My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?

Today being Friday I said the Sorrowful Mysteries. In my daily rosary, I have tried to be much better about meditating on the particular mystery, instead of rattling off the prayers without much thought, or only thinking about what I hoped to get out of the prayers.

All through the rosary, though, I kept thinking about the first mystery, the Agony in the Garden. For the first time, I feel like I KNOW what Christ was going through. Now I know that my suffering and problems are nothing compared with His, but everybody has a different tolerance for pain. I think I've reached my max. Our Lord being alone, begging God for comfort, being tempted by Satan and the world be dark and hostile. The next day from the cross, He said to His Father, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" If the Savior who knows all still had those feelings, then I feel a little better having them myself. I KNOW that God hasn't abandoned me, but I FEEL like He has. I cry for hours every day and find no relief from the pain. I pray and I pray and I pray, and I feel like God has stopped listening.

My God,
I willingly admit my weaknesses. I am frail. I need signs. I need to know You're still with me in my grief. I beg you to give me some comfort. Please offer me some sign that You're still here, rooting for us to get through this. My devotion and love for You is not dependent on how you answer my prayers. You have done so much for me. But I desperately need Your intervention, if You can find a way to give it, even though I am not deserving. I love you so much. Why does love have to hurt?

101st blog entry

This is my 101st blog entry. I have been recording our healing process for four months now. How far have we come?

I've gotten to a place where I don't believe my husband cares for the other woman anymore. We have survived the fear, reality, and finally release from the possibility of another child. We have paid her, so she shoudn't be able to hurt us anymore. We are both working equally hard to show the other than we care about our marriage and future. We are sleeping together again. Our therapist has cut back our sessions because she doesn't feel we need as many. We are emotionally, spiritually, and physically close.

What still needs work?
I still have doubts that my husband loves me. The pain when I imagine them together is still crippling. We both still cry a lot. I still feel like my life revolves around the affair and only find relief from the pain when I am busy.

I guess, all in all, we're not too bad, considering. We knew this would be hard, but I am in it for the long haul if my Love is. Hopefully, when I reach 201, the second paragraph will be very short.

Happy 101st entry, Baby. We've come a long way.

If it's a blue dress, it has to be Prada

Beloved,
I wish I could answer those questions. I feel like we are both committed to each other, both very much in love, emotionally and spiritually close, yet we have no joy. Maybe we aren't praying enough, like you had said. Maybe we need to try the EMDR and jumpstart our minds into letting go. At this point, I'm willing to try just about anything.

I can't wait for the day when our intimacy doesn't bring any sadness, and when we go out on a date and don't talk or think about the affair. That to me will be real progress. Until then, we'll keep going to counseling and spiritual direction, keep talking, keep holding each other when we cry, and keep praying. Hard.

I love you.

End of the Novena

Today is my last day of my novena for the other woman. I have been asking St. Therese to work a miracle in her life and let me know that one has happened. I didn't specify the miracle or how I would find out. Yesterday my husband and I got into a long blog discussion. He proposed that maybe God did answer my prayer already and that's why she hasn't bothered us. That may be.

I feel like in order for me to have faith in humanity again and not look at every human I meet as my enemy, I have to know that she has grown through this situation in some way. That a part of her feels remorse, regret, or wants to do things differently next time. She is the absolute most heartless, hard, selfish, callous person I've ever met. I desperately want to know that she is not beyond reform, not that God CAN give her a change of heart, but that He WILL.

I know that it's not up to me to save her and that God is the only one who can do that, and I also know that I think about her way too much; much more than I know she's ever thought about me. I need to let her go, but I don't know how. I want to pray for her every day because I feel that I'm the only person who is, but at the same time, maybe that's making me think of her too much for my own good.

A part of me still wants so badly to go see her at work, not to see if she's pregnant anymore, but just to see her face. I'm afraid, though, in case she is pregnant. I don't even think that's a possibility anymore, but if she is, then I will always be living in fear and it will have raised doubts that I've finally gotten rid of. That's not a possibility to me anymore. Truly. But she could have gotten pregnant since, and then how would that make me feel? Miserable, I already know.

I guess I don't have any answers. I just would like to know some day that she has become a better person.

Dear Lord,
please guide my heart. Help me to surrender to your will. If it is Your will that we never hear from her again, help me to accept that and move on without it. You have taken such wonderful care of us through this and I need to trust that you can see the big picture. Thank you.

