Hi everyone,
I will do my best to make this short. I'm a young man in my early 20's who met a wonderful girl 6 years ago. We got married 3 years after dating. She is 6 years older then me. We have no kids although we were both planning on having some after we bought a house.
2 years down the road, our marriage started to fall flat. We started losing interest in each other and we both started to get more selfish in our own hobbies. We stopped putting each others needs first. Eventually I stopped initiating date nights and she stopped initiating sex. I became "betaized" and she started falling out of love. We talked about this and decided to go ahead, try and work it out, then we bought a house.
We got even busier with household chores and spent less and less time with each other. For the record I actually did most of the cleaning and cooking around the place. Never complained either. I love cooking and I am kind of a neat freak! Anyways, then one day, 6 months after we bought the house, we got in an argument (over nothing really) and she randomly walks out and doesn't come back. She said she was going to stay at a friends. She said she needed time to think and I respected her wishes. I found out about the primer and read it thoroughly. I realized a lot of mistakes I made during the relationship, but I also knew and still know I can fix this and change my poor behavior, as I have done successfully in the past. I took counselling, talked to a lot of people and started to work on myself. So far so good!
Then she started sending me these long letters by e-mail. She said all the things that made her unhappy in the relationship and I replied with my own thoughts. She said I never listened to her, I never remembered things and she didn't feel like she was part of my life. Typical stuff and I admit to doing all of that, but still, I never understood why she was so sensitive about everything all of the time, and we never actually sat down for more then 15 minutes to try and work on our issues. It was like I was always fishing in the dark with her needs. I never understood them and so I was never able to act on them accordingly. We both took the relationship for granted. We both admitted to becoming roommates and we both admitted to being unhappy. Anyways, we agreed to write a separation agreement. I saw my lawyer, she saw hers...but I probed to meet her to get it signed and she just kept ignoring me.
2 months went by and this is where the pain really started. Things somewhat cooled off and she finally agreed to meet me for coffee. I learned to keep myself busy, not to be clingy, needy and follow the MAP as best as I could. She said she had 2 more letters to write me before meeting me. I said okay, no problem.
In the first letter she revealed that she was sexually abused as a child, was raped by a boyfriend and ended up having an abortion. Yeah. Wow. She said she never felt like she could trust me enough to tell me to my face. That hurt a lot. My poor baby. If only I knew, I would have known to be more sensitive. I said some really stupid **** and made some very bad jokes a long time ago. It sounds manipulative to say I wouldn't have said some things if I knew what she went through, but it's true. I'm a good person and always have thrived to be much more then who I am. I had no idea she had been through such horror and yet my life has been pretty much handed to me on a silver spoon.
The next letter was one I wish she didn't send. She admitted to cheating on me, with a few guys too. What hurt the most, was that she talked about how perfect they were, and these traits they had. Alpha traits (I get it now). But I am still devastated. I never thought she would cheat on me. Seriously. We even had a talk before we bought the house. I told her; if you fall out of love it me please end it first before cheating on me. And she asked the same of me. To top it off she is very religious and so when she told me she cheated it caught me by such complete surprise, that now, I feel like I am actually traumatized and will never get over this. Sure I am a young guy and I'll make due in time, but nobody in my entire life has taken my trust, my unconditional, loving and true trust, and breached it, so selfishly. The whole 2 months she has been gone I have kept my ring on and been faithful. My hearts been broken a few times before, but not like this. I even told friends on se veral occasions that she would never do that to me. I thought she was much more then that. She said she didn't technically cheat because we wrote the separation agreement, but she never signed it!! I feel walked on.
Of course all emotions ran through my system. Fear, anger, hatred. (Man I want to kill those guys!) But even stronger was the sadness and confusion I felt. What the heck did those guys do to get her to open up like that? In 6 years it was really a struggle with her to get her to open up and be intimate, and here I find out she did it effortlessly with a few dudes in a few weeks? I wish I knew their tricks. I wish I was them. I wish I was taller, I wish I wasn't such a nice guy, and so forth. It was and still is a huge blow to my self-esteem and self-worth. I talked to my best friend about it and fortunately I have been very lucky to have a great support system at home.
Despite my rage, I calmly collected myself and set out conditions to stay married and she made her own conditions. Although I want to forgive her, I don't think I will ever be able to and also be able to fully trust her again....but I married her for better or worse, and I am not one to give up on anything.
She has finally come back home and things seem to actually be going well. We are rebuilding the friendship, trust and praying together and communicating transparently when possible. We started doing more things together, laughing more and for the most part, up until tonight, I felt like if we just keep at it, just maybe things will get better.
