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[quote=Anonymous]I am the PP who wrote about forgiveness.  I did not realize my post would lead to such strong reactions.

I was not trying to write a Hallmark moment.  I just wrote about my personal experience, and I was totally honest.  That was some of the most hard-earned wisdom I have accumulated over the years, and I wish someone had shared similar advice with me years earlier, because it would have saved so much grief.  I could have put my personal story in terms of psychology or theology, but I thought that would make it too easy for people to put it into a box with a label.  I wanted it to speak for itself.

Right now, OP is stuck with a certain set of facts.  The past cannot be changed.  His wife wants to have a good marriage, and his kids would be better off with two parents who love each other.  But OP, by his own admission, does not know what to do with these (understandable) feelings of hurt, resentment, rejection, confusion--nor has he yet figured out where things went wrong all those years ago.  He wants to find a way to deal with those feelings, and to learn the truth.

His anger has him trapped.  And his anger is trying to convince him to dig in, to hold on, to not let go, that forgiveness equals weakness, that justice is holding his wife accountable, making her suffer, getting her back.  Where will that get him?  No where good.  Seriously--nothing good can come of all that.

But how to make a step away from the anger?  He needs to change this paradigm of "I am good, she is bad.". Because no one is perfect. Besides how he has been in his marriage, I am sure there are times he has wronged other people.  His parents, his friends, girlfriends, strangers...what if they all held him completely responsible for his shortcomings?  What if everyone he has ever offended came back and demanded their pound of flesh?

And this is his wife, the mother of his children, the one person on this planet with whom he shares the most intimacy. He has established a dynamic that has her in a hopeless place.  She can never change the past.  She can never give him back those years.  She let him down, and she cannot make up for it.  That is a terrible place to be.  I know.  And if he wants an equal partner, in his home and in his bed, he needs to put her back in a place of honor and wholeness and reverence.  How can she have confidence and sexiness and affection for him sexually if she knows he carries this low opinion of her?

So he needs to divert his focus away from her acknowledged shortcomings and seriously contemplate what HE needs forgiveness for, and once he has reconnected with her, as a fellow weak human being who has his own faults, they can reestablish trust, mutual respect, honesty, open communication, and so on.  Maybe that will require an outside counselor, or maybe they can handle it themselves.  I don't know.

OP, I don't know if you are even still listening, and maybe you thought I was hokey.  That's fine--it takes all kinds.  If you can tolerate a little more cheesiness, listen to the song "I See" by Matt Nathanson.  I doubt he meant it to apply to this situation, but I think it summarizes what I am trying to say in a poetic way.

Sex is not a transaction.  It is not something owed, something taken, something demanded or given.  It is a union of two PERSONS, body, mind, soul.  And it should be a union of EQUALS.  Isn't that what you desire, OP?  You don't just want a physical indulgence.  You want to love and be loved in return.  That is worth fighting for, worth sacrificing for, and it is not always easy.  But it is worth it.

Again I wish you and your family only the best.[/quote]

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