Many emotional affairs are being carried out with old boyfriends or girlfriends… the rekindled past flame.

rekindled past flame

By Doug

One of the common threads we have noticed from comments to this blog as well as from the emails we receive, is that many of the emotional affairs that exist are being carried out with old boyfriends or girlfriends – many times from decades ago. 

We thought that was kind of interesting and decided to do a little research on the subject.  We were kind of surprised to find out that this sort of thing has been a growing trend.  It actually has a name for it —“Rekindling.”

Probably the most notable person who has conducted research for this phenomenon is Nancy Kalish, Ph.D.  She began her research on rekindled romances in 1993 with a simple survey of men and women who tried reunions with ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends.  

Her initial survey request for participation appeared on radio stations, television shows, in magazines and newspapers, and on the Internet (which at the time would have been in its infancy).

As a result of that first survey, Dr. Kalish found that reunions with former boyfriends or girlfriends were common in all age groups. Two-thirds of the participants had reunited with their first loves from when they were 17 years old or younger.

Featured Download: “The Top 10 Reasons to Leave Your Affair Partner Now”

If you’re the unfaithful, get it, read it and carefully consider the advice. If you’re the betrayed, give it to your unfaithful spouse.

 

Their success rate for staying together was 78%. For the overall sample, the staying together rate was 72%.  To me, that is shockingly high!  However, something changed as her research model switched to more internet based research.

See also  Oh No, It’s Mr. Bill: The Real Life Story of a Sex-Addicted, Narcissistic Man

Recently, she conducted new research on participants who have typically found each other online through sites such as Facebook, Classmates.com, etc. These participants are very different in one respect: the majority (62%) are married, or their lost loves are married, or both. They are in unexpected emotional (and often physical) extramarital affairs with their old flames.

These extramarital reunions were generally not successful

The reconnections were devastating to the spouses, children, and the lost loves themselves.  Although most participants believed they could carry on the affairs until they decided what to do about their marriages, most were caught by their families.

Because of the high extramarital affair rate, successful reunions for this group of participants was low: only 5% of the lost-love couples married each other; one or both of the affair partners chose to remain married. If they were not caught, most ended their reunions after a few years. 

About half of those in Kalish’s sample who divorced to get back together with their old flame reported that before renewing contact with their earlier love, their current marriages had been good.

Thinking about an old flame is fine, but beware of contacting them because it can escalate into an affair with amazing speed and force. It’s like you’re falling in love all over again, thrown back to those exciting teenage days.

One survey participant noted that her first boyfriend found her on classmates.com, and before she knew it, she was obsessed, and then lying to her husband, and then sexually unfaithful, and then caught by her husband – who, to her continuing gratitude, stuck with her instead of divorcing her.

See also  Our Own Emotional Affair

 

 

The Rekindled Past Flame Relationship Can be Powerful

Therapists tend to underestimate the powerful nature of such old loves, especially first loves, Kalish argues. As a result, they tend to tell such patients that their feelings for their re-found loves are based on fantasy and that they can find the same feelings in their own marriages if they only try. But that fails to take into account that reunited lovers really do know and love each other, and a first love, in particular, remains unique.

“This is not about sex, it is not about the spouse or the marriage, it is not a midlife crisis. The reunion is a continuation of a love that was interrupted.”

Some research indicates that a teenager may attach specifically to a first lover in much the same way as a baby attaches to a mother.  Psychologist Linda Waud says,

“There is an actual neurological attachment that happens between these individuals, and that’s why it’s enduring and it never leaves your mind. It’s there forever and ever.” 

She goes on to say, “There is this strong sense that they have to reconnect with the other person before they die.”   Waud herself, was reunited with her current husband after more than 35 years apart.  They met at a high school reunion after each of their marriages to other people had ended.

Not every affair leads to marriage; indeed, most don’t.

According to the late infidelity researcher Shirley Glass, Ph.D., when one spouse leaves for another person, the chance of failure for the new relationship is about 75 percent.

On a survey follow up, one of the participants wrote that one day while performing a search on the Internet, she typed her college sweetheart’s name on a whim. “I didn’t even know I’d been thinking of him,” she says. Within weeks, they’d rendezvoused.  Within months, she left her husband of 32-years and bought a condo in the city where her old flame lived.

See also  Perceptions of the OP Over Time

Almost immediately, the relationship deteriorated. “All of a sudden, he was too busy. The flowers stopped, the candy stopped,” she says. “We tried to make it work for a few years, but it eventually ended in a very ugly way. I was foolish—I saw what I wanted to see.”  Surprisingly, she and her husband never divorced, and they are working toward reconciliation.

The Rekindled Past Flame Destroyes Trust

Repairing trust in a marriage is hard enough after an affair. But bouncing back from a lost-love affair is far more complicated.

Many couples are unable to rebuild the relationship without professional help. The solution is as individual as the two people involved.  But a good marriage counselor should be able to help find it.

So just how worried should married people be that their spouse is going to have an affair and leave them for their first love? The answer: not very.

For most people, a blast from the past won’t result in either a divorce or a fairy-tale wedding.  In fact, most will eventually remember why they ended their relationship in the first place.  “Most of the time,” says psychologist David Greenfield, Ph.D., “if we were meant to be in each other’s lives, we would be. In most cases, these relationships are over for a good reason.”

If you or your spouse had an affair with a “rekindled past flame,” please share your story below.

 

    101 replies to "Emotional Affairs – Rekindled Past Flames"

    • michael

      Thank you for this.
      Its hard to hear but good to hear. Even more so because I now have found out about another ex that she has had contact with. She is mad and hurt that I keep looking at the past. And keep looking for her faults.
      Me and my wife spoke today about how my lack of trust hurts her. I had only this to say.

      It was her choices that put me here. When she gets that. She will get better.

      I’m starting to realize that my being obsessed with looking at her past is just driving me nuts. Not her. She knows what she did. And she was fine with it for the most part. She doesn’t want to bring up old things. So my digging is only causing myself pain. So I need to work on myself. And get better for me. Thanks for the help and hope that she comes around.

      • Doug

        Michael, Does your wife realize that her actions have caused you to be cautious and mistrusting? It’s normal for the betraying spouse to want to be defensive and “move on.” On one hand, you need to know so that you can get closure, but on the other it’s not good to continually dig up the past.

      • Devistated

        I’m so grateful for this site. I just found out, literally 5 days ago, that for the last 6 months my husband of 17 years (together 23) has been communicating with his high school/college sweetheart. The really horrible thing is that I thought we were happy. In fact, we just had one of the greatest weekends of our marriage. Our kids were gone to summer camp…We made love for hours every day. Loving, uninhibited, passionate, amazing love. My husband said it was the best in his memory of our years together. He sent me poems and songs all about how he “can’t stop thinking about me”…not only was he calling her the entire weekend but actually drove to meet her at a hotel 2 days later and 2 days after that. 3 hours each way. Racing to get back to work with no sleep. He works at night 4 hours from home, only home every other weekend. He’s been speaking to her on the phone 5-20 times a day. Once for 96 minutes, once for 88 minutes, many 5,7,10 minute calls all day. Dozens of texts…I could not believe it!! We were that couple everyone was jealous of because we seemed so happy. He’s always worshipped me or st least I’d convinced myself he did. Needless to say, I’m still in shock and hysterical. After reading this article, I have hope. I’d been screaming, ALOT, crying hysterically, sending him horrible text messages. I even hit him and scratched him up a bit. He’s been begging my forgiveness, promising to make it up to me, doesn’t want to lose me..all the normal things, I guess. I’m REALLY TRYING to believe him and move forward. The only trouble is, he swears they couldn’t go through with anything but talking once they got to the hotel. Even says the last visit they agreed never to see each other again in person. Agreed that it never worked before and if it was meant to be, they’d be together now. Says he’s grateful I discovered the calls. He promised never to contact her again. I’ve checked calls and texts and there is nothing since he promised never again. How can I believe nothing “happened” st the hotel??? Am I a fool to believe??? Just wanting to believe to satisfy my sorrow??? I keep telling him if he’ll just tell me the truth, it’ll be easier to heal. He insists there was never physical contact. Just the roller coaster of feelings rushing back. Says he felt like he was in high school again. I’m SO CONFUSED and hate feeling like a fool to believe him but I love him so much and don’t wa t to lose him. I also realized, after much thought and prayer, I’ve been emotionally disconnected for the past couple years. He begs me to send him pics of me and sends sweet, romantic texts throughout the day that I normally don’t even respond to or tell him I don’t want the kids to see so I delete and don’t reply. I realize he’s been lonely and I haven’t exactly given him the quantity of sex he wants or needs. To me it’s about the quality. Oh, I didn’t mention he started working out about 2 months ago, saying he’s getting ready for our up coming Hawaii vacation. Is there hope for us?? I’ll keep praying and trying.

        • Soph

          Devistated, this is so strange! I have had a very similar experience. I found out July 25, 2017 that he was in contact with a long distance college sweetheart. They met in 2013 while he was on a business trip. It sounds like her sister was with her and nothing happened. Who knows though! We have been happily married for 35 years now. I am still struggling to understand. He says he never loved her, but she was fun to talk to. Although, they mostly only rehashed their past. The emails were like they were 19 years old again, not very mature. I would love to know how you are now.

      • Brian

        I do you have just come out of one of those I found her she’s been with a man continues be doing that it was over between them too and she was going to leave on the next visit back when really she never really planned to do so she was just playing me to get some affection that she had not gotten from him in a while now he knows and she’s lost both of us as far as I know because I sent him all of the text showing her and asking her I don’t want to be the job that breaks you do that if you are really having a relationship please tell me the truth and I get this over a period of several weeks just this Sunday did she go back to him and I decided that he needed to know because what if he does it again and brings back home a disease or what have you… I’ll never learn her I just made her feel loved and appreciated and paid attention to something she said she never got while he was there at that house I figure I’m trying to get over it right now. From February 27 until just this past Sunday 2020 I have been promised that I was the man for her that I am the one that shows her what is needed to be loved and that she cannot go back and then at the very last minute tells me that she’s just kicking me to the curb without a thank you or I’m sorry.. So I called and told him what she was up to he was devastated as well and told her to leave rather he took her back or not I’ll never know she won’t let me talk to her she won’t come and she won’t give me any kind of closure so never rekindle the flame lest you know what you’re doing

    • Darla

      My husband is ready to divorce me because I communicated with a guy I dated in High School on Facebook. We emailed each other on and off for about 2 weeks. I never had any intention of getting together with this guy. As chance would have it, the day I had intended to tell my husband because I had felt guilty, the guy’s wife hysterically calls him at work making all sorts of accusations. I called the guy twice and we chatted about what each of us had been up to over the last 40 years. That’s it! Yeah, I’m guilty for not telling my husband right away and I lied to him about a phone number on the bill but I never slept with this guy even though my husband thinks I did. I’m not so sure if he’ll ever forgive me or is willing to save our 11 1/2 year marriage.

      • admin

        Darla, It sure sounds as though you had an innocent conversation for the most part, but the fact that you withheld information and lied to him has created mistrust for your husband. I can’t help but thing that given some time, and you doing what you can to make things up to him will allow your husband to come to the point where he believes you and trusts you again.

      • Dawn

        If you were not doing anything inappropriate and had nothing to hide, you wouldn’t have lied about the phone number. You wouldn’t have withheld information from your husband.

      • Saddenned

        Darla,

        My husband did almost the exact same thing. It was about 2 weeks as well and ironically it happenned in the same timeframe. He is just really hurt. I am there too. We have went through counseling and I continue to go through counseling. Hang in there.

        • Randi

          My spouse of 30 yrs traveled 1.5 hrs to talk to his first love. He says they never went further than first base. He claims they knew each other as kids then ltr became a couple (puppy love). I believe initially it started out innocently, he was curious about what happened to her. He was the pursuer, but she also led him on. He asked for pics which she willingly sent of a younger version and also a recent pic. He became, inactuated/limerance, with her. He was first to tell her I love you after about a month. I’m not sure but by the sound of it, she may have begun realizing she was playing with fire. She responded that it was probably feelings from the past. He told me she never said I love you or expressed feelings. I dont believe that. They kept up this EA for almost 2 months. I happened to look at my ph bill and discovered their EA. I believe it was headed to becoming physical had I not found out. I did speak to her and surprised now looking back that I didn’t bite her head off. I still feel I need answers. He’s come to his senses post DD 16 MO ago. Trust is not there totally, believe me it was a very hard yr and still is but he’s been doing alot of work earning my trust back. I did meet her in person as well as I needed to know if it had become physical but she chose not to show her face, mask, sunglasses, and hat. They are both 8 yrs older than me. Everyday he expresses and show his love. He also wants to sweep it under the rug and says it was stupid and embarrassing what he did. I know all those feelings and not a day goes by… you know what I mean. He’s damaged our families, our kids, our friends and fam I’m sure wonder how I could stay and forgive, still not fully. I tell myself they don’t know our lives, our family, our marriage. 30 urs is a long time to be with someone and I couldn’t throw away the memories. I don’t have any intentions of revenge. The “why” will continue to be there. We were going through so much hardship when this all took place. That’s hard as well because he was the person that was supposed to be there yet he was distracted looking for this person. I believe we will get to a place of understanding, we have to if we want
          to live our lives fully and happily again. I also believe my heart will lead me where it may, even if it may be alone. I also
          Learned that addiction plays a huge part, especially for someone with an addictive personality.

    • Heartbroken

      Wow. Thank you for this post today…’a continuation of love interrupted’…I had never thought of it that way. This is exceedingly significant to my situation and may really help with my finding the forgiveness, or at least understanding, to save our marriage!!! Thank you!! Thank you!!

    • Darla

      Thanks for the feedback. We have gone to a counselor 3 times now and hopefully, things are on the mend. I know it will be a long time before things will get back to being somewhat “normal” but at least he seems willing to try. I guess it’s still too soon for him to tell me he loves me even when I tell him. He wants me to do a lot of soul-searching and give him a reason why I did this to him. I told him it was mostly out of curiosity but I truly believe the real reason was that I felt neglected, invisible, unappreciated and worthless and the fact we stopped interacting with each other. There is definitely a communication problem on my part, I won’t deny that, but when we did communicate, I had to pull information out of him or he would give me one or two word answers.

      • Doug

        Darla, Trying is the first step. I would suggest instead of telling him that you did it our of curiosity, that you be transparent and tell him your true feelings. Otherwise, he has no basis to change. For some reason, I believe that I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know! — Doug

      • Tim

        Darla, In the end, you went looking, period, the truth. My wife did the same thing and it turned into a 13 yeara affair EVEN after I found out about it after 3 years. The reconnection was just too strong for my unchristian wife. That was 37 years ago I found out and I can’t get past it. the lies are the huge part and you were certainly heading down the same road as my wife. Your ship was sinking and your ex was your lifeboat and handy. Seems he was looking as well if there was more than one call. I am also a counselor…

    • Mary

      This is very interesting. Albeit not what I am currently worrying about. However, it does remind me of a post I read awhile ago – http://thekingdomofmatt.com/2010/02/guest-post-facebook-friends/

      • Doug

        Thanks Mary. Yes, I’m sure that is a scenario that is played out daily on Facebook and other internet sites. You know that when scientist are studying it and it’s a “trend” that has it’s own name, it is a major issue.

    • Mary

      Admin,
      Yeah and it all seems so innocent. Or at least like it should be innocent. It is funny how all this technology that has “helped” us remain in contact with those we once knew does not seem to really be helping at all. It is unfortunate.

    • Darla

      After a lot of soul-searching, I believe I know the real reason I even considered communicating with the guy to begin with. We had distance between us anyway and after going to the counselor and finding out (for the first time) that my husband had a great deal of resentment for other things in our marriage which contributed to this distance. I began to feel very lonely, emotionally neglected and unloved. I will admit, I do have a problem with communication, but I don’t feel it would have done any good even if I had talked to him about how I felt since he had all of these resentments. When we did communicate, I felt I had to pull information out of him on day-to-day stuff. I do feel so much regret for lying to him but I was backed in a corner becaue I had been caught and I knew I had hurt him tremendously and didn’t want to hurt him even further. Yeah, I know honesty is the best policy and hindsight is always 20/20. I just hope we can work through this and build a better, stronger marriage.

      • Michelle

        Darla:
        So when you feel lonely, invisible and negelected – how do you not get sucked into an emotional affair? I feel like I have been set up and there is this big sign painted on my forehead that says, EASY TARGET. I hate feeling so vulnerable and I hate that he has put me in this position (H). I am trying to get out of an emotional affair but it hurts like hell.

    • Darla

      On another note, am I in denial that I don’t feel I had an emotional affair because I wasn’t sharing things with this guy that I should have been sharing with my husband or the fact that we never talked about ways to see each other or feelings other than friendship? We only talked about our families and where our lives had taken us since we had gotten out of school.

      • Doug

        Darla, For what it’s worth, I don’t feel that you had an emotional affair based on what you have described. However, your husband apparently does, or is at least extremely upset and perhaps jealous about your contacting him. As you mentioned, in hindsight, you probably should have been honest from the get-go. That being said, I know that you realize that you must work on your communication and rebuild the lost trust in your marriage.

        • Tim

          Only Darla knows the direction of her emotions, heart, and feeling and what she took away from their talks. Fire starts small and if there was something there early, well. She is the only one that knows where she was hoping this would go. Just innocent, maybe, but…

    • michael

      Looking at this post again, the term rekindling reminded me of a article that was in one of my wife magazines. The term “Bird dogging” refers to a man that hits on, flirts or has an affair, with a married woman. I don’t remember the entire article only that my wife didn’t like that I likened the OM to this.
      There was something about how there is less chance for the woman to get too attached. And he could still get what he wanted. Just thought I’d see if you guys ever heard of this. Don’t know if it works the other way with woman. Are there women out there that are attracted to married men for the same reason.

      • Doug

        Michael, I’ve never heard of the term “bird dogging” used in that context. I’m sure there are women who are looking for a this type of “fling” in the same manner, but would be interested in comments from any who are.

