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What is wrong with me???? I can hate him one hour/ day and then start to feel sorry for him for being alone and without our family! Been separated almost 8 months and I have moments that I ache for him and feel so sorry for him. He has lost it all! He lives in a house alone now and I worry about him! When I think of all of the good times of our 19 year marriage and 3 kids, I’m in disbelief that I really didn’t know this man. Sometimes I think I’m going crazy! When I get this way, I have to have a talk with myself and go down
the list of horrible things he has done to betray me/our
family. He wants back so badly but I can’t do it anymore and I’m not in love with him anymore! He destroyed that! But I do feel sorry for him and I do care about him! I’m not “in love” with him but there’s a part of me that loves him His childhood story would make anyone cry. It’s very sad! Some
days I second guess myself and wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I pretty sure I am but when I see all of these other families and couples together at ballgames, church, I question myself and my decisions. There’s nothing easy about this. I rant and rage and then I’m sad and I cry. I do feel crazy a lot of the time.
feel like I’m just losing it!!You’re a good person, rj, that’s why you can still, after his betrayals and deceit, muster up a little compassion.
It’s been really hard for me to see other families, or older couples (like my age) out and about, too. Of course we have no idea what’s going on in THOSE relationships either! But just the simple idea of having the person you started with, with you through life, is hard to handle sometimes. Until you make yourself remember that he wasn’t who he presented himself to be. So then I get even sadder because I realize that I never had ANY of those nice family moments, really. It was all deception and usury.
You aren’t losing it. You are facing what it means. And that takes courage and hope for your life. Of course he wants his lie back. It worked for him. And now he doesn’t need to pretend anymore. You know. You can be enlisted into the deception and spend your life propping up his big lie.
I DON”T THINK SO!!!
IMO
Diane.I totally understand how you feel. My SA has been out of the house 3 days and I know that I will never have him back. Like you I don’t love him anymore. 8 years of this torture completely crushed any love I had. But I feel sorry for him too. Sometimes. He has lost everything also. But we have to remember they are gamblers. They gambled with our love, our childrens love, our sanity, our childrens sanity, our health, their health, our entire marriage. They made their bet that we would stay. Forgive. Let things get back to normal. Just so they could gamble again. This whole SA thing as all about the ultimate selfish bastard. They really are only concerned with what they want. And to hell with the rest of us. That’s what it is. They chose to go all in and lost it all. I too feel sorry for what he has done to himself. But I feel much worse for my 5 kids who don’t understand why dad has to live in the rv away from home. For me whose heart and goodwill and trust has been broken time after time after time. I know it is easy to feel for the broken human in front of you. But never forget the selfish monster who did not give a shit about you or your kids when it was about what HE wanted. NEVER FORGET.
I get this, too. My h will frequently walk around the house (that we share, but live in separate quarters for now) looking very hang-dog and feeling sorry for himself. Plop himself down on the couch in front of me and look imploringly at me like I’m supposed to respond to his pain somehow. And I know his pain is real and I feel some pity for him, and then I remember.
Thank you!! No one could ever understand this unless they have experienced it! My h is a good, good, person and would give anyone the shirt off his back but I HAVE to CONSTANTLY remind myself of who he is!! He is almost 50 and he really is becoming in my eyes a “dirty old man”! One of our cars died this week so we went and purchased a new SUV …..and of course I get the new one and he gets my SUV and while at the dealership…..this will or will not surprise you….he said to me “Wouldn’t it be fun to lay the seats down on the back of that Yukon and have some fun”?? What the hell?? I haven’t been intimate with him in 8 months, we are separated and he said that to me????? But crazy as it may sound, it didn’t really register with me the severity of what he said…..considering our lives now….until a couple of days later! Then I got pissed off! I really think I have been living in a world of denial for so many years! Just like this incidence, I can look back and see so many signs. My mom even recently told me that when my h would hug her, she thought in the back of her mind that sometimes he pressed up against her boobs too much. My mom has big boobs. But she thought it was in her head! It WASN’T!! Now that we know he’s a SA, we see all these little signs. I HATE this!! I swear I thought I had found the man I would grow old with!! I don’t know how I can face a divorce and dividing everything, moving, attys etc.. I can’t bare the thought of it. I would give anything if I could snap my fingers and get through this whole process. The weak me tells myself that it would be easier to let him stay but the SMART, INTELLIGENT, MOTHER, PROTECTOR of our children tells me to stop the insanity and push through and get out and get it done. I feel paralyzed some days! Such as today! Overwhelmed!
