2 Floors and Sliding Doors

So yesterday My Dearest and I got off of the phone abruptly while I was at work and after a slight argument. I immediately raced off to a lunch meeting on the 52nd floor...my stomach was in knots, heart racing and adrenaline pumping. Disagreements are commonplace these days, but none of them easy it seems. I hit the call button and waited for my elevator to arrive to take me to the common level. The doors opened and being already off guard, I just wasn't prepared to see her...to see the stranger that I had grown close to at one time who now seemed so very far away. I took a position in the elevator that placed a cushion of people between she and I. Avoiding eye contact completely, I said an uncomfortable "hi" to her and her co-worker and asked "if they had been busy with the accounting close" before proceeding to stare intensely down at the carpeted floor for the duration of the ride. A ride whose end frankly, could not come quickly enough for an elevator that had only to ascend two floors and while moving at a speed of a thousand feet per minute (of course I know those stats...I'm in commercial real estate!). The doors opened and without another word I hustled off of the elevator in one direction and she the other...sliding doors of sorts.

It's interesting that The Universe would put me on an elevator cab ride with the one that I had an affair with, fresh from a battle with My Dearest as if to test my resolve...sort of like offering fruit to Eve after her and Adam got into a spat and Adam having reminded her just the day before to never partake of it. Although caught off guard, there is nothing there for me anymore...she and I poisoned our friendship the minute we became anything more than friends and poisoned it remains.

Although really uncomfortable for me to write about, this represents a "stepping out" of sorts and so I am hoping that My Dearest will give me a safe place in which to talk about this.

I love you, Dearest Elizabeth and I'm sorry.

Day 42- A Night of Healing

Tonight is a very important night for My Dearest as she actually gets to meet a very admired author and somebody that she is working on an important film project with and so I am very excited for her. Afterwards, she and I start attending the first in a series of lectures given by John Bradshaw as he debuts his new book entitled, Reclaiming Virtue. We both could use the spiritual uplift and are excited about being in attendance.

I am thankful to have made it this far down the road with My Dearest and won't take one moment of this for granted. We continue to move backwards, forwards, dodging left, dodging right as the winds of change hurl us and it's just not easy. I've witnessed so much pain in My Dearest's face as as the challenges of my betrayal continue to haunt her. I've tried my best to make her smile when opportunity presents, held her tight as she has cried when she would let me, danced with her on the rare moments that she felt like dancing, and taken a thousand photos with her in documentation of this journey. I've answered a thousand questions meant to clarify the madness behind where we are and none that have provided much remedy, although I keep answering as if able to help her understand something that is sometimes not understandable by either of us.

I listened to My Dearest just today give counsel to someone in a similar position and it opened my heart, brought tears to my eyes as she opened up and shared her experience with the person seeking her guidance. I was of course a villain of sorts in that discussion, which was difficult, but the conversation was beautiful and if our story helps another, then there is at least some light being passed around as a result of this dark time that we are going through. Afterwards, I looked down to the "makeup-less " face (a rarity) of My Dearest today and loudly pronounced my love to her several times...I wonder if she heard me. When I tell her that she is beautiful of late...I wonder if she hears me. When I tell her that I plan to spend the rest of my life making this up to her...I wonder if those words find home or shelter in a place where they are safe from the hurtful response that echoes within her but that she does not always enunciate...

"Then why have you done this to me, david????"

I just have no rational answer for that, no antidote for that venom, no way to muffle or mute that song...which could be the song of my defeat and I accept that. Nothing that I ever say from here forwrad might find its way deep into the place of her heart that I must touch in order to keep our love alive...and so it is...and so I am...engaging in a battle to save something that My Dearest may not want to save. My love is strong and undying, but it won't be forever and I pray for strength, patience, and courage to allow us to find the place where we can once again be fully happy and fulfilled by one another.

in every dusk a new dawning

in every cloud a new lining

in every storm a new calming

in every winter a new warming

in every hurt a new caring

in every frown a new smiling

in every silence a new calling

in every crime a new forgiving

in every sleep a new awakening

in every shunning a new welcoming

in every condemning a new redeeming

in every betrayal a new believing

in every coincidence a new meaning

in every being a new becoming

in every hiding a new revealing

in every end a new beginning

Forgiving Myself Again??

