Desperate

From D A
July 2003

Dr. Beverlee,

I have been married over 17 years. Never more in love with my husband as I am today, or now, as I think I am today. He travels so, so much, I am left at home with our daughters now teenagers many, many nights. I never saw this as a problem as I trusted him to no end. Although I didn't like his traveling, I didn't say much about it because I
didn't want to burden him with it because I "knew" he didn't like the travel himself and I didn't want to make it any harder on him. Always when he returned, it was like a new date for me. I dolled myself up and readied myself only to realize that the effort went unnoticed. Anyway, several months ago, I became very insecure and felt he wasn't the same upon his return from his Asian trips. The intimacy didn't change, but other, small changes (only a woman would recognize) occurred. I felt the lack of affection in him and became very depressed at times when he was gone. I asked him point blank if his feelings had changed for me but all he said was that he was tired from his trip. About 4 months after my initial feeling of insecurities came, I met someone who gave me the attention I so craved from my husband. I spent several hours with him, holding and kissing him. A week later, I traveled 3 hours to see him and became very intimate with him that evening (only to find out that he couldn't give me what my husband gave me by way of intimacy). A week later, my husband found out about this and told me it was over. I asked him at that point if he had been seeing anyone else and he replied yes for about 5 months now, a 27-year-old Phillipina with a 7-year-old son and a husband. To try and make a long story short, he agreed (after my begging him to stay) to stay and try and make it work for the family. Apparently, he had broken it off with her the week I met this other gentleman (the irony). But not before he told me he thinks he thinks he
fell in love with this other woman and that he stopped loving me several months ago. That while we made love, he felt disloyal to her. Now I am believing that he settled for me and I won him on a technicality (I own have his assets, I bore his children, she will lose her son if she leaves her husband, not to mention be shipped back to the Phillipines if she divorces her husband per Japan law). What if she wasn't in that predicament? I think he would have left me in a heartbeat. How can I live with myself knowing all of this? How can I respect myself? How can I believe I have any value knowing this? How can I believe that he loves me as he now says? How can I forget these heart-piercing words?

Desperate for answers

Dear Desperate:

It appears for most of the seventeen years of your marriage, you have had a caring, intimate relationship with your husband. During your marriage you both created a family with girls who are now teenagers.

Something occurred in your relationship with your husband during the past year that led to the dual infidelity. It is important to understand what changed between both of you because the incidents are unimportant compared to the family life you now maintain. Infidelity often occurs when two people have stopped paying attention to each other’s needs and personal growth. All of us change over time and we adapt to a partner’s different needs and, hopefully, the marriage matures and survives this personal growth and differences. In fact the marriage can become a richer experience with these necessary transitions.

Throwing away the home you built with a 17-year foundation would be destructive to 4 people.

The Yin: Communicate, communicate, and communicate when you husband is not tired from travel. Sit down and explore the changes each of you felt over time. Each person speaks without interruption while the other listens. Try to sit in the other’s chair. Give yourselves time to think about the other’s feelings and then reply the next day. Listening very carefully to another person is the key to awareness and effective change. If you cannot do this without a guide, seek counseling help as a couple with a well-trained family therapist and both you and the therapist need to ask the right questions. What happened emotionally, and why. Do not replay who did what to whom. Do not mind-read the other mate. Do not create guilt and pain in an endless round of recrimination.

The Yang: Each of you signaled the other mate that the marriage was troubled when you sought companionship and intimacy elsewhere. Look at your insecurity in believing he would have “left you in a heart beat”. He didn’t. Just as you felt a change in his relationship with you, he might have noticed something different in you. Lots of men divorce their wives and move on leaving behind major financial assets and children. He obviously came home because he wanted to.

Your belief in yourself is work you need to do because no outside person can be responsible for this. When we value our true spirit, nothing can permanently intervene and destroy the confidence and self-esteem. On my book I speak at length about development of spirit, and although self-esteem can be hard to maintain, it is worth the effort.

Please feel free to share this with your husband and to write again,

Best Wishes,
Dr. Beverlee
Author, The Day the Music Stopped, re-enchantment of our lost spirit
www.selfdiscoveryofspirit.com or my email address: beverleesee4ever@aol.com