      • Tim

        Some men as always looking and a woman needing something is so easy to see. Often, the simplest nudge gets the ball rolling, again or for the first time…

    • Cha Cha

      I recently discovered that my husband, who I have been married to for over 16 years and with for over 20 had been in contact with his high school sweetheart. They were forced apart over 33 years ago at the age of 17 when his family moved to another state. He had spoken to me about her but I never got the impression that she was still in his heart. When I found out what was going on I was devastated. In the emails I read between them, it was obvious that they still have feelings for each other. I asked him to stop all contact with her and even wrote her an email asking her to do the same. They both agreed but in her last email to me she said that even though they had talked about things I would have thought were “inappropriate” that neither of them lost sight of the fact that they have “obligations and responsibilities to the loved ones in their respcetive homes.” Then she wrote him one last email saying that she was “disappointed” in their “circumstances” because he is here and she is there (she lives 10 hours from us) and “all that goes along with that.” (She is also married)She also said that “maybe fate will bring us together again someday.” I say that if she wrote these sort of things, that it means that he told her things that gave her very good reason to believe that he still has feelings for her but he denies ever saying anything like that to her. He says they just talked about what they have been doing since they last saw eachother and about old times but not about any “feelings.” Am I a fool if I believe him? I think he’s lying. I don’t want to wonder for the rest of my life if he really loves me and wants to be with me or if he never got over her and will never be able to get over what they had and give his whole heart to me. I am very confused and just don’t know what to do. He says he wants only me and loves only me but he has lied to me so much since this all began and I just don’t know what to believe or what to do next.

      • kate

        I’m going through something really similar. The worst part is..we just got married a month ago. I found out a week after we got married that for a 2.5 -1.5 years before (5 months before we got engaged) he was emailing his college ex inappropriately. He stopped 5 months before he proposed because he said he realized he wanted to commit to me and marry me and knew it would be in appropriate to continue emailing her, in secret. He knew more than that as when we first started dating and I asked about his past, I had a bad gut feeling he wasn’t totally over her, even though I did feel like he was madly in love with me. I found a few inappropriate texts/emails 1 year into our relationship (we’re now almost 5 yrs into it) to which he originally got defensive about (red flag) and ultimately he promised that he would a) not speak to her inappropriately (i.e. been thinking about you lately…ugh, puke) and B) tell me if they did have friendly contact. That whole timeframe of inappropriate emails he KNEW how upset it made me and KNEW he agreed to tell me and both things he did not do. Not only that but the emails were really hurtful and disrespectful to our relationship…he’d tell her about experiences he did and leave me out of it. He said “miss you and think about you all the time” and shit like that. What’s difficult is he started and stopped this w/o me knowing, but I didnt find out till right after we just got married, so in the past 1.5 that he hasn’t done this and before we got engaged, he’s actually confronted (w/ my support and encouragement) a lot of issues he was avoiding/numbing before. He said he’s grown so much and understands so much more about my feelings about this however I’m still so hurt and feel like #2 and obviously felt like, wow you love her, go fucking be with her. But, he claims he didn’t mean any of the intimate things, he said she was an easy target to get attention from when he was in a dark place (and we were long distance for this part) and it was all for selfish reasons. Idk what to do or think. I feel numb and angry and so disgusted. Also, it never got sexual, but she was suggestive. He told her he had dreams about her where she “looked great.” The most suggestive thing was, she emailed some days she thinks about what she’d do to him if he was there. To which he ignored. Better ignore than reply, but I was horrified. I’d been w/ this guy for 3 years and he promised me she wasn’t a threat. How could you not tell her to f off, or at least that you have a GF, so disrespectful, humiliating, and a betrayal. He said he probably didn’t because he wanted to keep getting attention from her. But he says he doesn’t really know what he was thinking then because he’s grown a lot since then (the communication stopped a year and a half ago) and was in a dark place then and using that as an escape. I told him it was at my expense. I feel so depleted and like, well now you’re ready to be committed to me and do the right thing, but now I have nothing left to give you and will probably hate myself if I stay bc I’ve allowed someone to do this to me and lie about it on numerous occasions and not leave. I love him but it’s almost like I never stopped worrying about her or felt like he was actually mine until recently, and at this point I don’t know if I’m able to give any part of me to him anymore.

    • Jim

      Hi,
      Saw this and thought I would request advice. Many years ago I was engaged to a girl whom I loved very much. She was a virgin and wanted to remain one until we were married. I respected this decision, but was 20 and had the hormones raging. I became involved with a lady ten years my senior and ended up sleeping with her. She had three kids by a first marriage. First thing I knew she informed me she was pregnant. I did what most people in my locale and upbringing did and broke up with my fiancie and married her. Then was informed she ws not pregnant after all !. I stayed with her all these years. I now know it was because I came from a broken home where my mother left me at 18 months old and was raised by elderly grandparents. Father was an alcoholic, and brother and sister raised all seperatly. I felt I had no one to turn to and no where to go. I raised her children and about five years ago the oldest one died. My wife whom I only live with in a almost coexistance only situation started changing. things went from bad to worse. Our sex life ended completly three years ago and she has become a couch potato and lost her job due to incompetence after nearly thirty years.
      I don’t think there has been many days gone by in all these years that I have not wondered what happened to the girl I loved so much and never got over. I finally started hunting on the computer on ocassion for her and after several months located her parents. I called a number for her parents to ask them to please relay a message to her that I wanted to tell her I was sorry for what I had done all those years ago and ask her to please forgive me for my actions. I had lived my life as a lie and was sorry for any pain I might have caused back then and wanted to only wish her the best. Well when the phone was answered it was her! I reconized her voice right away and started crying so hard I could hardley speak for a few moments. Seems she had married and is now divorced and back home taking care of her father who is in his 80’s ( her mother died a month ago after my call). We talked and I did not tell her much about myself nor did she. I asked her to forgive me and told her I had never gotten over her. She was cool but not cold and distant but many years have gone by since we last spoke. She is not currently seeing anyone.
      I later wrote her a letter and told her all about had happened and asked that she give it some thought about seeing me again. I asked her not to respond back for now. I have since disscused a divorce with my wife and she starts screaming about how she will be left alone in her old age, a major guilt trip. I am 57 and she is 68. She then starts threating to cause all kinds of trouble for me and take everything I own. I have about reached the end of my rope and do not know what to do. I know where I want to be or at least try to be and know it may not ever work out. I am tired of never having sex and I do mean never. I believe I am entitled to a little better life than I am now in. I have been to counsuling and been told they do not know what to tell me to stay or go. I have never been unfaithful and respect the 56 year old lady too much to ask her to even so much as meet me for coffee unless I am like her completly free. I think I am just scared of the unknown . Can you offer any advice ?

      • Doug

        Jim, Obviously your situation is a very tricky one with no clear cut answer. I guess the bottom line is that if you are truly unhappy in your current marriage and have done all that you can do to make it better, then you have every right to consider divorce. Of course you need to consider all of the consequences of such an action to determine if it is the best thing for you to do. You should also go into this knowing that there is the very real chance that your old flame may not want to have anything to do with you, and that you too will end up alone. Good luck to you!

    • Yuki

      Could this not be like cheating spouses who rewrite the history of their marriage to justify their actions? It seems to me that marriage vows are to be kept. Saying that you have always been faithful does not make it ok to be unfaithful now, which you have been by contacting your former girlfriend in secret. That’s how it starts.

      In my opinion, you need to try everything possible to work it out with your spouse. Have you gone to counseling? Have you tried to make it work? Have you taken her to counseling for the death of her child? That trauma must have a lot to do with her current outlook. Like Doug said, have you done ALL you can do to make it better? You may have, but it sounds like you are looking for a way out so you can make your fantasy come true. Of course, my opinion is colored by the fact that my husband had an affair with his first love. In his case, he came to realize that it was a mistake. She was not the person he dreamed of and their relationship did not work out. That does not help me much. My life is in ruins because of attitudes like yours. And we have had sex almost nightly for 28 years. We had a good marriage. Even he admits that. He just had to go after that dream. And now he is trying his best to make it up to me, but my dream is dead.

      • Jim

        Yuki,
        Thank you for your unbiased comments and helpfullness. I bet you would have stayed with your husband if he had been beating you, wouldn’t have called the Police and left him. Bet you would have stayed and said I LOVE him. Abuse and deception come in many forms and I think sometimes divorce is the best answer. Sometimes our dreams are all we have left, even though they do not ever come true.

        • Yuki

          You obviously have done little reading on this site, or any others concernng affairs. I hope you get everything you deserve.

          • Jim

            Yuki,
            I mean this when I say I hope things work out for you.

    • Jann

      One thing that I read, perhaps into the article above, is that the main supporter of this ‘I can go back to my high school love syndrome’ has done so herself. I feel that this is just a way to garner support for her choice since it it not a popular one. Most rekindles do not succeed. Most are based on lies or fantasy, and the good feelings and thrill of having the chance to ‘start over’ in high school again. Like we can. It hurts like a hot knife when you find out that your spouse often of many years doesn’t love you and probably never has. I honestly question if these emotional affair junkies have a cue about what love really is. I don’t think my husband who had a long term emotional affair with his high school girl friend has a cue what real love is.

      We cannot go back. The one thing I have learned from his mistake is all those times he dreamed and wanted that one special person from his past was his needing to cover some fear in the present. “If I can just go find_____ if I had the chance to tell _____how I still loved them..etc.” The truth of the matter is it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. You both made a choice… grow up! And leave them alone, leave the past alone. All you will succeed in doing is messing up everyone’s future.

      And Jim.. no one held a gun to your head when you had sex with the woman who became your wife all those years ago. You made a choice, you cheated on your fiance, and you paid the price. Don’t expect your old fiance to cover you butt for what you did! Man up!

      • Yuki

        Thank you, Jann, for your comment. You’re absolutely right.

        The researcher that is quoted from in the article did not have an affair with an old flame – her husband did. In an effort to learn more about it, since she was already a researcher, she did a series of studies on the subject. Her findings are interesting. I looked her up online and found out all about her.

    • chas

      Where to begin here?
      33 years ago, my LL and I parted ways to head to different colleges, with different life goals and different perspectives on commitment that 2 teenagers who were so in love just could not reconcile. Until then, we had been each other’s first everything. But our paths were not meant to be shared then and we knew it.

      On a day that recognized major life change for me, an e mail coincidentally arrived from him. The first contact in 33 years–though we learned we had each searched for the other over the years.

      We KNEW so soon that we had to be together. I mean, within 3 weeks of our initial contact–we renewed our commitment and knew we would do what it took to marry and have the next 50 years together.
      Our 1st meeting was a month and a half after the 1st contact. It was like coming home–so familiar, so comfortable, so riveting meshing the old and the new. A handful of meetings followed which just deepened the commitment and set his course to relocate to my home state.
      He arrived a few months later and we married right away.

      We wake up so very glad to have this chance every day. Our lives meshed SO easily–he said from the start that we are each other’s other half. Time had resolved the issues that seemed so insurmountable back then. People who know me and work with me now ask what has happened, because I look so happy. 30 pounds melted off and I got my sparkle back. I could not ask for more.

      Was it challenging? Yes–divorce for me, moving for him. Lots of tears, angst, talk, help from good friends and professionals. At the end of the day, the take away is that this came at us like a freight train and we knew deep in our hearts that we would move with the (incredibly rapid) timetable our hearts had set and that it was very important to fulfill the whole commitment right away…to set it right.

      All I can say is that WE KNEW–right away–and got on board and surrendered to the ride. That’s how it worked for us. Are we happy? Deeply so–it is the most satisfying thing I ever did. I would do it all again, in a heartbeat.

      I hope this helps some who are just beginning the journey. It can work, it can last. It did for us. I have my journal from back then, where I wrote about my dreams of marrying this boy, who grew into the man who is now my husband.

      • Linda

        chaos, i am just curious how long have you been married, and how are your families and ex spouses doing? — Linda

        • blueskyabove

          Linda,

          I’m curious why someone who says they are so happy has apparently been searching the web regarding affairs. It seems to me they would want to spend their time with their incredible spouse instead of delving into other peoples agony.

          • Linda

            blueskyabove, I wondered the same thing, I know two years ago the thought of searching for information about affairs never entered my mind. Unfortunately it has become a way of life. Linda

    • Yuki

      For some people, breaking vows and causing agony to those around them mean nothing.

    • 40YrsL8R

      Long marriage, mostly happy, one child, out of the house now, feels like not much in common anymore (and has for 4+ yrs), found HSS online a year ago. She’s married too, also one child, and also not happy in marriage sitch now and for some yrs. Didn’t take long to feel those love feelings of HS. We each brought something to the other that was probably missing at home. That “little flame” in each of us, for the other, from so long ago, has now rekindled and it is very hard to resist. With no guarantee of the outcome of that, and so much to lose in our current situations, it is agony to go thru this. If we don’t get together, won’t I always wonder? Couldn’t that easily turn into resentment for my spouse? What if that doesn’t work out? Are there any winning outcomes here? It feels like such a gamble. One I am willing to take, but the road is gonna be very tough. Still incredibly conflicted.

      • blueskyabove

        40YrsL8R.

        First of all in answer to your question: Are there any winning outcomes here? the answer is: NO. Everyone loses in an affair! I repeat, EVERYONE (spouses, affair partners, children, siblings, your parents, her parents, your in-laws, her in-laws–everyone) loses in an affair!

        In answer to your question: Couldn’t that easily turn into resentment for my spouse? the answer is: Only if YOU allow it to. You are in control of whether or not that happens. You choose your thoughts so if you start resenting your spouse then you make it happen just like you are letting your thoughts convince you that the “flame” has been rekindled. Apparently the “flame” wasn’t as strong as you’re trying to convince yourself it was.

        In answer to your question: Won’t I always wonder? the answer is: Only if you allow yourself to wonder. You might try allowing yourself to see it for what it really is. Again, the “flame” wasn’t as strong as you’re trying to convince yourself it was.

        You have already decided that you’re willing to gamble on this. Does your wife have NO say in what you are planning to do with HER life? Your child? Don’t kid yourself into thinking just because your child is older that he/she won’t be affected by your decision to have an affair. The age of the child doesn’t matter…they are always affected. How come you get to make all those decisions for everyone? Why do you get to “gamble” with everyone else’s life?

        Your username suggests it’s been 40 years. Don’t you think it’s time you stopped thinking and acting like a teen-ager? You aren’t a teen-ager with no responsibilities anymore. You have a wife and child. Take responsibility for your actions. Take responsibility for your thoughts. A lack of self-discipline will lead to a lack of self-respect. Is that what you want? Is that who you are? Every act is an act of self-definition. Only you can define you. Good luck.

        • Bunnie

          Just wow. Your response nailed it! And my thoughts exactly.

      • Norwegian woman

        You ask: If we don`t get together, won`t I always wonder…… Well are you constantly wondering about all the infatuations you had before your wife, that did not turn in to something??? Of course not. So the answer is….. NO.
        And why would you feel resentment for your wife? What have she done here? It is YOU who chooses to resent your wife, if you do, based on YOUR wish to resent her because you cannot have this woman without consequenses. Do you think life is unfair when you can`t have what you want because you have done some commitments before?Do you even hear how immature and stupid that sounds?

    • suziesuffers

      Blueskyabove……….EXCELLENT post. I think I posted something to this blog, but I was pretty angry so maybe it didn’t make it in……but Blueskyabove, you said everything I wanted to say.

    • suziesuffers

      Chaos…..how long were you married and how long was the affair? How long have you been together with the OP? Might be love or infatution hasn’t rubbed off!!

    • chas

      Blue Sky—it is just not that simple. There is the marriage, (usually following very close chronologically to the first love that is so suddenly gone.) We marry the person we know can NEVER break our hearts….but then,years later, there is the renewed connection we cannot endure one more day without. A day comes….an hour comes…where that could be yours again AND YOU KNOW you will never feel the same for that spouse as long as you live.

      This changes you that much.

      If you choose to stay–with that spouse, or lover, what will they have from you? I would not want a “love” less than 100 percent, but that’s all I would have to offer. Do you respect the marriage and ‘fess up that you cannot love them the way you need? Or do you slant the truth and message that all is well?

      Because, in this kind of renewed love, it isn’t and never will be as it was before the first love returned. You can choose to have your physical self stay true and committed, but you cannot will your heart to do so.

      • Ben

        Hahahaha! I love this guy.
        Mate if your still reading this stuff, let us know how it all went. Cuz it sounds like you’ve convinced yourself and no matter what anybody has to say, you KNOW BEST! My guess is that after some time, you came across someone else in life who was “the one”? They made you “feel” a way nobody else could. They just got you. Just soul mates. Etc etc. Until the next one comes along. Lol!
        But in any case, your spouse who was once very hurt and once devestated with the end of their marriage has moved on. Has prob found someone who held the same values and morals as her. Found someone who believes in commitment the same as her and prob now lives very happily. I hope your new spouse doesn’t find a new “soul mate” whilst still married to you. But I bet you thought that you were so special. Lol! Until the next “special” person comes along.
        Hahahaha!

    • LoveInterrupted

      No, it’s not that simple, this is a complicated issue once you are in contact with a Lost Love, and even if you aren’t.

    • John

      leave it be

    • dazedandconfused

      Mark,

      Why did you marry your BS if you knew you were in love with another woman?

    • Conflicted

      This is an interesting thread and very topical for me right now. My wife and I of 30 years, live a thousand miles apart. I moved for promotion and she refused to follow. This has been my life for the last 2 years. 2 weeks ago I ran into my LL. we parted as teenagers due to geography.
      All the things that everyone has said here about LL is true. the feelings are real and very intense.
      She is recently single and I am intensly lonely. The temptation is almost too great to resist! we phone and email but I am not visiting my LL.
      I am trying to reconcile my marriage in my mind but the seperation is killing it. I am a faithful and loyal husband but find myself in one hell of a pickle.