So I forgave myself for my terrible mistakes last week and now feel like I am struggling with it again. I suppose that's the humanity component of it. Every time I see my wife struggling with the events, I go within and find that she is struggling because of me. She is struggling because of my actions, my words, my breaking of our trust and sacred promise. I know that I'm not responsible for her healing as only she can determine the look, the shape, the feel of it but I want to help and can only do so much to try and keep close and keep engaged.

My heart feels claustrophobic, feels as if it's being squeezed or contained against its will by walls of guilt and shame, constructed of the actions that have betrayed My Dearest. I long for those walls to disappear but know not how to dissolve them other than forgiveness, which so far eludes me more on some days than others.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference...

Day 35 - Heavy Overcast

Oak Trees are so magical...so perfectly imperfect. They have such a presence in their boldness and exhibit an architectural wonder that few other trees can boast. Sure there are trees that sport a colorful array during certain times of the year but it is truly oak trees that I have always been drawn to and that have always had great significance in my life. After punishing myself with some fast food, I sat out by the oak trees next to my office tower and just drifted. Today has been a really tough day. Yesterday, I was angry enough to suppress the sadness but today, no such luck. It's amazing how powerful of an emotion anger can be and how powerless it can make you feel when it leaves you. I left My Dearest some roses and a weathered angel planter by her locked office door this morning which was a short high, but it has all been down hill from there.

Checking in with my feelings, I have fear about my relationship today. I guess we are all guilty of putting those that we love on a pedestal that sits much higher than the plane that we associate hiding or secrecy with. I suppose its quite fitting and I deserve a dose of my own medicine, but it is still really challenging my faith today.

I guess if today wasn't overcast and rainy, then it wouldn't make tomorrow's potential sunshine feel so good.

Turnabout...

I feel like I have just moved light years backwards but I asked for this...I asked very clearly and very definitively. Not only did I hear the answer but was given insight as to what was coming...I just didn't know that it would be the next day. I asked the universe if I was the only person in my relationship capable of hiding or secrecy because I felt so alone, so broken, so ashamed for being just that...but what was shown to me is that I am not.

So now that "I am not", I am without my words and for the first time am without my full trust. I suppose I could focus on what other hidden truths there are out there and run myself ragged about what else might be hidden from me, but I'm not sure of the value here. It's just not worth the energy or time spent coming from a place of insecurity as opposed to just faith...this would be the Wrong Way. I have faith that My Dearest will talk to me if there is more to talk about and do so on her timeline and when her feelings are clear.

Everybody has secrets...it just takes so much damn energy to keep a lid on them and / or unearth them, that I feel as though I can no longer afford to give them shelter, nor can I afford to get out my shovel and dig through up anybody else's. Today is a new day inclusive of all the previous events that brought me here and so it is truly today and tomorrow that are most worthy of my efforts.

Thoughts...brainstorm about what this means to my marriage:

• If my marriage isn't worth the truth for either of us, than it is regrettably not worth saving.
• If my marriage can't survive without using inappropriate relationships as support or in compliment, then it just isn't worth holding onto.
• If my marriage can't listen and incorporate my feelings then it is deaf, exclusive and useless as I need to be heard.

My heart tells me that my marriage is capable of everything above and so much more...just not in its current state and not without work. I'm grateful for this day and all others to come... grateful for all that My Dearest continues to teach me. Grateful for her beauty and her grace. Grateful that I close my eyes next to her each night and open them to see her still next to me.

The Healing Within

So I'm "unlovable" or at least that's what I have been telling myself. I've been unlovable since I was a child and left completely on my own to decide my worth, my value, my place in this world. I don't blame my parents, they did the best that they could do and quite frankly did far better than what their parents did for them. My Mother had two alcoholic parents, one that was abusive and my Dad's father left the home at an early age. My parents don't need forgivness, I need forgiveness from myself for all of the thoughts of unworthiness that I have created and then all of the destruction that occurred thereafter. I have done the absolute best that I could to date given the opinions that I have had of myself.

• I've worked myself into oblivion to compensate for my Mother labeling me as lazy.
• I've given all that I could possibly give and forgotten to give to my self to compensate for being called selfish.
• I've adopted an intense fear of not being on time or being absent for my children as a result of my parents never having the energy to be present for me when I was younger.
• I've coached 6 years of soccer to try and cleanse from myself the horrible feeling that my parents were rarely in the stands at my games.
• I've bought beautiful houses in the best neighborhoods to create an image of success to hide the lack of success that I really feel inside.
• And I've looked for love in compulsions and unhealthy places to fill holes that just couldn't be filled.

