Wife Cheated - Again

  • Thread starter Thread starter JoeRK
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
JoeRK said:
How did I find out? Well, we came home from an evening of eating out at a restaurant and driving around looking at Christmas lights. I sat down and picked up the laptop to check a few things. She appearantly had been using the laptop earlier in the day, and forgot to log out of her facebook account. A male friend she had been having a conversation with had sent her an instant message, and it was blinking on the screen. I checked it out quickly and read where my wife had been discussing her “fling” with this facebook friend.
Click to expand...
I’m so sorry.
 
JoeRK said:
How did I find out? Well, we came home from an evening of eating out at a restaurant and driving around looking at Christmas lights. I sat down and picked up the laptop to check a few things. She appearantly had been using the laptop earlier in the day, and forgot to log out of her facebook account. A male friend she had been having a conversation with had sent her an instant message, and it was blinking on the screen. I checked it out quickly and read where my wife had been discussing her “fling” with this facebook friend.
Click to expand...
I am so sorry. I feel your pain. If your wife cannot be truthful, then there seems to be no alternative but to separate now. Lying just continues to breed mistrust. You will never be able to trust her if she is lying and trying to cover up.

This may be useful for her to read if she is willing to do these things…

wikihow.com/Rebuild-Your-Spouse%27s-Trust-After-an-Affair

I will pray for you, that God will hold you up and help heal your heart.

Remember,
O most gracious Virgin Mary,
that never was it known that any one who fled to thy protection,
implored thy help or sought thy intercession,
was left unaided.
Inspired with this confidence,
I fly unto thee,
O Virgin of virgins my Mother;
to thee do I come,
before thee I stand,
sinful and sorrowful;
O Mother of thy Word Incarnate,
despise not my petitions,
but in thy mercy hear and answer me.
Amen.

The Memorare is a wonderful source of comfort

God bless
 
Well I just had a long painful talk with my wife. I told her I can longer trust her and due to that fact plus some long standing relationship problems that I feel we must separate. One of the hardest things I ever had to do.
 
May Our Lord guide you both through this process and may your path lead to healing and deliverance from your anxieties. May you find peace in His Love. Amen.
 
JoeRK said:
Well I just had a long painful talk with my wife. I told her I can longer trust her and due to that fact plus some long standing relationship problems that I feel we must separate. One of the hardest things I ever had to do.
Click to expand...
Joe, I am praying for you. Been there, my friend.
 
Thanks for the thoughts and prayers!

And Trevor, thanks for the message, I really appreciate it!
 
a few days ago i caught my wife having an affair with a younger man, he is 31 wife is 52, i confronted her and she admitted it, she said she was sorry and it’s not sex what she want from the man but attention, understanding and respect ( i know it’s my fault, I ignored her too many years) I forgive her but it still hurts, i love my wife so much and i want to stay with her, but thoughts of her having sex with this man destroys me bigtime, please pray for me so that i will be strong to continue forgiving and loving her. we have 4 grown up kids. HELP
 
francisdtan said:
a few days ago i caught my wife having an affair with a younger man, he is 31 wife is 52, i confronted her and she admitted it, she said she was sorry and it’s not sex what she want from the man but attention, understanding and respect ( i know it’s my fault, I ignored her too many years) I forgive her but it still hurts, i love my wife so much and i want to stay with her, but thoughts of her having sex with this man destroys me bigtime, please pray for me so that i will be strong to continue forgiving and loving her. we have 4 grown up kids. HELP
Click to expand...
Praying for you. Please have her get tested for STDs etc as well before continuing on with your marital relationship. This could be very dangerous. God bless,
 
francisdtan said:
a few days ago i caught my wife having an affair with a younger man, he is 31 wife is 52, i confronted her and she admitted it, she said she was sorry and it’s not sex what she want from the man but attention, understanding and respect ( i know it’s my fault, I ignored her too many years) I forgive her but it still hurts, i love my wife so much and i want to stay with her, but thoughts of her having sex with this man destroys me bigtime, please pray for me so that i will be strong to continue forgiving and loving her. we have 4 grown up kids. HELP
Click to expand...
People who allow their emotional pain to give them permission to do previously unthinkable things–whether it is an affair or drug use or even a suicide attempt–rarely think about how their actions will hurt those who love them. Just as someone attempting suicide believes that their death won’t harm anyone because in their delusion they believe their lives do no one any good, just so a person who is convinced their spouse does not care for them can rationalize that their spouse will not be hurt by infidelity because the spouse doesn’t find their relationship particularly precious, anyway. (The flip side, of course, is that sometimes a spouse feels hurt and do these things precisely in order to get back at their spouse or family…)