And if you're right

Dearest Love,
this is very hard for me to write because I know I've already disappointed you once today. On the one hand, she could have decided not to send anything because a. She was thinking about sending the letters we asked for and decided not to out of spite, b. it was a test to see if you really weren't going to respond, c. she wanted to keep us in suspense, d. she wanted to let you know that you can't cut her out completely, or e. she was just giving us the bare minimum she always has to be a bitch.
On the other hand, you could be right. Maybe she was going to send you something completely vile, and didn't because God is already working in her. If that's the case, I know it brings you great comfort, but it actually makes me miserable, because it means that I will never have my questions answered. It has been so hard on me to have this horrible, vile enemy who has hurt me so much that has never had any contact with me except for her snotty remarks on the phone. It is hard that I wrote her from my heart and she ignored it. It is hard that I can never know her feelings and her side of the story. She has kept so much from us and were are left with so many questions.

If you are right, then it means that as with so much in this situation, I just have to let go and live with the fact that I can't have things the way I want. This is just another area where I have to live with endless doubts and questions that will never be answered.

This isn't fair.

Do you see and accept me as I really am?

Dearest Love,
this is the hardest question yet because I am constantly torn about what I feel and what I know. I believe that you know me better than anyone: my mom, my brothers, my friends. I believe that you are staying with me because you love me. It is very painful right now, and I don't know what would be as strong a reason as going through this pain other than love.

Sometimes, though, I have doubts, because you cheated on me. It's hard for me to accept that you love me and accept me for who I am if you chose someone else for a while. It's hard for me not to give into the feeling that you prefer someone else, that you have the knowledge of who I really am, and that having that knowledge, you can't accept me.

I guess on both sides I feel you SEE me as I really am, but sometimes I doubt that you accept me.....

Love Always,

Your Wife

Do I see and accept you as you really are?

My Love,
This is a difficult question. I think six months ago I would have said absolutely. But six months ago, I didn't know you as deeply as I do now. That would have been honest then, for the information I had.

Only now, though, seeing your vulnerability, can I answer that with a truer honesty. Now that I have been given the gift of seeing your weaker side, seeing your vulnerability, can I answer that I believe I do see and accept you as you really are. Until now, you and I didn't know each other as deeply. We had both been showing each other masks. I didn't want you to see that I needed help and wasn't always superwoman. You didn't want me to see or even see it in yourself that you too are vulnerable to temptation. I love this man I'm married to even more now than I did before the affair. He is infinitely more precious to me because I see that he needs protection too.

I have to wonder, though, is my trying to get you to lose weight, say the right thing in front of my parents, act a certain way around our families me NOT accepting you are you really are? Would I not love you if you didn't? I absolutely would. But is me still trying to control those things me rejecting a part of you?

I don't know the answer, my Love. What are your thoughts?

Love,

Me

What are the qualities that most attracted me to you?

Beloved,
there were many. I'm trying to think back to my initial impressions of you. I thought you were handsome. You were the oldest of the guys in our little group at the Mission, and for some reason that was attractive to me, probably because you were on your own and were just more mature than the others. I remember liking your ideas for the newsletter. I also liked your confidence and assuredness in speaking.

I have said this many times, but the first time that I started to look at you differently was that day in the park when you stopped the two bums from fighting. I thought you very brave and began to admire you in a whole new way. One time when the youth group was together you raised your arms above your head stretching and your shirt came up a little. I saw your belly button and the hair right below it. I knew nothing of men, and had never looked at anyone erotically? before. But when I saw that, there was something very masculine about the hair and I felt a stirring inside me. At the time I didn't know what sexual feelings really were, but in hindsight, I think that's what I felt.

I liked the sharing we started through email. It was a new and exciting friendship for me. I began to look forward, almost like an obsession (as everything I care about tends to become!) to every form of communication between us. I would hang on your every word, and when you and I would exchange a glance my heart would literally skip a beat. That day in the park when you told me about your past, my heart broke for you, and it was the first and last time in years that I saw how vulnerable you could be. There was such a strength in showing your weakness to me: taking off your mask.

Obviously, my feelings matured and deepend over time, but those are the initial things that first made me fall in love with you.

Faithfully,

Your wife

Where do I think God should be in our relationship?

Beloved,

I think God should be the only thing standing between us. Years ago, long before you and I started dating, I attended one of many Opus Dei retreats with my Mom. I remember the priest talking about how love between a man and woman is like a triangle with us at two points and God at the third. he said that when we move ourselves upwards to God, we naturally become closer as well.