She came back on Saturday, and now it is Sunday, but towards the end of the night, I already feel like she isn't taking my conditions seriously, although I am doing my best to meet hers. I feel like I am doing all of the work and she won't a finger unless she has to. It's all about her it seems. She even had the balls to say she is scared that I might leave her down the road.... yet she is the one who left me!
As you can see many thoughts race through my mind, and although I know there are many fish in the sea, I love this woman dearly. What breaks my heart is that I fear that she is not giving me another chance, not because she loves another, but because she doesn't love herself, and I am realizing there is nothing I can do to fix that.
One of my conditions is that we start kissing again. I told her it's okay that we take it slow, but tonight right before bed I went in for one and she pulled away. I just wanted a two second peck, not a deep french kiss! She says she is numb and doesn't feel anything. I don't know what to do. Our "agreement" was to try and fix this for the next 5 months and if it doesn't work we would complete the separation agreement and go for divorce. I want to seek counselling together yet she is hesitant. I think with a little more balls I can make it happen.
The questions I have for now are these:
1) Why do I feel like we shouldn't have to start over from scratch again? (She says she wants to be friends again first). I feel like time is too precious.
2) Why am I the one who seems to be struggling to gain her trust , when she is the one who breached mine? How can I turn these tables around? I am doing my best to be more alpha, but I am really struggling.
3) Am I being a ***** (cat) here? How can I grow a pair???!
a. How can I take charge without being "invasive"? I find myself either tiptoeing or being too direct. She says she hates pressure.
b. How can I make her take my conditions seriously?
c. And if she doesn't want to (as displayed by her actions), is 5 more months of hell worth it?
4) Would you have taken back a cheater?
5) It's been over 3 months now that she says she is unsure of how she feels. I am pretty sure she knows, but doesn't have the balls to tell me. What can I say or do to get her to be honest with me?
6) What would you do in my situation?
I don't know if she came back because she wants to work at it, or because her friend isn't letting her stay at her place anymore. I feel like I am in a dark tunnel and she has the flashlight, but she won't give it to me.
This is hands down the most difficult thing I have ever went through in my life. I know there is a long road ahead. I appreciate all feedback. Thank you for reading my post.
I will do my best to make this short. I'm a young man in my early 20's who met a wonderful girl 6 years ago. We got married 3 years after dating. She is 6 years older then me. We have no kids although we were both planning on having some after we bought a house.
2 years down the road, our marriage started to fall flat. We started losing interest in each other and we both started to get more selfish in our own hobbies. We stopped putting each others needs first. Eventually I stopped initiating date nights and she stopped initiating sex. I became "betaized" and she started falling out of love. We talked about this and decided to go ahead, try and work it out, then we bought a house.
We got even busier with household chores and spent less and less time with each other. For the record I actually did most of the cleaning and cooking around the place. Never complained either. I love cooking and I am kind of a neat freak! Anyways, then one day, 6 months after we bought the house, we got in an argument (over nothing really) and she randomly walks out and doesn't come back. She said she was going to stay at a friends. She said she needed time to think and I respected her wishes. I found out about the primer and read it thoroughly. I realized a lot of mistakes I made during the relationship, but I also knew and still know I can fix this and change my poor behavior, as I have done successfully in the past. I took counselling, talked to a lot of people and started to work on myself. So far so good!
Then she started sending me these long letters by e-mail. She said all the things that made her unhappy in the relationship and I replied with my own thoughts. She said I never listened to her, I never remembered things and she didn't feel like she was part of my life. Typical stuff and I admit to doing all of that, but still, I never understood why she was so sensitive about everything all of the time, and we never actually sat down for more then 15 minutes to try and work on our issues. It was like I was always fishing in the dark with her needs. I never understood them and so I was never able to act on them accordingly. We both took the relationship for granted. We both admitted to becoming roommates and we both admitted to being unhappy. Anyways, we agreed to write a separation agreement. I saw my lawyer, she saw hers...but I probed to meet her to get it signed and she just kept ignoring me.
2 months went by and this is where the pain really started. Things somewhat cooled off and she finally agreed to meet me for coffee. I learned to keep myself busy, not to be clingy, needy and follow the MAP as best as I could. She said she had 2 more letters to write me before meeting me. I said okay, no problem.
