What does cheating do to you.

So what does cheating do to you? I can't really say from the cheaters point of view, but from the view of being cheated on....well I can say in all honesty....it can really mess you up. Which makes me a full on mess. I stopped counting after eleven different women.  Three of which I considered to be my friends. When I look back at that time I don't consider myself stupid or ignorant, I knew what I was thinking, and right or wrong I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that he was still on the same page that I was. That he wanted forever. I wanted to believe that he had just slipped. He was a man and they make mistakes and I wanted to continue to believe in him and believe in Forever. But by the time number eleven was discovered and his tears of remorse were shed, I was numb. I couldn't believe in something that he himself wasn't believing in. When my marriage ended I didn't mourn the loss of the marriage, I was mourning the loss of my dream. The dream of forever after. The dream that this man was going to be there till death do us part. In a way it was death do us part....the man I had met, loved, married, created babies with, raised babies with, had died, and what I was left with was this man that I didn't know. This hippocrite that said one thing and did another. The jerk that would get so angry that he would leave welts, and bruises all over my body.  I had lost my real husband and now I needed to divorce this other creature. And so I did.
Now its time for the healing. Funny how we all heal in different ways. Funny how sometimes we rely on our faith and beliefs when healing and other times we go the total opposite. I did the latter. I needed to prove that: 1) I was still attractive to other men. and 2) I could allow another man to touch me sexually. The attractive part wasn't to hard. Men my age seem to be attracted to anything that has to breasts that hang above the beltline. But I discovered that I wanted to be attractive to myself. Sounds kind of strange right? But what do you see when you look into the mirror. Do you see a women that has wrinkles or rolls of fat? Or do you see those wrinkles as laugh lines and those rolls of fat as an enhansement of maturity and shape? If I didn't like what I saw in the mirror I could take all the mirrors out of the house or I could change what I saw and how I saw it. You see when someone cheats on you....someone that you put your whole world into. Someone that you have trusted you start to doubt yourself. Your first thoughts after the blinding emotional pain subsides is what is wrong with me. Why did he go to her/him. What did I do to push him away. Maybe I didn't loose the weight of the baby fast enough. Or we don't communicate anymore. The emotional wounds that come don't heal quickly. They bleed and seep which leads to infection. We hold in that pain because we are embarrassed to go to our friends or family and tell them that he cheated on me. So you feel alone. You are hurt and lost and alone and we go to a bad place.
In my case I was lucky enough, at the end, to have a friend that said, "you need help" and pushed and pushed until I got help. Only then did I realize what I had been telling myself. I was worth it. It wasn't my fault that he cheated. There was nothing wrong with me. Once I convinced myself, I started looking in the mirror and found things to really love. I love my hair and my eyes. I love my smile and strange enough I love my body. The stretch marks don't bother me. The scars from my abuse tell me that I survived, not that I was abused. I am not a victim I am a survivor. So I wasn't wanting to be attractive to men...I wanted to be attractive to me and that comes from the inside out....very cliche, but very true.
Number two came soon after number one. I met a man. A very good man. he didn't beat or verbal abuse. He was funny and he made me laugh and when he kisses me for the first time in my life I felt the butterflies that everyone talks about and well I will leave the rest....maybe for another time.
I am not totally healed. I have a long way to go. I have huge trust issues and sometimes wonder if I will ever be right...other days I feel almost normal. But then again normal is just a setting on a dryer.