This is the end of the road for the "unlovable child". I accept that person and love that person so that he is no longer unlovable. I release all of the crazy thoughts, feelings, emotions and ultimately the pain that came along with that unlovable soul and put in its place the gifts of experience that came along with that duality. It is those experiences that make me the compassionate person that I am, the hard worker, the good father, the loving partner...and no longer will I allow the interruptions to that which I know I am. I am not the bad things that I have done...the secrecy, the lies, the betrayal, the abandonment.

This is where I find the most important forgiveness of all, forgiveness of self...and where I try to build upon that with forgiveness from those that I have hurt. This will come through my actions and through all of things that make me truly who I am and not who I have shown through my struggles. I am capable of so much more and there is so much more waiting for me as a result. It starts with My Dearest.

Feels Like Home

There are places and events that one may visit for the very first time that are both breath taking and awe-inspiring and yet bring with them an overwhelming sense of familiarity and deja vu. A sense of home or comfort like no other that warms you to the core yet is quite baffling and frankly chilling at the same time. Could these feelings be bridges to past lives, past places or are they simply glue to the events in this life as we fumble our way to do, see, and accomplish all that lies within our path of destiny and / or co-creation? Were we shown our path before we started out on it and thus are recalling fragments of that viewing which result in these momentary connections in our minds that seem to defy logic and understanding? For me, these universal glimpses represent assurances that there is something much greater than ourselves at work.

How I Found Home...

I first met My Dearest late one evening at a very familiar place, one that I had been to many times but no matter my familiarity with the surrounds, I could have never been prepared for the energy that overtook me when she walked by. Never in my entire life have I felt so drawn to someone. Moving to a place in the room where I could have the advantage of observe her dance without being caught, I literally remembered saying to myself "I could marry her". I watched her for about a half an hour (okay maybe a little longer)...beauty, familiarity, comfort, home kept ringing through my mind...so much so that I couldn't chance her leaving without my saying something to her. So I took a deep breath, walked up to her on the dance floor and told her that she was amazing before muttering my name and then walking out to head home, but yet somehow knowing that we would again see one another. We didn't have conversation beyond "You are amazing" and "Thanks", no exchange of numbers, no promise to meet again...I'm not a very good pick-up artist anyway and besides that, she would move into my life in a more graceful and magical manner. In fact, she randomly walked into my store a month later with her 3 year old daughter to pick up a trade magazine and the rest was history. It makes me wonder how much history we have beyond the 12 years that we have spent this time around.

Have we tried this before but failed the test and are now re-learning to get it right? Why was she home from the moment I saw her? I just know that she is the glue in the mozaic of tiles that represent my life today and she is home. She is the only home that I know...not because we have become comfortable over time but because we were comfortable before time and before we even met. We aren't addicted to one another, we simply fit like puzzle pieces and enjoy the snugness. Through my anger and resentment I had forgotten what My Dearest means to me, what her family means to me, what our history means to me and I abondoned ship...I checked out. I lost my sense of self and thus lost my sense of self with reference to her and how important she truly is. I don't want to lose the only one on this planet that absolutely captivated me from first glance. I've been so foolish and will commit the rest of my days to undoing the damage that has been done in seeking comfort elsewhere. This is my journey to Forgiveness.

Where My Salvation Lies

My world is hanging by a thread and twisting in the wind of this cyclone. I feel like the centerpiece of a windchime as the universal energy causes it to take flight and bounce off of the surrounding emotions, all with a differing tone or eruption of sound and all with a certain amount of violence associated. I've watched my wife cry for days now...extremely humbling and an experience that will be impossible for me to forget, no matter how much time has passed. It makes me feel as if someone has punched me in the stomach and sent me falling to the ground, doubled-over and dizzy.

