Healing over time??

Statistics: Submitted by: MancalledTribe Article ID: 454 Total views: 859 Word Count: 1267 Rating: 5.00 --Choose-- 0 1 2 3 4 5

Hello, I am a 33 year old father of three married to a beautiful woman for the past 7 years. For a very long time in our relationship, I would drowned my problems in the bottle. It all came to a breaking point at the beginning of last year. I was home alot more as I was going through several surgeries, luckily, with my job, I only need to work a couple of days a week to be able to pay the bills. However, as I was home alone durring this time, healing, I noticed some strange quirks with my wifes schedule. There seemed to be about 30 to 40 minutes in the afternoon right after she got off work that she could not explain.
As I have to drive passed her work to reach mine, I knew the amount of time it took to get from point a to b in the heaviest of traffic. Durring this same amount of time my grandmother; who had been battleing cancer for some time, began to loose the war. Again, I turned to drinking to try and forget what I was facing.
At my grandmother funeral, I went with the family back to her home to eat, and as my family always does, drink. My wife did not attend the funeral as she was sick. She called and asked me how much longer I would be wich invoked an arguement. I am not going to go into the long details of that phone call, yet I will tell you that when asked, she told me there was no one else. I went home against her wishes, we had an eve bigger arguement that weekend. By the end of the weekend and alot of "sober" thinking, I realized how much of my life and marriage had been "lost in the bottle".
I guarenteed (I refused to promise as I had broken too many of thoes) my wife that weekend that I would give up drinking. Though I do not remember one person in her family or mine thinking I could do this on my own, here I am a year later, still -not- drinking. Slowly, our marriage began to get better over time, weeks turned into months and things between us seemed to level out. Not exactly where I had forseen them doing so. There still seemed to be something missing.
In oct. of last year, I was home nursing an injured leg when there was a knock at the door. It was the wife of the man my wife had been having an affair with from about dec. to april of that year. Talk about throwing a bomb in your lap. I have always been quick tempered, the first to throw a punch if I felt threatened. For the first time in my life I was simply frozen. Everything hit me at once, it made so much sense. For a long time I has suspected, found trivial evidence, but never anything concrete. Yet now here it was, right in my face......and I could do nothing.
Of course the first thing I did was start yelling as screaming at her, as her apparent x-boyfriend and his wife sped away seeing that I was regaining my senses. I knew that I had been a terrible husband, I was the type of person that kept everything inside, everything from my tragic childhood to the insecurities I had as a man in my marriage. I admit to trying to loose myself by drinking, which caused me to lie to her about where I had been and what I was doing; but I had never, ever cheated on her, not even close. How could she had done this to me.
I am no fool though, I could clearly see my part in all of this. For years I would not let her in, the harder she tried, the more I pushed away. I would rather open a 12 pack then sit and talk. Yet it all brought me back to the begining of our marriage. We swore to each other that we would leave before we ever cheated. Both of us had been cheated on in past realationships and I thought that was the one thing we would never do to one another.
She swears to me that it was nothing more then an emotional affair, that nothing more then kissing ever occured. It was easy enough for me to fogive her, as I truely believe it was something I pushed her into. I think she thought our marriage was over. For all the crap she had stood by my side against, I at the very least, owed her another chance.
So to my problem. At first, I thought getting my hands on the other guy would make a difference. Yet this has proven to be impossible as the guy does not have the guts to face me. To the point, I have pretty much chased him all over town to the point of almost crashing.
Then I thought knowing all the details would help. I had my wife tell me everything. She did so willingly, even telling me of things I would have probably never known being that they were the only 2 people there.
I have tried letting go a thousand times, but something always brings it back to the forefront of my mind. Now, I find myself holding it in, something I know is not good. I refuse to go back to drinking, I have 3 beautiful daughters that deserve a sober father. Yet I am going crazy. I am loosing sleep due to the fact that when I do sleep, I often dream of her affair.
One other thing that has been bothering me lately. I have noticed, when I was drinking, she was quick to tell her family and mine of the problems it caused. But now that the shoe is one the other foot, she wants no one to know. To date, only my "close" family that is here in town and her mother knows. Its like she wants to be viewed by family and friends as the angel and me the devil. Even though I have conqured drinking and in general cleaned my act up. I now know that I am a good father and husband and all around good person.
So, to wrap it all up, I guess I am wondering if I made the right decision by trying to make the marriage work. Note: Our marriage has improved to heights both her and I never thought possible. I love my wife and I know that she loves me. So I guess my question is, when will the nightmares end so I can move forward and get on wit my life???
thank you for your time,
this is the 1st time I have vented since I learned of the affair
Tribe

About the Author

husband and father of 3, rocky marriage that became very dark before the dawn. Only problem is, I can still see the shadows.

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