Forgiveness.

I was reading through a forum at this site BeliefNet and it’s about how to deal with infidelity. I was reading through some of the posts and some really discouraged me and one woman I really related to.

But when I got to one specific post, I was really impacted by their explanation of what forgiveness means (in their definition). And I have to say it really helped me to open my heart up to it more and to be more understanding…..moreso when it comes to forgiving my husband.

I know it’s something I do for me, but it is because of his actions that I am facing this challenge.

Here is what the poster said, verbatim:

“Blame is a normal & natural reaction to loss. One feels as though you need to blame someone; your spouse, God, yourself, friends, or the one your spouse cheated with. It is easy, far too easy to turn someone into a scapegoat.

The problem with blame however is what it nourishes. Blame and anger work together to grow resentment. When you feed your anger with accusations and self justified shifting of responsibility, you will begin to seethe with resentment. from resentment springs forth bitterness. Bitterness is a slow disease that eats away at ones soul, it eats you from the inside out, but seldom affects the one your bitterness revolves around. It leaves you alone and lonely… Perhaps you can find a few on this thread who have suffered a lost, and have decided to forgive and move on? Perhaps there are some here who have decided not to forgive? Perhaps the contrast of the two views will help you decide what you wish to do?

In my opinion forgiveness is something you primarily do for yourself. It is giving yourself permission not to relive the hurt and pain each day. It’s saying you don’t need to focus on what should have been and what could have been. It’s giving yourself permission to move on. Forgiveness is an acknowledgment that I made a mistake, and that is okay life goes on… The world didn’t end because I made a mistake. Because I trusted. Forgiveness in one sense is about trust, it’s the acknowledgment that I trusted someone that perhaps I shouldn’t’ have at that point.
But I need to know that because I trusted, and that trust was abused, that it is okay for me to trust again. IMHO that is forgiveness the knowledge that it is okay to trust again. Yes I suffered a lost, something was taken, I experienced pain; hurt. But I lived through it, and I can trust again… IMHO there is nothing more hurtful than being married to someone that doesn’t trust you. I believe once you know that you can never really trust your spouse again you need to end your relationship. And someone you don’t really trust you have no business marring. Trust is such a foundational corner stone that so much else of marriage is built upon that without it you have nothing else of real value.

Trust is a choice that we all choose to make, or not make. Trust is the knowledge that I am giving you a chance to hurt me, but I choose to believe in your goodness, rather than focus on your evilness. How much you trust another is about how big a chance you are willing to accept of them hurting you. We can hold someone at a distance, never letting them close, and all they can do is beat our hands, or we can let them closer, in past our defenses, and bare our heart to them. Ultimately for me life’s rewards are about how close I am willing to let another into my life, about how willing I am to bare my soul. Forgiveness is a willingness to bare my torn and abused heart to another. Forgiveness is the knowledge that my heart is no longer perfect, it has been bruised, kicked, punched, and stabbed, but yet I am willing to bare it to another, to my partner once again. That I’m willing to let them in past my defenses because I choose to believe in them…… A lack of forgiveness is an unwillingness to let them get close enough to hurt me again. It is the knowledge that they will hurt me given a chance, by choice! It is the idea that if I keep everyone away I’m safe from more pain, that if I keep them far enough away I will never hurt again… Unforgiveness is about fear, and mistrust of others, it’s about the belief one needs to always be on guard.”

Will it really ever get better?

I know that there hasn’t been much time lapsed since I found out my husband cheated on me and everyone keeps telling me I just need to give it more time. What exactly is “it?” Time for me to stew? The roller coaster ride I am on? More time for me to start to forget details?

Stewing is what I have done a lot of. In fact, it leads to the roller coster ride that my life is now driven by. Up and down, left and right, zip and zoom, forward and backwards. I enjoy a good roller coaster, but imagine being on one 24 hours a day. You can’t sleep and one day you are happy to repair your relationship with your husband and the next day you are still hung up on the hurt he has caused and “How could he have done this to me?”

I recently wrote a post about forgiveness…more or less a post forgiving the woman my husband had sex with. I also wrote a letter to my husband forgiving him. But I am not sure I am ready yet to forgive him. The affair was his choice. He pursued these women, so it’s hard for me to let go of the fact that he was so determined to fill a void in his life that he did so with multiple women. One wasn’t enough. Now, he didn’t have sex with all of them, just the one.

But that is not what I focus on. I am hung up on the fact that he had sex with another woman and then came home to me and continued to be with me after doing so. He pretended to love me and treat me the same way he had while he knew in his head what he had done.

