Quote:
Originally Posted by pnggrad79
Paul,
Please don't feel like you had anything coming to you, like your kids being angry at you. You simply fell into the trap of the fundamentalist lie that you are bad and unredeemable, and you felt like you had to sneak around because society and the church has so brazenly shamed us into back room behavior where we had to live out who we were in the shadows. I don't feel like you did anything wrong. I feel like what happened to you by those forcing their beliefs on you was wrong. What you did was a result of it.
I hope that your kids come around. Mine did. I hope you don't still struggle with this. It is a hard road, I know, but there is a lively, wonderful community out there to support you.  |
pnggrad,
Thank you for your kind words, your being very sweet. I'm not trying to be self depricating, just ruthlessly honest. If we don't deal with the truth, what else do we have beyond delusion? I do understand the fundamentalist trap you speak of and find it astounding that it took me so long to extricate myself from it. One thing I did buy for myself, on time (whew, that was expensive), was the knowledge that I sincerely wanted to change. I believed at the time that's what "God" wanted as part of that "redemption." If there is a God out there who knows all and sees all, then I know that God has record of the almost constant 35 years of daily prayers, tears, and begging. For what? Not even deliverance, just the ability to not act on my ssa. That was probably the most devasting part, believing in a God who was watching me go through this but didn't intervene. The jokes on me, the God I was begging with probably doesn't exist. Not that there is no God (I don't know), just not the one I believed in. The rotten thing about the struggle being mostly secret is that my family doesn't have a clue. My sons both accuse me of not "having any balls" because I am not fighting this, they tell me to "man up." But honestly, I "did do something wrong." I broke my vows to my wife repeatedly and then lied to cover it up. There is no pretty way to put that and it is just simply true. I do understand why I did it and I have been able to forgive myself. My wife and kids still operate under the old label system so they cannot understand the why while maintaining their fundamental beliefs, so the estrangement continues. My wife does forgive me, and it's better than nothing, I suppose. But, it's without understanding, and there's certainly no acceptance of my ssa. That's the most challenging estrangement. Being married to, living with and trying to love someone who thinks you are broken.