What would you do?

I wasn't a "hidden" mistress. His family knew of me and I had spoken with many of them.

No, I don't believe for a minute it's about his wife other than he sees her love and caring for her kids being expressed. Being a mother is not the same as being a wife. Unless he is looking for another mother, that's the only attraction there other than guilt for leaving to begin with, guilt for not being there for his son, and guilt that this happened to his daughter because he was the bad guy. How do I know this? I've watched the manipulation by his parents, his wife and his daughter for years. His parents want him to live the life they want. His wife used the kids constantly to make him feel guilty he left and creating false emergency situations. His daughter played avoidance games and wouldn't see him much when he was not living there and he wanted her to meet me but then complained she missed him. He wasn't important enough to make time for, but she wanted him to be there at home when she was there. It's normal at her age, to be involved in only yourself. It's also normal for her to be scared going through cancer, surgery, chemo/radiation and now it's back.

This man has been through therapy, Divorce Care and many other things and kept coming to the same conclusion, the marriage is over. Even when he went back the last time against the odds, it was a matter of months before he came to the same conclusion as always, life there with her just wasn't what he wanted and neither of them were willing to do the work to make it happen. They'd act and "try" for a few weeks, maybe a month, but revert back to old patterns and their real selves. He'd move out again.

There's another possibility that nobody has considered. Maybe his daughter will survive. Maybe there will be some new treatment, some miracle from God. My point was I don't want anyone to die but I do believe it is inevitable the "marriage" will end sooner or later regardless of his daughter's fate.

I don't know what the future holds for me. I know I have work to do on me in the areas of self esteem and self confidence. It's been six and a half weeks and if you've been reading I was struggling with what to do with my life before this happened. It's not a matter of putting my life on hold, but I have not figured out what I want that life to be, what I want to do for a career, where I want to live, etc. I'm not going to go off on tangents on whims. I'm not running out and looking for a relationship. First, I am nowhere near ready to even consider it. Second, I have to find "me" (whoever that is now) whether it's with him, without him, or if the future holds something else.

I totally agree.

The sense of myself was shaky before this happened. I agree I have to find that and get that back. It was something I expressed many times before this happened. I'm just not sure how to do that. My therapist hasn't been much help in this area other than keep pushing drugs.

Thanks Eva.

I really agree with what Jespah has to say about focusing on the financial stuff right now. It has two benefits. One is the obvious benefit, that you avoid possible financial disaster. (Great job on tracking down the payroll mistake and rectifying it!)

The other benefit is to have a focus, an activity, an IMPORTANT activity. Both of my parents are clinically depressed, there have been suicides (plural) on both sides of my family, and I have been keeping depression at bay (usually successfully) for most of my life. I know a lot about the techniques. Activity, whether of the mind or the body, ideally both, is one of the most surefire ways to get oneself out of the abyss.

Good luck.

When I referred to 'hidden', I was referring to the first years of your relationship, when he was still living with his wife. I did assume at that juncture, your relationship was a secret--and that if he knew he could resume that now, it may be telling that he hasn't.

Not trying to say hurtful things, but wanting you to see that he probably is aware that he could have you in his life at some level--but had recommitted to his wife.

I thought if you looked at this, it may help you to decide to heal, and disentangle your heart. But, reading your response, you are interesting in finding 'you'--and that is the best thing I've heard in a while. The fact that you are still open to his return is your business. I'll reserve comments on that aspect from now on.

That was a long, long time ago and after the first few years his wife did know. I always wondered why she allowed it to continue but I suppose I justified it as she just didn't care and was doing the same thing he was, staying together "for the kids" (which I never thought was a good idea for anyone, Kids are so much more observant than parents give them credit for). It wasn't hidden in any way,was very public and open with friends, co-workers, etc. The only place it was "hidden" was from the kids. So resuming a "hidden" relationship would be going back 15-20 years for us.

Why he hasn't called.....It's the most shocking and hurtful part of all. He has never not called after a few weeks or so or had some kind of contact by email or phone. It hurts that it was all so sudden to end the relationship after all we mean to each other and all we've shared, with no chance to even remain in contact or attempt to be friends. I really feel he is thinking this is the "right" thing to do, it's what his family thinks he "should" do (and has been very vocal about). They have never supported his decision and his wife at first used the kids and made up crisises about them to get him feeling guilty he left. That didn't work when his son was married and his daughter was off at college, but once she graduated and was back home, there were times that were still manipulative by his wife regarding his daughter, his daughter's never accepting her father's leaving and wanting Mommy & Daddy to be back together. Then his son's wife dumped decisions about his son on his wife and he felt it wasn't fair she had to handle those decisions by herself so there was either some "poor me" stuff or "I should be there" stuff going on there. In our joint therapy a few years ago, the therapist we had said the marriage was long gone and it was us that had the "marriage" type relationship, but he kept trying to find a way to end the marriage without anyone being upset, angry or hurt and since that solution didn't exist, he struggled with getting to a point to do what would make him happy versus what would make his kids, his parents, his sister happy.

In someways I think he's trying to "make up" for leaving and not "being there" for his kids in recent years. I don't know if he's bargaining with God to sacrifice his happiness and going back for a possible miracle, or hoping the less stress she has to deal with might buy her more time. (She did get a test result the day before that the chemo session the month before had shrunk the cancer a little bit. I know from my dad any tiny improvement gave you hope that maybe he could beat it somehow but even without stress, it was a matter of time with inoperable cancer).

I know that's not rational to think that his leaving caused his son's attempt at suicide or his daughter's cancer but when you are grieving it's fear and guilt that motivate you as well as the grief. You don't always make the wisest decisions when you are running on these emotions. He continually expressed a lot of feelings to me about his son- how he should have done more, should have given him better advice, should have somehow known and stopped it.

I don't know if he's thinking that they really can somehow recreate a time from the past when there was love and happiness and safety for his daughter. I don't know if it's a combination of feeling sorry for his wife taking care of the kids on her own and guilt. I just don't know what he's thinking but the one thing I am sure of is that marriage is not a healthy one based on love, trust, communication and commitment between a husband and wife. That's been gone for over 20 years before I was on the radar screen.

There may still be some affection and bonding because of the kids, but people don't change who they are. They might pull off an act in the short term while they have a common goal for their daughter but eventually the reality and day to day being together will bring up the same personalities, the same problems, the same distance, the same lack of communication. You can't base recreating a husband/wife relationship on shared tragedy of losing both kids. According to the experts, it's hard enough for a strong marriage to survive the loss of one child, let alone two in a marriage that has been gone for over 20 years.

The thing I keep thinking about is how his wife was always more concerned that he didn't wind up with me than if he left her. She told him no matter what happened she didn't want him to be with me. How much of that motivated her to stay in the marriage I don't know and I don't know that it was a conscious, scheming or vindictive thing if she was motivated that way. I do know that it's a hell of a price to pay to lose both kids and get a man back living with you who loves someone else, who has shared with that person the relationship they lost 20+ years ago and will never get back. That's the thing about life that is lost in all this. None of us can ever go back to what was 20+ years ago. Too much has happened, too much has changed.

Now he's losing his daughter too. It's cutting at the core of him and I don't think he's focused on anything other than his pain, his loss, his grief and his guilt. Just like I lost "me" in the past few years due to all my losses, I think he's overwhelmed emotionally as well. For a few months before this happened I noticed the changes in him, sullen, moody, irratable and always exhausted, falling asleep just about anywhere he sat down. I was afraid he was going to crash emotionally with all the losses and stresses of his job/classes. I had no idea he was coping with the diagnosis of his daughter's cancer coming back and inoperable. Someone said earlier about a leaf caught in the current that can't get out. It's easy to get caught in the downward spiral as life keeps taking everything that you love and care about and lose all perspective about anything else. I know because I let that happen to me.




He could have me in his life on some level, but it would mean that I would take time away from his daughter (remember he has to take night classes required for his job within a strict timeframe for certification or he loses the job. As a school teacher, the daytime job doesn't end when school does, there are papers to grade, lesson plans to prepare and so on. The night school takes many nights per week). He'd also have to deal with my insecurities and frustration about my inability to help or do anything for his daughter.

It could be that he is just overwhelmed, can't handle it all and taking the safest, most comfortable path of least resistance. He's internalized his vulnerable feelings most of his life rather than expressing them and tends to try to keep busy to try to avoid them.

If he's recommitted, it's to his daughter and doing whatever he has to do to make the time she has left happy and to help care for her.