I don’t know how much I can express this: marriage and sex are VERY sacred to me. I am the kind of person that if this doesn’t work out with him, I can promise you I will NEVER be with another man after this. I committed to forever with him and if that can’t happen, then I am done with relationships. I know most of you – Mike included – are probably telling yourselves that eventually I would break and find someone, but I can promise you I won’t. I am like an Emperor Penguin….I mate for life with one….the only one.

But this post isn’t about that.

It’s about trust.

I have very very very little trust in Mike and what he says. I want to believe him when he answers my questions and tells me he loves me and that he’ll never cheat again. But then I remember that he promised those things when we got married.

Some days I follow my heart and trust that I’ll be ok and we can make things work. Then other days I want to question everything under the sun and tear everything apart so I can analyze it. I expect deception. And this drives me crazy and makes me bitter and angry. Actually what makes me bitter and angry is that I was betrayed in the first place.

Like I said, I acknowledge that I had a part in our marriage going sour, but the affair was his choice. He took the sourness to a whole new level. I’m not denying that I hurt his feelings with the things I told him, but those things can be worked on and amended. You can’t take back an affair. You can’t say I didn’t mean to. Because the fact of the matter is is that he enjoyed it. He got off. He felt vindicated to some degree for soothing the pain he felt from me by having an affair.

So, what? I am supposed to not want vindication for the extreme form of betrayal he put upon me? I am supposed to be strong and work through this with him and leave shit in the past?? I’m supposed to be happy that I have him back and that we can save our marriage?

I know I may sound all over the place, but this is how I feel on my down days. And frankly I am tired of going up and down. I’m ready to just pick one over the other. And down seems so much easier because then I can be pissed at him like I am and not have to worry about masking that and forgiving him and reading all of these books, websites, etc and doing so much work.

But that’s what got me here in the first place: accepting the less painful way of doing things. I just don’t want to go through all of this work and then the same fucking shit happen again, whether it’s 10 months from now or 10 years from now. He thinks that the only thing he really needs to do is show me he loves me and that will make things all better.

That makes me think that I should be thankful that he chose me over them. And this pisses me off.

I know this is all toxic thinking as I am reading about in the book Katrina bought me.

I just don’t know that I want to be with someone who I have to learn to trust all over again. I’m the kind of person that if I don’t get it right the first time, I’m not doing it again….and that’s in a lot of things. So I do my damnedest to make sure it gets right the first time because I want to be successful in everything I do.

And I know I didn’t work so hard on my marriage. I retracted when I started feeling fear.

I don’t know what to say at this point. My mind is a mess. I’ve cried all morning. I am so exhausted and ready to throw in the towel. But that lump in my throat is there for a reason, right?

 

To: Paula Christian Reisman Floyd….whatever you go by.

If you are here then you have either Googled your name and found this or you knew about my blog already. And if you follow my blog, you’ll know that recently I have decided to do something I vowed that I would never do: forgive my husband for his infidelity.

I’ve thought it over – and have been scared to death about it – but learned after researching it online and talking it over with some amazing people, that forgiveness isn’t about dismissing the behavior/situation that caused you grief. It’s about making peace within yourself so that you can move forward and not be stuck on negative thoughts and feelings. And this is what I wish for.

I wish this had never happened, but it did. Now what am I going to do about it? I know in my heart that I still love my husband. I always have and always will. True love doesn’t just go away. I know that because I still love other men that have been a part of my life.

Do I love him enough to stay with him and work through this? Yes. I decided that since we have been through so much shit together, this is one more thing that we can work through, overcome and come out stronger from. There is nothing Mike and I can’t overcome. I know this because I am willing to work through this issue. In the past 4 years we have been through hell and back. The worst part was the affair.

It has also been the best part.

As I told you, this has been a pivotal moment in our relationship. I said some things to Mike that I can never take back. And I didn’t know how to repair the damage I had caused by what I had said, so I sabotaged. And Mike distanced himself from me because of it. I don’t blame him. I don’t accept his choice in the end, but we are where we are. I’m not sure what would’ve kicked our asses into gear and am not sure that anything would’ve been a more obvious sign. I wish I had sucked up my pride and just said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean those things.” But I didn’t.

And because of that, you entered our lives.

I know you were there because you wanted attention from someone. You wanted to feel cared about and wanted…and so did Mike. You had nothing in common other than this. As Mike had said, he wanted validation for what he was thinking that I must be cheating if I didn’t want him. It was never true. I never cheated on my husband. I am not that kind of person and never will be.