      Just thought that I would share and will happily accept guidance to resolve this

      • Just call me Emotional Roller Coaster

        Just wanted to share with you, as the one who was cheated on….once you cross that line with your LL you can never go back. Fix whatever is wrong in your marriage. Look to your spouse for what you need. Cheating is never worth it. The pain you will cause not only your wife but yourself, for becoming a dishonest person, will never be taken back once you become the unfaithful spouse. Affairs are all about meeting your own needs. You made a vow to your wife. Honor it and stop all contact with the other woman. How would you feel if you found out your wife was cheating on you right at this very moment?

    • conflicted

      Thought i posted here. universe is playing up again

    • Just call me Emotional Roller Coaster

      Where to begin….It’s now been over 2 years since I accidentially discovered my husband’s affair of 18 months with his first love. He and I are still married….but I’m not sure if I’m staying for the right reasons. This is the hardest thing I have done in my entire life. I’m a 53 years old and don’t want to give up all I’ve worked for (material things) and live alone in some dumpy apartment. The thought of dating makes me uneasy. I do love my husband but I’m just not sure that I can ever feel as tho I’m the woman that he has always loved. I absolutely NEED that.

      They were young (her 17 and him 20) and dated for 2 years. She broke it off when she left for college. During their relationship she got pregnant and aborted their baby. It was a mutual decision because of their age. From what I heard from his family and friends, he was absolutely devestated that she had broken up with him. He and I met a few years later, dated for two years and decided to get married. We have two grown, beautiful daughters that don’t live at home. We both have full time jobs.

      My husband tells me that she sent him a message on classmates.com in March 2008. March 4th they both created secret email accounts (hers was blzgrl**@*****.com….my husbands name is Bill) his email was his initials and year he was born. He tells me that the first phone call was in late March (I saw that on the phone bill, so he can’t dispute that). I’m guessing that it must have started before March due to the fact that the email accounts were made in the BEGINNING of March…….More lies as far as I’m concerned but he says that since it’s been so long he simply can’t remember now.

      They were able to spend time together without my suspecting because my husband would take our dog on a walk usually on Saturday or Sunday (sometimes both days….I can’t remember) in a local forest preserve. He also has days off work when the weather is bad (he works construction). They would meet in the nature preserve and have sex in the backseat of her car while our dog was locked up in my car. He confessed to the sex happening about 8 times…..Hummm….a year and a half affair and sex only 8 times?

      I’m sure all affairs are hard, if not impossible under certain circumstances to get over. With all I know of their past relationship and the fact that he ran back to her within such a short time of her first contact with him, I have doubts that I’m actually the woman that he has always wanted to be with. I feel that I was second choice to her. So many lies, so much I still don’t know about their affair. Even though I have asked for reasons, details, etc. he has never told me much or simply says he can’t remember. He says it was all bad and that it was the biggest mistake he has ever made. He says he is with me because I’m the love of his life, not her. My biggest fear is that SHE ended it and he was still keeping the phone in case she called him. He told me that the affair was ending when I found out. It WAS ending???? If he says I’m the love of his life why would it have taken a year and a half to realize that. He wanted to be with her and went to great lengths to do so.

      He ended his affair with her AFTER he accidentially called me from his “secret cell phone” (thru the bluetooth on our car) that he bought to call and text her. Gotta LOVE technology!!

      Their affair began in March of 2008. At least that is what my husband told me. In July, 2008 I was checking the cell phone bill and saw a number that I didn’t recognize. Calls and texts. Many calls to that number (her number) lasting an hour or more. All calls were during the day and before I got home from work. Texts were at all times of the day and night and weekends. I called the number from our home phone and a woman answered saying…..”Well HELLOOOOOO there”…..so he was also calling her from our home phone…..I hung up and I KNEW who it was. I guess that I never imagined that my husband of 27 years would NEVER have an affair. I confronted my husband and he said “Oh, we are just friends and it’s just talk”. I insisted it stop and he said OK. I HONESTLY believed him. He did stop calling her from our house phone and his cell phone BUT went out and bought a pay as you go phone so he could continue his affair…..because I would have to gather that as far as he and she were concerned, it wasnt over.

      14 months later, in late September, 2010, the day that he accidentially called me from his “affair” phone, and I asked what phone are you calling me from? He said it must be cell phone tower crossed or some other mistake. I KNEW he was lying and kept after him for the truth. He told me I was crazy. It took him SIX LONG weeks to come forward with the truth….well part of the truth….he told me that it happened a LONG time ago and it had been over since then. I packed my bags, left not having anywhere to go. I sat in my car with all my belongings in suitcases and garbage bags. He kept calling and I just kept saying “tell me the truth, Bill” and I would hang up. He called again and said he would tell me the truth only if I would come home and promise not to leave him. I went home and he confessed his affair to me. Looking back, I dont know how I survived those moments, days and even months after that night. I do remember I cryed every day for at least 6 months.

      My husband has been doing “all the right things”. I know all his passwords, have access to his phone. He has a GPS map on his phone that he turns on when I ask him to. He keeps me informed as to where he is at all times. He is more attentive to me. He holds my hand when we go out and opens my car door for me as well. After being married so long we have let so many of these things go. I realize that in order to get over the affair and go forward with our marriage, I have to stop thinking about their affair.

    • Love.

      What if it isnt an “ex” – but a best friend, an amazing bond, from many years ago, and because of foolish youth – life happens – and the romance never actually took off? Fast forward 15 years, and bump into them at the grocery store. And that bond is there, but one is divorced, and the other unhappily married. And the relationship picks up as if not a day was lost. But it picks up in secret. Never getting physical, but endless emails, phone calls, even eventually, the children playing together, and the meeting of the spouse. Lunches. Pouring out the hearts, and deepest secrets with a trust and loyalty that is uncanny, just like in the past. A fierce connection. A horrid situation. The two of them together have always been a force to be reckoned with, and lines are drawn, as always, to all outside their little bubble not to interfere or ask questions. Including the significant others. It endures. No matter what. Emotional affair? A rare bond? Just friends? The fantasy of what if? Leaving isnt an option. Being together is not an option. Not now. The years tick. The bond grows, and stays strong. The love of the other is so intense, they wont dare upset the apple cart for the other.
      I’ve always been in love with my very best friend, and once again, ‘the right time’ hasn’t caught up to us.

      • D

        If I knew my wife described herself as “unhappily married,” I would find out why and try to remedy that feeling. If it couldn’t be remedied I would ask her to move on with her life. It would be a hard decision but the right one. Children will adapt, as will routines and finances. Hundreds divorce daily and simply create a new life for themselves.

        But to sneak around behind your husband’s back because “leaving isn’t an option”? Even if he completely deserved it, that behavior is incredibly selfish and cowardly.

      • Healing Mark

        You apparently left some things out of your description of this damaging relationship. Not only does this unhappy wife and divorced best friend share a “rare bond”, but they also share the fact that they are both incredibly immature and willing to do things that they know are harmful to other people, including children! I feel so sorry for the husband of the unhappy wife, but even more sorry for the children of each of these flawed individuals. One can only hope that the other parent of the respective children is able to instill in them the many positive character traits that the other parent does not possess. And for those of us repulsed by Loving’s post, let’s simply hope that the following saying is true: “Karma’s a bitch!”.

    • TNB

      I too attempted to reconnect with an ex. He and I couldn’t even have a decent conversation/communicate at all because after about 3 weeks my blinders came off. He is not the same quiet and lovable guy I remember. He is overbearing, controlling, and most of all disrespectful towards women. After communicating for just 3 weeks he wanted to know where I was going, tried to tell me where I could/couldnt go, and asked me to put him on my benefits package at work. Hell no and definately not! I told him to stop calling because this person I dont know nor like is not welcomed back into my life. I will have to suffice with just the memories because the man is not who or what I need in my life at this point. Darn that ole Facebook!!!!!!! It was where we connected!

    • Kit

      My first love and I kept in touch over the years. We had a very youthful relationship many years ago. I followed him around like a puppy when I was 15 and he 18. When I was 18 we had a relationship that last on and off for a year. No real ties between us just a sort of friendship with sexual gropes. Fast forward 6 years and I am now living on the other side of the world. We found each other through Friends Reunited. We emailed and texted on and off for years. Every so often a sexual inuendo was made but we had a true friendship bond. Both in long term relationsips, neither of our partners knew what was going on, but as we live so far apart we enjoyed what we had. 20 years after our first meeting we met up on one of my vistits home. Just a drink and dinner. We got on had a laugh and the friendship continued. Suddenly after that visit it all turned sexual and emotionall. All our texts where highly erotic, we had this emotional tie between us. Another few visits, still we did not consumate our relationship. Now 25 years on, we met again on a recent visit home. We met in a hotel, spent an amazing night together and hope that that is the end of it. Neither of us had ever cheated before, neither of us plan to cheat again it just felt that we had this emotional tie and a relationship that spanned 25 years and we had to do something about it. I believe that we are true friends, and that we had to find out if all our memories and fantasies where real. I am finding it tougher than him to walk away, but now back home with my family I hope that I can move on.

      • Blue

        Kit: Can I ask you a question? Exactly what does a VOW mean to you? But At least you used a condom to protect your husbands physical health.

        Have you ever thought of the importance of any of these words? Don’t worry if these words mean nothing to you, you’re in the majority, unfortunately.

        in·teg·ri·ty   /ɪnˈtɛgrɪti/ noun
        1. adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.

        vow   /vaʊ/ noun
        1. a solemn promise, pledge, or personal commitment: marriage vows;

        trust   /trʌst/ noun
        1. reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence.

        cheat (tʃiːt)

        — vb (when intr, usually foll by on )
        1. to deceive or practise deceit, esp for one’s own gain; trick or swindle (someone)

        char·ac·ter   /ˈkærɪktər/noun
        1. the aggregate of features and traits that form the individual nature of some person or thing.
        2. moral or ethical quality: a man of fine, honorable character.

        em·pa·thy   /ˈɛmpəθi/ noun
        1. the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.

        ‘The measure of a person’s real character is what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.’ ~Thomas Babington Macaulay

        ‘If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters. ‘ ~Alan Simpson

    • Gizfield

      My husbands father and mother divorced when he was 16, about 25 years ago. In 2003, his father reunited with some one he dated in his teens. She was a widow after many years of marriage. They were married when I met them in 2003, I think it lasted about a year, if that. I think “lost loves” might get together more easily than strangers, but I doubt that overall they have any more chance of success than regular Cheaters. Especially with you start seeing them for what they are now, not what you thought they were decades ago. My first love is still a cheating pathological liar, and he us now also a bloated, creepy 55 year old. Nice …..

    • Gizfield

      Love. I dont know if you noticed, but this entire site is filled with people who have “rare bonds” and “intense connections” , etc., blah, blah, blah. Have you considered the fact that finding someone to Sneak around with you IS the connection? You’re willing to do ANYTHING as long as itdoesn’t involve a real relationship or commitment. How Romantic…

    • Gizfield

      Oh, let me clarify, my father in laws situation DID NOT involve cheating. They were both free to pursue the relationship.

    • Kimberly

      Hello. I have been married since I was 24-15 years, with my husband since I was 22. I have recently been working a lot and going to school full time. We have 2 daughters, ages 4 and 8 and my husband works a first shift position and I work an evening position. Yes, it is set up for failure, I see that now. I spend a lot of time preoccupied with other things, and have really quite neglected my husband (no sex for almost 7 months!). I saw it happening, and ignored it. Iam not a very affectionate person by nature and it was always an issue that I was trying to work on. I discovered he was texting his old high school girlfriend since November. They reconnected via facebook and began texting each other, a lot. I looked at the phone bill online when I suspected he was talking to someone else and discovered her number. I was heartbroken and devastated. I confronted him about it and he wouldn’t tell me at first who it was. I figured it out and he said he figured he was doing me a favor, that he planned on leaving me for her. We talked, I told him I know I have been neglectful and we decided to work things out but he said he needed to see her one last time. I couldn’t understand why, but I reluctantly agreed he should see her. a week went by, and he still had not set up a time to “meet” her to end things. I finally hacked into his facebook and felt even more betrayed. He had been telling her the whole week that I thought we were working on things, that he could not leave me yet because our daughters were to young and that I couldn’t take care of them alone! He told her he would “go back to his old life and suffer without her and that he would never love anyone like he loves her.” He also said, “suffering me would be his punishment for hurting her.” He also said he wanted to see her one last time to end it because she was too beautiful a woman to not see again and that he wouldn’t expect her to wait. She said she would wait forever for him.
      I was so hurt and frankly, had chest pain. I feel like I never knew him. He told me they were “just words” that he got caught up in the moment. I want to believe him, but I don’t. I wish I never saw the messages they sent to each other. They are haunting me and ruining my life. We have since started trying to move forward, he tells me everything (I think and so he says) and says he loves me but I feel like it is contrived. Did I force him to stay? Is he really here because of our daughters? Is he faking it? I don’t know and now I am faking my happiness when I feel like he is faking me out, maybe not even realizing that he is.
      A brief history of their relationship-they dated from when they were in high school, 1986 until 1993. She broke it off with him at least 4 times, he stated in casual conversations that it was because she was always looking for something better. Did they feel like old times? Did it bring back old memories? I guess, I don’t know. I’m confused, wonder if he is just “suffering” me. My self esteem was not great before this and now it is completely shot. Out of all of this, I dislike myself the most. I need an objective opinion.

      • Xterra

        Hi Kimberly,
        You will find everyone here is helpful and have some very wise advice.

        My wife found her “first love” on Facebook. She admitted since they went their separate ways over 23 years ago, that she would sometimes think of him. Last summer, she went into this dark place where she felt that there was more to life than what our family and our marriage had to offer, so she sent him a friends request. Things got sexual very quickly and my wife says that he played on her loneliness and ego and said the words she wanted to hear. I found some of their texts where they expressed love for each other and that she would not want to be with him. It devastated me and I’m pretty sure our reactions were the same. After I found out about the EA, she came to her senses right away and explained that she was in a fantasy world and that she should never have said those things. I have to believe her.

        Their online affair lasted 4 months, and it’s been 4 months since I discovered it. As I’ve said many times on here, luckily she snapped out of it right away and was truly remorseful. We have been working hard ever since and, believe people when they say your marriage can become better, because ours is heading in that direction. You have to want to make it work, work hard at it, become better communicators, and love more.

        Hope some of this helps – there are others on this site that will give you a lot of guidance and help. Good luck!

      • forcryin'outloud

        Kimberley, my H’s AP was his HS GF. So I’ve been around the mulberry bush with this bulls#!+. And that’s exactly what it is…bs. There’s a valid rational reason why it didnt work out the first time.

        They are stuck back in those locker lined hallways holding hands when there were no adult responsibilities bearing down.

        My h even droned on how important her family was to him (a fam he had no contact with for 20 some yrs). How the hell was I suppose to compete with an entire family? I couldnt, Because it wasn’t about me and its not about you. He is NOT “suffering with you as punishment”…he’s not a victim!

        From my perspective his ego is in the toilet and the fact that the girl who strung him along way back when is now “willing to wait for him forever” has got him on a high. He wants her to continue to feed that hole in his ego and it’s probably the same for her. My suggestion would be to set some firm boundaries as to what you are not willing to accept and try to start a dialogue with him about what he feels is missing in your relationship. Best wishes!

        Btw. My H was so screwed up by the time the EA came to light I thought I married someone who seriously hated me. So don’t take it personally, it’s not about you.

    • gizfield

      Kimberly, you are cast into the role of the “bad parent ” who is interferring with “true love.” What hogwash. Cheaters rarely stay in the marriage for the children. They have the betrayed spouse doing that for them. It is an excuse. If she left repeatedly in the past, she will leave again and he knows it. is she married as well? If they are not “together” you csn bet your ass one or both of them doesn’t want to be. The bad news is they will be content to sneak around, mooning at each other like teenagers, and making your life miserable.

    • gizfield

      I wonder what happened with Chas in the comment from above in March 2011. She was quick to ramble on about how special she and her boyfriend’s love was, while neglecting to answer any questions, like how long they had been together, how life was going, etc. Of course, we all know it’s “just never that simple.” Lol.

    • Devastated and sad

      I have been burned by my husband and his LL. They had an affair for 3 year before someone from my church saw them and told me. I had absolutely no clue until then. We tried to work things out for 2 years but he continued to lie and cheat because that is what liars and cheats do, they lie and cheat. When he left he said he was “dying without her” and that she effortlessly filled his love tank. I wanted to throw up at the foolishness of this. They act and sound like 17 years olds and look like 65 year olds when they are only 45-47. If they realized how immature and foolish they sound, I wonder if they would have the grace to be embarrassed. I doubt it. He has re-written our whole marriage to justify his affair and is angry and hateful towards me, the mother of his children. I would say that this is the very worst thing that has ever happened to me. I feel like my life has been destroyed. My children are devastated. But he seems very happy. That is the very hardest to take after all the lies and the cheating. I suppose I should be “happy” for him but I am not there yet. I wondered if any of you could put in your thoughts on the projected success of this relationship based on your experience.

    • Strengthrequired

      Devastated and sad, my h hated me just a month after his affair had started. The look he would give me was the look of death. He would say hurtful things, say he didn’t love me, say she saved him when I damaged him.
      I came to realize all of what he said to me was to justify his behavior, it had nothing to do with me, just two people feeding off each other trying to make out what they were doing was right, then trashing me at the same time.
      This man I had married was like this stranger I never knew existed.
      I had to show him the love I had for him, but it took a while. We are still recovering from his infidelity, but at least for now we are still together.
      They live in a fantasy, yet if the really love each other why hide it, why go around cheating and lying?
      Have a read ofnthis blog and find outnwhatnothers have been through and how they managed to find out how they managed ti get their h out of the fog. It isn’t an easy road, itsma long one and recovery is long as well.
      Use this time to notmlose yourself, find yourself, do the things you love.
      Come in here and join us for support.