Decide to heal and disentangle your heart- I recognize I have to focus on my survival, getting back to work, my finances, and finding whoever "me" is again. Healing and disentangling my heart is not something I believe you can just decide and turn on/off. A major part of my heart and life are not going to evaporate or just go away. He will always be a major part of my heart and my life no matter what happens.

I haven't stopped loving him because he's doing what he felt he had to do.
I may be sad, scared and grieving and not agree with what he's doing or whether or not this is wise, rational or the best decision for anyone involved, but I also can appreciate the loss of losing two kids in their 20's within a few years and the overwhelming grief and helplessness he must be feeling. In the end, he has to live with himself and whether or not he did enough for his daughter or did the right thing for him breaking up with me and ending our life together. I know we have something special and I know we could still make it work, but I can't make that choice for him. I just pray that somehow God will find a way for all of us to find peace and happiness someday.

You're lucky you've been keeping it at bay but it sounds like you have learned about depression from your parents and others. One of the people I worked with always thought depression was just being upset or sad occassionally and you should "snap out of it" until his wife suffered from major depression. He, like you, learned because of them and came to have a better understanding of the whys you really can't move on or snap out of it like people expect you to.

Then that's your answer as to why he hasn't called.

Camille, sometimes in life we experience things we'll never get over. Sometimes it's not possible to ever have closure, because the person who can answer our questions is gone or can't give us the answers we need. And sometimes there simply are no answers.

You don't "get over it." You just have to accept that it happened and move on. Because life goes on. Does that make more sense?

And sometimes, as Frasier quoted Alfred Lord Tennyson in the last Frasier show, our biggest regrets in our life are when we stay in the safe port of yesterday instead of taking chances and finding out later that the true love we walked away from was the most important part of life and we have settled for something far less. For the first time...rather than over analyzing a relationship to death, he is about to let the process
of love just happen. I believe when Frasier walked out on his balcony with
the rain falling..he was cleansed..all his hang ups and fears were "washed" away, and he knew what he had to do. No talking to Niles about it...no
discussing it over with Roz or his father...it was a life affirming Frasier generated moment. He finally went after something instead of letting it slip away or over-analyze it.

When I started this thread, we were still together but had just found out about his daughter and her asking him to "come home". I was looking for an external view because I was way too close to the situation to be objective.

With very few exceptions, most people agreed he should spend as much time as possible with his daughter and to be there round the clock as the end nears, but not give up his new life and the relationship with me where real love exists and not ghosts of the long gone past to go back. To be with his daughter as much as possible was a given by everyone involved, but to move in, give up his own life, and try to recreate a fantasy world of Mommy and Daddy coming back together to fulfill his daughter's dying wish was not an option that should be taken.

Unfortunately, in the throes of overwhelming emotion we don't always see the obvious even when it's presented to us. Try as I did to show him how irrational it would be to take the path his daughter wanted and how much it would impact and hurt so many people, in the end my own fears took over and I probably helped drive him back there trying to control what his decision would be.

I never ever expected this thread would turn into one about my heartbreak of losing him completely in my life, my depression and desperation. There have been many times that without having a connection to another human being on this board I don't know what I would have done. The darkness, the fear, the tears, the disappointments..... You have all been there for me in ways I never expected strangers to be and I consider many of you friends for giving so much of yourselves for me. I will always be grateful for all of you. Thank you all.

Now it seems the thread is becoming tedious for everyone and not really productive anymore. There are so many different opinions on whether or not I'm doing enough, trying enough, moving on/getting over it fast enough, leaving doors open for him, putting my life on hold or what I should be doing right now or in the future. I recognize I have to get on with the business of living and surviving, finding purpose, even if life ahead is not what I want it to be. I recognize that if he and I come back together someday that each of us would have to change some things about our lives so the relationship could really work again. He'd have to finally put his marriage behind him and letting obsessive guilt drive him, I'd have to stop trying to control him and letting obsessive fears drive me, and we'd both have to build trust between us again. But I have no doubt we could make it on those terms. The truth is I love him and always will no matter what life brings. I will always be here for him in good times or bad. Will we ever have that chance that we came so close to again? I can only pray that is God's plan as we learn lessons from this and if not, I pray God will help all of us to find our way through what remains of this life.

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me-
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads-you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.


Take care my friends.

