Changes

Life has blessed me with many changes recently.  In the long run we have seen the changes I have made for myself to make future relationships healthy, to increase my ability to handle responsibility, and to keep myself physically healthy.  In the short run things have been a little different.  I haven’t been posting nearly as much as I used to and for that I am sorry.  I love to write and I love to share and when I don’t get to do that I always feel a little sad.  Not because I think my posts fix people, or that you rely on my posts for comfort or hope, but because each of you cared enough to follow my blog for your own personal reasons.  You each have invested a small amount of time to read and assess and support and that means a lot to me.

The paperwork is still moving.  With the holidays there will be some delay but I hope for everything to be finished by my first “Anniversary”.  Oregon has an express lane for these things, which I have mixed opinions on.  I have had minimal interaction with her, which is nice since she tends to be a bit on the bitchy side (lately).  I am not sure why, although I may have an idea.  I received an email from her asking me if I could watch her dog while she was in Seattle for a wedding conference thing.  When I told her no, that I would appreciate if she found a friend or our old dog sitter to do it she asked “What happened to us being friends?”  We had talked during this process and had discussed being friends after this was over.  I don’t have a problem being friendly but at no point will I go out of my way to help her out.  This is not because I don’t want to, I rather enjoy helping people who genuinely need help.  The problem is that she still cares so little about me that she wont show even small amounts of attention to the things that affect me.  I asked her to stop all debits from our account (now my account) and she missed two major ones.  One of them I was specific in asking her to stop more than five days prior.  After those debits she was hesitant to transfer funds into my account, even after explaining that I would overdraft if she didn’t (and miss my mortgage).  Once she made the transfer she explained that she was going to have trouble making ends meet because of this.  Huh, join the club.  I got the checks for my loan so I can pay her the money I owe her.  She will want for nothing once she gets that money, being debt free with a few grand in her pocket.  I am still a little sore about that one, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.  Besides, life moves on and there are much more exciting things to focus on.

She also decided that it would be a good idea to text me a list titled “10 things you shouldn’t do if you don’t want to lose your girl forever” and say that I did most of the things on that list, just saying.  I didn’t even bother to read that…

I met someone.  I really didn’t expect that to happen or at least, not so soon.  She is nice, and wonderful in all the ways that someone should be.  And for some reason she doesn’t mind hanging out with me.  I don’t have much to say about the situation since everything is new and so very lovely, but I will share as time goes on.  God has a funny way of doing things and I am always amazed at how some things work out.  One thing is for sure though; I no longer feel like a broken mess of a man.  That feeling followed me like a dark shadow for a large part of this process.  I worked very hard to stop feeling like that and I thought that it was gone.  When I met and started talking to this new woman, however, I was attacked by a fair amount of my former insecurities.  Through conversations with her and self reflection I am analyzing and dismissing each and every one of them.  I don’t expect them to be gone forever, but there will never be a time where they hold as much power over me as they used to.  The world is full of lovely people and I am blessed to know a few.

My situation is weird.  This process has gone extremely quickly.  I don’t think that it works for other people like it did for me but I can’t be sure.  I see posts from people months and years after the fact talking about how it has stayed with them for so long and I shudder to think that I might still think about it on a daily basis in that sort of time frame.  Time will tell whether or not I am able to let go.  I feel like I am on the right track, and with the day in and day out stuff I think that the healing is fully underway.  Looking back I can’t believe that I made it through what happened.  At this point I am so close to being “On the other side” that I can almost taste it.  Single-dom is exciting for a lot of reasons, and I am anxious to remove the last painful tether.  Especially if I have the opportunity to give it to someone new 🙂

Busy

I haven’t been able to post in a while, or at least not with the regularity that I had before.  That’s good and bad.  The bad is that work has been pretty busy, and a lot of the posts that I compose are done at work.  The good part is that there have been plenty of distractions to keep me from dwelling on what is happening in my life.  I was worried that I would succumb to the serious introversion that comes with situations like this (well, historically for me anyway).  Thankfully, the times where I have been overwhelmed with emotion have been few and far in between.

