Faith and trust

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Faith and trust
18
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 1:07am

I am dealing with a personal crisis on a couple of other boards, but I was interested in maybe getting some feedback from another aspect here. My dh, age 60, and I, age 43, have been married for 6 years and together for 8. On October 29, 2005, I discovered that my dh had an emotional affair with his high school sweetheart. This began four years ago. The worst of it happened over a one year period, but she goes on believing he loves her and always will to this day. She also sends him "love" pages and poems and the like still. Anyway, I don't need to go into all the gory details. Enough said. We are headed to marriage counseling this month. We had to wait to get into a place that charges on a sliding fee scale.

In the mean time, this is one more crisis in my life. I have dealt with every kind of abuse there is at all stages of my life up until I met my dh. I have lost a twin and one other baby. My first marriage of 20 years was filled with abuse. To date, I have felt that I am able to turn around what I learned and experienced and make it a positive for myself and others.

How do I do this this time??? I am lost.... How do I keep my faith and trust again. These losses add up so quickly in a way to belittle my trust in others.

Steph

"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."

-Mark Twain




Edited 1/4/2006 1:15 am ET by amcanmom

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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-11-2004
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 7:18am

I am so sorry you have to go through that.
With that said, you must ask yourself the question...'why do I keep choosing abusive relationships?'
No one wants to hear that they are but relationships are patterns, we keep picking people who have something to teach us about ourselves.
Until we learn the 'lesson' they will keep repeating themselves.
Do you subconsciously believe you don't deserve better? I'd talk with my therapist to really find out what it is about me that is making me so unhappy.
We can put the blame 'out there' on anyone but it really is about ourselves.
Life is FULL of crisis', that's how the soul learns to overcome, which is what you're here for. I'm not blaming you, just opening your mind to the possibility that you chose this 'type' of man once again.?

Charliesap

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 9:22am

The other women is pushing a bit hard and the trust issue between you and your DH is feeling the pressure.


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 12:11pm

(((Hugs!!)))

iVillage Member
Registered: 02-27-2004
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 3:19pm

Hi Steph

Having been through a betrayal by my dh (he had a brief but very intense emotional and phsyical affair) the only advice I can offer from my own personal experience is that you won't find your trust and faith again until you have trust and faith that you can handle whatever happens next.

A betrayal by someone who you have been with for a long time and whom you are particularly close to rocks your world to the very core. You question everything you thought you knew including your own judgement. You wonder how you could have lived with someone for so long and not known that they were capable of such behaviour. I could go on and on about the ways it affects but you know all that, you are experiencing it right now. Until you start to believe again that you will come through it and you will find some peace in yourself because you are still here and you have survived you will struggle with your belief and trust. In the end it comes down to believing that no matter what your dh does you know you can handle it and then you will start to have faith again.

Hope this helps

~Carol~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 7:56pm

Thank you to everyone else who responded. I am frequenting the two boards that are mentioned. I just wanted to see if there was some other outlook that I was missing and needed in the way of faith and trust. Trust is, of course, of many discussions on the two infidelity boards.

I don't know that I would call my current marriage as "abusive." I guess that emotional infidelity could be considered emotional abuse, but not in the sense that abuse is usually thought of. As a matter of fact, one of the things that made me think that I might want to be with my dh permanently is that his childhood was that of the proverbaly "Leave It To Beaver." Absolutely no abuse was in his past. I would not have been involved in any way, shape, or form with a man who had had any kind of abuse in his past. I did go through two years of VERY intense therapy to deal with the abuse in my childhood and first marriage. I would have been unable to leave my first marriage without it.

Now, by emotional affair, I mean that they had a very intense email, phone, and chat thing going on. Yes, I believe that having to deal with an emotional affair is MUCH more difficult than dealing with a physcial affair. I would have been angry, but I would not have felt the deep hurt and grief that I do.

