To be passionately pursued

I have been spiralling. I keep looking at Abigails picture like she's a terrorist and I need to find her and destroy her. I can feel the bitterness tighten and tighten deep inside...I joined a chat group, because I was convinced that my husband was on it. This time I didn't punk out and got the guy to send me his picture...definitely not my husband...I felt so shitty about it that I explained that I am in fact not looking for someone to hookup with and that I thought he was my husband blah blah blah I am so sorry etc etc...I then kept on apologising like a crazy woman and I wondered why? Why couldn't I just delete the account..and then I realised its because he was paying me attention and it was dangerous. I soaked it up like a sun starved eskimo and it put me in a tailspin. I apologised one more time like a stuck record and then I went for a drive.What the hell was I doing - up to now my hands have been clean, I struck up a report with internet guy in hopes of revealing my husband, but now that I knew it wasn't him - I was in quicksand, liable to lose the moral high ground.

I wondered what wrong in my relationship with my husband - why do I keep thinking his cheating on me still? Why do I keep going round and round in circles...and I realised its because my husband is not showing me love the way I need him to. His not speaking my language. I desperately need him to be overwhelming passionate about me. I need him to TELL ME how much he cares, how much I mean to him. He has words for all these other woman, but no words for me. He buys me things and does things to show me that he cares, but I don't want things - all I want is him. I want him to share himself with me. I want him to look into my eyes and tell me that I am his universe and that he would be lost without me. I want him to passionately declare himself to me and court me all over again and thats exactly what I told him...he then got angry with me. I told him that I feel rejected and unloved and he said how is it possible, when he does so many things for me...I said I appreciate all that his done, but its not what I need. Its not enough -

He was angry with me, because I needed him to speak to me...he says I keep changing things and that I am always finding something wrong with him.

That was on Thursday...on Saturday we had a shouting match. I told him that he has all these words, for all his women but he has none for me. He shouted that he would have said anything to sleep with them and I told him that his not getting the point. I don't care what he told them...what I care about is that he had a commnuication plan for these women. He wanted them and he went after them- Where is my plan? Why can't he tell me things, when he obviously has no problem talking to women...where is his passionate persuit of me? Its not enough that he does things, I need him to talk to me. We shouted at each for the next 20 minutes - me begging him to understand what I need, and him defensive what he percieved as a critism and not a cry for help. He told me that I need put my self in his shoes and understand he is has been trying and how must he feel when his been doing all these things...he even said, that maybe he should stop making me breakfast and do this instead. And thats when I finally understood - I understood that maybe I am asking him to do something that he doesn't feel. I am asking him to be passionate about me, but he can't be because thats not how he feels. He hides behind doing things like doing all the chores, making me breakfast...its all stuff, but never him.

I asked him to think about how he loves me. Does he love me like a lover or like a friend.

Its our engagement all over again. I have always felt that I pushed him into it - and to this day he says I didn't. I remember issuing an ultimatum and funny enough after he proposed - maybe two/three weeks later he found himself a prostitute. Maybe I should have just let go...and here I am again, but I won't make the same mistake twice...

I told him that I have one more thing to say and this will be end of it - I want him to note and remember that there once was a time in our marriage when I fought and begged him to share himself with me. He apologised for shouting and then that was it. He surprised me with ice-cream later. I would have been happier with a hug. Argument over.

Yesterday I went for a drive to sea and I watched a small little bird battle against the winds. Her wings pumped furiously, trying to make headway - but she stayed on exactly the same spot. She kept on trying, but the winds were to strong. Didn't she know that she was fighting against something bigger than her? Maybe she should just stop and wait for the winds to die down and try again.

I don't want to have to fight with my husband to get him to love me.

p.s. I deleted the account with internet guy - even now when things are not looking good - my marriage won't fail because I didn't try my best.

Paranoi my good friend...

Through the years there has been this consistent messaging from various sectors that we shouldn't allow our feelings to rule over our minds, that we need to push past them and not let it control us.

And I get it - sometimes your feelings can lead you astray. They are transient and often are formed by expieriences that have no bearing in the present... for me this applied directly to my own mini porn addiction. I read so many bodice rippers that I believe it numbed my ability to have a normal sexual relationship with my husband because I expected to have the constant intense feelings that litter that kind of literature...and when those feelings aren't there, you think you're not in love. So yeah, feelings sometimes are not your friend - but what about the role of feelings and intuition when it comes to infidelity and more specifically feelings post discovery.

Should our feelings be considered paranoi or intuition? Are our feelings based on our own version of a post traumatic stress disorder and therefore unreliable at worst or red flags at best?

Yesterday I realised that for me it doesn't matter. I know my husband is untrustworthy and I would be foolish to even consider him as a source of real information, so all I have is me...me and my feelings. My feelings helped me to understand that something was wrong that led me to his discovery. My feelings told me that he was a lying peice of a shit, when on the surface he gave a performance of a lifetime. I believed that God used my feelings to save me - its all I had when I had no evidence to go on. However there is a difference now, previously I believe that God directed to me the key questions that eventually led for all his deceit to surface. I never had a sense that I was alone...but now I do. My feelings aren't accompanied by a soothing and calming next step. I feel alone with my feelings and makes me wonder if I am in fact going crazy.  But even then...isn't that enough to leave?

How can I stay, if I can't even trust myself enough to know when his up to no good? I can't bear being tossed around by my feelings. I would leave just for calmness sake...

My husband seems to think that my staying is hanging on his ability to be honest and for a while I thought so to - but I have since discovered that far more critical than this is not whether I can trust my husband again, its whether I can trust myself.

The impact of infidelity on your career

I am ambitious. I always have been and always will be. I was raised to prize excellence. I am a hard worker...perhaps to hard as my husband as often called me a workoholic. But he never understood the joy that comes from a job well done.

So when I first found out that he was cheating on me, my work ethic was shot to hell. Unable to focus on anything but his infidelity - deadlines went passed unheeded. In meetings I spaced out, unable to keep to stop myself from thinking about whats going to happen or what he was doing at that exact moment. It took me about 5 months to get to a place of almost functioning the way I used to - and now I am thinking about my future.

I always knew I would be a life long learner. I love studying and learning new things - I find meaning in gathering knowledge and implementing it - so now at the point in my life, I am trying to position myself to do whatever I want to do for the next 20 odd years ( I am a bit of a planner:-))...

The thing is though- instead of thinking of what I would love to do...what would bring me happiness, I now think about what I need to do in order to have the best shot at bringing money in, as a single mom.  I would love to be an historian - there are gaps in south african history around coloured culture and for too long we have ingnored it in favour of white or black culture. I would like to part of the movement that brings about coloured pride - this however seems like a pipe dream right now. Nobody wants to pay consistently for this sort of thing - I would need to have a reliable partner to pull it off. A reliable partner that I don't have.

So I find myself, looking at options at how to study more indepth in the field that I am currently in. Maybe I should do my masters in adult education? I can do it and I do it well, virtually all my work experience is in this field and it would be the natural next step...but I long for unchartered territories...perhaps the closet I will ever get is the discovery history channel.

His taken more from me than he probably realises.  His taken away my freedom to choose to something bold and new. I could never risk losing the roof over our heads for a new adventure - my sense of responsibility is to deeply ingrained.

It makes me wonder how many women have compromised their dreams because their partners have let them down? How many women chose to stay in marriages, because on their own - they can't provide a standard of living that they want for their children.

Why couldn't he have loved me more?