Thats a good decision, Todd. Its certainly in the right direction. May you find peace and happiness with your wife, and that you may be able to forgive each other and move on…nothing is too late!
[quote]malonetd wrote:
A week into her trip she tells me she isn’t coming back. God, I miss her.
I needed to get my mind off of the situation for a while. I needed help. I got invited out for a drink after work with a co-worker. A female.
I knew in the back of mind what was going to happen but I went anyway. And of course it did happen.
I really didn’t feel that guilty at the time. I would later.
I told her that if the only reason she was coming back to Wisconsin was for us to move back to California, then don’t come back. I told her I can’t guarantee that I can move back. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to leave Milwaukee.
I belive that at the time, part of me didn’t want her to come back so I had to tell her about “the girl”. But I didn’t feel that way for long. God, I miss her.
I started making plans to leave and kept finding reasons to push the date back. I just didn’t want to leave.
I said that I just got here and I wanted to enjoy it for a while longer. She said I was being selfish and didn’t care about our marriage.
What the hell do I need to stay here for?
God, I miss her.[/quote]
Don’t take this the wrong way, it takes a pretty big guy to admit he is wrong. I am also going to assume you are probably both in your early or mid-20’s.
You mention in your message enough that you miss her, I wonder who you might be trying to convince, your forum or yourself. You also made it pretty clear that you are both indecisive about marriage or geography, or the fact that you can get some on the side. If the marriage was that committed there would be no question. It almost sounds like maybe the marriage has already grown stale, or not all you hoped it would be and maybe the both of you really want your freedom. I say this because you knew what would happen going out with the female co-worker, yet you went anyway.
Since you mentioned nothing about kids I assume you have none. For that reason I am going to play devils advocate; if neither of you are really ready to be committed then maybe it would be better to let it go. Especially before you do have kids and these decisions would effect their lives.
[quote]chinadoll wrote:
I don’t see how infidelity can strengthen any relationship (scratching my head)[/quote]
Primarily because you don’t see that it isn’t infidelity anymore.
Infidelity is about engaging in forbidden relationships. Extramarital sex and dating are not forbidden in my marriage, so they’re not infidelity. They’re just a natural part of our lives, the same way they’d be a natural part of our lives if we were single.
How does it strengthen our marriage? The same way lifting weights strengthens your muscles: it challenges our marriage. If I was lazy and insecure, I wouldn’t want to go into a gym and lift weights. It’s hard, and people might laugh. I wouldn’t want an open marriage, either; what if my wife brought home a better guy? I might have to actually work at our marriage. Heaven forbid.
The fact is, I don’t have some natural perpetual right to keep my wife just because I gave her a ring and made some vows. If I want to keep my wife, I have to be better than the next guy.
Most men don’t know how to be better than the next guy. They don’t know or care what their partners like and want in a man, so they’re completely incompetent when they have to deliver. Which means I don’t really have to work too hard at being better than the next guy… just being willing to work at it tends to put me miles ahead of the next guy.
This is where I think Malone is being too hard on himself about being “put to shame” in the stamina department. Women are not consumed with the question of whether a man’s bedroom performance is up to some standard or other. Malone has something the other guy doesn’t: his wife moved to Wisconsin for him.
She didn’t move to Wisconsin for anyone else, did she? Do you think she would move to Wisconsin for anyone else? Probably not. I don’t know what made her willing to move for him, but whatever it was, it’s got to be pretty damned good. And chances are the average guy on the street doesn’t have it.
Same here. I moved over three thousand miles to be close to my wife. Then she moved over two hundred miles to be even closer. Neither of us arranged for employment or housing before moving; we just did it, trusting that we’d figure out the rest when we got there. With devotion like that, we’ve got absolutely nothing to worry about.
Todd~
That’s great. All the best to you and your wife!!!
Chinadoll:)
[quote]malonetd wrote:
One thing I would like to ask of the readers here is advice to get past and get over infidelity, for both of us.[/quote]
I’m in a slightly different situation, but I still had to grapple with the idea of my wife sleeping with other men. It’s one thing to say it’s okay, but it’s quite another to actually believe it. We’ve been trained from a very early age that it’s wrong for “our” women to sleep with other men, so there’s a gut level reaction that takes some adjustment.
Most of the problems an affair causes are caused by jealousy, which is really nothing more than fear. (The rest are primarily caused by a loss of trust, but I think this is a reasonably minor concern in your situation.) It’s important for both of you to understand why the affairs happened, to put a face on this fear and make it something you can handle.
The way to understand is to ask questions. (Getting the details was a smart move on your part; if you don’t get the details, you’ll just make them up yourself, and that’s rarely better than the truth.) Did she do this because she was angry with you? Because she wanted her “fair share”? Because the other man was so irresistible? Because she was unbearably lonely and/or horny? What did she want from it? What did she get from it? The same questions need to be asked of you.