That doesn’t make your wife’s actions your fault. No, if she is not insane, she is free to choose the right that she knows is right. Her intelligence still works. If you are doing something wrong, she needed to say, “Hey, you’re in the wrong here. I deserve better treatment. I deserve to have the respect, attention, and understanding due to a faithful wife.”

It does mean, though, that she may have allowed herself to forget that the reason it bothers you to think of her with someone else is not competitiveness, but because you do still love her and think of an exclusive relationship with her as the most precious thing. She might have failed to ask because she feared that you would reject her. If she didn’t point out what she wasn’t getting, she wouldn’t have to suffer the fate of having you say, “So what? I don’t care about you any more. I don’t think you’re important.”

This is why a counselor is so valuable: that is, the counselor bluntly asks each spouse to say how they feel, what they need, how they think they are seen, and so on. They help the couple to find the courage to really talk to each other, and they help keep the conversation moving in a profitable direction instead of dissolving into the kind of talk that hurts but accomplishes nothing. If a counselor doesn’t help a particular couple to have that kind of profitable conversations, it is time to find a different counselor. Nothing against the counselor, necessarily, because different couples are prompted to have good talks with different situations.
 
francisdtan said:
a few days ago i caught my wife having an affair with a younger man, he is 31 wife is 52, i confronted her and she admitted it, she said she was sorry and it’s not sex what she want from the man but attention, understanding and respect (** i know it’s my fault, I ignored her too many years)** I forgive her but it still hurts, i love my wife so much and i want to stay with her, but thoughts of her having sex with this man destroys me bigtime, please pray for me so that i will be strong to continue forgiving and loving her. we have 4 grown up kids. HELP
Click to expand...
**Bolding mine: **

(** i know it’s my fault, I ignored her too many years) **

Oh yes? :rolleyes: She is a free will agent. She chose to do what she did. Certainly there were other avenues for her to explore.

When (if ) worse comes to worse you will need comaraderie see here: avoiceformen.com/
 
Hey Joe, sorry that you are going through this. I am going through something similar though everyone’s story is different. I will tell you what I am learning and maybe it will be of some use.

Shorty story: Married over 30 years five kids. After 12 years of apparently good marriage wife had an affair that she revealed several years later. Attempted forgiveness and reconciliation but separated after 2 years and have been separated now for 5 years with on-again off again attempts at reconciliation. Last attempt just before Christmas and right afterwards she revealed she is in love with another man, wants a divorce and will pursue an annulment. Strange as it may seem her faith is central to her life and she loves the Church.

My fundamental belief is that our marriage is valid and Sacramental. I am bound to her until death, regardless of her actions, and will strive to remain faithful to my marriage bonds. It hurts like hell but at the same time my marriage has been an enormous blessing and source of Grace. The years of struggle and the most recent crisis has brought me closer to God and revealed to me the beauty of what marriage should be and what it is to truly love your wife.

The things that I have come to understand are painful to accept. Her first affair came about during a period of stress in our lives. I was consumed at work and neglected her. She sinned in having the affair. I sinned in neglecting her. Husbands are supposed to love their wives and in that time I did not.

In the years since she revealed her affair and since the initial separation we struggled with forgiveness and reconciliation. She remained a faithful Catholic. I kept myself from the Church. In outward appearances I forgave her. I have come to understand that I never truly did. I kept wanting something more. I did not cultivate a spiritual life with her though, for a time, I went through the motions of going to Mass and raising our kids. She remained faithful and suffered a great deal especially bearing the brunt of estrangement with our children as she bore all the blame for our discord at home.I looked like the good guy but I was never giving her genuine forgiveness. I never returned to loving her unconditionally and making sure that she was secure that she was loved and forgiven. I waited for her to figure me out and give me what I was looking for.

Now we are at our current crisis. I believe she is in conflict because our attempt at reconciliation just before she revealed this other relationship was actually a wonderful time. She, of course, had another terrible secret. She was, and is, in serious sin. But contrary to what others have written here a woman who has done this is not trash to be discarded. She is a creation of God wounded by sin. My lack of forgiveness pushed her into it every bit as much as the other guy lured her into it.