I have in the past few weeks through fear, uncertainty, and even through anger expressed that all would be okay regardless of where this should end up, be it a strengthened relationship with My Dearest or be it on my own...a starting over of sorts with new rules, new players, and new surrounds. As time passes however, and I focus on My Dearest and examine who she is and how we got here, I realize that my salvation truly lies with her love. She too was hurting in our relationship...angry, unfulfilled, and probably just as wounded and unknowing at the time that we met as I. We brought baggage to this relationship that when stacked upon became so heavy that it crushed all that was underneath. We have so much love for one another, so much passion, so much caring that has simply been smothered by love's idiosyncricies. How does this happen? Why is it so difficult sometimes to see what is going on, to listen to our partner's needs, to surrender to them in order to fulfill one another and truly adjoin? Why does stubbornness have to stand in the way of true tranquility with the one that we have committed our lives to? Why are our minds so hard-wired to go to battle and draw lines when our hearts are so longing to surrender to something greater in the form of this partnership or contract that we signed up for? How do we align the mind to think with our heart instead of the ego, which ultimately causes so much pain and destruction.

I'm trying desperately to learn these answers right now because I know that love's secrets are buried within...and all the while trying to hold onto the most amazing woman on the planet and the best thing that has ever happened to me.


"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. ...We had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossoms had fallen from our branches we found that we were indeed one tree and not two."

The Night of the Fireflies

Spring Break has arrived and My Dearest and I have spent the last few days at the lake along with our little ones. There's so much serenity here in one of the rare places on Earth where the trees outnumber the people, but this ratio is always good for truth and soul-searching. Lots of ups and downs, backwards and forwards, going inward and reaching outward. Sometimes I don't know if I should be wrapping my arms around her and smothering her tightly or whether I should be running to the furthest corner to allow her the space to heal. She assures me its the former, but its anybody's guess?

So we are still taking it day by day, hour by hour and even sometimes minute by minute. Last night, we snuck away on the golf cart to a hidden cul de sac deep in the woods...no houses, no people...just the blackness of the thick pine forest underneath a beautiful array of stars. The Big Dipper was the brightest that I have ever seen it and we talked for hours. Sparks danced all around us in the form of fireflies of varying distances...sometimes high up in the pine trees and other times zooming in a few inches from our head as if to eavesdrop on our conversation and give assurance that all was going to be okay. My Dearest and I even joked about who they were actually dancing for although I'm sure it was her. She deserves the serenade much more than I.

So we keep doing this dance of forgiveness and dance of healing...without any predefined dance steps or even so much as a familiar beat. I have brought us to this place of unfamiliarity, this place of unknowing...I'm just thankful to be next to her right now eating popcorn, watching trash tv and typing away. She is my one and only love.

She is My Dearest

She is My Dearest because much of what I am today is a result of her being in my life and although "what I am" is not representative of my greatest potential it is she that I can work through to reach said potential; for I have chosen her to teach me these lessons and she has chosen me for the same.

She is My Dearest because she is of stunning beauty; a beauty that I am constantly reminded of in the morning when I wake up next to her and in the evenings when I arrive home. With the rawness of late, I feel naked and ill-equipped to hide from her my adoration and am reminded in this that even the worst of events are opportunities to open our eyes and see what is before us...in this case a flower of radiant colors that my eyes are sometimes blinded by.

She is My Dearest because she is the one who gave of her body, mind and soul to carry, birth, and nurture my three children who are the best things that have ever happened to my life.

She is My Dearest because we can talk for hours about the current issues in our lives and when the pain becomes too overwhelming to keep a smile, we can pillowfight to the death and then fall into eachother's arms passionately before surrendering to the night.

She is My Dearest because she does support me as best that she can at any given moment and any given circumstances...and I judge her not for the times where I looked and couldn't find her because she became overwhelmed and had to hide.

She is My Dearest because her name is written all over my heart and so my heart wears those letters like a warm coat, shielding itself form the darkness and coldness in the world that would exist if she weren't around.

She is My Dearest because I love her and for all that she is and care nothing about what she is not.

Dancing

So we have been dancing...all kinds of dancing in fact.

Dances in self discovery, dances in discovering our relationship and the truth about my affair...even slow dancing with one another by the bedside when feelings are raw and circumstances allow. Its funny, we never slow danced alone in our bedroom before this and I hope this is a sign of things to come. I hope we dance through the rest of our lives together...dancing like nobody's watching, dancing like we are the only two souls in the clouds on a beautiful Spring afternoon. For now, its just survival dancing...hour by hour and day by day.