    • Confused

      My ex fiancé fro high school found me on Facebook. we have both been married to the next person we found when I left him. We both needed to grow up but probably should not have split. We are now in a heavily emotional and physical affair. Neither marriages are good, mine worse due to alcoholic husband that has no libido or ability due to meds for depression. I never in a million yrs would have thought I was capable of this. my love for X is excruciating. We don’t have much time to c each other to avoid getting caught and it’s harder and harder to handle. He is not in a position to leave and I fear my husband emotional state if I left. I don’t know what to do but I love my x sooooo much and it’s all I can think about

      • Blue

        Confused, It’s clear you are very vulnerable to having an affair because of your situation with your husband. I think for a moment you should step back (though you probably won’t because contemplating your next ‘high’ is so intoxicating)

        It would be a very thoughtful, wise and mature thing to open up to your own husband how unhappy you are, maybe with a counsellor present.

        Another thing would be to give 5 measely minutes from you fantasizing about how wonderful your X is and that you love sooooo much and think of his wife (and kids) the ones he’s lying to and sneaking around like a creep on and how you are ‘stealing’ from thier life.

        If you REALLY looooved him soooo much, you would want him to be a better man with integrity and go fix the problems in his own treasured family. Try and look honestly at your and his behaviour and how it is like a loser. Cheating (adultery) is one of the lowest forms of getting high. It’s definately a high, just like crack or sniffing glue. Fix or end your relationship with your husband for your own charactar and integrity. You’re not just cheaply fucking up your own family you’re doing it to another family whether you choose to ‘see’ it or not.

        I hope you find true happiness one day, not at the expense of someone elses happiness (his wife and family) and thier demise. The question is ‘ Do you care about anyone but yourself?’

      • Devastated and sad

        Confused, having an affair with someone else’s husband is the cruelest and most selfish thing you can do to a woman and her children. Let me assure you that he is not nearly as unhappy at home as he professes to be. If he is lying to her what on earth makes you think he is telling the truth to you? If I were your friend, I would tell you that you deserve more than a tryst here and there with someone else’s husband and that you deserve better than this guy. That is reality. The rest is addiction and fantasy. I hope you invest in some counseling for yourself and your own marriage. If you leave your marriage for this guy, I assure you that you will never be happy. Happiness can not be obtained or built upon the tears of another woman and her children.

    • Strengthrequired

      Confused, if you think sneaking around is good, and makes you both lve each other more. If you think he doesn’t love his wife, it’s delusional. This man would not be sneaking around behind his wife’s back if he didn’t, he doesn’t want to lose his family, otherwise he would have left her.
      All it is to him is a roll in the hay with a old high school girlfriend. If you think he isn’t making true lve with his wife when he gets home, think again. He didn’t marry this woman because he was so devastated he didn’t have you in his life, my goodness you were only kids when you were together, he married this woman on the intention of committing to her. You are just a phase and he will eventually wake up when he sees the hurt in his wife’s eyes and heart, when he looks at his children standing there trying to understand why there daddy hurt their mummy and them, his family. When he sees this his heart will begin to break too and he will regret the day he saw you again. That’s if it isn’t too late for him.
      If he ends up marrying you, you will then wonder and h will wonder will you cheat, his children, your children will become an issue with the both of you, because they have been hurt and now they have to see the both of you together, they don’t get a choice, so they keep suffering. You have to remember, if you think your life will be for the better with him, think again, life begins to happen, you see each other for what you really are, fantasy land nolnger exists, it’s real, you will begin to feel all the hurt you both caused, and you will begin to wonder how you could choose to be with someone, to start a relationship with someone who was already taken, one that was based on hurting others, you will then be living the life you have made out for yourself, one that will have karma knocking a your door with a vengeance.
      Remember what goes around comes around.
      Think as well, do you think this man is willing to lose all he has worked for, his family, his integrity, his honour when his affair comes to light, his whole world will come crashing down aroud him, he may lose his family, his friends, his self respect, his dignity, all because of his choices he made, it can be the same for you.
      Think carefully, don’t ruin your life, your h life oryour children’s life, or another families life, it isn’t worth it. If you don’t wan to be with your h, leave before seeing someone else, don’t lose your self respect. Don’t hurt others for your own gain, be truthful to yourself and others around you.

    • Cherry

      This is MY story… My husband and I have been incredibly happily married for 10 years (together 11). Seriously, never a problem. Lots of fun times and a wonderful life together. Then a woman from his past moved 3 blocks away from us. She’d had a hard life and had just lost her husband to cancer. She herself was recovering from anal cancer and had to endure a colostomy bag. She was on disability, taking care of her sick elderly mother, raising her nieces 2 preteen kids and was extremely obese (over 300 lbs). My husband admitted that they had fooled around she they were both in their teens, but he’d been a horrible alcoholic and never remembered having sex with her…only waking up next to her on a few occasions. I watched her walk past our house for nearly a year, ignoring my husbands suggestion to go walking with her for health purposes. I am thin, but needed to move more as heart disease runs in my family. When I did give in, my husband made a track in our pasture so that she and I could avoid traffic and walk safely. She came to walk with me daily for over a year. Shortly after she began frequenting our home, my husband began complaining of fatigue and back pain. This caused a considerable decline in our sexual relationship. Since he is in his 50’s and had a previous back injury, I I didn’t think too much of it. Then, about a year later, he began finding fault with me and became argumentative. I asked why he was acting so different, but he had no answer. Well, one morning he asked me to teach him how to forward a YouTube video to his brother’s messages and BAM! I found a text between her and him. It said enough that I printed out the latest phone record. Just that month alone, there were 1997 texts! I looked back in the records and discovered a 15 month long affair with over 43,000 texts, 2,000 phone calls and 80 pictures! I was devastated. I heard the “We’re just friends” line from BOTH of them, but I found out otherwise. Seems this is the same woman he committed adultery with while he was married to his first wife 37 years ago. He also had sex with her behind several of his girlfriends backs. My husband has been sober for 25 years! He did this SOBER! They BOTH swear there was no sex this time because of me! However, he begged her for it constantly and asked her to come to the house when I wasn’t home. This sober man sent her pictures of his penis!! She has told me that she loves him, but he says he’s never loved her and loves me. As far as I can tell, they stopped contact one year ago, today, the day after they got caught. My world has been shattered. They told me it was just a game. He says he only wanted her to THINK he wanted her. Says he felt sorry for her. Then he tells me, when he brought up the subject of having an affairs, she said “NO”, which pissed him off and made him try even harder to get her to say yes. I think it’s a bunch of bullshit! He says he can’t remember most of it and cannot come up with any reason why he did it. Yes, he started the whole thing. He can only say he just wanted to mess with her head. I do not understand! We live in a very small town and if you asked anyone who he’d ever mess around on me with…they ALL say her! What does this mean? He’s free to go, but he says he doesn’t want her and nothing they did was important to him. What? They never missed one day of communication in those 15 months. Every morning he texted her, “Good morning Sweetheart” and every night, “Goodnight, babe, sweet dreams”. He texted her while he and I were out on dates! He began to feel out his family by mentioning her to them. I think she meant something to him and still does! I don’t think I’ll ever heal from this! I think I married a monster!

    • Sal Hepatica

      I was married for over 40 years. My wife considered me to be someone she should manage, command, and mistreat because I didn’t live up to her expectations as a money-maker and general gadabout. Her family never accepted me–they put up with me. She and her family considered me and my family beneath them. Even when I was saving $50,000 a year they didn’t relent. I am very well-educated and know about many things, art, literatature, philosophy, poetry, history; I was also an athlete when I was young. Gave that up to concentrate on books and languages, but I never was any kind of couch potato. I wake up early–always have. By the time my wife woke up, I had already been awake for five hours. Our issues were: sex, money, and her family. I was a fine father, I love my children and wanted to be near them. I still feel that way, and I am rather near them (a couple of hours away). My children still love me, but they are grown up. About a decade ago, my wife’s high-handedness and domineering behavior intensified. She began flirting in front of me and behind my back. She would touch arms and faces. Once, she even lifted a spoon of blueberries to her target’s lips. She would yell at me in front of others. She took trips alone. In the last year of our marriage, she traveled far away 5 times alone. She went to the Far East alone. She traveled to Europe alone. She preferred being angry to figuring out what the problem was that was preventing us from intimacy. I never felt close to her. I had always wanted to feel close to her. I always desired and respected her–she knew that. She still knows that. But I had had enough of her public behavior which was humiliating. I found I didn’t love her anymore, and on top of that, could never be around someone like her ever again. I say I respect her–I do, but her values are totally different. I believe in love, being happy, in reading, thinking, talking, making love, and, if you can afford it, traveling. I also believe in success in love–those who haven’t had it, don’t know what it is. It may not be permanent but it’s the next best thing there is to having a lifelong personal intimate relationship with the beauty that there is in existence. So when, once again, she insulted me at her birthday party, I called it quits. Did I tell her? No. I wanted her to take off again on her gadabout travels, perhaps she would have affairs! Who cared and who cares! Did I start warning her and trying to talk? No. I had tried that 1000s of times. I felt no guilt whatsoever. I set about finding out where in the world my first girlfriend was, the very first, the very sweetest, love of my life. We had been together for two years, in 5th and 6th grades. We had kissed (often) and held each other. We had been to parties–many of them. We could talk about anything (and still can). Throughout my experience of women, I could not help seeing that I had been happiest with her. After 5 months of searching, about to give up and hire a detective, I found her. I divorced my wife without regrets. I haven’t missed the nagging, the flirting, the yelling, the bad temper, the sulking, the days long silences, the public and stupid bragging about all the men she’d known, her family’s sniffing at me, her criticisms of our children so as to please her siblings (praising their children, criticizing ours)—I say I haven’t missed this a single time. I still respect her: she needs someone else.

      To call my first love a “fantasy” is stupid as well. Being married to that woman was a 40-year long fantasy, believe me. I thought she would or could change; I thought she would understand that her constant secrecy and withholding of information was dishonest and destroyed intimacy. It destroyed any love I felt for her. She’s left with lots of respect!

      I moved far away. We live together. There are issues, of course. But I am for the first time in my entire life, fulfilled in love. This woman knows more about love than any 50 other women. “Ripeness is all.” That means, when you have had the best and there is no more worlds to conquer, you do not need to despair, and you are never hungry again. Well, in love, my first love was absolutely the best for me. Of course, there are threats to our relation: we are old and have had long lives (55 years) without the other, and so those things do pull us in different directions! These are real threats; I do not think we can overcome them, but to call this a failure is so stupid. I never have been emotionally and sexually fulfilled like this–ever; and before I met my wife, I’d been in long term relationships 7 times. My 40+ of marriage was what was stupid. Staying together and failing at love is what is stupid. If you are married to a monster, take stock of your possibilities and get out.

    • Sal Hepatica

      I was married for over 40 years. My wife considered me to be someone she should manage, command, and mistreat because I didn’t live up to her expectations as a money-maker and general gadabout. Her family never accepted me–they put up with me. She and her family considered me and my family beneath them. Even when I was saving $50,000 a year they didn’t relent. I am very well-educated and know about many things, art, literatature, philosophy, poetry, history; I was also an athlete when I was young. Gave that up to concentrate on books and languages, but I never was any kind of couch potato. I wake up early–always have. By the time my wife woke up, I had already been awake for five hours. Our issues were: sex, money, and her family. I was a fine father, I love my children and wanted to be near them. I still feel that way, and I am rather near them (a couple of hours away). My children still love me, but they are grown up. About a decade ago, my wife’s high-handedness and domineering behavior intensified. She began flirting in front of me and behind my back. She would touch arms and faces. Once, she even lifted a spoon of blueberries to her target’s lips. She would yell at me in front of others. She took trips alone. In the last year of our marriage, she traveled far away 5 times alone. She went to the Far East alone. She traveled to Europe alone. She preferred being angry to figuring out what the problem was that was preventing us from intimacy. I never felt close to her. I had always wanted to feel close to her. I always desired and respected her–she knew that. She still knows that. But I had had enough of her public behavior which was humiliating. I found I didn’t love her anymore, and on top of that, could never be around someone like her ever again. I say I respect her–I do, but her values are totally different. I believe in love, being happy, in reading, thinking, talking, making love, and, if you can afford it, traveling. I also believe in success in love–those who haven’t had it, don’t know what it is. It may not be permanent but it’s the next best thing there is to having a lifelong personal intimate relationship with the beauty that there is in existence. So when, once again, she insulted me at her birthday party, I called it quits. Did I tell her? No. I wanted her to take off again on her gadabout travels, perhaps she would have affairs! Who cared and who cares! Did I start warning her and trying to talk? No. I had tried that 1000s of times. I felt no guilt whatsoever. I set about finding out where in the world my first girlfriend was, the very first, the very sweetest, love of my life. We had been together for two years, in 5th and 6th grades. We had kissed (often) and held each other. We had been to parties–many of them. We could talk about anything (and still can). Throughout my experience of women, I could not help seeing that I had been happiest with her. After 5 months of searching, about to give up and hire a detective, I found her. I divorced my wife without regrets. I haven’t missed the nagging, the flirting, the yelling, the bad temper, the sulking, the days long silences, the public and stupid bragging about all the men she’d known, her family’s sniffing at me, her criticisms of our children so as to please her siblings (praising their children, criticizing ours)—I say I haven’t missed this a single time. I still respect her: she needs someone else.

      To call my first love a “fantasy” is stupid as well. Being married to that woman was a 40-year long fantasy, believe me. I thought she would or could change; I thought she would understand that her constant secrecy and withholding of information was dishonest and destroyed intimacy. It destroyed any love I felt for her. She’s left with lots of respect!

      I moved far away to be with the young girl who has grown old. We live together and to make love. There are issues between us, of course. Can we talk them out? It’s hard to keep a balance between talking and always picking at a wound; you want to be happy and pleased with each other, so it’s unrealistic to think you can always overcome problems by talking; some problems are a matter of history. But I am for the first time in my entire life, fulfilled in love. This woman knows more about love than any 50 other women. “Ripeness is all.” That means, when you have had the best and there is no more worlds to conquer, you do not need to despair, and you are never hungry again. Well, in love, my first love was absolutely the best for me. Of course, there are threats to our relation: we are old and have had long lives (55 years) without the other, and so those things do pull us in different directions! These are real threats; I do not think we can overcome them, but to call this a failure is so stupid. I never have been emotionally and sexually fulfilled like this–ever; and before I met my wife, I’d been in long term relationships 7 times. My 40+ of marriage was what was stupid. Staying together and failing at love is what is stupid. Calling this an “emotional affair” is stupid as well. The term has trite and trivial, not to say hysterical, connotations. Of course, it’s emotional–that’s what you want with your spouse or your beloved, and now i have it every way I have ever wanted it and I do not have it those ways I do not want. If you are married to a monster, take stock of your possibilities and get out.

    • claire

      Married for 16 years army wife stay at home mom he worked over seas after retiring from army only to come home and decide his ex wife of 6 months Almost 23 years ago was love of his life and that he didn’t love me anymore. I moved overseas to build a life with a man that I thought had my back. Guess I am the fool.

    • Dawn

      I found a old flame on Facebook. We have been together for 9 months. Right after we connected his wife passed away, i however am married for 28 years and happily. We met after talking over the internet after 3-4 months. One thing led to another and we eventually had sex and lunches and went to parks to meet. We even said I LOVE YOU to each other. We were very sexual with each other, always was. We have had a few arguments and it just ended. Why am i so upset when i am happy at home and had no intention of leaving my husband and family? And does it get easier? Please leave comments and let me know if anyone has ever been through something like this and what can i expect from here on in? OH, by the way my husband never found out or knew about it…

      • Callie

        I never thought that three years ago when my husband came home from physical rehab and discovered i had been having an affair the last year he was relearning to walk after a MRSA Abscess in his spine and the resulting complications of an open heart surgery and three strokes. Would lead to the things like Civil rights charges, Marital fraud and extorsion charges, as well as the pain its caused in my in laws family and everyone that was associated with me and my husband, My husband was not mad about the affair the day he caught us , in fact all he was going to do was send me out the door with him with my luggage, and a few words to stay away six months so he could go into court and claim i abandoned him and the marriage. If it Had not been for my old boyfriend having a wife that ad a direct bearing on his career and children that might have worked.

        He decided to sweep my husbands cane and then laugh at him asking me how i had ended up with someone so pathetic. My husband had learned to walk with a cane that when he was relearning to use his hands he carved. That cane was used almost like a spear when it fractured the other mans scull. My husband the last 12 years had not forgiven any thing of the first 16 years he was home Or any thing until MRSA developed the next 7 years. When My AP hit the floor my husband draged himself over beside him and broke every bone above his central chest when the police arrived they saw his rage when he hammered is leg with a fist yelling whose pathetic now ,breaking the femur. My husband spent two weeks in a stress center, And when he came home it was my turn.

        I had been invited by my husbands father and mother to go as the fourth a a fundraising dinner with his fathers best friend when he walked in that evening with no intention of trying to sit down and talk throught the problems with him of the last 3 decades with me, his mother or father or any of what i told my husband could have also been his friends with less defiance.

        HE came home on that minus 490 degree evening with me just finishuing getting ready I went out in the living room expecting any one but my husband to be standing where i would run square into his chest. He knew before i said any thing that i was not dressed to go out with him, when first he was sarcastic saying. Good I hve not been out any where after noon since i came home from the navy in 1985, Where were we going, the movies, a concert or something else. I was crying before my first word was out I explained i had made this promuise to his father six months prior. We had the intension of taking him out latter that week and have a discussion 31 years over due about how to accomidate his rights without disrupting lives. a talk we should have had in 1985. Maybe things would have been different those decades. I said everyone just needed time to absorb he wasn’t in a wheel chair like he was supposed to be and we simply needed time to think about how to allow him some of the life he had wanted for 31 years and had not had. I Was begging him handing a 100 to him to opick any place he wanted to meet in 4 hours, The Event would be over by then and we (We meaning his father, Mother me and his fathers best friend) could get ahold of his sister and brother in law, other friends of mine, mothers, and fathers. So everyone could sit down and have a calm civil discussion on how to allow him what he wanted in life, not what he should have had but what over the next two years we could allow.