Life is often tedious, Camille. We know that. Many of us here can relate to the poem. We have that "One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will..." You're one of us now, Camille.

If this is getting tedious, come play on some of the other threads for awhile. "Play" is greatly underrated, you know. Underneath all the sorrow, I bet you've got a great sense of humor. Come show us! Betcha we can make you laugh!

Has anyone seen Camille recently?

Camille I hope you are still here reading. I have had to do a lot of searching my conscience to finally post this. It's taken me a long time to get to this point and it has not come easy.

You have spent 20 years together beating all the odds. It is not over. The last chapter does not have to have been written. Don't believe for a minute that your guy doesn't love you. Don't believe for a minute that he wanted your relationship to be over. Don't believe for a minute that he loves his wife. How do I know? I could be the wife you write about.

My husband met someone many years ago and started an "affair", at least that's what I wanted to believe. An affair doesn't mean the end of a marriage. It doesn't mean the spouse doesn't still love the marriage partner. An affair means something is being satisfied that cannot be satisfied within the marriage. An affair is never worth risking your family or marriage.

In my husband's case it wasn't an affair at all. It was a long term emotional relationship for 25 years based on love and friendship. I hated her. I wanted her dead. I wanted her to get out of my life so we could be happy as a family again.

When he left me for her the first time I did everything the books and magazines tell you to do. I colored my hair, lost weight, avoided his phone calls and tried to make myself more attractive to him. It was my attempt to make him realize what he was throwing away. It didn't work. We had one child still at home with me. I started making up excuses to call him about some "crisis" involving our child. I managed to get him to come back home to me several times. It was always short term. Within a few months he would leave again.

When I think back to that time I remember being more concerned about him not being with her than anything else. I was sure if she wasn't around we could recapture our past and keep our marriage together. It was all about her. It was all her fault. She was the only reason my marriage was in trouble.

I prayed a lot. I read books like "The Power of the Praying Wife". I believed what God had joined together no mortal could separate. I believed God would keep us together and punish that horrid evil woman. My in-laws were a great help to me in providing guilt and pushing their morals on him.

My husband was an emotional wreck. He loved her so much and wanted a life with her. He also loved his son and wanted to be with him. When he would come to a point where he would want to leave and pursue happiness with her the whole family would participate in the guilt fest.

What neither of us realized was our son knew how bad our marriage was but he played along with his assigned part in the drama of the wounded son. Five years ago our son went out with a family friend and spent the night talking, crying and drinking. He told his friend about how many years he spent watching our marriage disintegrate, how many times he wished we would split up and be happy apart, but he kept holding out hope against hope that we would stay together and be a happy family again. As he got older and watched the games and guilt that kept bringing his father home he started to feel guilty himself for being part of keeping his father from being happy. He started to see that our marriage was not based on trust, friendship and love but obligation and guilt.

He wanted to do something to free us from the prison we had built in our family. So he got drunk, got behind the wheel of his car and drove into an overhead embankment on the interstate.
A suicide note was found in the car that said it was his fault we didn't split up and find happiness with others. If it wasn't for him there wouldn't have been crisis after crisis that caused his father grief and guilt and brought him home. If it wasn't for him, there wouldn't be any obligation to stay together. He wrote that he couldn't live with himself anymore that he was the reason his father was not with someone he loved and that neither of us were happy, or ever would be.

My son didn't die. He was paralyzed and had massive internal injuries. He could not speak or communicate. Most of the time there were tears in his eyes.

My husband and I were pulled together in grief over our son. We saw caring sides of each other we had not seen in years as we cared for our son together. We thought it was love that had never died and went back together again. My husband ended his relationship with her. I don't know what made me happier. Was it that he was coming back to our marriage or that he ended things with her? She continued to contact him but he wouldn't respond. He kept telling me it was really over with her. I didn't care. I had him back and she was finally gone.

A few months later my son died from complications of his internal injuries. My husband and I held each other in our grief during the funeral and the months that followed taking care of closure of accounts, going through possessions. Nothing can hurt more than losing your child.

My husband went into a deep depression. He wanted nothing to do with life. Life had taken all that was precious to him. He became bitter and hard. He felt trapped in a life he didn't want to be living. During an argument months later it came out that he still loved HER, still missed HER, still wanted HER.