Knowing the answers to those questions is important, because it identifies parts of your relationship you might not have understood before. There’s a distinct difference between sex out of anger and sex out of loneliness; if your spouse was sleeping with another man just to hurt you, that’s something you need to know.
Once you know the answers to the big questions, you can stop being afraid of what the answers are, and start dealing with what those answers mean to your relationship. I think the two of you are going to be just fine. Just remember, a marriage does take work; resting on your laurels is not an option.
CDarklock,
Again, I can only agree. I can hardly believe we disagreed so much about gay marriage a few weeks ago.
Makkun
do you really see yourself changing your whole life for a woman that you are not even sure about?
Decisions like this seem tough when you are in the situation, but seem easy when you step out of it and extract emotion and think logically
[quote]clark4 wrote:
do you really see yourself changing your whole life for a woman that you are not even sure about?
[/quote]
I’m not sure what you’re refering yo here. What do you think I’m not sure about? I’m sure that I love her. I’m sure that I miss her and want to be with her. Am I totally sure about how she feels or if she can make the commitment and sacrifices to get back to where we used to be? No. She says she is. And I have to start trusting her again sometime, why not now? Am I nervous? Hell yeah, but I’m not going to sit here on my ass and let our marriage slowly dissolve. If we end up apart, it’s not going to be because I didn’t try.
As far as changing my whole, well I just changed it two months ago moving here. Now that I see it’s not everything I thought it would be, I just think of it as changing back to what it used to be.
Yeah clark4, trying to figure out a love relationship without having emotions about it makes no sense at all. Are you a Vulcan or something? I’ll tell you what man, I may have trouble doing the Mr. Spock “live long and prosper” hand gesture thingy, but there is one thing that I am not going to have any trouble doing at all: telling malonetd to go for it! Yeah, things are gonna be weird when you see her again, but so what? Take the path of courage, man, and don’t look back. I say f#ck the history, both of you made mistakes, but it’s time to get past all that sh*t, and go get that lady!
Don’t know if you may care for a female perspective… but shit. The more I read, the more tangled it got. The only thing that seems clear is that you seem to love your wife.
I’ve heard it said before that the only real reason people cheat is because something is missing from the relationship that they are trying to find in someone else: in this case for you, it may be the fact that “the girl” was there. Your wife isn’t and hasn’t been. I think that maybe she cheated because , well, now that you had, she could play the “you started it” card and convince herself of her relative lack of guilt. All that aside, what’s done is done on both sides, and you can either move on or away.
Now, I can’t take sides, because I haven’t heard what she has to say about things, but before the pot (your wife) calls the kettle (you) black (or selfish), she should realize that moving with you in the first place if it made her unhappy was unfair to you and herself. It was even more unfair to you to take off and not come back. Whenever you date or marry anyone who is not from the same place as you, and odds are good that will happen, compromise is absolutely key. She wants to be near home, and so do you. Unfortunately, thats not the same place. So? Get a freakin’ map and, mathmatically if you have to, find a halfway point. Neither of you know anyone, you’ll both start new, and you’ll start on even ground. And oh, god, you’ll HAVE EACH OTHER. It can’t be one person giving up all and the other getting all. Resentment and all other sorts o’goodies come up then. I know this, firsthand. And it sucks to argue about the same thing overandoverandoverandover.
I guess in sum, if you can both move past the infidelity, you’re both gonna have to give a little on stuff. I won’t lecture you on cheating: I’m sure you’ve heard it all.
Just curious: how old are the two of you and do you have any kids? That complicates things alot.
Good luck, and for future reference don’t ever, EVER ask about the details of fling. How’d you LISTEN to that???
[quote]CDarklock wrote:
Primarily because you don’t see that it isn’t infidelity anymore.
Infidelity is about engaging in forbidden relationships. Extramarital sex and dating are not forbidden in my marriage, so they’re not infidelity.[/quote]
Forbidden by who? I’m guessing you’re not religious, but I’ll give you a perspective from someone who is. When you talk about it being forbidden, it’s forbidden by God, and just because you and your wife think it’s OK doesn’t mean it’s not wrong anymore.
Gay rights advocates could make the same argument. “Well it’s not forbidden to me and my partner therefore it’s OK.”
Hell, anyone could make that argument. A pro-choice person would certainly say that abortion is not forbidden to them and therefore OK.
You don’t need to have your partner sleep with other people to make sure your committed to being a good husband.
I know plenty of people who are good spouses without the use of such tactics. It sounds like you’re trying to justify what you’re doing.
Do you encourage your children to live with other people off and on to try them out as parents? Would that make you want to be a better parent then the next guy so your children to emancipate themselves from you and find new parents?
Do you also go out and blow all of your money periodically? Financial stress can certainly challenge a marriage.