        I found my self back up to the wall with him screaming who in the hell did we thingk we were to allow him any thing any longer, He read off what he had supplied me the last three decades and he said what had i returned, I was crying hard by this time saying i was the buffer to keep him from doing as he pleased, He stood there and said Had he not provided me with a home, nice things 10 vacations he was not on in Europe and the holy lands, He had kerpt the house when he was home, repaired it worked seven days a week 12 hours a day for 24 years and befor that worked for 24 hours a day seven days a week for 3 and a half yeears only to come home to a bi polar wife, a state assigned Guardianship me telling him that he was hnot getting sex until he cooperated with that bunch of snobs.

        I was begging him just to at least come hear us out what had happened was not meant, time just got away, we could come up with solutions for everyones satisfaction. He told me he did not care about any satisfaction but hisown that evenuiing i was going to start paying him back for the last 31 years first by doing wuith him what i had given my old Boyfriend. I took off for the door when my dress and everything else was shredded, I was terrified by this point telling him if he wanted we could cancel that evening when everuyyone got there, Things did not have to happen this way, He said yes they did. He was not accepting one more compromise, promise and he certianly was not accepting any one telling him what he was allowed under his roof, He was the final judge and arbitor I really think he had been insane since another surgery in 2001 wghen a tumor was removed off the top of his brain stem and his father and others only allowed six of the sixty days for recover before making him go back to work it was also the only six days off he had between may january second 1982 and January the second 2010 when he was retired in a isolation rehab. We spent three years trying to tell him his return home was going to have to be taken on a week by week basis in 2012 when his father had to go to isreal with his face bruised after and argument explaining this, a bed pan hit his father square between his eyes, My husband came home the next year in 2013. first to 2 weeks in a srtress center then the night of the event IHe Pushed everything into an issue he wa not waiting one nmore second fore what he had been promised many times the last 31 years. Starting with Raping me. an hour latter his fathers friend who was not going to stand for my husbabnd defying him about coming in my husbands house said get the hell out of his way crip and tried forcing his way past my husband as i sat on the edge of the bed crying at how things came to this.

        MY husband saw his fathers car pulling in the drive and actualy threw him like a foot ball at his fathers windshield over our deck rail. He Had to spend three nights in a hospital With a bad concusion and a 4×6 inch flap of skin stiched from hitting face first in the drive. Since that night I did have a son, We moved 1230 miles west, Even the threat of weapons to get my husband to back off meets with hurt retaliation Two of his fathers friends in 2014. All That was wanted was a private talk with me about what to do about my husband and the cruise to Cancun in 2015, A way to get him to come here to high range the two weeks instead of going on the cruise, the only way was i was not going on the 11th such vacation without him. The two friends of his father and his father left him standing unharmed on our porch but he left those two men a half hour latter horrably disfigured with their faces opened to The jaw bone.

        Since 1985 getting him to do something that was to be considered as the best for everyone, he considered it as uos dictating his time and life. after the Rome trip he was forced to stay behind on in 1987 to let a younger seniority couple have the time to get married, I with his fartther and friends proposed he take any three weeks he wanted between the end of the Christmas shut down. and valintines day as the best possible time to take his time, He could work the down week and the first week after that he could use personal time, I would leacve the tree up and we could have a christmas for him and new years celebration for him without causing bad feelings making lesser seniority work while he had the holidays off, and there had to be someplace he could drive to for his vacation then since the tropical vacations were booked and Europe was to cold until April. By this timer he was demanding either I be a roommate and supply my half of the expenses. OR Be the wife i had vowed six years before. To Get him to staty and work the Rome Vacation I had to swear on my bible that any time, any place and any way he wanted I would be the wife he expected and a travel companion. My Foot was not off the plane before he was taking three weeks and heading west. We were requesting the mid winter time to be considered before he made any decision. I was sent home to my mothers with a divorce fliing he was making. Just before MRSA IN october 2009 I was Again begging him to just conider a ST Criox vacation of five weeks starting the 2nd of january 2010, just seven months and keep out of the way for everyone elses needs we could celebrat the Holidays then and add seveal weeks til valintines day just try it to get a life he wanted on track. That was the day we were leaving for Europe and the orient express. He Dislocated my shoulder getting the cancelatuion check of 6354 from my shoulder bag, Then To get his passport back from his father it took seven full grown men to Seperate his fingers from his throat. I ended up in county for 2 months upon my return and i have been trying to work around probations since.

        I just never understood with the options offered why my husband started getting violent trying to get his way. There were options of jobs and shift he could take without pushing his will for what was considered the best job in a new plant. He just about killed four men telling them he was not backing off that job bid, That was the morning he left all four on our porch in critical and grave condition. and me laying under the front door he just kicked in with a broken ankle informing me if i ever tried getting him hurt again he would kill me.

        All I wanted was a life lived in peace and love for all. What i got instead was a non understanding nuc blowing up in every ones face. To The point that the possibility that my husband might perceive something as interference. In turn he takes that perception and mops the floor with people. We are having thanksgiving and Christmas here at high range cabin. My sister wants to ride up on horseback with her husband and the weather looks good for that, My mothers coming and staying until after Christmas. By Helio. Its lonly for mere up here. my husband just plays with our son our nearest neighbor i my mother and sister a 2 day horse ride down the mountians. . The pilot and her are bring extra supplies and three new Heaters up for the New Room division my husband built up stars. It used to be a large loft with a bed, Now its three rooms and a bath. Everyonev else has been warned if they intend coming here they better expect to camp and my husband wants to gie them the go ahead.

        • Jon

          Forgive my bluntness, but you need to get out of there for the sake of your life. Whether you had an affair or not, your husband’s violence is going to end up being fatal to you eventually.

          • Cally

            My husband was assigned a Guardianship on me in 1985 due to my being bi polar, Two years Latter he’s dispatching me on a bus to my mothers the day I flew in from Rome, Would not listen or try any thing we were suggesting for after the holiday shutdown In January.

            After landing on the 13th of June Not able to use the Rome trip that was his ten year corporate gift because a girl with nine years less seniority and he fiancé’ with 6 years less wanted the same vacation slot, to also go to Rome to get married.

            Since his return from his Navy Military leave 2 years before. It had been my policy to hold sex as the reward for his cooperation in the community and on His UAW position. when his vacation the first of June end of May 1985 came up his father had a pair of friends that wanted him to stand down from his three weeks and personal time of 21 days so their daughter could go and marry. I had to promise to go any place, at any time, and any way he wanted a vacation that I would go as a willing sex partner and wife as well as travel companion.

            His mother and brothers and sister in Rome were the only ones at the table at the inn we stayed in Rome to say his father and friends and I were making decisions without consulting my husband, his father and I had already got in his way twice and I had made promises that I had not kept about letting him have the life he wanted starting with that vacation. His father said two people had such a need for that vacation my husband would have to buck up and be a man and good sport about not getting his way. He could not be allowed to take other5 vacation plans and trash them so we had to find a way for him to take a vacation when nobody else had needs for one, He said after the first of the Year Hawaii sounded nice for someone in mid winter. He said Any place tropical would work if that was not available. He said that he knew it had been since 1976 or there about since his last vacation getting out of the army with two years pay under his belt He had tooled around the southwest then for a month before going back to his home town and got Hired at a Big Three auto plant after Joining the local guard unit. I knew his last day actually off was New Years day 1982 the day before our wedding and he was supposed to sign out of his navy school command on the next Monday and we were taking 30 days for a honey moon as part of his Permenant change of station leave to South Carolina, Until The wedding night that was the plan when we were intercepted with Emergency Orders to report to KIngs Bay and out to sea the next morning as a replacement for several men busted in a drug test.

            He was gone until the Morning of the 28th of May three and a half years later and that first day the war that still rages was joined Three days after he came home I was telling him he had to just let his seniority right alone and get along in the community over his Job/ and shift Preference. Just let things settle in peace for two years and we could start a family and sex life then after his and other ex military returnees let things settle. He di8d as asked and pulled his Shift preference Two Years later I was again asked to get him to take the back seat.

            We came back with a list of vacations we could try to find he had already researched every suggestion we had, that we would have had to reserve a time far in the past almost when he got out of the navy. Europe in the winter is not the best time. We suggested places to drive to like Vegas, Florida, southern texas. he said feel free he was not ice skating across country just to go to a place just about as cold as the Midwest just without snow. By The end of the day he was put under a court order to go to the court to decide his time off I was at my very angry mothers.

            Two years later we were In front of the Courthouse getting ready for the dissolution hearing. It had been since New years eve 1981 since my husband had a day off, That was August 9th 1989 when his father and mother arrived to say to my mother how sorry they were that things did not work out in our marriage and My mother just about decided to take his fathers head right there for his interference since the day we married. When my husband pulled up in an old ford pickup held together with bailing wire and smoking up the street he had not showered or shaved or changed out of his work cloths. He was covered in Coolant, cutting oil, steel chips the day was already at 96 degrees. And he comes up the steps with us wanting to be upwind. His father was yelling couldn’t he have at least cleaned up and my husband said thanks to him he had to take off a half hour early from his 16 hour shift to make that hearing. He had the money for my legal the money and the keys to the storage shed everything went in two years before he was giving me everything just to get rid of me he even had the title to that wreak he drove up in if I wanted to put him on his feet walking to work, he said I might get ten dollars for scrap for it. We were called in for the Hearing and nobody was in the least happy, The Judge asked for the guardianship assignment from my mother and she would not take it.

            The Judge Had some figures about how much my care would cost the state and he asked my husband if he had a cashiers check for 3 million and More to follow in five years, My husband said he was Down to nothing with just 100000.00 where was he going to come up with 3 million. the judge gaveled down and told my husband his petition was denied, My Husband Stood Up and said well at least he was out from under his order to work the hours the court instructed and the judge said he was wrong about that he still had to ask for the time the court decided he could have off in the best interest of the community. My husband start6ed to leave and the judge said sit down or get a contempt charge, My husband came back and leaned over the table and told him he had nothing but contempt for the lot of us so go ahead toss him in jail and the county would have to pick up the bills His father was screaming sit down to listen and maybe a deal for sometime that winter could be reached that day. My husband told us all to piss off and walked out. When I got to talk to him next I told him all they wanted was one little time if he would just listen to them and try and work with us about a vacation without the total hell about his rights he put us through.

            The next 11 years was try and get him to take a vacation in mid winter and use his personal time to replace holidays at the same time. It would have made things so easy. on everyone especially me until he Decided to start hitting the Internet and the law. in 1998 when on Christmas I was just putting the two sandwhichs together to take him at his work gate at 730 pm When he4 walked in the front door again in his work cloths covered in the stuff from work I was called out of the kitchen to get him to go back I even said he stank, He said well that was his gift to me and my guests the smell of hard work that he had not had a day off from in 18 years. He said touch anything to put it up he would break something, We were to go to the club for after dinner drinks after dinner and he’s threatening somebody with breaking their neck> I stood there crying please4 just go back to work and stop ruining Christmas I would put something together when I got home for h9im to have when he came home the next morning. He had me sprawled out on the floor in the kitchen saying who paid for that meal. I was crying he did but why did he4 have to be so mean about the holidays when we could get him time off at other times in replacement I would even cook him a Christmas meal for him then, The judge stared to speak and my husband tossed him out of out house telling him he was never welcome and whoever was using pot was also not welcome He found four boys 17 to 20 using in his room and after mouthing off at him they left through four windows into piles of glass and his father was punched in the mouth for trying to stop his rampage, He handed everyone Buckets and Pine sol and told us to clean until the stench was gone He would call someone to replace the glass When he came home the next morning I was crying that he had really showed what kind of a horses rear he could be the night before. He said and what did that make the rest of us a bunch of cow rears he had not had any rights in years over a decade and a half and he had never commited a crime except decide he did not like being a slave, His father came over the next morning to tell him what was acceptable to the community if he wanted time off, My husband tossed him out saying he owed nothing t0o the community or him for his rights, New years eve we did not go out because he had removed the plugs from the drains on every ones radiator when they arrived, We went to his Union president about what could we do about him and He had him going to a mental health clinic but told us stop treating him like he owed us any thing he did not. Then on December 23 we were all waiting for the Airport shuttle to Fly out for Bavaria. I tried to get his passport to keep him from going and he snapped my wrist taking it from me. When four deputies showed up to take him into Custody to force him to work until the 8th of January @000 so we could have a little breathing room to figure out what he could do and where to go in replacement for the Millinialls He demanded the Judicial judgment and the crime he had commited to get the judgment signed personally by the judge or a warrant for his 0arrest and every right he had coming under the law. Two deputies hit the ground knocked out and two others tassed him to his knees. I was standing there crying when we came home we would figure out something to Replace the time he was going to be forced to work As the deputies took him past he screamed at me I was a traitor bitch and if his father got between him and what he wanted once to often he was going to see to it that6 him and his cronies paid hard for that interference, as they tried pushing him into the police cruiser he yelled he hoped our flight went into the ocean or into the side of a Bavarian alp, We arrived at the inn we were staying at, I was paired with another married man that also had trouble at home for coming from his ER nurse wife who could not get the time off, We had heard she chased him out of his house the night before we were going yelling he should just stay home with her and their sons, He just wanted to go back and relive his days in the Army there. He worked in my husbands plant in the next department over and had watched as friends of his had to be shuffled around because if they stayed in my husbands department after e had to work another year without a day off they might have4 had some unfortunate accident.

            We knew that going home after the very nice time we had in Germany as he was on the job producing parts for Assembly start up on January the 3rd 2000 was probably going to be met on the 8th of January, three days after we came back on his birthday of the fifth of January, We were hoping the three days between his birthday and the projected release date of the 8th to have something in place for a plan of time off in replacement. We came back on his birthday to find he was making good on his promise to get even with us and everyone that had interfered with him taking the Millinial holiday off, The first casualty was His shift supervisor on the 28th of December when the shift supervisor got in his way calling someone from the plant on a Pay phone. He thought since my husband was working under a judicial order he had the right to stop my husband from calling any one. He grabbed the phone and slammed my husbands thumb in the cradle. My husband kicked him so hard in his abdomen he had ruptured a kidney and he made his calls to the National Union, and the ACLU, Him and other friends had been gathering information on his fathers friend ion the bench that had it in by his outlook on men that were ex military or reservists, He felt just because men served should not get them their jobs back, the time returned in seniority under a union contract, and that these men in the community created a danger to other lives with their combat training and they had been indoctrinated to a point it was not healthy for the community to have men like them think they had free will and my husband was at the top of his list. On the fourth of January the Day before we were to get back, The investigating arm of The state Conservation police finished an investigation that was set in motion by my husband and others earlier in 1999. The investigation uncovered that that judge had accepted bribes for favorable decisions, Had Raided the evidence locker to support his own Cocain habit abs destroy eveidence. aqnd The conservation officers on the 3rd walked into his court and Cuffed him reading his rights and He went to federal prison for 15 years, That was two men hurt because my husband and others did not want to work the holiday shift and use other options instead for time off. We Got back after hearing from his local Union president that we should consider not coming back at all He was not able to make any deals for my husband and other men that should have had the time off under seniority rules because He was Resigning and Retiring at the end of the week or face impeachment for not putting the entire locals legal resources behind my husband and other friends of his, preferring to hope for a solution and to get everyone to a sit down to at least try for a solution.

            It was to that toxic enviornment I returned to on his birthday the fifth of January after talking to his steward and Commiteeman on the 3rd, He had been released by the sheriff who was facing the threat of getting the county hit with a 150 million dollar lawsuit it could not afford, He was going to resign the next month, The two deputies he knocked out before we left and two others lest leaving the state to find other law enforcement positions. When he met us we were going to take him out that evening for his birthday, tell him our plans until the 24th of January as the replacement for the holiday. MY husband was waiting to give his opinion of how he had stayed and worked without having. Even the chance of answering charges in court, It had just been 11 days and so many had the chance to do things over the milliniall they did not have a chance for other wise.

            We Like I said planed to take him out for his 43 birthday that evening when we were told he had been released under a write of Haebus Corpus, his mother, sister and me had made plans for the 6th to have the tree set up have a Christmas celebration including a gift exchange and full Christmas dinner, In duty free I bought a bottle of Dom To Celebrate the millinialls on the seventh, I had even noticed an advertisement in the Airport for a B and B 4 hours away on the straights of Mackinack. I had made a Reservation there so my husband could drive us there in peace. I had hoped to gain forgivness for supporting his fathers agenda for the last 15 years and having him jailed to make him work the last two weeks, Have some rest and fun the next 2 weeks even though it was not the beer halls In Munich and The Celebrations. of the New year, there wer other things he could do like snow mobil, and Ice sailing, The Room had a full Jacuzzi and I had been reminded of how much I liked and needed sex with my Bi Polar in Municjh when I had a one night stand with the man his father paired me with, He Did not sleep in his and my mother in laws room after we arrived, He actually sported ten stitchs when my husbands mother told him he did not have the right to have forced my husband to work, He came out of his room holding his bleeding head after a heavy glass ashtray was bounced off his head. He swore until he died that except for the 2009 Oreint express vacation, another my husband ruined with his anger because he was being forced to stay behind and work. We came back to my gift of a box of dog sh** and a note that said that was worth more than our marriage had been for 15 years and Hiss gift of a offer to let his father whip him on a wheel he set up in his yard and insulted the entire community Declaring we were all slavers or worse yet KKK, since he had not had the freedom to do as he pleased. That whole Milliniall where we hoped top come home and negotiate a truce in peace and forgivnes had turned into a homecoming of hell on earth. He could have at least tried In the new century to forget the old century and made plans to use options he had in exchange, even the company had offered not to make him use time he consider5ed as his to decide the way it was used and make the time he chose as fully paid by the company to stop his knocking heads.

            As far as I know the only man harmed on the Job was when that shift supervisor tried to stop him from calling the people that was in the end going to ruin so many lives. because my husband and others would not even try to negotiate solutions for the bennefit of all. not just keep hitting people with that national contracts seniority clauses that said your place on a hire list meant more than family and personal needs, and my husband was always at the front of that ideal.

