Dear Dra. Holmes:
I recently discovered that my husband had an affair with a married woman through some letters I read which he forgot to discard. What the letters contained left me devastated. I confronted him. At first he denied, but when I told him about the letters, he admitted it.
He asked for forgiveness. He begged me to stay. He’s in the Middle East. Whenever he cries, I give in (but) realize that I still hate what he did. It’s been 4 months already and I can’t seem to move on.
I can’t trust him anymore. I don’t believe what he says. He really shows how much he cares and loves me. But I can’t forgive him wholeheartedly. I always pretend that I’m ok, but in the end my true feelings usually show up.
Please help me. I want to move on, but I’m stuck... -- IMELDA
Dear IMELDA,
We ended PART 3 saying that, even if you cannot trust your husband the way you did before, perhaps you can trust him in an (even better) way.
This is no longer the trust of a starry-eyed bride on her wedding day. This is a trust forged from living with a man you too, have promised to love for richer or poorer, through sickness and in health. Somehow I don’t think those vows meant literal, monetary wealth, but the wealth of being able to forgive a man whose behavior led to your loss of trust.
Perhaps, it also includes trying, once more, to trust -- albeit not in the same way -- a man occasionally with feet of clay, perhaps but with the courage and tenacity that only a heart that loves you can maintain.
You can forgive him, Imelda. And the graver the mistake, the harder it will be to do so...but true love was never made for sissies. This experience will either make you as a couple or break you.
You can forgive him, Imelda. Even if your forgiveness may ricochet from (seeming) total forgiveness to total hatred and great indignation in less than a minute.
That is par for the course. That is usually what happens when a woman feels (and is!) betrayed.
The other thing that happens is that she cannot seem to stop talking about it -- To him, to her family and in-laws, her barkada and friends. In fact, it seems to anyone who will listen!
Again, that will abate once healing has started.
And if, as you say, you want to move on, this anger and despair, this pain that cuts you like a knife, will also abate. I promise you that, Imelda.
As Kalil Gibran says, “The deeper the sorrow that has been carved in your heart, the more joy can be filled in.”
I so hope things work out for you both! MG Holmes