When did we stop feeling the rhythms and grooves of our relationship...music muffled by the sweet distortion of life's song that we are drawn to like an addict to a syringe. We've stacked anger, discontent, resentment between is like mile-high structures cemented together tightly by a mortar made of silence and avoidance? I miss my better half for she completes me. I have forgotten who she is for the walls were too high for me to recognize her beauty and the distortion so loud so as to not be able to hear her sweet song. I knew how to climb walls once but have since learned to build some of my own. Walls that hurt those around me when they came crumbling down. I can no longer survive a life with walls and choose to dance...to dance with My Dearest and dance on the walls like a stage for which she has built me if she so chooses to continue building for it is her smile that I seek and walls can't survive among smiles and laughter.

The Silence - Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

Sometimes silence can be deafening and violent and yet other times so peaceful and healing. I suppose the determining factor is when you achieve a place of stillness, can you sit with yourself and know that you have done all as you should or at least with your your best efforts for all of those around you. As I have not, the silence has not been good to me of late.

So the success of my journey to Forgiveness (be it forgiveness of self or forgiveness from those that I have hurt) can be measured directly in how I feel when I sit still. And as such, this initiative is just as much about learning to sit still and listen to myself, something that I have forgotten to do over the past decade in the hustle and bustle of growing family, growing responsibilities, and growing illusions of success.

To My Dearest I extend my deepest apologies and greatest sorrow for not focusing on myself enough over the years in order to maintain a resemblance to the self that you fell in love with 12 years ago. This is an opportunity and a calling to change that about myself...no matter the outcome. This is an opportunity to make silence my friend instead of my enemy.

Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.

A Prayer to My Dearest

God,



Please fill my heart with faith from the purest of sources…a faith that can’t and won’t be denied in terms of my marriage to my beautiful wife. And please…not a moment too soon nor a moment too late…fill my wife’s heart with the same faith for we are on differing sides of this pain and it is unrealistic of me to expect her to be blindly trusting of me.

Bring to us a strength that no one may take from us and a renewal so intense that we shall never sink back into old patterns of mistrust, miscommunication, and mishandling of one another’s hearts and feelings.

Help me to ascend from a place of being my wife’s convenience to being her primary source of strength and security for this is what a wife expects from her knight. Patch my armor with the strongest of metals to protect my soul that resides underneath.

Let us engage in creative endeavors together whether those endeavors take us to foreign shores and reach thousands or whether said endeavors are confined to our kitchen, our back yard, or our bedroom and only reach our own hearts.

Give to me your grace and forgiveness and when my wife is ready, extend to me her forgiveness as well…but do so only on her timeline.

Stand with my wife every second of the day so that she is never alone through her healing and regardless of where that healing may take her. Should that healing take her away from me, help her to know that she will fill a place in my heart until the end of my days and I will look for her again when my days should start over. For it is understood that my meeting her twelve years ago was not the first time that we had danced. Help me to remember this deeper connection to her so as to never allow my shallow ego to cause her pain again in this life or the next.

From this moment on, I put my life and my relationship with my wife in your hands to align it with the highest standards of this universe so that they may serve as an illuminating example of life, love, and happiness.

Let it be done and let it be known.

Your humbled servant.

~Me

Lost in The Forest - Day 19

Its tough to say the words, "I have had an affair"...and especially to the person who was betrayed. My affair was so many different things and at so many different times, meeting a variety of needs and at the same time creating a different set of problems and negative feelings as a result. It was confusing, inconvenient, and scary while truthfully meeting some very basic needs that I was both aware of and unaware of on many levels. It was like being lost in a forest in the dead of Winter but having the sun's rays break through the trees to warm my skin as I look for civilization.

How could I do this...why would I have an affair?

I had an affair because I was angry, resentful and unable to resolve these feelings through a broken communications system. I had an affair because I was starving for any connection whatsoever to replenish my bankrupt heart. I had an affair because I needed to end this relationship as it existed in its current form and regardless of the ultimate cost. Maybe I had an affair because it was the one thing that you told me that you couldn't tolerate and mentioned untrustingly throughout our marriage in good times and in bad...was this prophecy or affirmation...I don't know. I had an affair because I am not perfect. Humans have affairs and this was my human side guiding me into unknown waters.