            In 2001 things became very violent on my husbands part over a four moth time frame from the 31st of July to the 1st of January 2001. On the 31st he was put in a endoscopice neuro surgical unit for a brain surgery that involved drilling a hole from over his right eye, to the center of his head to remove a brain tumor that was causing hydrocephalus, we w3ere told that even though he was being sent home on the 3rd he had to take the next sixty days off to recover His absence was, already causing problems in vacation cancelations his first six day and His father and others decided if he could stand he was going to work take time off after the first of the year> That was the need of the community Just take time he had coming in January since we did not have children which was a blame he laid at my feet for not prermitting sex unless he first gave up what he wanted in other arenas. The fight was terrible on the 6th of august with his fathers arm broken one mans teeth broken out by a Vic 20 Keyboard another man had a heavy book case land on him before his father and 2 others had his arms twisted enough to get him forced into his fathers car. He yelled at me to call federal authorities to tell them he was being abducted against his will but it was his father and many of them were friends and I knew it was just getting him back to work. His foreman was threatened by several of those men that if she sent him back home and canceled their vacations they would cause a wildcat strike and there were just to many Military contracts that were ramping up Shev decided to let them put my husband back on his job, Even though six months later in a grievance deal about my husband not being sent home she lost her position getting transferred to a different plant and getting a demotion. Another persons life altered because my husband was not allowed time he should have had off, In October 2001 The Company was completing a new plant in the complex and my husband saw his chance for a good job on a shift he wanted more.

            He signed for a bid with 24 years Seniority and was taking three of his ex military friends also with seniority with him, over four younger, more socially connected young men. Two were married less than two years The county commissioners son had been married just a week when the bid list went up, When I and his father learned my husband was getting ready to take that position and who else also wanted it because those young men came from Important area family’s and one was even a sitting city councilman. The first two attempts at getting my husband Just to back off and wait two weeks after the bids were filled for startup just got silence4 and a middle finger raised. telling us we were not getting his willing cooporation. So I was asked what he would consider as a good exchange, . I told his father and The County commissioner they had to agree to stop interfering in his time off. I said I would have to stop the sex denial I was keeping going. I told his father after 21 years of marriage and being just under 40 it was time we figured out a solution to have peace with my husband before someone was seriously hurt, Worse that when he slapped me out of the way and entered his sons room six days after a major surgery,

            His father said OK this was the last time any one would ask him to back off something. The solution if he wanted off second shift that bad would happen in just two weeks with the next round of job bids. He said his son could take a machining job off that bid list on any shift he wanted and leave the clean job for the younger men They were So much better connected through family and politics he just could not be allowed to defy his betters. The people that represented authority in the community, I discovered 14 years later that when that argument entered the mix, it was automatic my husband was going to defy everything to the point he was either jailed or someone was going to try and force him, When I failed to get him to back off I was instructed to bolt him out of the house the next morning to hear the offer the four younger men were going to make.

            There offer was get his rear beat and he would still back off, They did not realize a man in his early 40s was not someone they wanted to mess with, the training he had from two military services. They came over hoped up on the cocain they sold His father was crying out in the waiting room that he had never been so scared in his life that he was about to die at his sons hands.

            We got home an hour and a half after my husband to find the thanksgiving dinner I had worked hard on that morning with his mother Being shredded by Neighborhood Stray dogs, His father went in and grabbed his foot pulling him off the mat he slept o and he slammed off the wall across the hall with his nose and one ear bleeding after my husband kicked him in the face with his heel yelling he had to be back at work in four hours.

            On Christmas eve in Front of my mother and his father and three others used pistols to force him into the car> My mother was already upset. His mother was telling her that his father felt it was the only way to stop my husbands defying the community, We would try and get him something after the holidays arranged in replacement but he had never accepted our suggestions in 23 years As we watched his father and the three companions he had bought to force my husband into work That Christmas down time. We saw him get up to speed and suddenly the hardware flew of the back doors and two friends went rolling down the street after being ejected from the car at 45 MPH. His fathers car swerve into a yard running over another man that went through the windshield and off the fender and buried his car up to the hubs. The police found his father behind the wheel of his car with a large lump from where my husband slammed his fist upside his fathers head.

            My husband came back to the house and walked in with me trying to keep him from walking out with his truck keys in hand just to talk to the police about why there had to be violence over not wanting to go to work and just take alternate time for his holidays and vacations. When his father came to me in 2009 pleading with me to help cancel my husbands double berth on the orient express we were to leave on the 22nd of may on. A man of 24 who had got himself in a family way with his girlfriend of 24. The were getting married on the 17th of May and needed my husband to cooperate about staying home and letting the man with 2 years to his 34 years seniority go on the express in our double berth. His father said I could go in a single berth, let that young couple have a honey moon and get their marriage of on the right foot not like the marriage I had with his son he hoped to god he was never able to start with me now.

            I helped cancel my husbands and my berth at the Union Travel agent he used. We went and told that poor woman my husband could not go because he was supposed to go for training in Germany, A lot of that was going to happen but my husbands was not one of them. It was just a conveniant way to cancel his vacation.; I did however start the process for a five week vacation Rental on St Croix with the Time to Start on the 2nd of January as his first vacation since getting out of the army before we even met in 1976. I even planed to make up the holiday time we expected him to work sometime in February and March. We decided to let him believe he was going on The Orient express until we Were at the Airport, I had the entire amount of his Berth in my shoulder bag his father made up the ten percent out of pocket for the cancelation saying it was only fair.; When we told him in a TSA conference room he was not going I was pleading it was just 210 more days till he got a vacation, he dud not have to be angry he was not getting the orient express and we did not need to have trouble over it leaving, We would give him his money back on Christmas at his work gate and I would give him the itinerary for were we were going then. I said nobody had to be harmed just because he had not had a day off in 24 years> He demanded the Check right then and Searching his computer case demanded his Passport returned that we were going to give TSA to mail back to him. I saw the table in the conference room going by as I flew through the air to pile up against the wall with my shoulder dislocated.

            His father was screaming just be a man and go to work please If he did not like our choice in January we could figure out something he would like then and a number of people would help pay his way wherever and however he wanted his vacation It was only time In Europe and out of his plant> He was yelling in his fathers face as he tried to strangle him to death he was not going back to work but catching the direct flight to Europe and renting a fast car to make our life as much hell as he could until Topieki palace where I would Join the Sultans traitor wives at the bottom of the Bospherous and His fathers headless body would be left to rot in the streets of Istambul. He hoped we liked our stinking vacation we just cheated him out of. Because we were not coming back, He said he was not even going to let his father leave the airport in any thing but a body bag. I left on the trip to Europe that year with my arm in a sling after the dislocation, His father could only croak, His mother decked his father with her purse and left the airport with my husband yelling we had no right to cancel his trip. That ruined every ones plans for his mother and fathers 55th Wedding anniversary.

            We had no idea how bad our homecoming on the sixth of June was going to be, I was going back and tell my husband he could do as he wanted now I did not want to hurt that bad ever again, We arrived at the airport, His sister told his father and me to find our own way home, My husband was not there to get us. We got to his fathers hours nearly 15 hours after getting through customs, I just wanted to go home and find out the next morning what else my husband would accept instead of the trip I just came home from.

            I SAID ANY MORE INTERFERENCE WOULD NOT HAPPEN BECAUSE I KNEW THE NEXT TIME HE WOULD PROBABLY MURDER ME OVER LOUSY TIME OFF AND NOT BEING THE WIFE HE WANTED.

            I was saying please don’t have me jailed over something as stupid as canceling his vacation I was just trying to get him to have compassion the last 24 years someplace in his angry life, Nothing was meant by keeping him working. Just where he worked had so many with real needs for the time that should have been his to take, and he was just never going to think there was any other way other than that stupid UAW contract and its unfeeling provisions in seniority. I said I was done trying to get him to show a little humanity.

            I had still a St Croix trip we could take that winter. Nearly two months straight he could have off, He said cancel it because those two months were being blacked out and he was told already he could not take a vacation for at least another year since he did not take his approved vacation. He told me to take my interference and shove it since his father actually knew what was going to happen. We were read our rights, Taken and booked into the jail for acting as false agency, We explained what happened to the lawyer his father retained, who said His advice was plead guilty to the charges in the arraignment or try and get my husbands complaint of acting as false agents, Marrital theft, and fraud.

            The Judge let me beg my husband to drop the charges prior to the arraignment, The only charge he did not drop was acting as false agent since i did not have a power of Attorney The Judge sentence his father and me to a year in county jail on top of the return of the money. A promise was given to never get in his vacation time and holiday time at work again. I went to jail that same day and served until the Friday before labor day 2009 Let out on Good behavior and Jail over crowding, I did not get into my home, he had actually filed an eviction from our home on me, and changed the locks. He was no where to be found camping about 26 miles away. Trying to talk to him was hard but got his Union Chaplain involved. Who got us into his plant the morning after Labor day to talk to him. He did not speak through the keys down and a letter for an allowance from the bank.

            I was sitting at his mothers table trying to think of some way to arrange a solution to peace, with my husband before the holidays arrived with people crying the holidays were going to be worked by them. If my husband continued to push his seniority in the union.

            I had only seem him that night after labor day, His father was In front of the TV watching some game when the phone rang and It was my husbands foreman telling us that my husband had collapsed at work and was on his way to the ER. His father was still angry we had to serve a 3rd of a year in county jail because my husband wanted a vacation after not having one for 33 years. He did have several liberties while we dated in the Navy, His last day off was On December 31st 1981. two days before our wedding. The Day before our wedding he was getting everything done for our honeymoon and PCS Change of station to South Carolina.

            I felt that as of that time he had been so mean about his rights, tried things the way everyone wanted the last 24 years since his return from the navy, just one time not fought us tooth and nail about his seniority rights, Tried a little compassion about just having his vacations in the January February time frame, let others have the better positions and shifts, I could not understand why evening shift was so hated by him and why he would not try and work with us over a day off that did not cause other community problems. Why he would not work with me instead of tell me to go to hell about figuring an acceptable Vacation in mid winter out and insisted he had the right to take whatever vacation and trip he wanted since it was his pay that enabled my 11 trips over 31 years.

            We could have had a nice peaceful life over those years and started a family far earlier than when I had a son, That son was produced from a night he came home after three years of physical rehab after MRSA caused him to loose Nerve impulse in his legs, also the complications of a mrsa Lesion on his heart that had to be repaired and three strokes following that> In late January he came home while I was out with the man i was in a affair with after things deteriorated even more while he was in rehab, over not understanding the situation around home the last three years with his father being upset he was now crippled and not wanting him in the way over the holidays when all that had to happen was we would sign him out on a day pass to come home for holidays like the 4th, labor day, Memorial day, thanksgiving , Christmas and New Years We always went to see him the day after those holidays even taking him things he wanted from home like his Laptop. New sweat shorts and Sweats so he did not have to wear hospital gowns open in the rear. His father felt his coming even to his own home was an imposition we did not need.

            He resented being left with one nurse on the holidays after watching others go home for them as always it was the needs of others that dictated my position. We knew it was not fair but I could see his fathers view on the subject. That Morning I came home with the other man to start setting things up to bring him home from rehab was a disaster with my husband trapping us Then was insisting my affair partner take the Guardianship. When my friend swept his cane putting him on the floor things went from horrible to deadly in a heartbeat, My Husband threw his 13 pound 4’4″ tall cane like a spear catching my friend right where the back of his temple was shattering the left side of my friends skull.

            My husband did not consider it a joke to diffuse the day since he had hit knocking his breath out and decided that my Affair partner was not leaving that house alive since when he hit my friend laughed at him and asked me how I had ended up with my husband the pathetic looser Every punch that broke something else was accompanied with how does it feel to be a pathetic looser then my husband broke another bone.
            I tried stopping the beating my husband was delivering by grabbing his arm pleading he was killing my friend, and My husband swatted me across the room telling me he was never going to give another man the right to hurt him ever again he was going to die for sweeping his cane, he wanted me gone after words.

            I called 911 Crying my husband was murdering someone in our living room The saw him Break my friend clavacal as they enter still screaming whos the pathetic looser now in a blind rage, As The EMTs stopped my nose and lip bleeding and took my friend to the ambulance they were loading my husband for transport to the Regional mental health for the blind rage they witnessed from my husband and asked me was there a trigger, I said itr was meant as a joke when his cane was swept, They already knew his legs would not support him without help> I was not really surprised when the Mental hospital director called for a talk with the family, That talk did not go at all well , The Director was saying we had abused my husband over the last three decades in denying his civil rights and marrital rights, A week latter I was getting ready to keep a promise I made his father about a black Tie dinner evening with him , my husbands mother and his fathers best friend when the regional mental health sent him home by insurance taxi after we had asked they keep him just one more day so we could prepare the next weekend for a dinner then to discuss his return home and the way things had to be4 done. A way to include him in holidays, vacations and Other traditions over time in baby steps to not offend any one.

            I Told him I was going to a dinner and it was to late to include him and he told me then I was not invited and i was going to be only non his arm that evening, He started out saying to me Good I was ready to go out, He had not even been to a movie in 31 years, and as of that evening he came before any one, that included his father, my friends, the community or even god himself, I was going to keep the hundreds of promises made to him that I had broken over 31 years and IU was not going to keep any to his father, as of that second he was the final and only judge and arbitor of what, where and how hew was allowed any thing and The first thing out of my mouth had better Be OK. I tried to make a deal for after the dinner offering a 100 out of my purse telling him to pick a place to meet, and have a nice dinner on his own and we would meet him there for after dinner coffee and least to try and work out solutions that would not get somebody else’s brains beat in because he wanted to rule his own life.

            I said It was not years, not months, not weeks or days we were asking for now It was just four lousy hours to try and figure out some understanding about his status in the family and community after the hell of the last three decades he put people through because he was not wanting to wait for what he was to have.

            He told me he had waited three decade4s and had not had vacations days off and we thought the last three years was a damn vacation or holiday when it was bloody hard work just getting to his feet and then I let my ass of a. He said As of that point i owed him 31 years of hard work, sweat, money from those years of work that hew never saw because we were keeping our snob country club friends happy, and they were the last he was ever going to consider as any thing but bugs from then on. And I was less than a bug for stealing from him the last 31 years keeping him under a guardianship that would not let him have a damn divorce, for messi9ng around on him several times making him be the last consideration in any thing even though he had earned my way through my life without any return> I was going to start repaying those 31 years as of that evening, I was going to be the wife he wanted when we married and I was not going to a dinner with his father and any one else wearing something he had just paid for me to go. It was either on his arm or no one. I had no right to demand any thing from him before keeping my promises of 31 years since he had just been informed again he could not have a divorce So I was going to pull my weight as his wife or he would kill me to get out from under the Guardianship and slavery.

            I was trying to reason with him telling him that the last 31 years were not meant to happen the way he was seeing it, nobody ever wanted him to feel he was a slave> We just had to get him to understand that there were just to many that he had a life affect on and he had been fighting our point of view every step since 1985 refusing to try any thing we suggested instead of causing problems in our society, He Said well he was just getting started causing problems that evening I could tell his father and friend I had to be home with him that evening, He was not taking the back seat Any longer I was going to be the wife he should have had for three decades while he was trapped in the marriage, I was edging towards the door since he had yanked all the phone lines but the Cell he had in his hand I was just going to run Next door to Call 911 to get him back to the Regional mental health and het him to hear us out someday. somehow. He was not waiting for someday or somehow as he ripped every stich I was wearing off me to shreds as I ran for the door. I was backing across the room crying things did not have to happen the way he was intending that day. I was just trying to hold off what i knew was coming holding what was left of my dress to me until somebody arrived to yell for help. I was pleading that he was intending to do something in anger that did not have to be that way. I said I would meet his father and his friend at the door and explain I could not go to that dinner because my husband had come home> I was hoping the could help get him back to the center before he did what was not wanted at that time. Instead he took me to the floor and had his way, I got up a half hour latter expecting his father to knock on the door at any time, I felt like my husband tore me apart limb from limb and my hands were badly bruised from trying to slap him off me it was like I hit rock.

            I went in to sit on the edge of the bed after he handed me the cell and told me to go ahead call 911, Turn him over for what i had threatened for years if he had his way in our marriage, have him jailed for Sexual misconduct in our marriage He said see how fast the money dried up when his retirement and Social security stopped. He then threw a few DVD RWs down and said he wanted to see what a jury would decide when they read my journals of 31 years. Proving me, his father and our friends took his civil rights from him and through coersive tactics, intimidation and illegal use of the courts kept him as an indentured servant He did not care it was an invasion of privacy that would get many others in bad trouble.. He Put his Shorts on after he was done with me and i sat there crying that there had to have been a way to get him what he had wanted without the harm I perceived he would cause in the community.

            His father best friend arrived first and was taken by surprise when my husband answered the door, He told my husband to get me out to the door to talk to him after my husband told him to just go on without me. HYE would send his parents on when they arrived, His fathers friend was in his tux and got angry my husband treated him like dirt. at the door He told my husband to get me out there or he would call the police, My husband said go ahead But unless her had a badge he still was not coming in his home and the badge better have a warrant or the badge was not coming in either on his call. I heard get out of my way crip and then a scream and a car screeching to a stop. I heard his father demand what did her think he was doing his friend was hurt bad and now had to go to the hospital. I heard a car door slam and his mother say get him to the ER before the wish her son had about bleeding out happened. I was Just sitting on the side of My bed looking at the phone. When his mother sat beside me and asked what happed with that days homecoming, I told He I was trying to get her son to just listen in four hours.

            She said and what did he say about waiting four more hours to have me and his father tell him again he was going to wai9t to get what he had earned these last three decades, i SAID WE COULD HAVE WORKJED OUT A SOLUTITIONM THAT WAS NOT SO HARD ON ME FOR ONEE. AND SO ROUGH ON HIS FATHER AND HIS FRIENDS, SHE SAID SHE SAW ONE THING COMING THROUGH THE LIVING ROOM, A MAN DECLARING HIS EMANCIPATION FROM, THE ABUSE, AND HE4 WAS GOING TO ABUSE BACK EVE4N MORE THAN THE LAST 13 YEARS. She asked when the last time before the MRSA was a sex life, I told her his father kept telling me from the day he came home from the navy if i even thought to allow one we would never get him to pay attention to the needs in the community. I told her multiple times we tried to get his cooperation and start a sex life with Cooperation, the sex life was the reward I was holding back for. She said you held sex from my oldest son as a reward,, I knew she was angry and yelling at his fathers instruction we held him sexless for 31 years, no wonder there was no grandchildren then she asked why he had never taken a vacation or holiday off. She said The people that went on them his father told her was him just doing as he wanted and staying at work and she knew that was not the case in 2009. Then he got sick. She round housed me and asked me what right I had for staying in my husbands house Said Go ahead call 911, We had to control the slave population didn’t we.

