What if I don't want to?

What if I don't want to try to rebuild? What if I don't want to figure out how to forgive or restore relationship? What if I just cannot force myself to put the needs of the children before my broken and destroyed heart? What if he's done nothing *new* in 6 months but it doesn't matter? What if he's done everything I asked...and I just cannot...cannot get through this pain?


What if this just hurts too much? If the pain is too intense, the betrayal too strong, the damage too deep?


What if I don't want to restore this marriage and I just want this pain to lessen? What if I think that the pain is less when he's not around and I want to be done?


Its not best for the children. He's contrite. He's done everything I've asked of him. He's honored every boundary, worked on this marriage and his own issues, held onto his sobriety, stayed compliant on his medications. Yet...I just don't think I can do this. I don't think I can get past what he did to me. I don't think there is anything he can ever do to make me feel loved and cherished again when he so fundamentally and horrifically DID NOT LOVE ME.


My husband slept with at least 40 other women. The prostitutes, the massage parlors, the one night stands can all be atributed to his mental illness. Bipolar I with sexual compulsivity...all well managed with the proper medication regiment...if only he had been honest with myself and his doctors after the first encounter instead of letting it go five years.


But, the affair. It doesn't fit. Its not part of his mental illness, and he knew it then and he knows it now.


I gave birth to our 6th child. I nearly died from hemmoraghic bleeding. Our rental house went into foreclosure and we had 3 weeks to find a new house and get moved. Then, I started developing a life threatening allergy to tree nuts. In the middle of that....he started an affair. Every day he came home to me and professed to love me, to be worried sick about me, to be devoted to me. And, every week he was doing things in parking lots that would have gotten him arrested. Every other week, he had 'lunch meetings' complete with hotel accomodations. For months, through my health issues, through the start of M's adoption, through the start of my ovarian cyst issues, he was having this ongoing affair.


And yes, around my 31st birthday he magnanimously ended the physical affair. He also feel into a deep, clinical depression when he ended the affair. And then, the depression lifted when he re-started the emotional affair. And, he held onto that emotional affair until AFTER I discovered his nasty little secrets. When M was in the hospital having a bowel obstruction...he hung up with ME in the ER...to talk to HER. He gave her our intimacy...and he gave her a part of MY CHILDREN. She was 'worried' about M. What RIGHT did she have to be worried about MY child. I was worried about my son! And, for 20 minutes, he ignored my repeated phone calls. I thought he was talking to doctors. The phone records showed he was not.


He gave her up when I found out the REST of his dirty secrets. He wants acknowledgement for that. I don't have it to give him. All of the nightmares since M has come home...she was in our lives because he let her there through all of it.


I don't think I want to forgive. I don't think I want to forget. Every night I dream he has either died or left me. Every day I struggle to contemplate my future. And, I finally realized I cannot see my future because I don't believe he is going to be IN my future anymore. He took himself out of my future. And, I don't know how to give up. I don't know how to stop loving him and to walk away. I don't know how to break my children's hearts and acknowledge that he killed all that was precious between us. I told him today, when I figure out how to do that then I think it will be over. When I figure out how to walk away, and I just cannot take the pain any longer, then I'm going to walk away from this marriage and be done.


I don't know what else to do. I cannot make this pain stop. It just hurts too much. The betrayal is just too deep. I don't think the last six months can change the five years he spent betraying me and destroying us. I don't believe he loves me. I don't believe he'll be faithful. And, I don't think he can ever convince me either of those things are true.



If I knew out to make this decision without breaking the hearts of 8 children, I would ask him to move out now. I don't want Plan B. I don't want another chance. I don't want to restore this. I want to be done.