Todd,
Hey man, i just read the thread and yours is definitely a tough situation. To be honest, i have been through this but the bad part is my relationship eventually ended. my girlfriend and i went to diferent schools (Me Ohio State and her Clemson). She got into the sorority scene and i played sports so there was temptaion everywhere. needless to say, she cheated on me so i figured i “owed” her. Long story short we eventually broke up. Now for my words of wisdom.
I can tell by your posts that you love the midwest (i can relate) but sometimes getting away isnt such a bad thing. Especially in Cali. I was there for 2 weeks when i was going through the girlfriend turmoil and everytime i got upset or angry i would head to the beach a just lay there. cali can be stressful but there are plenty of places to go and just lose touch with reality for a while. also, if things don’t work out you cant force them to. this isnt a suggestion to give up but in hindsight the breakup with my girlfriend was the best thing that could have happened as the girl i am with now is a much better fit for me. granted i wasn’t married so i cant speak in that light but i know how you feel. sometimes you just have to think “whats the worst that can happen and what can i do from there.” usually the outcome isnt as bad as it seems.
anyway, i hope this helps. good luck brother.
[quote]super saiyan wrote:
When you talk about it being forbidden, it’s forbidden by God, and just because you and your wife think it’s OK doesn’t mean it’s not wrong anymore.[/quote]
No, when I talk about it being forbidden, I mean it’s forbidden by your spouse. Which is precisely what God means by it: it’s not the sex that God is forbidding, but the betrayal.
But I’m not trying to turn this into a bible study thread, so I’ll stop there. Suffice to say that you have some studying to do. You can see a common thread running through the ten commandments, if you look hard enough.
It’s a pretty good argument: “you don’t get to tell me how to live my life”. It’s called freedom, and while I’m aware that it scares the shit out of some people, I’m rather attached to the concept.
That’s true. But when I let my partner sleep with other men, and I’m already committed to being a good husband, it makes me a better one.
It’s all about freedom. Some people just aren’t too comfortable with the whole freedom thing, especially when you start talking about freedom that involves a penis.
Oh sorry CDarlock, I must have not read that commandment completely. It probably says:
Thou shalt not commit adultery. (Unless your spouse say it’s OK wink wink)
Are there any other commandments you’d like to amend? How 'bout this:
Thou shalt not kill. (Unless the guy wants to be killed.)
Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy neighbour’s. (Unless you and your neighbor agree to covet each other’s stuff equally)
[quote]super saiyan wrote:
Oh sorry CDarlock, I must have not read that commandment completely.[/quote]
Sure you did! You just didn’t understand it. Adultery, like everything else on the second tablet at Sinai, is a crime of DISHONESTY. If there is no dishonesty, there is no crime.
But, as I’ve said, I don’t want to turn this into a bible study thread. If you really care about this question, PM me.
What if you don’t care about commandments? What if you live your life according to your own rules?
[quote]dookie1481 wrote:
What if you don’t care about commandments? What if you live your life according to your own rules?[/quote]
Unfortunately, we live in a world where many people do. Some of those people will inevitably become your friends or family members in time. So it’s a good idea to understand the biblical meanings of fornication and adultery, which are radically different from the modern meanings:
Fornication is sex without commitment.
Adultery is sex with a married woman.
Both of these hinge on the concept that a woman is both property and a burden. Fornication is forbidden because the man who has sex with a woman is supposed to support her, and failure to do so wrongfully imposes that burden on another. Adultery is forbidden because a woman’s sexuality “belongs” to her husband, and you are “stealing” it from him.
So we can restate these two forbidden actions in the modern world (where women are neither property nor burdens, couples are not always of mixed gender, and relationships are not always between only two people) as:
Do not take a partner without the consent of existing partners and supporters.
Simple and to the point. It may be argued through various avenues that this is still sinful (there’s no pleasing some people), but you can’t really argue that it’s unfair.
I just wanted to say that I am leaving for California this weekend, probably early Friday. I plan to arrive either late Saturday or early Sunday morning.
I’m both excited and nervous. I hope in the end everythimg works out and we can be happy together again.
Wish me luck,
Todd
P.S. As a result of the move, I will be away from T-Nation for a while. But, I will be back.
Todd-
Best of luck to both you and your wife. I hope that you’re able to work things out and your love is rekindled when you’re back together.
You’ll be missed here at T-Nation, but I look forward to hearing that your life is good again.
Have a safe journey to California.
[quote]amym4981 wrote:
… compromise is absolutely key. She wants to be near home, and so do you. Unfortunately, thats not the same place. So? Get a freakin’ map and, mathmatically if you have to, find a halfway point. Neither of you know anyone, you’ll both start new, and you’ll start on even ground…[/quote]
Finally, someone said it!
jaystyles