I would have rather had a funeral

A would never ever want to kill anyone. I would never ever want to hurt anyone. I honestly have not or ever want someone to die before their time. I would never want to hurt anyone on purpose or even on accident. So when I say that I believe that it would have been so much easier if I would have had to bury my ex-husband than divorce him I mean it emotionally. I would never honestly want him to die, but the pain that he has caused me and my kids would have never had to happen if the good Lord had just taken him.  We could have had a wonderful memorial. With flowers and a service.  Spoke words over him and said our good byes.  We would visit once a week and than once a month and even though it would have been hard...we would go on living our lives. Fond memories would be spoken and good things would be remembered. But in divorce only the ugly comes out. All the good things are forgotten. You forget that he was a good man once.  That you saw only the good in this man.  That he made your heart pitter patter at one time and that you had vowed to stand by him till you died. In divorce the dream is gone. Not just gone either....shattered, burned, tortured, pieced back together and cried over.  You finally after soul wretching and agony you are able to walk into a new beginning.  Divorce is never easy. It hurts so bad that you go numb just to protect yourself from going insane.  Everything you said through out the marriage is gone over. You wonder what you did and what you should have done.  In my case, and many others out there, there was abuse. He beat me and abused me, cheated on me with many many women, and all while preaching the christian gospel. He ignored our children but retained ownership.  He called me a whore and slapped me, while he was sleeping with the sunday school teacher. I look back and wish I had had the courage to leave him when the kids were younger, but I just couldn't let go of the forever after story. He was my prince charming and I wanted the happily-ever-after ending.
I didn't get it. I wasn't meant to have it in this horror story. I was the one person that made it out to tell the tale.  I was not like other woman that had to hide for years to protect themselves and their children. I was not one of the women that had to bury a child or have them all taken away because they were being abused. I got out...so did my children.Maybe later then we should, but we did get out, and I divorced him and so did some of my kids.  We are survivors.  But would our lives be different if I had left sooner or if he had died and we could have been able to remember only the good things. The torture of divorce has horrible. The torture and humiliation of having a man cheat on you is agony. The emotional and physical abuse was major and I have to walk through the after-effects daily. At this point I have to think that having a funeral and remembering him as a good man and father (even if he wasn't) would have been so much better than going through the hiding, mental abuse,  legal paperwork and agony of divorce. The loss of divorce is so much more than the loss at a funeral.

Thoughts on Marriage

I have lots of thoughts on marriage. Surprisingly some of them are pretty good. My marriage sucked! Wow, was that to blunt? It wasn't all bad, just most of it. I got four wonderful children. They are my pride and joy and I have come to believe that if I were to do it over I would have just used a sperm donor.  Ouch! That says a lot about the person I chose to be the father of my children. But that is a whole other subject.
My first thoughts on marriage right now as I sit here are;  "Don't do it!" It means nothing anymore. Its a piece of paper. We have very few examples of good marriages. My parents have been married for 43 years. My ex-in-laws for 44 years. They have happy marriages. They have learned to compromise and compliment each other. They have differences of oppinions and thats ok. I give them kudo's. I would have followed their example if I had chosen a partner that was more like them and less like Satan.
The example for people like my parents were people like their parents. When you married 50 years ago you were married until death. There was no such thing as divorce. If someone did divorce is was for some horrible reason such as abuse or the spouse commited some horrible crime.  Those that divorced were almost untouchable. It was just un-heard of.  Then divorce became more acceptable to the point we have Hollywood stars that count their wedded bliss in days...not years. Please that last longer than 15 years are celebrated as a rarity.  Divorce is not a stigma, but almost a right.
So if you want to avoid divorce then avoid marriage.
Woman no longer need to get married like in the days of old. Way back when....about 50 years ago, if a woman didn't get married she was supported by her father or brother or a sisters husband. She was an old-maid and something was seriously wrong with her...like maybe she was ugly.
Now, with plastic surgery and weight-loss no woman has to be ugly....just kidding. Woman, do not need a man to define them. They can have careers and lives free of men and the crap they bring into a womans life.

Now don't get me wrong. I am in no way a man hater. (And if anyone has a right to be a man hater I do) I love men. I love a good man. I love that they are tall and hansome and sweet and kind.Some are short and round with deep voices. Athletic or Geeky they can all be wonderful.  I love that they bring flowers and romance and make your heart pitter-patter. I love what a good man can do in the bedrooom...well we will stop there. But men seem to think as soon as they have a ring on your finger all the niceties are over. Then the farting starts and the dirty socks and stinky underware and the demands of laundry and dinner and countless other things that comes with having a man in your life. Very few stay sweet and sensitive. Very few remember to bring flowers home and will fix dinner if you are late. Very few remember to put the seat down after their done.