I did what I always did. Nothing. I kept hoping it would go away. I kept hoping it was just his grief talking and not really what he felt in his heart. He didn't leave and didn't mention it again. We went through the motions with other family members. They all thought we had gotten beyond the "affair", our son's death and our marriage was better than ever. Looking back, they thought what they wanted it to be, not what it really was. We lived in the same house but were like strangers. Without our son there was nothing left to keep us together. It had always been about our child.

Six months later he told me he was leaving for good and wanted a divorce. He said he didn't want to live a lie for the rest of his life. He was going to see if he could find her and if there was any chance for them to be together again. I was sure he would be back home again. He always came back.

The separation papers arrived within weeks. I wasn't surprised. We'd been here before too. He'd be back. I knew he would. Our families played their assigned roles in the drama of guilt. This time he wasn't playing his role. He didn't come back. He found her again. She had never gotten involved with anyone else. She still loved him but she wouldn't take him back unless he was really through with me. When the divorce was final, they finally got together and married a few months later. I haven't seen him so happy in over 35 years, when we were first married.

I expected to grieve hard. I expected to be angry. I expected to feel alone. Instead I felt relief. We weren't playing the dysfunctional drama we had played for years and years. I started to realize I never did "have him", even when he returned home to me. His heart had never left her. I started to realize that it had become more important to me that she not get him than whether or not he loved me. She gave him something I stopped giving him . She gave him the mature love between a man and a woman that endures with or without children. She had nothing to use to make him feel guilty, no obligations to hold him. She only had her love for him to offer and their hearts were held together closer than any marriage vows, guilt or obligation ever held him to me after she came into his life.

It wasn't until he left and remarried that I really looked at my part in the breakdown of our marriage. It was easy to blame her. It was easy to make him responsible. It wasn't so easy to see my own responsibility. I stopped treating him like a lover. I treated him like a father, a provider, a handyman, a companion, maybe a friend but not a husband. We taught our son that marriage was about guilt and obligation. We taught him no matter how unhappy you were you didn't leave.

That love I thought had rekindled was nothing but the mutual love, caring and grief for our son as he was dying. Those feelings overwhelmed any rational thoughts or feelings. When he died the final chapter was written in our marriage.

It's been 5 years now since they married. I've met someone that I share a deep and loving relationship with. In many ways it is better than my marriage ever was. I pray a lot now but my prayers are different than before. I pray with gratitude for what was, for our son. I pray for acceptance of what is. I pray for his happiness. Through God I found forgiveness for him, for her, but even more important, for me. I had to forgive myself for keeping them apart all those years and in doing so, destroying all of our lives.

Are there regrets? Oh yes. There are many. My biggest regret? I didn't let my husband leave the first time he tried. You can't force love to return or a marriage to be revived because of shared tragedy after so many years of love with another. My son might still be alive if we had faced the reality that our marriage was over and my husband loved another. You can't go back, you can only go forward. We never lose the love we shared with anyone, but sometimes love isn't meant to be shared for a lifetime. Sometimes part of God's bigger plan is for love to leave so an even greater love can come into your life.
I don't want to give you false hope, but I hope your fellow realizes this sooner rather than later. I know you feel you drove him away with your fears the last months since both his children got sick. Those were natural fears. You could never compete with dying children. The emotions that come with losing your child are so overwhelming you don't see anything else and you want to escape to a time when everyone was happy and safe. As grief subsides true feelings come to the surface again. Life goes on. Your love has withstood the test of time, against all odds. You are the love, support and strength he has come to rely on. You are the one he will always love. If he loved his wife, you wouldn't have been in his life for 20 years.

Give the process some time Camille. Take care of yourself and finding you again. Trust God has a bigger plan and be open to letting go and letting God be in control. If you do trust God, no matter what happens, you'll be in good hands.

Hmmm.
I spy something.....fishy.

You too, Sofia?

Quite.

Worrisome, eh?

Yes, it is.

Me too.

Though it is surely possible, and if so, very hard on all.

Whatever on the fishiness. Doesn't matter one way or the other; why NOT take it at face value?

I have been wondering about Camille too, by the way. You out there? How are things?

It may not matter one way or the other to you.

It is incredibly transparent to me, and changes my participation. I think its unhealthy to pretend. It's like enabling someone to exist in a state of denial and altered reality.

But, no one is telling you what to do, soz. You can certainly still play at this, if you choose. I merely pointed out what I see.