I’m with you, rj. The pity for him is overwhelming at times. I think part of it is because he’s sort of reverted in my mind to a lost little kid. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, because pity feels better than rage and hurt, I don’t know. But the flip side is that I can still scream and yell at him too sometimes. It’s a bizarre emotional world we get thrown into, rj. xoxo
Hold on to that list. It’s your power when you need it, when you are about to cave in.
But you will keep getting reminders – 3 years in to this frickin nightmare and I still have waivering days – just grateful that they’re fewer and further betweenRJ – I hear ya. I, like you, do not love my h. any more but I do still care about him. It’s hard to stop caring about someone you have known for 15 years. And since he is the father of my children, he’s pretty much going to be part of my life for a long time. In the past month, I have really let-go of a lot of the anger that I had but at times, I’ve replaced that with feeling bad/sad for him and I hate that feeling! I try to stop myself from feeling that way. Right after he moved out in April, I was telling a friend how I felt so sad for him and that he’s probably all alone in his apartment and feeling lonely. First of all, she said, that may be how you’d feel and what you’d be doing but that doesn’t mean that is what he is doing (so true – in fact, for the first 4 months, he was going out almost every night, as evidenced by his credit card purchases so he sure is hell isn’t sitting alone in his apartment. He has only stopped doing that, as far as I know b/c I no longer obsessively check the credit card, is b/c I confronted him about how much he was spending & going out). She also gave me wise advice – that it’s okay to feel sympathy for him but feeling empathy for him is me taking on his pain. For some reason, that just clicked with me so I try to remind myself that it’s okay to feel sympathetic but I cannot take on his pain. That is for him. I have my own pain to deal with. So practice focusing on you – do waht you need to – take a walk, call a friend, get your nails done, take a class at the community center, etc. and spend less time thinking about him. (Btw, if you don’t read Chump Lady, you should. A recent blog post talks about things she did after her divorce to help “move on”. I thought it was good, practical advice & empowering to know that now is our chance to reclaim our lives).
rj, so many signs in hindsight, right? But it’s hard to put those little signs into the picture of the “good guy” you think/thought you have/had. Ugh, so disorienting.
I feel sorry for some criminal on death row sometimes. I really do. I think what God awful childhood did they have to make them do XYZ…..
But, I am not going to go rescue them.
Rj – I feel this way ALL THE TIME. I think it depends on which side he decides to present to me that moment. If its the kind, reasonable, caring side then I start to feel really sorry for him, that his life is in a shambles, that he’s pretty much lost everything. If its the manipulative, selfish prick side, then I just want to rip his face off. I think that’s part of why these guys are so confusing, because they are totally inconsistent. And they make you question – which is “real?” Is he really a selfish prick who pretends to be nice sometimes or is he really a nice person who acts like a prick as a defense sometimes? The hardest thing I’ve learned in my own therapy is that, although it would be easier to see him as one or the other, the truth is that he is BOTH. The question is – do I want someone who has the capacity to be so very selfish and so very manipulative even if he also has the capacity to be kind and sweet sometimes? I deserve better. We all do.
I just don’t think that feeling sorry for them is mutually exclusive to hating their fucking guts. I know for a fact that I am capable of both 🙂
Yes we do all deserve better!! I want to rip his face off too when he is so selfish and sneaking behind my back and going after the soccer moms on my sons team!!! EVERY single time I check his phone, I find something inappropriate!!! EVERY time!! Those are the times I hate him and am in utter disbelief in the lack of respect for me!!! He minimizes everything!! Then he is sweet, serving, wonderful, helpful, goes the extra mile etc. I swear I would be so long gone if not for our kids!! I pray that my sons in no way shape or form,repeat any of his behaviors!! Oh and is Chump Lady a book? Going to look that up! Thanks!!
Wow, that thing about not getting electrocuted with death row inmates.
An attorney I talked with told me it wasn’t doing me any good to be so terrorized and shocked by the things my husband did. He said, “You had to know bad people exist, are you so surprised to meet one? You’re old enough to have heard about things like Ted Bundy and the Columbine shootings and such, you know those kind of people exist. You met one, you can’t let it define you from that moment forward.”
I was so mad at him. I said, “Yeah, but they weren’t sleeping in the bed beside me the night before I found out what they did. It’s a little different when it’s your SPOUSE and it’s been happening in your HOUSE, beside your children, when it’s someone you loved, and made love to while it was all happening. We didn’t just rub elbows in the grocery line.”
He didn’t respond to that.
Chump Lady is a website….Go check it out.
I just wanted to say that I do doubt and agonize over the “right decision”. I filed for divorce last week, He got served last night and our temporary hearing is set for September 16th. I was feeling sad and wondering if I had made the right decision just a few minutes ago… that is why I’m here now – getting support and encouragement form all of you. Thank you so much for all of your posts! They have given me much insight!
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