Regardless of what happens here on out, and it looks as bleak as it can, my promise to her was for life and it wasn’t for whenever it feels good but for everything that comes up and the promise was to love her and work for her salvation. The only thing that has really changed is that I can see where I failed to do that. That is all that matters. How she reconciles her choices is between her and God. The mystery here is that though our lives are joined till death she has her walk with God and I have mine. My call is to love and fidelity. That realization was very liberating and an enormous grace. The future is frightening in that I don’t want to live alone for the rest of my days and there is much grief over what should have been and what could have been. But this is my cross.

Love and Responsibility by JPII and The Mystery of Faithful Love by Dietrich Von Hildebrand have been very helpful to me in trying to come to grips with my call as a husband in a badly damaged sacramental marriage.

The Adoration chapel is a good place to be now.
 
JPII_Fan said:
My lack of forgiveness pushed her into it every bit as much as the other guy lured her into it.
Click to expand...
As much as I agree with you that she’s not trash to be discarded and is as much a child of God as you or me or anyone else… this is just nonsense. I mean, if it’s what you have to tell yourself then fine. But being a workaholic is not on the same level as the kind of betrayal you and the OP have endured.

I commend you for being a forgiving person. We should all try to be as forgiving. But forgiving doesn’t mean you try to take some responsibility for other people’s sinful actions.
 
I am not taking responsibility for her sinful actions. I am taking responsibility for my own neglect. Over the years I have been told by many people to just leave her and move on. Talked to a priest yesterday who said “Why would you want to stay with her.” The thing is, no one has brought to me anything in Church teaching that justifies doing that. The commitment of marriage is about as absolute as it can be. If our marriage was not valid then such advice would be wise. However, it is at least putatively valid until the annulment process is complete. I don’t see choosing not to love my wife because she has done things that hurt (I have too - just different things) as more justifiable than choosing not to love her because I am attracted to someone else (I’m not but the analogy is apt).
 
The Church doesn’t teach you to be a doormat. There’s a difference between being humble and at least outwardly condoning sinful action. When Christ told us to offer the other cheek after being slapped, He was referring to being disrespected. After all, being struck in the face by another person was seen as a grave sin of disrespect to one’s honor back then. I guess that still applies today.

Repeated cheating is not simply disrespect. It’s something entirely different. Again, I admire you for your ability to forgive, but I find it curious that you say things like “she remained a faithful Catholic” and that her faith is really important right now given her state of serious sin. I mean, she can say whatever she wants but clearly her faith is not that important or she would stop doing what she’s doing.

It’s like Robert Hanssen minus the whole espionage bit. Sent his kids to Catholic school, went to daily Mass, was part of Opus Dei… but also videotaped himself having sex with his wife and broadcasted it live to friends and hit up strip clubs all the time. I mean, that’s not being a faithful Catholic. That’s being a duplicitous liar and trust me, I know all about being a duplicitous liar because I’ve been one.
 
To be clear she has said she has not had relations with the man. I agree it would be wrong to condone such behavior. However, the bottom line is she is a free moral agent who will do what she will do. If you can find me Church teaching which says the marriage bond is broken, even by repeated sin, I will consider what you have to say.

What I mean by saying that she has remained a faithful Catholic and that her faith is very important to her is just that. That she is struggling now, out of loneliness, deception, whatever, doesn’t change that. Most Catholics go through periods of time struggling to conform their wills to what Christ requires. The rest are saints. My viewpoint is that marriage has less to do with what my spouse does for me (or to me) and what I do for my spouse. My bond is not dependent upon her actions.

What do you propose that is other than what I am doing and how is it consistent with what the Church teaches? Should I act as if there is no Sacramental marriage? Should I cease to pray for her? At the very least, should my marriage be declared null tis period of self-examination prayer for my wife will be a valuable lesson for a future relationship.

There is beauty in the Church’s teaching on marriage though it seems at first glance to be harsh.
 
Stay apart for a good season. Let her heavily dwell upon the wrongness of her actions and come to realize what a good husband she has. If she does not verbally put accross to you that she is madly in love with you and that she will never do it again, it may be time for other considerations.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top