The abuse that I experienced as a child was physcial, verbal, emotional, and sexual (by no less than six men). The abuse that I experienced in my first marriage was physical, verbal, emotional, and sexual. As I said, I did deal with this during two years of therapy. It is still a struggle at times, but those are few and far between now. The therapy ended about 10 years ago. I will, about once a year, remember something else, but I am able to deal with it fairly quickly when these things do crop up.

Carol, thank you so much for your insightful post. You are right that I need to be able to know where I am going next and have faith in myself to do whatever may come next. I guess that one of the problems is that I feel uncertain about my path right now. We try to, and do when we can, talk about the issues surrounding the problems in our marriage. He has copped to taking total responsibility for the affair. He has given me carte blanche to take the time that I need and to lead the way. We are trying to rebuild our marriage into being better than it ever has been. I just feel stuck because we have trouble getting past some walls without some assistance from a marriage counselor.

I definitely question my own judgement. I think that more than anything, that was what I was trying to get across in my OP. I don't think it came out that way.

The affair touches every part of my life with my dh, our past, our present and our future. Right now, I am still trying to deal with how it affects my past. (Hmmmm There's some insight that I hadn't thought about before now.) Until I can deal with that, I feel stuck there. I KNOW that I have to come through this. I KNOW that I will eventually forgive him... for my own sake, not his. Those are the two things that I have come to know.

I know that one of the things that happens when we grieve is sometimes a loss of faith. I think that, right now, that is what I am dealing with. With my prior losses, I never had very much of that. This time I am.

Steph


"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."


-Mark Twain


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 8:56pm
(((Hugs))) Steph!
iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Wed, 01-04-2006 - 10:24pm

Steph,


One more question...


iVillage Member
Registered: 02-27-2004
In reply to: amcanmom
Thu, 01-05-2006 - 5:35pm

Steph,

It sounds to me like your dh has taken responsibility and is prepared to do whatever work it takes so that you both get through this and at this stage that is as much as you can ask of him. It is important to let him know that you understand and appreciate this as well as it will help him to see that you do appreciate his efforts. I can so understand your uncertainty about your path right now as I remember that feeling well (still suffer from doubts from time to time but only rarely now). As far as trust goes it will be a while before that comes back and will be built up gradually. I found that it helped to think about some areas I knew I could still trust him in such as childcare and finances.

It is hard to believe that the affair not only affects the present, the future, the recent past when it was going on but the whole of your past together, but it does because you think about it differently and you question events, feelings and thoughts that you didn't in that way before.

I questioned everything I thought I knew before. For instance I thought I knew that if my dh ever had an affair it would be the end of the marriage. I struggled with that for a long time thinking I was weak not to walk away. I felt so lost and unsure of which direction to take, whether I should go, whether I should stay. I changed my mind from day to day and sometimes from hour to hour with what I was thinking.

Feel free to e-mail me anytime you feel like talking to someone who has been through it and come out the other end. I think my e-mail is on my profile if you do want to do this.

Be patient with yourself and expect to feel fragile and unsure of yourself but know that this can be a positive experience because you will find out that you are a strong person capable of love and forgiveness.

~Carol~

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Fri, 01-06-2006 - 3:15am
This is one of the things that he is waiting on me for. It is up to me when and how this happens. He has agreed to share anything she sends him. I hope he means that. I am waiting to be in marriage counseling to decide how to handle this. Unfortunately, it is clear to me from the emails she wrote him, she is in an abusive marriage of about 40 years. Doing this the way I would really like to, and yes it's petty and vindictive which is VERY unlike me, is out of the question. It is terrible important to me that he make it clear to her what he is telling me about never having loved her. I'm not sure if I buy that, but he says it is, so he needs to tell her that.

Steph


"In the first place, God made idiots. That was for practice. Then he made school boards."


-Mark Twain


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
In reply to: amcanmom
Fri, 01-06-2006 - 10:21am

You shouldn't be the "heavy" in this issue.


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