We filed last tuesday, and I am ready for the paperwork to come back.  This situation has been rough and the hope I have now is the hope that I will be on the other side soon.  I no longer wish to remain attached to my wife, and am eager to feel “untethered”.  I don’t mean I am going to go out and cycle through a bunch of women, I’m just talking about the responsibility that comes with marriage.  Because of what I believe I have maintained a standard of behavior that has included taking care of her when she needs help.  She is an independant adult but the fact that we are married meant that she still warranted better treatment than your average girlfriend, lover, fling or whatever.  To be released from that will be a relief, and I won’t have to feel like I need to offer her any more help.  That is someone else’s job now, and good luck to them!

She still has a lot of her stuff in my house.  I don’t think I am going to help her move it.  Not because I don’t want to, but I have a lot of work to do around the house to get ready for roommates.  And one of them is moving in on WEDNESDAY!  So much work to do.  It’s her stuff and her life now, and she has to step up to that responsibility.  This is something she hasn’t really done, she has relied on me for quite a bit during this situation.  Hopefully it doesn’t stress her out too much and the separation continues without incident.

It’s nice to be busy actually.  There are precious few ways where I don’t feel like a failure, and when work is busy I tend to get a lot accomplished.  Feeling like a man and being able to provide for myself is important, especially since my finances are in such a poor state right now (not just my fault).  I have come to terms with the fact that I will be paying this debt down for the next five years, there is nothing that I could do about it now.  I might even be able to pay it off early, barring any unfortunate circumstances.

Life is good right now.  And slowly getting better 🙂

Courthouse

We filled out the paperwork on Sunday.  I was an asshole the whole time, silent and brooding and non communicative.  I know why I was, but try as i might I couldn’t bring myself to talk much beyond the occasional agreement or nod.  The way I feel is infuriating; I owe her money for the divorce and I can’t stop thinking that it feels like I am paying her for the affairs.  She chose to stray and the divorce was agreed upon.  After taking the larger financial commitment I will still owe her a fair amount of money.  She poured a trust her grandmother gave to her into the last project, and she is legally entitled to that.  We divided the debt down the middle, I wouldn’t feel right doing it any other way.  I make less money than her but I can’t justify not splitting the debt without feeling like less of a man.  In the end, the money I owe her will make her debt free, while I have to take out a five year personal loan to pay her.  I will be dealing with the aftermath of this for the next five years, living with room mates because I cannot afford to live on my own anymore.  Something about that seems unfair, but it is what it is.  I can worry about it, be angry about it, scream and shout about it but it won’t change a thing.  I will owe this money and I will pay this debt.

We met at the notary to get things finished today, and it was a sad experience.  She looked lovely, like she always does, and there was an awkward tension between us.  I had the feeling in my stomach that I knew this was over, that there was nothing that could be said or done that hadn’t already come out.  We went to the courthouse when we were done and filed the paperwork.  She talked to me sparingly, in much the same way that I had to her the past week.  I deserved that.  I left while she was paying because I didn’t feel like she wanted me around anymore.  I didn’t want to make things more awkward on the walk back to our cars.  I don’t know what happened after that, I went home and went to bed.  I woke up later feeling surprisingly well, until the thoughts that usually creep in started their rotation in my head.  Damn being on night shift and damn not having someone to talk to.  Sometimes I wish I knew more people up late who understood some of the things that I was going through, but for now I just write my feelings out in a post and hope that the occasional passerby gets something out of it.  I am going to go see if I can find a gift for her, for our final christmas together.  I don’t have a lot of money and it will be small, but I hate the thought of me missing this holiday with her.  I know it is no longer my right to spend it with her, but this gift can act as a final farewell.  The holidays aren’t as bad as they seem…

Repay

Because the same was offered to me I would like to pay it forward.  If you are going through a situation similar to mine (regarding infidelity) and you need someone to talk to feel free to email me (jlgedeon@gmail.com) or drop a comment on one of my posts.  The few who extended this invitation to me early on were a godsend, and I wouldn’t have handled this very well at all without their kind words and advice.  To all those suffering through events like this, good luck!  There are better days ahead 🙂

Momentum

Time has started to pass more normally for me.  In the earlier months I would spend all day swirling around the small details in my head.  What seemed like hours would in actuality be minutes as I played out all the different scenarios in my head.  It wasn’t a great way to do things but I didn’t know any better at the time.  Now I know better, and I am far more adept at keeping myself busy.  Work helps in giving me things to do.  I wouldn’t feel like much of a man if I wasn’t able to do my job, and the last thing I need is to lose the one thing that lets me support myself.  I have a room mate moving in sometime in January so I won’t be alone in the house any more either.  Things are settling in all aspects of my life, and I am reaching the edge of the storm.  While the waves are still rough they are less so and calmer waters are in sight.  It’s a relief on many different levels, and I couldn’t be happier to see the “light at the end of the tunnel”.  The start of the healing process will come soon, if it hasn’t already.

