Dear JournoGirl:

The title of your thread is “Struggling so much in my marriage”- but really, your serious struggling is in between your ears, that is where the struggle is taking place.

You have the urge to beg for forgiveness because you believe you are guilty, guilty about something way before you met the man carrying the title “husband.”

What is that guilt about?

anita

Dear JournoGirl:

You wrote above that you don’t understand why he knew about the affair for months but said nothing, being “nice as pie” to your face- well, I understand why. I understand because you already established in this thread that your husband’s way of being is to burry his head in the sand, to pretend like all is well. This was his behavior from the very beginning, before he knew of the affair. How he reacted to the affair is consistent with his behavior all through your marriage.

When he feels distressed, what he does is to pretend there is no distress. He won’t talk about it, start a conversation. He won’t express his distress. He will act as if nothing happened.

But of course, something happened so he can’t fool himself for too long, his anger is not gone. So he wasn’t physical with you out of hurt and anger. And when he can’t take his anger and distress anymore he threatens to leave and he leaves, so far temporarily.

He will probably return and continue the same behavior. And then you will both be pretending.

Would you like that to happen? For him to come back to you and both of you pretending? Do you want to pretend?

anita

Dear JournoGirl:

He left before and came back before: he left before and you let him back before. What leads you to think it really is over now?

anita

Dear JournoGirl:

Seems to me as well, that this marriage is beyond repair, that it was broken to begin with and that this time.. it should be in the past. Let it be in the past. Please, do move on.

anita

Dear JournoGirl:

You are not hurting him. The two of you have been hurting each other and your own selves. The hurting has been like this dynamic: you hurt yourself. he hurts himself. you hurt him. he hurts you. Not in this order, but all at the same time.

And so, I say: time to stop all this hurting. This marriage has been sick for a long, long time. Take yourself out of it and heal. Let him get out of it himself so that he has a chance to heal.

anita

Dear JournoGirl:

Congratulations! I see you don’t feel celebratory but this marriage is so, so…. so overdue; shouldn’t have begun at all. And I do hope your healing is already beginning. I think it already began- it starts with “drained and battered and bruised”-

Do post again, anytime throughout this process.

anita

Remember, it’s all good : )

Dear JournoGirl:

Glad you are back with this update. Congratulations for doing all the right things for you and for everyone involved: you stopped begging the husband, separated and maintained the separation for six months and you are in a loving relationship.

Regarding “the intense guilt and shame” you still feel and the “constant darkness” you experience, I think these are about your father having left your mother and you after his affair, when you were a child. I think at the time, when you were a child, and your father left, you felt intensely guilty and ashamed, as if you were the cause of him leaving. That guilt and shame carried through into this troubled marriage you found yourself in.

In March you wrote:”my father left my mother when i was a teen after an affair and i have huge abandonment issues.”

Your (now only legally) husband told you at first that he is unhappy in the marriage not because of something you did: “(He was) saying ITS NOT YOU, ITS NOTHING YOU HAVE DONE” Later he told you it was something you did:”(He said):i don’t listen to him, im bad with money etc etc” This is telling me that you were very concerned that it was you and that it was something you did.

Because your husband was far from being clear and honest as to his feelings and reasons, he left you with no answers (you wrote: “i need more answers. he wont open up”). He left you in a state of not knowing, so you filled in the vacuum of information with the old (wrong) information: husband is unhappy and wants to leave because JournoGirl is or did something wrong.

If your husband gave you his honest input, reasons, feelings, it would have been possible to separate the past from the present somewhat. Unfortunately, he is still vague, although content, that the marriage is over.

Best you attend competent therapy to deal with the shame and guilt, unjustified, from your childhood. If you’d like, please do share here what your experience was, as a child, regarding your father leaving. How did it feel then? What did you think then?

anita