Innocent people generally want to get to the bottom of things. Guilty people usually want the discussion to be over as soon as possible.

What happens when you survive?

I call it the barrier. At 20 yrs of marriage I found out I wasn't married at all. Repeated infidelities, lies, alcoholism, verbal abuse finally bared its soul, and I was married to a total lie.
I had many, many choices along the way. Read my profile if you want it all, but in the end I drew a line, dead set in sand, to my husband. No booze, drugs, bitches. One time chance before I took him out with every single thing I had in me other than violence. The sand was me.

On August 18 we will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. It was so, so, so hard. All of it. In the end it came up to him standing up to the plate, to himself, to his family and past. Facing it. Because in the end the women, me, booze, the arrogance was all a lie to himself.

The hardest part was realizing that I had no part in any of it. None. I wasn't even on the playing field. He loved me in a place so totally separate from all his pain, all his past, all the booze and everything he felt as a child with every hit from his mother. In his eyes I was the safe place, but he didn't know it was him that was killing me.

I was a safe and totally separate place in his mind. It wasn't until I made him join himself in the past, present and future that he knew himself. Saw himself and stopped drinking to mask the pain. It was so fucking hard. Why did I do it?
Because he came to me one day on his knees, literally. He said to me that he would rather live with me the rest of his life as friends than lose me. Begged me, told everything to me on his knees, the truth, all of it. He didn't beg my forgiveness, he begged for time to change. He committed to so. I committed not one thing. I drew a line in the sand. No more pain.
It hasn't been easy. I won't lie to you, but I have my best friend back in my life, sober, kind, thoughtful and committed. He has faithfully committed to me and sobriety for 20 yrs.

I didn't save him because I wanted to stay his wife, I tried so hard because I wanted to save my daughter's father. No lie.

If I cannot forgive him completely, I can at least admit, I love him deeply, with all my heart, respect him now. I do know that surviving infidelity is the harder road, but my grandson comes to "Grandpa and Grandma's farm" his future is more intact because of our survived past.

I just wanted to let people hear know that I could not have made it without this website. The support I received gave me strength to draw a line in the sand that needed to be drawn to save myself as much as my marriage.

Not all marriages are worth saving. Mine was very, very close to the edge of giving myself more pain, rather than giving myself a new life. Make your own decision, but know that what ever you decide, is you taking your power back.

For me, in the end of it all, I have lived my life with my best friend, dearest lover and life partner. Our life and love was worth trying to save. It wasn't me in the end that saved it, it was him by being honest to me, to himself and to his past.

My heart reaches out to all that have felt this awful pain and betrayal. May you next venture in life be with our without your former lover/spouse, let this new chapter be about you. Heal yourself with kindness focused on you.

Tryingtwo

4 comments posted: Tuesday, August 13th, 2024