My wife was sick the other day and we had to put off filing again.  I expected this with how sick she was when I saw her on Saturday.  We have pushed it to this Saturday, although I may push it again.  I would like to meet a friend for some drinks and that may be the only day to do it.  As a back up, I asked my wife the same question she asked me, “What if I don’t want to file?”.  I was curious what her answer would be, although I expected it to be negative.  She said that she thinks we should file, that we should both find ourselves on our own terms.  It stung a little bit, partly because that’s hollywood grade BS and partly because I have already done that.  But the response didn’t tell me anything I wasn’t already aware of so the sting was not long lasting.  I assume that she has a boy set up to date soon or when the paperwork goes through, her MO has been revealed to me in great detail.  It may be a bad assumption but I don’t have any other character to base her actions on and I have a hard time giving her the benefit of the doubt.  Either way it won’t be something I have to deal with for very long.  I am a little worried about the division of debt, no matter how we swing it she will come out on top.  Oregon is a no fault divorce state so infidelity has no bearing on the division of anything.  She is entitled to half the debt, as well as half of the money she has put into the house via mortgage payments, home improvements etc.  This is gonna smack me with a large amount of debt while the money owed to her will completely eliminate hers.  Fairness is not something this situation supports.  I will be saddled with close to 20k in debt, which will probably force me to refinance my home.  My interest rate will rise and my mortgage will go up giving me less money to have on a day to day basis.  Room mates will become a necessity if I want to keep the house.  Selling will be difficult, there is a lot of work that remains unfinished on the house.

I can’t stop these things from happening.  Standing in front of the iceberg will only see me getting crushed under the weight of everything that is happening.  The best thing I can do is walk in the same direction as the things that are happening.  I don’t know what the future holds but there will be brighter days ahead.  God will provide for me and I will get exactly what I need exactly when I need it.

I find myself having less and less to say about this situation.  I wonder if this is because I have already said everything I needed to or if I am just becoming jaded with everything that is going on.  It could be a combination of both, since I have written 30+ posts in the past few weeks.  Posting may slow down as things start to occur more slowly.

I ordered some books on surviving infidelity.  I found them on a fellow bloggers post about things that helped her (http://tryingtomakelemonade.wordpress.com/2014/12/11/whistle-while-you-work/) and I picked them up for a few reasons.  One, if we had ever turned around and decided to work on it I would have some resources to support that and two, I can read them from the perspective of both the cheater and the cheatee.  As I mentioned before, my behavior has mirrored hers in some of my past relationships.  The books arrived on Monday and I fully expected to read a chapter in both of them to get that process started.  Unfortunately it turns out that the wounds are still a little too fresh to allow me to read those books without feeling uncomfortable.  Maybe in the weeks to come things will be different but for now I will have to shelve them and work through things my own way.

Life keeps moving forward.

Hero

I hadn’t seen my wife in almost two weeks.  That’s the longest I have ever gone without seeing her, and I was a bit surprised  with how badly I missed her.  Well, I don’t think I was surprised so much as…disappointed.  I know that most of us in our situation want to hide from the fact that the person who betrayed us was the love of our life.  And that after the betrayal we just want a lot of these feelings to end so we can move on with our lives.  Such is not the case, I still miss seeing her hair, her smile, and hearing her laughter.  I visited her last night to drop off some of her stuff and she and I chatted for a little while.  She asked if I was doing ok, and if I needed a hug.

The hug was a bad idea.

I got lost in her scent, in the power and warmth of her embrace.  I know it is the part of me that wants to hope, but I could swear that I felt love in that embrace.  It was probably just my own.  Things have been tough for me, I am giving up the love of my life.  It doesn’t mean that I won’t ever find someone better than she, it just means that right now there is no one better.  I will be given exactly what I need when I need it and not a moment sooner.  As we parted from the embrace our hands caressed each others arms until our fingers touched.  It’s an old habit, one that I sorely miss.  One of the things that we were always proud of was the fact that we still loved to hold hands with each other.  Our fingers danced across the others and we quickly put them at our sides.  We continued to chat and I left after a while.  I had to head back into work, and last night was a busy night.  Before I left she gave me some stuff that had gotten mixed up in the boxes I had brought over.  Some mail and a card had been packed up in my haste to get rid of the stuff that reminded me of her.  The card was familiar, and I opened it up and read it.  The card had been sent to me when I had a brainfart and wished him happy birthday a whole two months before it was time.  His birthday was yesterday…

