felt about myself, my wife, and our marriage.

I'm going to question that, because I think healing requires going farther. IMO, a BS is best advised to look at everything in their lives and decide what to keep, what to modify, and what to throw away.

I'm convinced that self-talk that attacks oneself is best thrown away.

Note that recognizing one's negative qualities and weaknesses is not attacking oneself. Recognizing characteristics one wants to change is not attacking oneself. It's important to see oneself as one is, warts and all - but it's important to see one's beauty, as well as the warts.

My understanding of Hinduism is that it sees cycles of creation and creative destruction. That makes sense to me, though one great writer, Amitav Ghosh, wrote stuff that makes me think we're half way through a cycle of destruction, and I don't like that one bit. (At least one of his characters says this period started when the Brits started forcing opium down China's throat in the late 18th century.)

[This message edited by SI Staff at 5:10 PM, Sunday, November 2nd]

Sisson,

I'm going to question that, because I think healing requires going farther. IMO, a BS is best advised to look at everything in their lives and decide what to keep, what to modify, and what to throw away.

Going farther than what? I’m lost.

I am not going to try to attempt to suggest I did things right. Clearly, if I had, I wouldn’t have been struggling so deeply back in June of this year.

Note that recognizing one's negative qualities and weaknesses is not attacking oneself. Recognizing characteristics one wants to change is not attacking oneself. It's important to see oneself as one is, warts and all - but it's important to see one's beauty, as well as the warts.

Fully agree, and after the tear down and rebuild I could and did look at what was beautiful. I did not mean to imply that nothing was lovely. The problem was the things that I saw as beautiful about our relationship, my wife saw differently. Many of the things that I had previously seen as my strength and attraction to my wife were in fact a hindrance to her. So it all had to go. I left my chosen career, which was working within the church. I left my faith. I left my family of origin. I left my friends. I left my hometown of San Diego and moved to another state in the high desert in a small town of 76 people where I knew no one and had no desire to know anyone. Fortunately for me at that time, for many years, I was viewed, with slanted eyes, as an outsider liberal so they kept their distance. Which is just what I was seeking.

My wife and I lived and thrived in that little desert haven for 23 years. And though I was still viewed with some trepidation they came to see that I wasn’t dangerous to their beliefs or their way of life. Mostly, what they saw of me was a solitary, crazy dude clearing the thousands of rocks off his property and then using them to build walls. Kind of symbolic.

As always sisson, I value your input.

Asterisk

I act differently with my family, with the people at my day job, with the people in the military reserves, with my ski patrol team, etc. there is a fair amount of meeting expectations involved in setting the façade for each role.

Which one is me?

I remember a comment in another thread from 2023 that has stuck with me.

Wayward spouses most times are not looking to BE WITH someone else....

They are much more looking to BE someone else.

There’s parable by Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing, that ends with this paragraph, popped into my head reading your post. Google to find the full thing, it’s on-line.

The story goes that, before or after he died, he found himself before God and he said: "I, who have been so many men in vain, want to be one man: myself." The voice of God replied from a whirlwind: "Neither am I one self; I dreamed the world as you dreamed your work, my Shakespeare, and among the shapes of my dream are you, who, like me, are many persons—and none."

He’s an incredible author. The book Dreamtigers is full of nuggets.

The problem was the things that I saw as beautiful about our relationship, my wife saw differently. Many of the things that I had previously seen as my strength and attraction to my wife were in fact a hindrance to her. So it all had to go. I left my chosen career, which was working within the church. I left my faith. I left my family of origin. I left my friends. I left my hometown of San Diego and moved to another state

My goodness. It’s your life and have every right to do with it as you please, but from the above it sounds like you utterly discarded all that made you YOU, all to transform into whatever you thought your wife would like more. Sounds like you discarded a relationship with your Creator as well for this woman.

Looking back at your life, are you pleased with the results of your total transformation into a different man?

Asterisk,

I am grateful to you and all others for posting in this thread . I am a betrayed wife and this coming weekend is very hard because it was the beginning of my husband’s 5 months affair .. in 2020.

