When I posted the story 10 years ago, I guess I was just wanting to vent. Today I find myself reminded of the past, and found some of my old writings, and wondered if this was still out on the internet. I'm also rather surprised that I remembered the password for my old account.
Thought it's not all sunshine and roses, I thought a follow up might encourage some others that all is not lost when something this painful happens.
I received many thoughtful and I believe sincere offers of assistance and other responses in this thread and via private messages. Thanks to you all and thanks for the prayers. For those that have or will go through a similar situation, I hope God blesses your heart with healing and peace. It was comforting, alarming, and eye opening to see how common adultery actually is. There are a lot of broken hearts out there.
what I've noticed from your comments is that you look OUTSIDE of the relationship to find ways and means to console yourself. Was this the case BEFORE the affair?
... You also make statements that make one feel as if you are DEMANDING so much from her and the relationship.
The judgements made against her in this public format by you were VERY harsh.
...But I am quite sure that she has no idea that you have posted this situation for the entire world to read. Even though it IS anonimous, would she be happy that you did this? Would you NOT be deceiving her by this action?
This was one of the best responses I read. Some insightful things but also some that missed the mark. First of all, the guy's motivation for saying whatever he said was likely because he wanted to have sex with an attractive woman. Nonetheless, I do think that I look outside the relationship a lot for recreation and especially during that time, I spent way too much of my time entertaining myself and not being a productive person. I wasn't much help with housework back then and I wasted a lot of time playing video games. While it certainly doesn't justify adultery, it left her feeling used and lonely. I honestly don't think I judged her to harshly; this was by far and still is the most painful experience of my life, done by the person I trusted the most. I am not sure if I ever mentioned this posting to her, but I honestly don't think she would care much.
So what happened after? Well, things were not good for a long time. Early on it was difficult, but I worked to refrain from using this against her in unrelated disagreements. I had to evaluate and realize some things about myself. I was in my early twenties when this initially happened, and realized that I was still a kid in a lot of ways.
After around 2 years of publicly pretending this didn't happen, I was pretty messed up inside. I finally told my wife that I needed some time to live alone. We separated. During that time, she began "dating" other men (some of them married, some of them from our former church). I was a mess. I started divorce proceedings, but after all we had invested, I just wasn't willing to let her go. I couldn't bear the thought of running into her at a grocery store and us having separate lives. I basically begged for her to come back and change her lifestyle.
During my time living alone, I did a LOT of growing up. From that aspect, it was one of the best things that I ever did in my life. I had transitioned from a kid living with my dad to being a kid living with my wife. I wasn't as responsible in life as I should have been and it left her feeling like she had to pick up the slack. Learning to be an adult didn't happen for me until I lived on my own. I now think every person should live by themselves for at least 6-12 months in their early adult life. It was rough because I was so depressed, but some old friends helped me along my way. I basically was in shambles and had to rebuild myself from the inside out. Reality was that I was not nearly as great as I thought I was! I realized that I had to do things myself to make my situation better. No one was going to do it for me. I identified several key areas in my life and resolved to improve myself. The results have been fantastic for me as an individual.
So about 3 years after the initial incident, we were back together, but it was HARD. It was a difficult time, as we both had a lot of emotional damage to deal with. We're both very different now. I'm certainly a lot less naive than I used to be and I would say my heart is much harder as well.
Perhaps I shouldn't write this on a forum likes this, but I am being honest. My faith in Christianity has definitely dwindled. I still believe in God, but I am not nearly as dogmatic as I was 10 years ago. I am tolerant of many religions, and not really a fan of any particular religion. Whereas I used to think God was going to just bless me and carry me along to prosperity, I now rely on myself. I mean, if a family member is sick or something, I may still say some prayers but I don't pray or attend church regularly anymore. I was so sheltered growing up that I thought people you went to church with could be trusted. After what I have seen, I just don't trust people much anymore. Also, I tend to believe that people really don't know much when it comes to God, spirituality, afterlife, and religion. Myself included. The ones that say they have the answers are likely the ones that should be afforded the most skepticism. I live my life by trying to be kind and honest when dealing with people and business. I hope that my kindness is rewarded if/when God judges my soul.
I noticed in my previous writings how I wanted to pin things on Satan. I don't feel that way now. I feel that I was way overconfident in the strength of our marriage. Since I was not breaking "bible rules" with my behavior, I thought I was doing right in my life overall but in reality I was falling short in some areas. For sure, I was not providing nearly enough attention to her, and let's face it, if you are a young man bored on the job for 40 hours a week, would you rather look for more work to do or flirt with the pretty girl next to you? He had the opportunity to create this false impression that he wanted to shower her with attention and make her feel special. As soon as he got what he wanted, he was out of her life and she was even more alone than ever, having severely damaged the most significant human relationship in her life. She had to learn a difficult lesson that giving away her body in exchange for approval and attention made her an easy target for liars that didn't care about the years of emotional damage they left her to deal with.
Since then, my views on sexuality have certainly changed as well. I have remained faithful to my wife because that is what I promised to do, but I am very tolerant of other views. Don't mean to be rude considering this forum, but I question the wisdom of saving sex for marriage and I tend to think living with someone before marriage can be a very healthy thing. Not learning about potentially major compatibility issues until after marriage is a huge gamble, especially now that divorce is socially acceptable.
It was around 6 years later when things had finally gotten better between my wife and I, and we had our first child. I think we have an awesome family. There are still rough and depressing days that stem from these events--especially Valentine's day. "Forgive and forget"? I forgive her but it impossible for us to forget. It was years before she could see past her own guilt, but doing so helped us deal with other ways we were impacted. Even though I don't hold it over her head, the things that happened have shaped who we are and we must still deal with and talk about what happened sometimes. My trust for people in general is just not the same. The good times far outnumber the bad times in our relationship and I still love my wife and am so glad for the family we have.
I also now realize that you can never really know what another person is willing to do.