I lost it.  I broke down and wept.  My dad will likely not be around to see his next birthday.  He may not even be around to see mine.  He won’t see any new grandkids, he may not get to meet (if the divorce actually happens) the woman I do spend the rest of my life with.    I won’t be able to call him when I have a terrible day and listen to some dad humor.  My dad has made a point of always being there for me, especially when there are difficult times.  He was the first person to pray with me as I rediscovered my faith.  I won’t have my hero around to make sure that I am a good father, as he was to me.

My wife said at one point during this whole process that she was losing everything.  From my perspective she choose to give it all up for cheap thrills and short term need fulfillment.

I am going to lose everything that made me strong in the first place.

I often wonder if this is a normal occurrence for most people.  Not dealing with affairs, although that does happen to a lot of us.  But living life up to a point where you might just be faking the strength you have, or drawing from others for that strength, and then having those sources of strength taken away from you all at once.  I have gained in this situation, I can’t lie about that.  But I can’t help feeling like it is a bit unfair at times.  At least, I feel like that until the reality of who I was, how I treated people, and how I hurt people creeps into my thoughts.  A large part of me starts to think that on some level I deserved something like this.  That tends to be a sobering thought, and often is what ends up giving me the strength to stop feeling sorry for myself and start working on being better.  I don’t ever want to hurt anyone the way that I did before, and I don’t ever want to let the woman I end up with feel lonely or unappreciated.  Being better is the goal, if I don’t learn from this situation then what the hell have I really changed about myself?

Temptation

There will always be times where I start to believe again.  Where I start to believe that maybe, just maybe this could work.  The sad part is that I have to squash that hope.  I can’t let it run through me and fuel me like it did before.  I don’t feel safe and I certainly don’t have trust in her to do that.  Things would be different if she were committed to the effort, but for now that hope has been placed on the back burner.  Nothing is set in stone.

Even though I don’t let that hope control me I still can’t help feeling it from time to time.  I feel it most when she sends a text that brightens my day, when she shares whats going on with her.  When we talk like we used to, about nothing in particular and the most important things to us at that moment.  We are extraordinarily comfortable with each other, something I haven’t ever had with anyone else.  I’m sure it will happen again, but why not put in the work now?  The times where she and I are laughing at something are the hardest.  That is when the temptation to give in to that hope is the strongest.  It sucks.

Hope always feels so…..right.

Tuesday cannot come fast enough, I need to feel like things are moving again however unhealthy that is.  I don’t want to force things along but I also don’t want to sit in limbo forever.  Filling out the paperwork will hopefully bring some clarity to the situation for both her and I.  I wonder how I will feel once that paperwork is filled out.  Will I be relieved, will I be frightened, will I want to stay the course or will I falter?  What will I be tempted to do once I have the paperwork in hand and all the signatures I need?  We’ll see what happens on Tuesday, it isn’t good to speculate.  In the meantime, I have plenty of stuff to do on my weekend around the house.  I hope that keeping busy will keep me preoccupied in the meantime.  If it doesn’t I have a few friends I can call to take up a few hours of the day.  I’m sure that my wife and I will text about whatever as well.

Positive thoughts!  Good feelings!  Better days ahead!

Reflection

I spend a lot of time reading through my past posts.  I am sure that I am not the only one that does this, there is a bevvy of information in those posts that I would rather not soon forget.  Each post contains a lesson on how I felt at the time and how I dealt with it.  These experiences are crucial to making sure that the lessons learned stay learned, and don’t exist in the short term as ways of coping.  I have ADHD, and I have a tendency to forgive and forget.  This is true of most major indiscretions against me, regardless of who was responsible.  This is a common trait of those with ADHD and it has resulted in me learning some painful lessons MORE THAN ONCE.  So, in the wake of my personal development I have resolved to do my best to learn the permanent lessons instead of those short term coping mechanisms and thus, have been spending a lot of time looking at my old posts.  It has been four-ish weeks since my D-day.  It feels like it has been much longer, nothing can make time drag more than having something so significant to dwell on.  This is evident from my writing early on.  We still have a long way to go if we are going to make it through the healing process, and in the meantime we are still going through with filing.  There will be discussions about it, and nothing is set in stone except for the meeting on Tuesday to fill out the paperwork.  And maybe we will go on a date or two.  But nothing long term is decided (even the decision to file) and all can be changed.  But watching the way my writing changes has made me realize a few things:

1. I am emotionally reactive even though I am trying very hard not to be.
2. I am working through making a decision just as important as the one she is.
3. I am not nearly as blameless as I hoped that I would be, given my recent behavior.