God has helped us so much in our marriage, and I firmly believe God brought us together. As long as we continue to reach out to Him, pray together, and use His example as our guidebook, then we can and WILL be happy. I have to remember everyday that the progress we've made is not because either of us are strong or wise, but because God has given and daily gives us the tools we need to fulfill our promises to each other.

I look to you to show me how to love Him. You are the head of our family, and I trust in your guidance and wisdom. God gave you the graces when we received our sacrament to lead us. You just have to reach out and accept them.

Love,

Your Wife

I need your help in......

My Love,
your confidence is something that is very attractive in you. Right now you seem to have a healthy mixture of confidence and humility, that is so appealing.

It is hard for me to ask help from you. It is hard for me to show vulnerability, I think because my Mom never had much patience for it. After Benedict was born, I felt like I was drowning most of the time in the fatigue, pain, and overwhelming new responsibility. I should have asked for help, but didn't want you to worry or have additional burdens. I also didn't want you to think I wasn't a good mother to our new son.

I need your help by accepting that confidence isn't one of my qualities, and being patient when I put myself down. I want you to remind me of my better qualities and lovingly help me see that perhaps I'm not being reasonable.

I need your continued help with Benedict when you are able. You have been so helpful with that, and I just need you to continue exactly as you have been doing.

I also need to know that you are still committed to working through our problems. Please don't be impatient with our progress or at times what feels like a lack of progress. I need to know that you are always willing to fight for us and our love. I need to know that you don't ever regret staying with me and not going to her.

Love,

Your gentler half

How do I feel about continuing to dialogue this week?

Dearest Love,
You are so amazing. Very few husbands would be so willing to discuss feelings. I know it isn't always easy for you, but you have never shown irritation or resentment by my needing it.

I feel excited about dialoguing with you this week and in the future. It is excitement over facing the unknown, kind of like I described in my last letter to you on the weekend. I am so eager to grow closer to you and stronger as a couple. I get excited to read your blog everyday even though I know sometimes what you have to say is painful, because I truly see any insight into your beautiful soul as a gift. In general, maybe we don't have to use their specific format for writing, but sometimes it might be helpful. I feel like you and I are getting very good at communication, and that has been something that I have always been proud of in our relationship and in you.

I can see times when we need to ask for dialogue and use their format if there is a sensitive issue and one of us worries that our feelings might be rejected or belittled. If we begin to feel that way, one of us must ask for a time out to write and then discuss or ask for a safe moment to express feelings.

In our dialoguing this week, whatever form we use, I know that some things might come out that cause pain, but that's okay. It is a step towards a closer and deeper love than we already have.

Love Always,

Your Spouse

Retrouvaille Questions

These are the questions that we were given last. I can't remember which ones you had completed, so I'm going to post them all. When you answer, please put each question in a new posting. I will try to get to at least one of them today. I love you, Darling.

Why do I want to go on living?
I need your help specifically in_____________.
Where do I think God should be in our relationship?
What are the qualities that most attracted me to you?
Do I see and accept you as you really are?
Do you see and accept me as I really am?
What are my feelings about our sexual relationship?

Humiliation/Violation

A few weeks ago I mentioned to our counselor that sometimes I wanted to go to the Mall to see the other woman. Not to talk, just to see her. She asked me if I would be embarrassed to be caught doing that, and I said no.

Maybe under other circumstances I would be embarrassed, but I have suffered the worst humiliation possible: my husband making love to another woman. So shortly into our marriage, my husband was interested in someone else, enough to break his vows. As a woman and a wife, I can't imagine anything being more degrading or humiliating. I know this isn't true, but a part of me feels I won't ever be embarrassed by anything else again.

Something else that ties into this. I don't know if someone said it or if I asked it of myself, but at some point the idea of her feeling that all the questions I was asking, all the knowledge I was gathering about her might seem to her a violation. How would I feel if she knew as much about me as I do her? The honest answer: I wouldn't care. What is a worse violation that her having sex with my husband? What is worse than the two of them having such an obsession that they would speak for hours on the phone every day? What is a bigger violation that the teensy amount of time my husband condescendingly gave me he would be texting her all the while? How can her having my address or knowing where I work, what car I drive, be any worse than those things?

I can't imagine anything more degrading than the man who has pledged before God to love you forever carrying on with another woman. What is worse, is they have nothing in common, and he knew from the beginning that she was a slut. How can I ever recover from this.......?

Dear Lord,
I feel so miserable today. So worthless. It is so hard to believe that my husband can love me sometimes. It is hard for me to accept his love after what he did. Help me to feel like I have some value again, especially to my husband. Please comfort me and us today.
Amen.

