A Long Shot
My husband and I have been married for three years, together for eight. We met in college. We have a set of twins 15 months old, and they are too much for him to handle, even though they are not a handful. They are great. They are happy babies.
We, on the other hand, are miserable. We've been separated for a month. I just found out he's been having an affair with a coworker on and off for the last six months. We already had enough problems, and now she's possibly pregnant with my husband's baby.
I feel betrayed, disappointed, and broken-hearted. He keeps telling me he's sorry, but he is unreliable--a pathological liar who likes to party with his friends. When he tells me he wants to prove he can be the man I need, I tell him he should have thought about that before straying.
It may sound like I'm making excuses for him, but I hope I'm not. He has emotional baggage from childhood. His mother raised him. She is an alcoholic, and during his first 10 years she was also into drugs. His mother always had to be with some man, and I think she failed to attach to my so-called husband during the most crucial years, birth to age five.
According to him, he was a scapegoat because he reminded her of his father. That's what his mother would say while she smacked him around. I feel like I have paid for all his baggage.
Does it make a difference if he gets professional help? A couple of weeks ago he obtained a referral for individual counseling. I can't help but wonder, if he is able to get himself straight, wouldn't it be worth it to move forward together, because we would then have 50-plus years of a healthy relationship?
Lily
Lily, it's almost as if you are asking us to handicap a horse race. You've given us past performance, running style, and track conditions, and you want us to let you know where to place your bet.
We would not deny anything you said about your husband's background. In the first few critical years of life, his mother did not attach to him, and as you know, kids with that background are likely to struggle with relationships all of their lives. Everything else about his home life was a horror as well.
That's a given, and as you say, you are paying for his baggage.
But the empathy you have for him as another human being is not the best guide for what you should do. His behavior, character, and habits have been formed almost in the same way you form a statue by pouring plaster of Paris into a mold. They can be changed only with great difficulty.
It's hard to take the familiar away from someone. It works for them. Chances are he won't change, and where will you be if you wait for him? It's like using the lottery as your retirement plan. Some people do win the lottery, but nearly everyone else is better off putting a little money aside each paycheck.
Change is a long, slow process. With his past history, counseling may be just another ploy. If he sees your threat to leave as toothless, he may go back to his old ways. In short, things will revert to the pattern of settle-her-down, do what I want, settle-her-down, do what I want, etc.
The problem with waiting for someone else to change is that your good efforts are likely to reap no reward. Your children will grow up and see no matter how good mom is, it doesn't get her anything. The other problem with therapy is this: if he changed his basic patterns of life, would he still want to be with you?
We have to remind you that long shots don't usually win.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of July 3, 2006)
Dominoes
I am the father of two children and a husband for 12 years. I love my son and daughter dearly, but my relationship with my wife has been suffering for years. In fact, it has evolved into more of a business relationship than a marriage.
There is no passion between us. Sex is rare and mutually sans emotion. I wouldn’t call it miserable, but we argue every day and don’t treat each other with the love we each deserve. I’ve been a committed and faithful husband even though my marriage has left many emotional needs unmet.
We are best friends with another couple who also have two young kids. Since the day I met her, I’ve suppressed an attraction which grew stronger as I got to know her wonderful personality. After years of secretly fighting off the mutual passion and frequent flirting right in front of our spouses, we both gave in.
She would describe her marriage exactly the same as I do. My relationship with my wife was rocky even before we got married, but I thought I loved her and figured we'd grow closer together as we aged and had kids. Now I know what love really feels like.
We agreed one day we'd probably end our marriages, if not for the kids. Knowing our vision may be clouded by the excitement of this long anticipated romance, we've agreed not to talk about taking action for one year. We can't stand to be apart. We’ve spent several nights and days together in hotels. In fact, we've had more sex together in three months than in our own marriages over 10 years!
The lying and deceit is hard to think about. We don't feel we’re “that kind of people," but we’ll do almost anything to be together. Strangely, neither of us feels much guilt about the cheating. In fact, we both avoid sex with our spouses due to reversed guilt feelings.