Yes, it was 5 years ago , but it still feels raw . My husband is trying to help me in this healing process but he was not in my shoes. He has no more contact with the AP and it seemed his affair is starting to fade away from his memories .. He still listens to my flooding but I can see in his eyes that the flooding is only a rinse and repeat .. for him , while it is still excruciating painful for me when I have triggers.

I can bear the sexual intimacy more than the emotional one, he told her the big L word daily and chatted the whole day from sunrise till bed time in those 5 months . But women has a tendency to be more hurt from the emotional infidelity than the physical one . I cannot bear the thought , he gave his heart to the AP. My apologies if I am wrong.

Thank you for bringing this issue in this SI forum . You showed me that I am not alone in this long running pain of being betrayed by the one that made the marriage vow to us….

[This message edited by Lostwings at 12:17 AM, Tuesday, November 4th]

As always HouseOfPlane, I enjoy our ongoing conversations.

There’s parable by Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing, that ends with this paragraph, popped into my head reading your post. Google to find the full thing, it’s on-line.

It cracks me up how much Googling you get me into. 😊 I’ll check it out.

Asterisk

Gr8ful,

My goodness. It’s your life and have every right to do with it as you please, but from the above it sounds like you utterly discarded all that made you YOU,...

Yes, and yes, and I am Gr8tful that I did.

...all to transform into whatever you thought your wife would like more.

No, not at all. Though it was important for me to try to understand what my wife wanted of me and from me, I made the changes for me.

Sounds like you discarded a relationship with your Creator as well for this woman.

This statement is a little tricker to delve into. I do not wish to sound as if I am challenging anyone about their chosen beliefs.

1st your thought proposes that a "creator" does actually exist. But, for the moment we will work with that assumption. I did not give up my Creator for "this woman". Before I explain, it is imperative that I ask a favor from you.

Please, do not refer to my wife this way. Call her your (my) wife, call her a wayward, I’m good with that but she is not to be devalued on any of my posts by calling her "this woman".

In past posts I have referred to working full time in missionary work. I loved and was fully committed to the vocation for I believed I was "doing the Lord’s work". But parallel to my labors, while living away from "my people", amongst people with an ancient faith, I began to question the arrogance of the more modern, Americanized church I was working within. I started to question my thinking that believed my faith had everything right and theirs was evil – a fight against the real Creator. This is all a few years before my wife began her 1 ½ year affair and it would be 5 years later I’d be listening to a D-day moment. So no, I did not give up my Creator for my wife, that process had already been baking in the oven, in my head.

At the time of D-day, even though I had moved away from believing there is only "one way", (Conveniently, "my way") for God to be in one’s life, I had not given up my belief in a Creator. My wife and I were still fully involved in church work. I was the youth director/minister in a rather large church, and my wife was the organist and coral director. Her affair partner was the fulltime choir director. So, when the affair came out from the church’s shadows, having it so close to home, did give me pause and I began to pull away from my church and my church family. That said, I did not leave God behind but my faith in his presence and goodness was under challenge. It took a couple of years post D-day for me to conclude that I no longer believed in a higher power. Which had nothing to do with my wife’s affair. My wife kept her belief, and she was still playing the organ, though at a different church. I never once tried to persuade her to believe or do otherwise. It took her another 2-3 years to conclude what I had a few years earlier, and she resigned.

I hope that gives you a better insight into my lack of belief.

Looking back at your life, are you pleased with the results of your total transformation into a different man?

That is a fair question to be proposing and an easy one for me to answer for I often review my decision to not believe, for the consequences of being in error could be grave. The answer is a firm - YES! I am far happier, more empathetic and open to others who view the world differently than me. I no longer look through the closed lens of – good verses evil, sin verses righteousness. I’ve come to believe the world, people and actions are far more complex than the simplicity I was operating my life under.

Thank you Gr8ful for your questions, concerns, and insights

Asterisk