Now to those that remember that divorce is very prevelent in our society and that we women can do a whole lot on our own, I commend you for working to keep your woman and to keep her happy. Because a man that focus' on his woman, will have a woman that will focus on him. 
For those that think that once they have a ring on their finger and a bun in the oven they don't have to do anything to keep them...well let me remind you all that most women can get more off of welfare, and child-support with out having to fall into the toilet in the middle of the night because you left the seat up. They can have a job, raise kids, and still do a good job, despite what you might think.

Now all this being said. I do believe in the sanctity of marriage. I do believe in the fairy-tale. The Cinderella/Sleeping Beauty/Snow White dream. I believe that every man can be a prince charming and every woman can be the princess that she deserves to be. But both roles take work.
If a woman wants to have a prince charming in her life, well she needs to 1) act like a princess and 2) not settle for anything less than Prince Charming. I believe that if women would just stop settling, more men would rise up to the challenge.

My final thought on marriage.  Don't!  Unless you plan on making it forever.  Forever isn't until he pisses you off or when she gets old and fat. Forever is in sickness and in health.
If you don't plan on forsaking all others...which means sleeping with another woman or man than don't get married. Don't make the committment a huge joke. Because there are some of us that truly believe in forever. We believe in giving our whole hearts. All of our soul and if you don't believe in that...then might I suggest that you just live together.....

Lashing out

I am a survivor.  There I said it. I still don't feel it, I still don't accept it, but I have said it. When I think of survivors I think of people that have gone through horrific things and came out of his battered and bruised and effected. Crippled - but running marathons, scarred - but becoming a lawyer, sexually abused - but standing strong in the face of her abuser.  Those are survivors. To call myself a survivor is to accept what was done to me. To accept that I was raped by the pastor that led the congregation I was a part of. Accept that the man that, I married, I trusted, had babies with, believed in, beat me and finally pushed me down a flight of stairs that broke my neck. That lied to the paramedics when they got to the house. That after neck surgery, breast reconstruction surgery, two years of physical therapy, I was stupid enough to stay with him. Even after all those things...I still don't consider myself a survivor or a victim. I don't feel strong I feel weak. I feel like I failed my children and every woman out there that was strong enough to walk away before it got really bad.
I can not answer why I didn't walk away sooner? I never want to answer that question, I always want to  answer that question with a question....why did he beat me? I know whathe told me.  He always said that I was the only one that could push his buttons.  I knew exactly what to say to really hit at his very soul. I had so much power over him that I provoked his abuse. So if I was that powerful, than why wasn't I powerful enough to stop him? Why am I the one that suffered through the bruises and twisted wrists? The surgeries and physical therapy? I still didn't say enough. I still believed that he would change. I lived in shame of the other women. The women that he met online. The women he spent nights and weeks with. Amazing the kind of abuse another human being will put another through. The physical usually heals, but the emotional leaves wounds so deep that they fester. You don't want to fester. You want to heal and go on, but its always in the back of your mind that you are broken. You always find yourself asking the question - what is wrong with me? Why did he abuse me? What is wrong with me that he had to find satisfaction in someone elses bed? If only I had been a better wife, better mother, better lover. If only I could be a better listener, better cook. He wouldn't need to cheat or become so angry.
I am a survivor. I survived his anger when he shoved me so that I fell down the stairs, breaking my neck. I survived his threats and his beatings. I survived his humilation when he told me that he had slept with my ex-sister-in-law, my best-friend, the neighbor, the sunday school teacher of the church he pastored. I still feel the humilation as I sat in the front row and listened as he confessed his sins in front of the whole congregation, giving up his commission. Asking for their forgiveness and forgiveness for the women he seduced.  But never once did he ask for my forgivness. Maybe that is why I couldn't forgive him. All I ever wanted to hear from him was that he was sorry.  But he was never sorry.  He was sorry for being caught. He was sorry that he lost his temper, but if I hadn't pushed him I wouldn't have gotten hurt. He was sorry, but not for what he had done to me. Only for what he had gotten caught at. He was a narrsasistic, selfish bastard, who never thought about what his action would do to his wife.
How he humilated his children. I see what their father's hippocrital behavior has done. He see's none of that. That is why I lash out. That is why I lash out now. Anger.