I have lots of things to work on, and have a long list of things to do in the meantime.  At least I have something more productive to spend my time on instead of feeling sorry for myself or taking comfort in my anxiety.  The future is rocky, but bright.  Baby steps.

Outcomes

So, I believe I have fully adapted to the medication.  I haven’t felt any anxiety for the past few days and I am on the higher dosage.  It’s lovely, really, and it’s about damn time.  It doesn’t stop the motor in my head from churning out thought after thought after thought but my stomach doesn’t wind up in knots and I don’t have to take breaks to breath every now and then.  I began to think about the outcomes of this situation and I had a chance to write them down.  They are as follows:

1. If you say yes
   1. Put in the work, we end up happy, stay together
   2. Put in the work, you end up unhappy and follow through with divorce
   3. Put in the work, I end up unhappy and follow through with divorce
2. If you say no
   1. Continue with divorce, One or both of us meet someone new, fall in love again
   2. Continue with divorce, figure out you want us, I am not available
   3. Continue with divorce, figure out you want us, I am available, move to option 1
   4. Figure out you want us before divorce is finalized, move to option 1
3. If you are indecisive
   1. See option 2, since the divorce will continue

There are a few more, but I will leave them off for now, suffice to say they involve “old habits”.  The numbered points refer to how she answers the question “Are you willing to put in the work?”.  One of the things that she has mentioned is stopping her from making a decision is the fear that she will make the decision to stay and put the work in and be unhappy for the rest of her life.  This makes me laugh, because if she was unhappy after putting in the work and the effort to repair the marriage I would talk seriously about divorce.  A situation like that wouldn’t be fair to me and it wouldn’t be fair to her.

We talked a little bit tonight about trivial things.  She is sick and has stayed home from work the past couple days.  She has had me looking for some of her christmas stuff the past couple days, as christmas is her holiday.  Then she asked me if I was alright, that I seemed angry the last time I talked to her (the previous night).  I said it isn’t just us, there are other personal things that I am dealing with.  She said that if I ever thought talking to her would help that she hopes that I would.  I didn’t know what to say to this at first so I take a deep breath, count to ten, and clear my mind.  The truth of the matter is that we aren’t at a point where she could do the things that would help me.  I need to be able to talk with someone who won’t spread what I say to her friends.  I need to understand that the person I am confiding in won’t badmouth me to her friends when I leave.  And we just aren’t at that point, when we were more aligned on trying I was given permission to look at her phone whenever I wanted.  She thought it was to make sure that she wasn’t texting the other guys, but I was also looking for the conversations between her and her friends.  I told her that I wasn’t sure if she could do the things that I needed right now.  And she mentioned that she was sorry, and that I should still talk to her if I need to.  We start to hammer out details about tuesday and I mention her asking me not to file, as well as her asking me to go on a date.  For the first one, she says that she was unsure about filing on that day.  She doesn’t know if she will ever be 100% but the decision isn’t hers to make.

Accountability is something I hold very dear to my heart.  Having the right amount of it can get you out of some pretty sticky situations, as well as deepen the trust other people have in you.  The decision to file was made by me and I will be accountable for the consequences of those actions, but the decision to fight has to be made by her.  I believe that a lack of accountability for her actions is what drives her indecisiveness.  If she chooses to stay and put in the work it means that she is aware of what she did and how it affects me.  If she chooses to go she will no longer be held accountable for her actions, she won’t have the pile of work that comes with repairing a marriage looming over her.

To stay, or to escape?

The final thing she said is that she wants to go on a date but she doesn’t know if things will ever be normal again.  I won’t ever trust her the same and there will always be rules and limitations on her.  She says the reasons why are obvious but it’s still hard.

While there will be limitations for a while I know that over time, with good behavior on both sides they will recede.  If the right steps are taken, trust will slowly build.  If the trust is built and maintained the relationship will flourished.  Mistakes will happen, the road will get rocky.  Learning from those mistakes is crucial, and nobody can be perfect all the time.  I want so badly for her to step up and do this work, but I wouldn’t fault her for choosing not to.  I often think about what I would do if the situation were reversed and I honestly have no idea.  I don’t think I would be a nice guy in that situation.  The hardest part of this is that I understand everything that she is going through, from the sleeping around on the people she is dating to the being unsure if you really love someone.  All of this I have experienced before as the instigator, now I just get to see it from the other side.  That may be what drives my attitude in this situation.  I can hope for an outcome but I can’t say that I will be surprised if it doesn’t happen.  Sad, sure, but ready to accept it and move on.

The whole one day at a time thing is easier now.

Negativity

It’s amazing how much negativity I see in some of the posts here.  As someone who is experiencing these events in real time I understand how a lot of people feel.  The pain, the betrayal, the lies, the thievery (in some cases), the abandonment, and the emotional tension all work  together to make it a pretty terrible time for everyone involved.  Add to that the uncertainty of whether or not things will work out between the couple or not and you have a pretty volatile brew for Anger and Rage.  For the people who are in the middle of the process I expect a certain amount of this anger and rage.  I deal with it on a daily basis, as I continue to try and forgive my wife for the things she has done.  But I am seeing people 1, 2, 3 years past these events still harboring so much hate for the WS.  At what point is it ok to finally let go?
In their defense, I have no idea what their situations are like.  I have no idea who they are, nor do I have any clue how the WS has treated them.  I have no idea what it feels like to have children in the middle of a situation like this, who would be a near constant reminder of what happened.  What I do know is this; for me and others like me, that hatred is a poison. It starts inside and it feels great when it first shows up.  As time goes on that negativity starts to bleed out into the other things that you do, affecting those you care about.  After enough time has b=passed it stops feeling so good, but there isn’t an easy way to get rid of it at this point.  The only thing that works is radical forgiveness, and a huge amount of personal change.

The reason I fight against feeling that hatred is because it undermines the work that I have already done.  I have poured one billion percent of myself into being better, teaching myself to make wiser and more healthy decisions, preparing myself to have fulfilling and healthy relationships.  I will not let the actions of one person change the way I perceive the world (unless it is for the better).  Staying positive goes a long way to making sure the healing process stays on course.  Yes, what happened to me was terrible, and it’s something I won’t forget for the rest of my life.  But no matter how I feel now, no matter how bad it gets, I know that if I let go now there will be better days ahead.  If I let go now it will save me a massive amount of work in the long run.  There will still be triggers that toss my mind into dark places, and I will still have days where everything sucks for all the wrong reasons, but they will be fewer and farther in between as time goes on.  If I were harboring as much negativity as I have been seeing for as long as some of those I have been seeing, what has the work I have done really accomplished?

My perspective on the situation has changed greatly and rapidly.  It’s one of the reasons I was pushed towards faith and will continue on the path I have chosen no matter what.  For those of you who believe, consider this timeline:

1. She has an affair, asks to go to counseling. I don’t know about the affair.

2. She and I struggle through counseling.  Divorce is mentioned and she shuts down.

3. I Take counseling more seriously, start seeing real benefit.  She sucks the second guy off, gets back with the first one.

4. I find faith, start working more on myself, She continues to retreat as she prepares her “security blanket” relationship

5. I fight to get her to come back, to be more present, she decides to move out.

6. I find out about the affairs, am able to forgive and ask her to work on it, she obliges and breaks it off

That timeline will always amaze me.  If I had found out about the affairs at any point before the time that I did I would have been a dangerous person to be around.  But I discovered them after I found my faith and my ability to forgive, giving me the option of working on the marriage.  I would be a single person today if the events had occurred any differently.  I am amazed at the effect it has had on my life.  How terrible would it be to fall back into the old habit of hatred?  No matter what she has done or what she will do my wife will never be deserving of my hatred.  Nobody deserves hatred, least of all the person who feels it.

For those of you who read this and think it’s about you, don’t be offended.  I mean no judgment or condemnation, nor do I put myself above you for feeling the way that I feel.  I don’t know your situation, it would be wrong of me to assume anything.  But if you do read this and you have felt that familiar feeling welling up inside of you, tearing away piece by piece at the person you are, I ask one question; why not let go and give forgiveness a try?