            I had not thought of it that way even though he had said it many times. I thought it was just sour grapes he was not getting his way. She Heard his father come back demanding to know what he thought he was doing defying his betters again. We heard my husband tell his father he did not answer to him or his stinking friends. He was done having any thing to say to me or him about any thing, I had been slapped again after telling his mother just what methods were used to keep my husband in line and the way that evening came about, She said Why didn’t i just get out there were other people that would have shown more respect and love to her son. His father saw the shredded gown and the brui9sed hands and me in my dressing gown. He demanded to know what he had done and why did he have the right to touch a decent white woman. My husband stood Up and told him to get out of his face or suffer the same as his friend, he was in his home and frame. His mother stepped o0ut and round housed his father telling him the dinner was not on the agenda that evening and he could go to hell about any attempt to interfere in his sons life any more than he already had, He had caused to much damage with his interference< His crying father asked just what were we to do about him defying his betters, he just would not take any suggestions from us, She said after talking to me it was not suggestions it was interference and orders and told him to get in the car they had things to discuss at home, she said she would be back Two days latter my mother called from Virginia and told me Her and my sister were coming out to help pack and move. I did not know what she was talking about She said she had just talked to my mother in law about the trouble that was going on with me.

            I hung up really confused and my husband was in the Living room talking to his mother and sister. She was telling my husband he was going to be moving 1260 miles to the west and taking the home that his uncle was in In the Canyons of NE Wyoming befo0re he died two years before. His mother5 had brokered a direct property trade and My mother arrived to me crying again three days latter with my sister and neither felt my husband was at fault for what he did that evening. My mother got Atlas van lines to come pack our home leaving just one small TV. a air mattress, Refrigerator gas range, washer and gas dryer since his uncles home had all new appliances in a 16 by 85 redman on a block foundation my mother and sister drove the hhr out and my husband bough a used Dakota 4×4 and drove it out also leaving a gas grill and table and chairs on the deck until we came back to sell our house. I was expecting to be back in six months But that evening came back to haunt me three months later when I discovered I was Pregnant. The suggestion was since I was 49 and Going to have a baby i was going back to the east coast to have it with my mother and sister in attendance, My husband also sent a blood sample back for DNA testing to prove the child was his He left at the end of March for the place up in the Mountains his family called high range cabin. Had supplies Flown up by heilo in a pallet load and several other things to Install and repair. He made repairs and relocation of the wind turbans into a cut that the wind always goes through He cleaned and Repaired the small solar farm and generator there and installed Direct TV and Hughes net for the LCD tvs in the living area and loft. Repaired the washer there and Installed a steam generator of his design that supplies 60 KW when the fire place is burning hes always increasing ways to generate electricity there. I was in Virgiunia at my mothers until January and taking my new son to meet his father at a month old that was nearly five years ago when on my husbands birthday this scruffy head haired red bearded man rode past on a horse in a sheepskin coat, jeans and wellingtons And showed us the new Nursery he had spent the last week working on I barely recognized my husband as he held his son who seemed to know it was his father. Even my mother was shocked at the mountain man look he sported. Somehow it seemed the natural way he was My mother decided she liked the area and Bought a tract of land across the road from us Had arranged for a Large Modular to set in for my sister and her retiring husband He liked the fact we live right next to a trought stream He daughter Now lives in France as an Interpreter, and her son is a band member in NYC working as an EMT in the hospitals there.

            We did go back In late May 2014. It seemed the second we went across the border trouble was in the way as we arrived Just before Memorial day. We We4t Up short term furniture rentals got cable going again, and his father wanted me to hostess a last cookout there. His father wanted him to get lost for it but he was again in total defiance mode. By the end of the cookout he was chasing his fathers friend off with the threat of going back to the ER. His father was slapping him for His defiance to his wishes and getting his jaw broken in return and My husband was taking me for after dinner drinks over his fathers objection. After he flattened his father the Doorman at the club was told there was a hundred if he kept my husband from going in with me. I had always thought a doorman had wide latitude to decide who to admit, I found out latter that was not the case after he pushed my husband out to the street then lost his teeth to the pavement for pushing him.

            At his sisters cookout over the 4th we thought two friends had taken him home4 when he was feeling until state police officers walked into the cookout and had everyone turn out their pockets finding two with Ketamine charged with endangerment of human life leaving my husband out on the side of a county road 30 miles away. They had to pump my husbands stomach and give him other drugs to Bring him up His Father had something to do with it trying to gain some control over his oldest son and Had lost twice by that point. His mother even lit into09 him again over the control he wanted to exert, On July the 26th one more time to find a way to exert influence over my husband had me going to a breakfast to discuss the Cruise the next year. Two other friends held him at pistol point to take me to a breakfast without having my husband say go to hell out right He actually put his chest against the weapons and told them to be man enough to pull the triggers and get the needle. We ran convinced my husband was out of his mind until he tracked us to where we we4re having breakfast to figure out how to get him to stay home in 2015, I was supposed to Go as a single berth again and we thought going to High range for the Summer was the best Idea with our son. I was trying to work on a compromise of going on the tri year I was going to come back and go on a different cruise to Alaska two weeks after my return from the gulf I thought the offer w3as a very good compromise to stop the fight from even starting But found out he wanted the fight.

            We4 were sitting waiting to be served at a table when our waitress was laying our food down and mjy husband steped out from behind he with his cane swinging, Tw3o men had their faces laid open, to the bone and he's got his cane tip center of his fathers chest telling him he was going to die over the next 32 se4conds as slow as he could make it by impaling him. We started having to attend family counseling over teleconference the next two years. The Cruise In The gulf was canceled after my husband broke his fathers neck when his father showed up swinging a ball bat yelling my husband was going to stop defying him and his friends and just do what he was damn well told.
            My Husband blocked it with his cane and an uppercut from his hip just about took his fathers head off .

            I never could find a way to get my husband just to be nice and take what was left before MRSA took him down and after words there is just the thought we will have to kill him to get him to be nice to people. Just for once not act like we were taking things from him and find solutions for himself that did not get in other peoples way even with seniority. . Was I wrong for trying to keep things in the community peaceful, Was he wrong for thinking he did not have to take what was left over, in vacation times when it would have simplified everyones life. these last b35 years.

            What else could i have done but Cave in to the way he wanted his life.

    • Rick

      I just had this happen to me…

      I heard a conversation my mother in law and my wife were having on the phone (MIL lives in the hometown wife and x are from, Illinois) she was telling her about her old high school flame, and that his current wife was dying of a terminal disease… as they were talking my wife snuck out of the room abruptly and I knew right away that this was going to be a problem!

      Fast forward to the cheating husbands wife dying and him now exchanging love notes (my wife sending naked pics of herself from 15 years prior) by phone, mother in law asking if I was home and if I was she would call later. Saying extremely disparaging things about me through texts that I was seeing. It finally came to a head when I packed a bag and left. She had no idea I already knew she was setting up the ground work to go stay with him behind my back. I ended up returning that night and when I confronted her with the truth, that I knew, she immediately asked for a divorce, saying it was my fault because I packed my bags. I filed for divorce, which she later said she never wanted. Part of me thinks she might be going a little crazy!

      If your spouse threatens to leave the state, you should file right away because when they set up residence in that state, she can file on you and you will be going to their home state to their court.

      She had a team of people believing everything she was saying and she painted me as an evil person – said things, that were not true or based on history from 15 years ago.Tthey had me believing it. She went to her moms house for a few weeks so it doesn’t look bad to our son and friends who would be watching if she went straight to his house. At first I felt bad telling this story but now I am in the right part of my brain and realized I did nothing to ask for this.

      She will inherit a lot of money from her mom passing and she has told me that over and over again. Her mom did the same thing to her husband… she got a job as a secretary and ended up sleeping with the owner who then divorced his wife to be with the mother in law. This is shady behavior and will inevitably come back to bite them later. 26 year relationship scrubbed for this.

    • Billie

      I am currently in a tricky situation I haven NO idea what to do with….. please help!

      I am 1.5 years into a relationship with a man who is really lovely and things were amazing at the start. Pretty quickly though I realised that he was still VERY tied in emotionally with his ex girlfriend – they were together for 7 years (his longest relationship) and had broken up a year before he got together with me.
      They had split up amicably and decided to stay ‘absolute bestest of friends in the whole world’, as it was only the romantic part of the relationship that didnt work very well, and so they stay VERY close friends.
      They still talk for hours every week, update each other about almost everything, and basically over time I realised that even though she also has a new boyfriend, my boyfriend is her number 1 rock. When times are tough for her (which they always seem to be), he is the one she turns to, not her boyfriend. They would be texting each other back and forth all day almost everyday, even while he was at work!
      He told me she was just like a sister to him so I tried to be understanding and patient.
      Well then I met her, and she wasnt very nice to me at all- she was stand-offish and rude – sometimes she totally ignored me and only looked at him, which rang the alarm bells even more from me.

      Once he realised i was getting uncomfortable about their friendship, he started hiding contact from her, all along he had only ever spoken to her while i wasnt there (which i accepted as i trusted him at that point), but then he started lying about text messages he got from her, saying they werent from her when they were.He would message her as soon as i was out of the room, and quicky stop when i came back in.

      Eventually i put my foot down a bit more, and told him i felt that he needed to put some boundaries in place, and at least not be messaging her all day at work, which was interfering with his job, and that he didnt need to talk to her all day everyday – i told him i felt he was giving her too much energy and it wasn’t healthy.

      After that he got upset, and ended up siding with her and pushing me away – as they decided together that the problem was me having insecurities from the past, not them, So if anything had to change it was me. He pushed me away for awhile which hurt.
      Then one night after i asked him to do some soul-searching around her, he realised and admitted that he did have some unresolved feelings for her. No romantic feelings apparently, but just a sense of ‘non-closure’ around her. Like he was still a bit sad that the relationship ended, still felt like he owed her something. And he said he had found ‘parts of him that still loved her’ but assured me it wasnt the main part of him.
      SO he realised that since they hadnt had any space since breaking up, it was probably necessary to do so, so that he could move on properly.

      So he told her that he needed some space from her for awhile to get his head straight and try to move on (which she got really upset about and angry at him and I for)… However even though he realised he needed space, i dont think he really wanted it – perhaps he was actualy still doing it for me and us. So often he felt forced and struggled with it alot.

      Then this weird thing started to happen – he started having her name incessantly pop up in his head, over and over again everyday.
      He said he didnt understand why it was happening, but it just got worse and worse the more he tried to figure it out… everytime he would go to think about me or my name, her name would be there instead. Even while we were having sex together it happened!

      To cut a long story short, this ‘name-swapping’ (as he called it), went on for about 4 months!!!! And that whole time he had a lot of turmoil over not being able to see or speak with her.
      After about 4 months of craziness, I finally convinced him to get councelling, and the ‘name-swapping’ has dropped off a lot since then.

      It has now been about another 4 more months since the councelling, and since then it has been a gradual improvement… now he says the name-swaps are only happeneing about 3 times a week (as opposed to all day everyday like was happening for awhile). And he still hasnt seen her, though he gets updates about how she is doing through his mum who stays in contact with her.

      It has been a very painful and upsetting ride for me…. The lies and obsession with his ex girlfriend… sometimes i wonder why i stayed through it all.
      Now he acts like its no big deal as he says the only reason it happened is that she is like a sister to him (closer even than his sister and mum), and because i was asking him to let go of someone so close to him, he had inner torment and that is what caused the name swapping.
      It feels like he thinks i should be able to heal from this quickly, and that I overreacted to get so hurt by it.

      So i really need help and advice. Am I crazy for staying with him and trying to make it work with him?
      Im scared that after everything thats happeed i will never be ok with having his ex back in our lives again, but i know he wants to one day. He says now that he will wait until im ready, but that he definately wants to reconnect with her sometime.

      What should i do???

      • M

        Hi Billie…

        I know your comment was from 2017 but I’d like to share my thoughts. Hopefully you’ve resolved the issue by now, but if not, you have my sympathy.

        If you are still with him and he still can’t get over her, you are better off without him. My husband is the same way about a former girlfriend (but he doesn’t call me by her name!) and yes…the “closure” thing is a problem for him too.
        I think anytime there are unresolved feelings, somebody is bound to get hurt, even if the feelings are not acted upon.
        If he wants to reconnect with her, you can’t stop him from doing that. But you can tell him how it makes you feel and that life is too short to be with a guy who still loves his ex.

        There are men in this world who will put you first, so don’t tolerate his crap. If he doesn’t have children with her, he shouldn’t still be talking to her.
        They are more than just “friends” and this has nothing to do with “insecurities” (a word that cheaters like to throw around).
        I told my husband in no uncertain terms that he needs to get over his ex. It’s been 33 years, it’s time to seek therapy and leave her in the past where she belongs.

    • Billie

      Fixing an error in my previous message, paragraph 2…

      “He started hiding contact with her FROM ME”

    • Callie

      I can’t presume to say what you should do since I conducted an affair with an old boy friend from decades past. It happened at a time I was feeling mainly unloved by the Man I had married 30 years before, Things had gone wrong for years between us, with his building of re4sentment towards me, his family and the community as well as his work life, Since 1987 we had tried to get him to think of his seniority on the job as something that was just there not to be used as a social disruption for just his wants. In 1985 when he returned from the navy. His honorable discharge got him the return of the seniority of the entire time he was gone in the military on his Big three transmission plant position. When he went back the day after driving home from three and a half years under water he was going back to his plant with more seniority than 60 percent of the work force with the retirements that had happened with the plant additions. All the new hires He had nine years top the next nearest seniority down that was three years less than him to the whole nine years less than my husband returned with. His father and many others felt with his army time, his time in the state guard and his Navy time he should just reenlist and leave the community on a permanent basis they looked at him as a life disruption to their conservative unchanging world.

      HE came home to a campiagn to persuade him to go back to the military and just stay out of every ones way there. It was requested I stay out of sight his first week home so they could get him to go back and then failing that Get him so confused he would just leave with me in tow. My husband was trained in Air born, air assault, Battlefield intelligence and commo as well as a fully qualified Submarine sailor, Nuclear weapons security and Missile control center Technician and Supervisor in trident missiles. His submarine quals are designated with an SS meaning super stressed, They under estimated his confusion by a factor of a thousand, He under stood I had chosen their side within three days home, understood he was going to have a life where my cooperation was dependent on his in the society. and within three days his war with us started, I raised my surrender in march of 2015 sitting in a hotel room scrunched up in the corner of the bed asking why couldn’t he have just gone home as requested for the Cancun cruise instead of defying his fathers wish he not go ?He did not have to create the condition forcing his father to get drunk and show up at our hotel room so my husband could break his neck with one punch after his father came in swinging a ball bat at him screaming he was going to shut his face and go home. He had not been invited by him as the head of the family. I saw my husband block the bat with his cane. then with one uppercut delivered from his hip his father was laying in the hall with his neck broken. That trip was canceled for all of us when all my husband had to do was accept the lines offer of going home on a first class ticket. he could have gone up to high range instead of insisting on his rights. to go on the cruise.

      The last 15 years every time my husbands rights were interfered with I had watched as he destroyed bodies and lives. That started in January 2000 after his father had him arrested on a court order that he was to work the Millinial holiday instead of forcing lesser seniority to work He even stood in front of the judge as he handed him the order and told him to FO he had rights he had stepped on for 13 years now so lets go to a higher court when we came back from Bavaria , but he had the contract right to the time so he was going, it took three deputies to take him in to county then the next two weeks until his birthday he was taken to his job then back to jail We landed from Munich on his Birthday of January the fifth that year with the hope we could just talk about how to get him some time off and we could start the new Century and new years in a process that would keep him from disruptting the plans other people had and just show he could be courteous. Without blackmail and force Even start the sex life he had been after me to be a real wife for the last 15 years. Just start the new century without resentments and yelling at us about his rights being shafted, we would arrange a process to let him have his rights, My Christmas gift from him was in the Suburban that morning of his birthday we were hoping for a fresh peace in the way things were decided. we would see to it he had time for a vacation latter that year and even get his union to arrange a few weeks off to replace the miliniall down week in time and we would celebrate it on our own just like if he had been in Bavaria also, we had a gift of a one of a kind clock that had hundreds of changing pictures of the milinial celebrations there and he could see everything we saw. the clock was a gift as a Christmas, birthday \ peace offering for his being forced to stay home and work. He has not touched it since we came home, My gift was what he gathered in dog droppings out of yards in a box. His mother and fathers gift was a protest to the way the community treated him The worst part was the wagon wheel concreated in the yard and Rawhide wrist straps added He also hung a bull whip on it with a sign inviting the community to come participate in the whipping of the rebellious slave meaning himself., I never saw a son hate his parents that bad or the wife he would have been able to do something with except he killed our overture to peace.

      The next Year On November the fifth 2001 I was on my knees begging him to just back off a job bid with his friends, I was offering non interference, myself as the wife he had been wanting the last 16 years, Even told him if he backed of we would no longer get him to work on holidays. Even said he could come to Ireland with me in 2003 without any one saying a thing. He wished I would take his father by the hand and step in front of a semi doing 60.

      The next morning the men I was begging him to give up the bid for were waiting on him to get home. I bolted the4 door to get him to talk to them and when the commissioners son said did he remove his bid, my husband said suck an egg, Then called the four of them gay. and goaded them into jumping him, He just about killed all four using his combat arts training, then he kicked the front door and the door and frame landed on me breaking my leg HE told me at that point try to get him hurt again and he would arrange my next date was an undertaker. He said if my Boyfriend out front survived I could go with him. I had had a one night stand with him on the Bavaria trip, just to feel good about myself and not hear I was a bitch that had contributed nothing in my husbands home.

      He considered that using sex to keep him from what he wanted was not right, That he washed his cloths, Cooked his own meals. Slept in the twelve hours he usually had off in a day that I did not contribute any thing in our marriage, I had to put up with the put downs, The yelling when I had to stop him from taking what he wanted. Then In 2001 his father and others felt in August if he was allowed the full 60 days recovery after a tumor removal off the top of his brain stem. HE had a nasty fight with them when they came to take him to work six days after that surgery, One man even had a computer keyboard broken on his face getting him up. None of the six men escaped injury. that took him to work that day. In 2009 over the orient express trip he tried to strangle his father to death over his passport and the cancelling of his trip, To get the check for the cancelation from me he dislocated my shoulder and threw me across the room. All this over a period out of the plant he wanted. There were not any answers for the way to get him to take just what was offered in the community. I was arranging for a five week time In St Croix when we left on the Orient express trip Starting in just seven months. He did not have to get violent because we stopped another vacation did he.. He did not have to ruin lives with lawsuits and counter blackmail the way he did. That cost a man his family then his suicide. in 2005, Couldn’t my husband have just let us try at least to make things so they did not conflict with other plans. He could have taken the Mid winter times and left the rest for everyone else. Taken Personal time to replace holidays. Why Did he have to cause pain because he was not getting his way.

    • Anthonia

      I had a problem with my Husband 3 months ago he was having an affair with a friend of mine that happens to be my best friend, i was so sad that i never knew what to do next, during my search for a way out, i came across this Email Dr_mack@yahoo. com, i never believed in spiritual stuff, i thought it will not work for me but to my surprise i got positive results and i was able to get my Husband back from my so called friend, if you are having a similar problem contact DR.MACK and your problems shall be solved?

    • Nancy

      Been married for almost 10 yes.,my husband still talks and text his ex-girlfriend,he says nothing is going,but why do they have to keep in touch with eachother all the time,friends he say,well if that’s so why is he being so sneaky with it?

    • Ann

      I think this article is very optimistic many studies actually based on data show rekindled lost loves have a 75% success rate as well as a 72% staying togetherness. A bond of a teenage love is something that really cannot be broken and does not require sexual relationship to be strong. My lost love contacted me and literally nothing would or could break our bond even after not talking 10 years we met 16+ years ago and began a love affair /friendship we haven’t talked because of his wife’s request. we met at age 17-18 at senior party we never quite made it to relationship status I was in and out of a toxic relationship. I moved away 3 years later and live across country. His wife cheated on him twice in the past 4 months and he reached out to me and I’m happy to support and care for him like no time has passed. She has tried to stop our friendship but he finds ways to contact me and call me and we talk for hours. We both know we have a special unbreakable bond. His wife has mentioned she’s worried he will run away w me though I’ve not even hinted at that happening. So the point of the story is if two people form a strong bond during formative years they will never forget it ever. No spouse can take it away.

      • Tom

        Ann – So, why do these people get married and have children with other people?

    • JJ

      I broke up with someone 6 years ago. at the time he wanted to be more serious than I was ready for. I wasn’t completely sure we were compatible enough to live together, etc. after a year or two I became ready to try again with him after missing him but I knew he moved on and was seeing someone. we weren’t in touch much. it felt like he was putting distance between us so I didn’t reveal my feelings. anyway he shows up at my place this year after almost 4 years of not seeing him. for a few minutes we talked and was catching up. he told me he was married. I noticed him looking at me very intently and then he asks me about why we broke up and what happened between us. he told me he still loves me and feels he belongs with me. I was stunned. he kissed me twice and then I kind of pushed him out. he got very passionate. I’m not embracing an affair with someone married. i’m curious if he meant any of it or just looking to cheat. his behavior is strange, the man I knew seemed more loyal and together. anyway he said he told his wife and now says he didn’t mean what he said about his feelings. said he was only curious about me. well if he was curious he didn’t have to visit he had a way of calling or emailing. . he says he has a good marriage. but there is something going on with him

    • M

      Ann…what you are doing is wrong, and you know it. He is married. Y’all are not teenagers anymore.
      Cut the crap, you are both hurting his wife with your behavior.

      I’m not perfect by a long shot, but I agree with what Jann and Yuki said above. People need to grow up.
      Your past relationships ended for a reason. All this talk of “rekindling” is a bunch of crap! If people are unhappy in their marriage, learn to communicate. But wanting to go back to an ex from years ago will not solve your problems. If anything, it makes things worse.
      You can’t rewind time and be 16 again. That will never happen to any of us.

      I found out only a few months back that my husband still has feelings for a girl he dated who dumped him in freaking 1988!
      I am 14 years younger than both of them, more attractive than she is, and I’ve always been a loving wife to him.
      But (like Ann said above) maybe that’s no match for a “teenage love”…even if she is ugly, frumpy, out of shape and lives on the other side of the country.
      I don’t know if he has been in contact with her (he says no). All I know is that his own mom even admitted to me that this girl broke his heart and he never fully got over it.

      I’m hurt beyond belief because we have been married a long time. One time he went on a business trip and I found lube in his bag when he returned.
      Now I have so many doubts and bad feelings, like…how can I know that he didn’t meet up with her somewhere?
      She has been married for many years with children, but as we all know, that means nothing to cheaters.
      They don’t give a shit who they hurt. They will look you in the eye and lie like it’s nothing. Meanwhile, I’ve always been faithful to him. I’m the one who has been with him the longest of any woman he’s known.
      I’m the one who has remained by his side through thick and thin. And yet, he still seems to miss her…because she is his “first love” (sarcasm).

      Well, I had a “first love” too, before I met him. But you know what? I took my marriage vows seriously and never wanted to do anything to hurt him.
      I might have loved my ex, but I never expressed a desire to be with him or see him again. Why? Because that is my PAST…I can’t be a teenage girl ever again. I have to be an adult now and adults (real adults) have to live in the present, and accept responsibility for their actions.
      And that is what I told my husband about Tamara (his ex-girlfriend from high school). You have to accept that you are both adults now with spouses and that is a choice you both made.
      Like it or not, your actions DO affect other people.

      He claimed to want “closure” from her. I asked him, closure for what? She moved on in 1988.
      So should you! She doesn’t want you, dude. I think deep down he hopes that she’ll call him up one day for a second chance.
      If that happens…well, I know where I stand. I will choose to walk away rather than be hurt anymore.

    • M

      Also, when it comes to old boyfriends/girlfriends from high school…I agree with the person above (sorry, can’t remember your name) who said that these people are trying to relive a youth that is no more.

      While I understand that adulthood comes with responsibilities and other issues, there is a certain level of delusion with these folks saying that it’s “true love”.
      Nope…it’s that they can’t/won’t talk to their spouse about what is bothering them. They choose to seek comfort from somebody else, even if it means going to a person from way back.
      There is no maturity or decency in that. It’s an inability to grow up, deal with reality, and take responsibility for their choices in life.

      To the ladies here whose husbands had affairs with high school sweethearts…I’m so sorry. Although I’m not completely sure if my husband has done this, I know he thought about it, and it was like being stabbed in the heart.
      People need to understand that there is nothing “cute” or “romantic” about cheating on your spouse, whether it is with a stranger or an ex from years ago.
      Your actions can really hurt people around you.

      • Hurting

        “There’s a particular type of sadness you feel when you catch up with someone you miss and realize that the version of them you were once friends with doesn’t exist anymore. You won’t ever find the same person twice, not even in the same person.”
        —Sherry Ning

    • HeartShock

      Thank you for pouring your hearts out here and helping others like me. 2 months ago my husband told me he wanted a break and moved out. I found out his friend from highschool had reached out to him just a month prior and now they wanted to see where it goes. Feels better that he didn’t physically cheat but emotionally…yes! Now he’s moved out and she’s asked for divorce from her husband who is pissed. My husband also wants a divorce. All this based on the study done by Dr K. Saying their divorce rate would be .4%. My husband is into statistics. OR just using all of this as an excuse to justify what they are doing. Basically blamed me for using him as an emotional punching bag. Because I have outbursts sometimes like a few times a year or less. Either way. Going through a true heartbreak as I find love letters all over the house telling me how happy he is with me. Does anyone have more data on the success of the rekindled lovers staying together? From what I can gather, the sample size was really small and so shouldn’t be compared with divorce rates of the world or country. Thank you.

    • BoundaryBuilder

      Hello HeartShock:
      You posted this a few weeks back but thought I’d take a chance and respond with hope you are still reading here. I understand why you want further accurate information to hold up and say to him “Look! See HERE’S the truth!” but honestly if this is for HIM it won’t help. He’s moved out, his HS sweetie is blowing up her family so they can be together. Certainly seems like an exit affair to me. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this. I wanted to reach out to you with some information for YOU. And for others who are in pain and may stumble upon this thread. I’m a former academic so I understand the gravitas supportive statistics may lend a theory. There’s cold comfort in statistics that support our own bias as well. But don’t forget that old quote “There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics.”

      Your H is certainly grasping for justifications if he claims leaving your marriage to hook up with HS sweetie was motivated by Dr. Kalish’s research. That’s a doozie justification! Almost as good as “you didn’t empty the dishwasher correctly” or “that time in 1993 when you yelled at me I never recovered” etc. etc. type blame-shifting he’s also employing. FYI, his interpretation of the study results is based on an incomplete interpretation. Which is not unusual when Dr. Kalish’s research is mentioned in conjunction with infidelity. Lot’s of folks incorrectly cite or refer to this research. Even folks who should know better. For example, Dr. Shirley Glass in “Not Just Friends” misrepresented Dr. Kalish’s early research in the “Old Flames Burn Hottest” chapter which was a big blot on that book for me. The above article “Rekindled Past Flames” is another perfect example.

      Dr. Kalish’s FIRST round of “re-kindlers” research spanned 1993-1996. Pre-social media, EARLY internet days. This old study is the origin of the often misrepresented statistic cited in this article. I quote from Dr. Kalish’s website:

      “with 1001 participants from all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 35 additional countries. They ranged in age from 18 to 89.
      Dr. Kalish found that reunions with former boyfriends or girlfriends were common in all age groups. Two-thirds of the participants had reunited with their first loves from when they were 17 years old or younger. Their success rate for staying together was 78%. For the overall sample, the staying together rate was 72%.”

      HeartShock, the majority of respondents to this original 1993-96 survey were AVAILABLE to pursue their “lost love” – either divorced, widowed or single. These respondents had to find their lost love the old fashioned way – write a letter, ask a relative for a phone number, meet at a high school reunion and so on. The ease of connecting to an ex on FaceBook with the click of a mouse was not available. This important distinction – that these folks weren’t (for the most part) IN A PREVIOUS RELATIONSHIP when they reconnected with their lost love is often what’s lost in translation. The author of this article and Dr. Glass left out this IMPORTANT fact when they mentioned the “high” success rate of “rekindled first loves”.

      In 2005-06 Dr. Kalish did another round of research. I’ll let her website speak for itself:

      “Her new research findings (2005-2006) are based on 1600 participants who have typically found each other online. These populations are very different in one respect: the majority (62%) of the recent survey participants are married, or their lost loves are married, or both. They are in unexpected emotional (and often physical) extramarital affairs with their old flames.
      These extramarital reunions were generally not successful, and the reconnections were devastating to the spouses, children, and the lost loves themselves: although most participants believed they could carry on the affairs until they decided what to do about their marriages vs. lost loves, most were caught by their families.
      Because of the high extramarital rate, successful reunions for this group of participants was low: only 5% of the lost love couples married each other; one or both of the affair partners chose to remain married. If they were not caught, most ended their reunions after a few years.
      Dr. Kalish strongly discourages married men and women from having any contact with their lost loves at all.”

      And in Dr. Kalish’s own words:

      “What has changed, though, is whether those romances last. When I began studying love reunions in 1994, I found that 72 percent of the participants remained together with their lost love. By 2006, only 49 percent were still together a decade later. What happened?

      In the 1990s, contacting a lost love often involved getting a phone number or address from the lost love’s parents, old friends or other relatives. These contacts acted like gatekeepers: If you went to your lost love’s father for the phone number, you’d better be single. These men and women were purposefully pursuing a romantic reconnection.

      Classmates.com, Reunion.com and then Facebook gave people a way to make contact without anyone else knowing that they’d reached out. It became normal to contact old friends, so why not a teen sweetheart?As a result, people whose young loves were interrupted reached out, even when they were married. Sixty-two percent of my 1,600 survey participants in 2006 were married at the time they reconnected with a lost love. Half said they’d been “happily married,” so they saw no harm initially in saying hello. In fact, some told their spouses beforehand.

      But there is a harm. Lost love reunions are a different kind of romance, often the most intense of my subjects’ lives. This is in part because of the excitement of the affair, but also because these were romances that never ended; a situation broke them apart when they were young, and they wondered what might have been. Now they wanted the opportunity to find out if they belonged together. And because they are in the same town, the shared roots had formed a bond of familiarity, comfort and trust. As a result, these extramarital reunions can become obsessive and then leap off the computer into a physical affair.

      But only for a time. Just 5 percent of the lost love affair partners in my research surveys left their spouses and married each other. The affairs usually ended bitterly, when one person wanted to leave the marriage but the other wouldn’t. One woman moved to the city of her lost love and stalked him after he recommitted to his marriage and left her; he filed a restraining order. Another was so bitter when her lost love left her that she called his wife to report the affair, ending his marriage. One man came home from grocery shopping and overheard his wife on the phone, using endearments she had always used for him.

      Another change that social media has wrought is that the population of rekindlers — yes, and those who have affairs — is getting younger. There was an age range of 18 to 95 for my participants in the 1990s, but the average reunion happened in the 40s and older. I still have that age range, but the average age of my participants has dropped into the early to mid-30s. They leave their marriages more often than older affair rekindlers, and they often have young children at home.

      Social media doesn’t cause cheating. Facebook doesn’t book the hotel room. But it does make the initial contact simple, the secrecy easier and the start of it all seem harmless.”

      So, HeartShock, according to Dr. Kalish’s more recent research, your H and his HS sweetie have a 5% chance of getting married. Of that 5% I wonder what percentage STAY married longer than a few years? Now that’s a statistic I’m curious to see! Here’s a random quote I pulled online just now:
      “For couples who began a relationship through an affair, and later marry, the statistics aren’t positive. According to the studies that have been done, over 75% of those marriages will end in divorce after five years.”
      So, using your husband’s own extrapolation, if only 5% of “rekindlers” successfully remarry, and only 75% of that 5% are likely to stay married past 5 years, he has 0.0375 chance with HS Sweetie. Not very good odds LOL.
      Hope this helps!

    • BoundaryBuilder

      OOPS typo. Sorry about that.
      If only 5% of “rekindlers” successfully remarry, and only 25% of that 5% are likely to stay married past 5 years, he has 0.0125 chance with HS Sweetie.

    • Wendy

      Almost 4 years after reunion my husband and I are separated (married 38 years ) because he is still in the fog. He said they never broke up in high school just timing was off and is now reliving a fantasy romance across the country when they see each other. Reunited through me on facebook mine helped her husband with cancer and then he passed away but became her guardian angel. He thinks she’s gone through too much hurt and doesn’t want to hurt her again. She is evil and knows we had a strong marriage until she came along but always wanted my husband. She can have him at this point.

    • Hurting

      The only thing she could talk about was our upcoming engagement. She knew that I was going to propose to her and she was leading the charge. She was so proud and happy and in love. But then one day she told me that I should not bother her during her lunchtimes at work, as these times were the only times she had to herself. Bright Red Flag as this is not the way she is. Usually she couldn’t wait to phone me and tell me that she is having lunch, what she is having, where she is sitting, who she has seen etc. A month later she is depressed and feeling suicidal, blaming her work schedule, which took her away from her family. We hardly saw each other and her 6year old son missed his mom. But she refused to leave the company. Our days became monotonous, intimacy stopped and was blamed on her depression and childhood sexual abuse, so I tried to be understanding of this and showed compassion. I ended up leaving my job in an attempt to make way for an easier life for us. After 3 and a half months she had a job lined up in the company where he works. He has been a thorn in our relationship since we started dating, so I was not impressed with this news. But nevertheless another month later she was working there. In her first week at his company she broke up with me. I didn’t hang around to hear her reasoning, I just stood up straight away and started packing my things, which made her cry and she asked me to stay. Eventually we agreed that she would see a psychologist for her emotional issues which had been debilitating over the last months. But over the next 3 months our relationship had completely broken and we were really struggling to hold onto ourselves. She found a new job, which seemed to be the shining light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel. As she was transitioning from one to the other, I accepted a job out of town which kept me away for a week and on my return home, I was greeted with her back when she opened the front door. I didnt even recieve a hello from her. She told me that she doesn’t want to be in this relationship anymore. She and her son moved in with him a month later. She still denies the affair and their relationship. She still has not said anything to me about why she ended things with me besides that she doesnt want to hurt anymore. I know she still loves me. We both played a massive role in changing each others lives and niether of us would be who we are without the other. For this reason I will continue to try turn things around. She will always be the most influencial person in my life. Its been 5months since we separated. I emailed her explaining my views and she replied with some very nice words, but she has never shown up when we have made plans to meet up. I called her out on this and also explained how we were perfect until her affair and that is what ruined us. She obviously took that poorly and told me that she wants to be free from the pain of us and doesn’t communicate with me anymore.

      I am so confused. The only thing I see is that she made a mistake and she couldn’t tell me about it, and so she chose the path of least resistance, being unable to face herself for what she has done. I might be wrong. But I cannot see anything else. She will always be the love of my life.

      Its very difficult to get over the trauma caused my such a deep betrayal. I am also aware that she will get in the middle of any new relationship I attempt, not physically, more that she had such a profound impact on who I am that I cannot ever really escape that. So this leaves me in a very difficult place. Unable to move on without her, yet hesitant in continuing to save our relationship even though I know that my greatest happiness will come from her. I think if she was stronger emotionally, she would be working on things with me. I believe that.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.