We engage in risky behavior and talk about the I-don't-care-if-we-get-caught feelings trickling through our minds. We know what could happen if we get caught. If this relationship continues to grow and we take action, we want it to be on the right terms and at the right time.
You hear from many people involved in affairs. When you read my words, what are your thoughts, opinions, and observations?
Evan
Evan, we often hear stories like yours. They start with a snare. Before you were born the snare was set by people who claim there is a fix for every relationship. You thought a rocky relationship could be fixed with a wedding, and a rocky marriage could be fixed with a couple of kids.
Somehow that seemed logical to you at the time, though it’s a little like trying to fix indebtedness by taking on more debt. But that echo in your head—every relationship can be fixed—allowed you to irrationally go forward. So if the fix to bad dating is marriage, and the fix to a bad marriage is children, then the fix to spare your children divorce is adultery.
Children are little animals who can sniff out anything. That is meant in the most positive way. They are masses of energy and life. They move on absolute base instinct. They aren’t tricking themselves or performing skullduggery on themselves. They are like the doe in the woods. I smell humans. I smell unhappiness.
We are fooling ourselves if we think we are fooling our kids. You said yourself you are engaging in risky behavior which may be found out. If the children don’t learn the details, the minimum they will learn is marriage is conflict. And if they learn the details, who knows what they will learn. And how will that affect their future?
It’s just going farther down the rabbit hole, because there isn’t a fix for a marriage which should not have occurred.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of September 25, 2006)
Like Father
I was married for 21 years to a man who enjoyed strip clubs, drinking, and his buddies. These things became important to him after we married, and part of his job as an undercover cop. He often brought home pictures of himself with strippers to show me.
Throughout our marriage I took care of our two children, the household, and worked full-time without a contribution from him beside his paycheck. I tried to talk to him because we never spent time together, he did not support me as a wife and mother, and I needed more from him as his wife.
Things did not improve. They continued to deteriorate . Our marriage relationship ceased to exist. Months before I left him, I tried to talk one more time and told him, "If this is all there is, I don't want any more." All he said was, "Stop crying and come to bed."
Seven years ago, when our children were 20 and 17, I left him. I felt they were old enough now. They would better understand that we did not love each other and I stayed because of them. I was also tired of being verbally abused on a regular basis by my son.
My children could not understand my feelings. I was and still am seen as the villain for destroying their "family." Even though I was on my own at the time, my ex-husband told my children he caught me in bed with someone, which was very destructive of my relationship with my children. He also told them that my best friend and I were lesbians.
Neither story was true. To this day my son thinks I was unfaithful to his father and keeps inferring that is why I left and that his father had no fault in the divorce.
I eventually met a wonderful man, and we have been happily married for two years. I love him more than anything, and he loves and respects me like I've never been.
Rachael
Rachael, Harry Chapin's song "Cat's in the Cradle" is about a son who follows his father's not-very-good example. One day, after the father talks on the phone with his son, the older man has a realization. He says, "As I hung up the phone it occurred to me, he'd grown up just like me. Yeah, my boy was just like me."
So you stayed for the children, and you wound up with a son like your husband. All blanket rules have exceptions, and the exception to "stay for the sake of the children" occurs when the other parent's example is a detriment to the child.
As a police officer, your former husband knows better than to destroy a mother's image in the eyes of her children. His lies reveal everything about who he is as a person. Unfortunately, staying bolstered your ex-husband's assertions. How bad a husband could he be if you stayed so long? That's his argument.
Your son's perceptions have been twisted by his father. He may be trying to win his dad's praise by torturing you, or he may be manipulating you into trying to win his love. Or perhaps he is simply acting out of defensiveness. He may think, if mom stayed with someone who abused her because of me, that makes me complicit. I'd rather believe dad's story.
When we do something we believe is wrong for the benefit of others, we cannot expect things to turn out well. A mother teaches a girl what kind of woman to be and what kind of wife to be. A father teaches a boy what kind of man to be and what kind of husband to be.
In Harry Chapin's tune, the son says, "I'm gonna be like you, Dad. You know I'm gonna be like you." That can have wonderful results or disastrous results depending on who we are as parents.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of July 5, 2004)
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