Surprise bad night

Yesterday was a good day. We seem to have more and more of those. Before bed, we started to get intimate, when I was attacked by visions of my husband having sex with the other woman. I became so angry with him. I think only one time have we had intimacy without me picturing them. It isn't fair. I started screaming at him. Talking about the vulgar and filthy things he did using vulgar and filthy words. He said to stop. That it wasn't me. I asked him later if it would make it more palatable for me to say "making love to your best friend." He said no. That is much harder for me to think of because it sounds noble and dignified, which what they did certainly wasn't.

As I was screaming at him, I pounded my fists into his chest. When I stopped, he banged his head and fist into a wall, and started hitting his own head. It was awful. We both then just collapsed and cried.

What happened next is very unusual for us. We didn't talk anymore. I went to bed and fell asleep, almost right away. My husband sat in our baby's room for a while, then came to our room and sat next to the bed for a few hours. I have never been able to sleep when there's something on my mind. Last night, however, I didn't want to talk. I didn't want to feel. I just wanted some relief from the pain. I didn't even feel motivated to make things right before bed.

This morning we were very passionate together. We still didn't talk a lot, and now still haven't. Things just don't feel right and I don't know why.

Just to note

Our counselor has cut back our sessions to every other week now. I guess that's a tiny sign that we're making headway!

A task

I don't know why, but I have felt compelled to spiritually reach out to the other woman. I have not only felt a need to pray for her, but I want to. I want to help her. I want to be her friend from a distance, that she never knows she has. I realize that if I do not pray for her, she might never have anyone else to. Because of this ugly ugly business, both of our futures have been somehow changed by the other. I don't want to know her, but I want to help her because our lives somehow became so interwoven. Maybe if I pray for her, someday it will do some good.

I have also come to another realization, or maybe it's another another holy peace and step in my healing. I don't want to go see her. I don't want to try and meet her. I want, if it be God's will, for Him to orchestrate it completely, for both of our healing. I no longer want to make it happen. If it be God's will, I leave it to Him to plan it.

Dear Lord,
I trust in You. I have had moments of weakness and doubts, for which I am ashamed, but I said in Confession that I am resolved to do better. You can see the future much better than I. I trust in Your holy insight that You can make all things right. Please use this horrible circumstance to make both of us better, stronger, wiser women. Bless her. Bless me. Not because we, either of us are worthy, but because we are both Your daughters. She doesn't know it, but her heart wants Your love too.

A week together

My husband took a week off from work. Tonight ends this beautiful break together. We went to the mountains over night, and spent the rest of the week very quietly at home.

The beginning of the week was difficult. We met an estranged family member and seemed to dwell a lot on our own pain. As the week went on, though, I started to have more peace. I don't know when it or how, but at some point I stopped worrying that there was another baby. I felt ashamed for my lack of faith.

Right now, all I feel is a desire for the other woman to have peace now too. I don't feel anymore that she could hurt us. I don't worry about there being a baby. I want her to be able to move on too, and I hope that her not writing hasn't made it impossible for her.

My husband and I are strong. Her power is no more because she doesn't have that means of leverage against us. I feel confident that we are going to survive this, and that we can be happy again.

Dear Lord,
forgive me my weakness. I haven't been a very good daughter lately. I have been plagued by doubts and fears, forgetting Your beautiful signs, and doubting that Your will is being done. Please forgive me my frailties. Is there no end to my weakness?

I love You so much and and resolved to do better, with Your merciful help.

Protection

The past few days have been hard. I have been feeling very vulnerable, and have been acutely aware of how dangerous my husband's behavior was. It's been hard to let go of the fact that we can't have proof that the other baby's gone. That uncertainty is just one of the many ways that the situation has left our family vulnerable.

He could have given me an STD since the other woman is very promiscuous, and she even mentioned once a fear of having something.

He risked our finances by creating another child to support.

By bringing another woman into our lives, he risked her being psychotic and and dangerous when crossed.

I wanted my husband to ensure that she could never harm us in some legal way, but realistically, there's nothing he can do to stop her if she really wants to be a problem in our lives. I need to trust that my husband will do all he can, and that God will take care of the rest. God is the only one I should put my absolute and unconditional faith in. My husband will do all he can, but he has limitations that God does not.

Please, Lord, keep our family safe from harm.

Urgent

Today I feel an urgent need to pray. I woke up and said my rosary before even getting out of bed. I keep praying the Memorare, over and over. I don't know what is different about today. Maybe nothing we'll ever know, but I have to pray urgently. Darling, please join me.