In the first letter she revealed that she was sexually abused as a child, was raped by a boyfriend and ended up having an abortion. Yeah. Wow. She said she never felt like she could trust me enough to tell me to my face. That hurt a lot. My poor baby. If only I knew, I would have known to be more sensitive. I said some really stupid **** and made some very bad jokes a long time ago. It sounds manipulative to say I wouldn't have said some things if I knew what she went through, but it's true. I'm a good person and always have thrived to be much more then who I am. I had no idea she had been through such horror and yet my life has been pretty much handed to me on a silver spoon.
The next letter was one I wish she didn't send. She admitted to cheating on me, with a few guys too. What hurt the most, was that she talked about how perfect they were, and these traits they had. Alpha traits (I get it now). But I am still devastated. I never thought she would cheat on me. Seriously. We even had a talk before we bought the house. I told her; if you fall out of love it me please end it first before cheating on me. And she asked the same of me. To top it off she is very religious and so when she told me she cheated it caught me by such complete surprise, that now, I feel like I am actually traumatized and will never get over this. Sure I am a young guy and I'll make due in time, but nobody in my entire life has taken my trust, my unconditional, loving and true trust, and breached it, so selfishly. The whole 2 months she has been gone I have kept my ring on and been faithful. My hearts been broken a few times before, but not like this. I even told friends on se veral occasions that she would never do that to me. I thought she was much more then that. She said she didn't technically cheat because we wrote the separation agreement, but she never signed it!! I feel walked on.
Of course all emotions ran through my system. Fear, anger, hatred. (Man I want to kill those guys!) But even stronger was the sadness and confusion I felt. What the heck did those guys do to get her to open up like that? In 6 years it was really a struggle with her to get her to open up and be intimate, and here I find out she did it effortlessly with a few dudes in a few weeks? I wish I knew their tricks. I wish I was them. I wish I was taller, I wish I wasn't such a nice guy, and so forth. It was and still is a huge blow to my self-esteem and self-worth. I talked to my best friend about it and fortunately I have been very lucky to have a great support system at home.
Despite my rage, I calmly collected myself and set out conditions to stay married and she made her own conditions. Although I want to forgive her, I don't think I will ever be able to and also be able to fully trust her again....but I married her for better or worse, and I am not one to give up on anything.
She has finally come back home and things seem to actually be going well. We are rebuilding the friendship, trust and praying together and communicating transparently when possible. We started doing more things together, laughing more and for the most part, up until tonight, I felt like if we just keep at it, just maybe things will get better.
She came back on Saturday, and now it is Sunday, but towards the end of the night, I already feel like she isn't taking my conditions seriously, although I am doing my best to meet hers. I feel like I am doing all of the work and she won't a finger unless she has to. It's all about her it seems. She even had the balls to say she is scared that I might leave her down the road.... yet she is the one who left me!
As you can see many thoughts race through my mind, and although I know there are many fish in the sea, I love this woman dearly. What breaks my heart is that I fear that she is not giving me another chance, not because she loves another, but because she doesn't love herself, and I am realizing there is nothing I can do to fix that.
One of my conditions is that we start kissing again. I told her it's okay that we take it slow, but tonight right before bed I went in for one and she pulled away. I just wanted a two second peck, not a deep french kiss! She says she is numb and doesn't feel anything. I don't know what to do. Our "agreement" was to try and fix this for the next 5 months and if it doesn't work we would complete the separation agreement and go for divorce. I want to seek counselling together yet she is hesitant. I think with a little more balls I can make it happen.
The questions I have for now are these:
1) Why do I feel like we shouldn't have to start over from scratch again? (She says she wants to be friends again first). I feel like time is too precious.
2) Why am I the one who seems to be struggling to gain her trust , when she is the one who breached mine? How can I turn these tables around? I am doing my best to be more alpha, but I am really struggling.
3) Am I being a ***** (cat) here? How can I grow a pair???!
a. How can I take charge without being "invasive"? I find myself either tiptoeing or being too direct. She says she hates pressure.
b. How can I make her take my conditions seriously?
c. And if she doesn't want to (as displayed by her actions), is 5 more months of hell worth it?
4) Would you have taken back a cheater?
5) It's been over 3 months now that she says she is unsure of how she feels. I am pretty sure she knows, but doesn't have the balls to tell me. What can I say or do to get her to be honest with me?
6) What would you do in my situation?
I don't know if she came back because she wants to work at it, or because her friend isn't letting her stay at her place anymore. I feel like I am in a dark tunnel and she has the flashlight, but she won't give it to me.
This is hands down the most difficult thing I have ever went through in my life. I know there is a long road ahead. I appreciate all feedback. Thank you for reading my post.
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