# Help it is Almost Over



## Smartman (Dec 19, 2012)

I guess I will start back a few years back. We have been married for almost 30 years and have two grown children that are doing well. I run a successful business so the wife did not have to work outside the home. She was a great mother to the kids growing up and was very involved in their lives. Things really started to go downhill back when my oldest went off to college. We started to do fewer things together and started to fight more. She would argue with me about how our oldest was doing in school. Then two years later our youngest went off to college and you would have thought the world had come to and end. No matter what our youngest would do the wife always had a problem with it. With this going on the wife and I just kept getting farther apart. The kids both graduated with honors and have gone on to great careers. The oldest has had an alcohol problem while in college and we got them in rehab twice for, and right now they are doing will. This has added to the stress on our marriage.

A few years back I screwed up big time and had a short emotional affair with a young gal just a few years older than my kids. The wife asked me about it and I told her and ended it that day. We got into counseling right away and I thought we both wanted this to work out. She then started giving me ultimatums about things going on at work and female staff that she thought I needed to fire because she did not trust them or me. It was like she wanted me to pay somehow for this betrayal. She now wants me to fire my main manager and partner because she does not trust him because he carried through on a couple of the projects at work she told me not to do and the ladies she wanted fired worked for him. This now has been going on for 3 to 4 years. When she asks me about work and I will tell her very little. She won’t come down to the office anymore because she says she is not comfortable here and she does not trust my manager. The ladies have now moved on and I just here that I didn’t fire them back when I should of. Now with the holidays upon us the stress level has risen even higher. I have never been around someone that is so negative about everything. She spins everything into a negative text that fits what she wants to argue about. I feel that she is dressed but I am not sure. She could be just so pissed off at me and the world this is how she is. There is no intimacy between us in over a year and a half. 

What I feel that I have to do is to set her down once the holidays are over and just tell her it is over. I have apologized so many times about the affair, but nothing changes. I cannot live in the abusive relationship any more. I need the courage to move forward, this is so scary to me, not know what’s going to happen.


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## RGS (Dec 16, 2012)

One thing our counselor (a very pro marriage counselor) said to my wife, "if you can't forgive him, forget him." I think that you should apply to your situation. 

You said you have said you are sorry to your wife numerous times. Women see the word 'sorry' different than 'forgiveness'. Have you asked for forgiveness? 

If you answer yes and your situation is still like this...move on.


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## Maneo (Dec 4, 2012)

sounds like the trust was broken and has never been re-established. what do you want? fix it or finish it?


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## Smartman (Dec 19, 2012)

I think that is the big thing is forgiveness. She says she forgives me but it does not show in her actions. At first she appeared to have forgiven me, but that soon changed when I would not fire people at work like she wanted me to.


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## This is me (May 4, 2011)

Were those people in anyway involved in the affair?


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## Smartman (Dec 19, 2012)

No way. I would never do anything with a person that works for me....


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## This is me (May 4, 2011)

Could they have supported your waywardness?

Just wondering why she would want them gone.


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## Smartman (Dec 19, 2012)

No they didn't, No one new at work what was going on. They where marketing ladies, so they were out in public a lot. She thought they were ****y. She asked me to stop working with them and I did that immediately and kept my distance from them.


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