# Helping My Husband With His Guilt Issues



## grade_school_love&married (Dec 30, 2011)

I think...........I know my husband is dealing and living with some real guilt issues stemming from his previous marriage. We met under a compromising circumstance, he was married to a woman that I recently learned that he was suppose to adopt her two youngest kids that were twins. 

He and I went to elementary school together and then I moved away to a different state. Back then we both had wild and crazy "crushes" on each other and we have always thought about each other over the years. He was married to a woman before this last one for 15 years and then that wife just up and left, still to this day she has not been heard from and that's been right about 5 years ago. From that marriage they had a son but they also raised a daughter togethr that was also from a previous and very brief marriage (they were both around 16 or 17 years of age when the daughter was born).

He met the wife just before me and I'll call her HK a couple of years after the wife JK left. They married and from what I have been learning just in the past few days they supposedly "had it all". His son and daughter thought of this woman as their mom and she thought of them as her kids also.

In March of 2010 my husband looked me up on MYSPACE and found me and we started talking "as long lost friends" through emails and MYSPACE. We both were in relationships that as we both described were "lacking" in areas and neither of us were happy. I do believe that made us both vulnerable in showing feelings and feeling flattered.

Within a couple of weeks and having never "met" each other as adults, he and I began having strong feelings towards each other and before long we were telling each other that we loved each other and were very curious as to what kind of a couple and relationship were could have. In May of 2010 he up and left this wife and I kicked out the father to my children (a 9 year non-married relationship), and he moved from his state to my state for us to be together.

We were married in Sept. of 2011 and it has been a rough long relationship. I lost custody of my kids to their father and he left his kids and her's for us to be together. We have both dealt with trust issues, jealousy, control, mental abuse from both sides and I really felt at tmes that we would divorce. I moved to his state in Nov. of 2011 to be with him after he moved back here, and to also go back to school.

MY MAIN ISSUE:
He and his ex wife have always kept in touch dispite my feelings that I think its unnecessary and just causes strain on our current marriage. He has expressed to her some very heart-felt feelings through emails that he later pawns off to me as feelings of "guilt", and he says he would tell her these things becaue he feels guilty about the way he left her and all the kids. I understand that he may feel "the need" to let her know how sorry he is and that he still wants to be a part of the twin's lives.

For a long time I had major issues with him talking to her but just in the past month or so I have let go of that jealousy because I realize that she does not want him back and he does not want her back. However, everytime we have a big knock down drag out fight, he calls her. Just two nights ago he told me that he felt that we were not going anywhere and he wanted his other life back. This is not the first time I have heard this. He feels this way one night or day and then the next when I start making plans or talking about leaving and letting him go, he then feels sorry and tells me he doesn't want me to leave.........so I stay. When she emails him, texts him, calls him or vice versa, he lies to me about it and he hides every detail of any communication. I've told him to please just be honest with me because if he lies to me, it will just make me suspicious of the reasons behind the deceit.

Just yesterday I get the first unexpected email from the ex, telling me that she just wanted me to know she did not encourage this. i was not sure what she meant so i asked her. Evidentally in times like those he calls her and tells her things like he misses her and misses the life they had and such.

By the time the 4th email came through she was getting real mean and saying hateful things........his kids and family will never accept me, and that I took all their good life away, I have ruined lives broke up a home, etc.....

My husband and I love each other very much and we are compatible in so many ways and we our life together to flourish and grow. He told me yesterday after I once again, started making plans to let him go and move back home but yet once again, he tells me to just chill out and lets look into therapy and/or marriage counseling. He feels like he is dealing with some major guilt issues and his ex wife believes so too. 

I want to ask and I hope I have given som ensight to our relationship, is there anything I can do to help him with this guilt that he lives with?? I have done some reading on this subject via the internet and I have found that living with this guilt can cause other feelings that are negative and self destructive............ (i.e. frustration, uncontrolled anger, bitterness, excessive shame, guilt, arrogance, envy, jealousy, greed, fear, suspicious nature, inferiority complex, persistent agony or melancholy, mental instability, escapism or shilly-shallying tendencies, communication apprehension, poor will power, low grasping, absentmindedness, sloth, laziness, dawdling, dodging)

WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP HIM OVERCOME THIS?? We want our marriage to work very badly but he can't overcome the guilt he lives with everyday. 

He says he's really confused and I told him I want to help him and I need him to help me. I will stand by him until he no longer wants me to.

Can anyone offer some advice as to how I can help him?


----------