I am someone who sabotages a relationship to protect myself from being hurt.

And in November, nothing more could have ever hurt me more than the news I received from you. As I said, I am thankful that you brought it to my attention because Mike says he would have tried to hide it forever. I believe that he would have eventually cracked because no relationship can thrive or survive on a foundation built from lies. So who knows where we’d be today? But we are working on being open, honest, intimate and passionate.

Over 5 years ago, I was able to contact Mike’s ex-fiancee. I was able to confront her for her behavior and basically do the same as I am doing with you. I had to do it so that I could find peace and I told her that. What she did with it – and what you do with this – was up to her from that point. I made my peace.

And now I am making my peace with you. I forgive you for having an affair with my husband. This does not take away from your responsibility for what you have done in any way. You have to live with it for the rest of your life knowing how you behaved and that you could have ruined this family.  My son….he would have been affected the hardest and he has been through enough shit in his short life.

All I ask is the next time you meet a married man – especially if he has young children – that you walk away and you remember how you could have wrecked a 4 year old’s life with your actions. Luckily that 4 year old has a kick-ass mother who would do anything in this world to make sure he is safe and happy. His daddy is pretty frickin’ awesome, too. And together, we will live our dreams and be totally blessed, peaceful and coveted.

As I have said, I do not want you in my life in any way. I will never forget you, but I will not think about you. Do not contact me on Facebook with your account or fake ones. Do not email me because I have them set to go straight to the trash anyways. Do not call me or text me. And do not try to contact Mike in any way.

If I could erase you from my memory I would, but this is the best I can do.

Feelings aren’t fact.

Since finishing His Needs, Her Needs I have moved on to another book called WHy Can’t You Read My Mind. Both of these books have really reminded me of what I need to get back to doing and how I need to think, but my head keeps wanting to overtake everything.

As I’ve said before, I am trying to follow my heart after all of this affair crap, but one thought that keeps getting in the way is, “How could he have done this if he loved me? He must not love me.”

I talked to Mike about it last night and he said that maybe I need to read the book again (he is reading it now) because throughout the book he says that most who cheat DO love their spouse despite their behavior/decision.

I am just really struggling with this because sex is something very sacred to me….you don’t just share yourself with anyone…it should be with someone that you love and invest your private thoughts and feelings with; someone with whom you are very intimate.

I guess in that time that he didn’t care about it being something special to him….he was driven to fulfill a need.

I just hate that when I have these thoughts, I feel like I can’t be close to Mike. I know it has only been a little under 2 months since I found out about everything from the start so everything is still fresh and harsh.

It’s just the addict in me wants quick relief from the hurt and the thoughts. I think I’ve done a pretty good job at fighting off the urge to give up on everything just to not have to learn to trust my husband again. To not have to love him through my pain. That, I think is the hardest thing: loving someone who completely betrayed you.

I am going to order the book Surviving An Affair now because I need more emotional help with this. And if any of you guys have suggestions/advice/reminders, I would greatly appreciate all of it.

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New Years 2012

I was really sad to learn that I never made resolutions last year. I guess I was busy trying to take care of bills and everything else that I just simply forgot. I don’t know.

I’m going to make my new ones for this year while I sip on my morning Mello Yello.

These were my resolutions from 2009:

• Pay off one bill.
• Increase advertising for my business.
• Regularly have family fun times.
• Quit my job.
• Finish all of the painting in my house.
• Continue de-cluttering my house.

We did well in 2010 with fulfilling 4 out of 6 of those. All of those have since been accomplished. In 2012, I’d like to wipe the slate clean and start anew. We have a lot of changes that will be happening then and I am really excited about it all. I haven’t really given much thought to what else I’d like to accomplish; my main focus has just been to prepare to move to Florida. And we have been.

So here are my resolutions that I am thinking of as I go:

• Move to Florida – Well, that is a given. As much as I’d love to stay here and save even more money before we move, I am ready to get the hell away from here. I’m ready to wipe our slate clean and start over where we plan to be for the rest of our lives. I look forward to the challenges this may bring and hope that we do better than expected. Mike and I will both be able to work full-time jobs and since Sarasota is a bigger city, I expect that business for my photography will increase and become more steady. We will see!
• Save money until we move.
• Maintain Mike’s car. He has some maintenance issues that need to be addressed and will take several hundred dollars to fix. I want his car to be in good shape before we move. I may need to buy new tires before we move as well.
• Start Aidan in kindergarten in Sarasota.
• Increase advertising here and in Florida for Babes In Dreamland and build a portfolio for Mike.
• Cut back even more on Mello Yello. I’m doing good with drinking only one a day – usually – but I would like to have one as a treat, like every other day or just on the weekends. I’ve fallen in love with Propel, so I know I can easily replace it and feel better about myself. I hate consuming empty calories.
• Lower our food portions (which I’ve already started) – Because it’s usually just Mike and I eating dinner, we have a lot of leftovers and some things just aren’t worth keeping since they don’t reheat well. I HATE wasting food, so I was just putting most of the food between our two plates. We’ve been eating double what we should be…especially me since I am not that active. Hopefully Aidan will start taking to some of these foods so he can help us with the portions.
• Lose the remaining 5 lbs. I have left to reach my target weight. Hopefully I’ll achieve this with reducing our portions, but I know that I need to start working out again…
• Develop a new workout routine: simple exercises that I can do at home and when I can afford to attend Workout Anytime, I will join there. We just got a new one in Cleveland that is only 2 minutes from us. I need to get my ass in shape. I want to tone my thighs, butt and waist – where we females typically put on our extra pounds first.
• I will continue to coupon, I will just have to figure out if I am going to be able to dumpster dive in Florida. If not, then Plan B is to ask neighbors for their Sunday papers. I probably won’t be couponing like I have since it has gotten in the way of my time with Mike and Aidan, but I will do it often enough to help keep our grocery bills at 50%.
• Spend at least 15 hours a week with Mike. This is a recommendation from the book I am reading, His Needs, Her Needs. Make sure that I am doing my part to help keep our relationship alive and happy. Find new things for the family to do together. Buy more games. Take more small trips.
• Learn to let go of the past and people in it. Karma is a bitch and they will get what’s coming to them. I want to live happily and I can’t if I stay focused on insignificant people in my life. I have awesome friends and family and that is all I need!
• Try two new recipes at least twice a month. I want to expand on our menu instead of having practically the same thing every month.
• Regularly maintain my hair cut and color. Wear makeup on a regular basis. I want to look my best so I feel good about myself and so my husband is even more attracted to me. (keeping that fire alive!)
• Read Surviving An Affair, Love Busters, Fall In Love, Stay In Love, Why Can’t You Read My Mind, Relationship Rescue and any other self-help books I feel may offer a promising perspective on affairs. The work doesn’t stop just because we are doing well and happy again. We have to always work to make sure our relationship never falters.

Now I know these are more like goals instead of things that I need to change or resolve. That’s how I want it to be since we are wiping our slate clean. We need to build a solid foundation before we move forward. Making changes will help with this as well, but I want to focus more on what will get us where we need to be.

2012 should be a great year for us. Child support will end, so we’ll have $400 a month back in our income. We will be moving to Florida and starting our lives over there. Financially, things will be more stable and secure for us. Even though our income is low, we will make it. And hopefully once we move, we can improve our income from there.

I am really looking forward to these changes and am not going to anticipate too much. I am going to let fate take the wheel and let things work out for us the way it’s meant to be.

 

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Pick up and move forward.

After all of the struggles that I have ensued, I feel like a much stronger woman. I know what I want – and always have – and I am making sure that I have it and take care of it.

I want to be with my husband. I want my family to be whole and not broken. I want us to be happy and healthy and living a life that we always dreamed of….no interruptions.

I will not allow my relationship to get the way it did over the past two years. I will re-commit to my vows and my husband to his and we will stick to them. As long as we are active in our relationship and giving each other the time and attention we need, then all should be good and only get better.

I do not forgive my husband for cheating on me, but I understand how he got there. There is nothing he and I can’t overcome. We love each other too much to drop everything we have over something so ignorant. He made a bad choice, but it doesn’t make him a bad person. I made bad choices, too – nothing like cheating – that I have to make up for.

We will do this by showing that we will attend to each others needs, not because we feel obligated, but because we love each other and that’s what married couples are supposed to do.

Mike feels terrible about what he did and so do I. I don’t want things to ever get that way again. I know what a great person he is and that there are many other women who would love to step in my place and have him….like Paula Christian Floyd. So I am going to make sure that he has everything he could ever want and need from me and vice versa.

This will lead us to ultimate happiness.

And we will no longer let financial problems and any resulting actions due to that get in the way of us being happy and tending to each other.

I’ve let this shit get in the way for the past 4 years and I’m not allowing it any longer.

I am really looking forward to 2012 and I’ll be creating my resolutions soon. Like I said, I feel like 33 is a lucky number and this will be a better year.

I’m learning to keep crap in the past and make everyday fresh and new.

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