Dear Carley:

Amazing to have you back here, so glad to read from you again, and thank you so much for your kind words and expressed appreciation of me! Your update itself is the gift you wished to send me: your gift has been received and appreciated, thank you!

I took some time to read your previous posts on this thread, beginning March 2, 2017. It seems like such a long time ago that you started this thread: three years before the year of the pandemic and the escalated climate change. Back in 2017, I still thought that once I emotionally heal from my damaging childhood, I will join a world that makes sense, a humanity that is safe enough and sane enough to evolve further and last long after I am gone.

But now, as I am stuck at home because of yet another extreme weather event: a severe snowfall and way below freezing temperature (without water because the water pump is frozen and having been without power and internet for almost 24 hours, now it’s back), I understand that my hope and expectation of joining a sane and safe evolving humanity has been a delusion. But in this despair, it is so good to read a sane story told by a sane and wise woman, you!

Before I address your update further, I want to summarize the story you told and see what I can learn from it today: the married man who had the affair with you, he was married for 5 years at the time, to a woman who seemed to be a good and supportive wife, and whom he claimed to love very much. You were approx. 19, a virgin, inexperienced, and he was approx. 37. You met him in a religious setting.

At first, you looked up to him and thought he was all good: “I didn’t believe any single bad thing about him back then, indicating I was deluded and tricked into believing he’s a deity”. He gave you gifts, took you places, loaned you a large amount of money to pay for college, and told you that you belong to his “special list” of women. “He also gifted me a lot of material things, which in turn made me feel like I was in debt to him, like I’m responsible to also make him happy in some other ways“.

Following 3 months of the affair: “He would criticize how I shut the door of his car, no matter how hard or soft. He would get angry at me…(for) being quiet because I was contemplating something that has nothing to do with him… he went on and criticized every little thing that I did… he always seems to think negatively of what I am doing“, and sometimes he threw things at you, like his cellphone. He also “reacted badly to people who disagree the slightest with him”.

At the same time, he complained to you “about how life has been unfair to him. He lived in a poor family, ate just rice and salt everyday“, told you that no one ever genuinely loved him, that everyone was always using him and that he was always treated badly, that “his life wasn’t so lucky at all because of the people who ‘had done an irreversible damage to his heart’ He had lent a lot of money to friends that ran away afterwards, he…  helped accommodate a single mother only to be lied and left behind… helping people only to be betrayed“, and you felt empathy for him: “Deep down inside, I know he is afraid. He is pained. And he is craving for a specific love“. You felt strongly responsible to help him heal: “I initially believed that I also have as strong responsibility as to help him heal“.

You tried to help him, to treat him well and to make him feel genuinely loved, but all your efforts failed: “Everything that I’ve done for him, all the gifts I gave him, I never see him do good of. For all the gifts for him that usually took days for me to prepare and that I know he loves, he will always say… ‘I don’t necessarily need it“. None of your well-intentioned efforts made a difference to him and because of that, you felt badly about yourself: “I see myself as the bad guy – not able to change him for the better, not being a good enough friend for him“.

Fast forward 4 years and 9 months, you shared today that you are no longer in any contact with the married man, that you have a supportive boyfriend, that your guilt regarding the affair was well deserved, because the affair was indeed a mistake. But opening up about it here, in your thread, and to your pastor and boyfriend, helped you to recover: “There’s this one belief in my religion that if ‘one was to heal, they must first open up.’ And that’s exactly what I did: I came clean… That night, I cried a lot in front of (pastor) and my boyfriend, but also felt the guilt washing off after a long period of it sticking like glue…  And for this reason, I feel like opening up about one’s struggles is good in order for recovery”. 

Re-reading your story today makes me think about the similarities between this married man and my mother, between your story and mine, even though mine is in the context of child-parent, and yours in the context of a teenage girl-older man.

Here are the similarities: (1) You initially looked up to him as a perfectly good deity; I initially looked up to my mother as a perfectly good deity, (2) He gave you gifts and money; she gave me gifts and money, (3) You felt indebted to him; I felt indebted to her, (4) He criticized you for… anything and everything, for just being; she did the same to me, (5) He told you about how unlucky his life was, how people hurt and betrayed him, how people used him, etc.; my mother did the same,(6) You felt great empathy for him; I felt great empathy for my mother, (7) You gave him gifts and tried to help him heal; I did the same, for decades, (8) All your efforts failed because he rejected them all; all my efforts to help my mother failed because she rejected them all, (9) Because you failed, you felt like a not good-enough/ a bad person; because I failed, I felt like a not good-enough/ bad person, (10) The religious community you and him belonged to allowed him to be part of the community, not protecting young women such as yourself from his predatory ways (“Apparently the entire organization had had their own suspicions of the man’s affair for a long while“); society (neighbors, family members, teachers, strangers) did not intervene and did not protect me from her, (11) Opening up eventually dissolved that guilt that stuck to you like glue; opening up eventually dissolved my guilt that stuck to me like glue.

Thank you for returning to your thread to spread your message of guilt, opening up and recovery, encouraging others to open up to supportive people and feel the guilt washing off, no longer “sticking like blue” (I like your choice of words)!

anita