The time has come for me to go within and listen to my own heart and my own soul to determine what it is telling me via my actions. A clear message resonating through my mind when I sit still is that the work that needs to be done is absolutely pointless if the work is being performed to return the status quo. I don't want my old life back even though this statement keeps reverberating from My Dearest's lips. My heart has been screaming that it has been dying a slow death and guided me to the extremest of actions to assure resolution. Day 1 of the rest of my life is that resolution and for this my heart is excited, albeit fearful and very nervous just the same. I can do the work in any direction but feel strongly that the right direction is to re-grow my marriage to new heights and along differing pathways. If this is not what My Dearest should choose than let it be done and let us not stay forever in the inbetween. Time will tell all and so shall time resolve all. If there is any certainty whatsoever, it is that I will look back at some point in the future and say that this is the way it was supposed to be for My Dearest, My Children, and My Self.

Sliding doors all around me...

The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me.

The Long and Winding Road

The road to recovery with respect to a damaged relationship after an affair isn't a straight one. To take that a step further, its rainy, heavy fog, falling boulder's and just flat out doesn't feel safe. The road is frozen, slippery, and leads up hill and I know this because any progress made today is often lost in tomorrow's worries or fears. There's just no safety on either side of the painted lines and no guarantee that the road that you are traveling is taking you to the place of your choosing. So I have a Universal Bus Ticket to the town of Forgiveness...not quite sure where that is nor when I will be arriving. I suppose I'm not driving the bus because it was my drunk driving that got me onto this bumpy road. Am looking in the rear view mirror a whole lot more than I would rather, but the road ahead has such limited visibility that the the road behind draws great scrutiny.

If you asked my dearest, I'm sure on the surface that she would have preferrred the bus trip to somewhere a litle more glamorous than this destination; but I have to trust that the town of Forgiveness is just the pit stop for the many glamorous journeys to follow that know no boundaries nor bitterness. We've traveled those roads for a while and I've grown tired of them. Not completely sure why so many of us choose those roads to begin with. They really are choices, although they differ in terms of the environment in which they were made. My environnment would appear to have been foggy at best of late and so I am conscious that the very lack of my own assertiveness in creating my optimal environment has led to the roadway to Forgiveness. There defines my journey, there defines my reality, there defines my destiny.

FORGIVENESS OR BUST!!!! ---written in white shoe polish on the back window.

"We attach our feelings to the moment when we were hurt, endowing it with immortality. And we let it assault us every time it comes to mind. It travels with us, sleeps with us, hovers over us. There is only one remedy for it...forgiveness"

Fall From Grace - Day 17

Its been 17 grueling days since my wife discovered that I was having an affair. Days filled with with guilt, shame, unrelenting bewilderment of how I could have let this happen to me...and ultimately to her. I always said that this was something I wasn't capable of, told her this was something that I would never do, reassured her that her heart was safe with me. Now I join the ranks of so many others who I have observed in this position and thanked the heavens it was them and not I. This blog is about feelings. Feelings that I need to share, but might be too difficult to share effectively through verbalization, given our current inability to communicate without anger. This blog is my support system, my therapy, my roadway to healing regardless of outcome.

It seems impossible or almost comicle to look my wife in the eyes at this point and tell her that she should have faith in me...in our future, although I know that's what she needs to hear, regardless of the implied disingenuousness of the gesture. I do so and release those words into a face that is hardened with anger, sadness, and dispair. Her eyes a shape that I've not seen in being married to her for 10 years. A shape that betrays the natural order of her femininity, softness, and inner light. It is I that have betrayed those very qualities that I love about her and caused them to retreat behind a dam of sadness that leaks water through its cracks as the tide of anger subsides and allows passage.

Through the night, she riddles me with questions...questions so painful and so repetitive that I am stuck giving frustrating and exhausted answers until my mind ultimately reaches its guilt limit and automatically shuts down. I liken this to what Gitmo prisoners probably went through when hiding important national security information from their concerned and skilled interrogators. Water boarding doesn't hold a candle to this torture. My mind betrays me of the events as my sleep is so miniscule, my diet so mediocre that it has sometimes been a challenge just to steady my focus.

When will we get through this? Will we get through this? How does this change our lives and how might it better our lives? So many survive affairs and many don't. Some are so full of ego that they would just as soon walk away from their families as face the music. I'm hear to stand in face of the grand orchestra, the symphony, and the three tenors to prove my love to my dearest. To shout it at the top of my lungs and fight to keep our sacred history and armor...albeit now battle tested.

Walk with me on this journey of limited outcomes but unlimited potential. Change has arrived on my doorstep and is prying its way into my door, betraying me by not showing its face.

This is the Diary of a Husband Seeking Forgiveness.

"It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend."