I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the gray....

Hello everyone....I have missed a couple of weeks, at least, of blogging. Sorry about that. Not that I've wanted to. Circumstances have thrown me into a major depressive state and I just couldn't sit here and write about it. I'm not really going to write much right now about that particular situation. A lot of things have happened to me personally that caused me to have a near nervous breakdown recently. Thankfully I have such a skilled therapist to pull me through some of it. But it has pushed my progress back and that in itself is depressing. I do plan on sharing this with all of you, but right now it is just too much to write about. It was too much for me to process. 

Another major thing happened and didn't happen to me, it happened to one of my sons. He found out that his wife has been cheating on him. What a horrific thing to find out, been there myself. The details I plan on keeping to myself, but I know so much about how he is feeling. My son was devastated and what really hurt me is that he was more worried about ME and how I would take it. He thought I'd have a heart attack, he thought that it would make me so sad that he didn't tell me for a few weeks. Here he was going through the worst time in his life and he wanted to tell me, but he didn't want to hurt me. Dammit! This damn depression and PTSD is now hurting my family even more than I ever thought. Thankfully, he has since talked to me about it, but the fact that he went through this and couldn't tell me, just KILLS me. I know that he is hurting terribly and the first weeks are the worst. Anyone who knows me knows how close my kids and I are. I am hurting so badly for him. When we started talking about it I looked him in the eyes and I told him that no matter what is going on with me I will ALWAYS be able to handle anything that is happening to him. I am here for him and I always be here. One positive thing about this is that it really brought home the fact that I am still needed, badly. 

I also found out how much guilt he has for the pain he caused me when he was younger. I was just so sad that he felt so much guilt for something that he did when he was 18. Something that he paid for and came out better for. He also had a lot of guilt about not being the best role model and not being around for his younger brother and sister. I told him that that was his father's job, not his. But he was in such pain as he said, "Well dad wasn't there, he didn't care." I had NO IDEA that he felt such responsibility for his younger siblings. Enough to have such a huge amount of guilt. It is just so sad. 

He plans on staying with his wife and I support whatever he wants to do. I know his wife thinks I hate her. I truly don't hate her, but I am furious with her for hurting my son so deeply. I can't deny that. I am also very disappointed in her. Having been on the receiving end of betrayal, I know how devastating it can be in every area. I never thought she would do that to him, especially considering how much he helped her regain some self-esteem after her last boyfriend, before my son, treated her. I also know that betrayal like this is different for men than for women. But as I explained the feelings that I went through, I could see that my son was feeling the same things and so he knew that I understood more than he thought. I support whatever he wants to do, I know that he loves her. But they BOTH have to work on this together. She needs to take responsibility for her betrayal and he needs to understand that it is not his fault. He didn't cause this. Whatever the problems are between them they need to communicate, no one can change anything it they don't know that something is wrong. No matter what problems you have in a marriage there is NO EXCUSE for betraying your spouse. NONE.  My ex-husband was abusive and horrible to me, I had many opportunities to cheat on him, but that is not what you do when you are committed to a marriage. I take marriage vows very seriously. If you feel the need to sleep with someone else, get counseling, together or separately. Or separate for awhile. But don't break your vows and hurt the person you committed to spend the rest of your life with. That is not fair and it is a hurt that never really goes away. Plus if you think you had problems in your marriage before? Try cheating, you'll get major trust issues that are VERY difficult to get through. It is hard to recover from betrayal. I know, I never got over it. I really hope that my son and his wife can work through this. As a mother you want to kick the ass of the person who hurt your child, but I know that it is his marriage and it is his life. I will support him and his marriage as best as I can. If this is what he wants then I want it for him. God knows I want him to be happy. To have your wife cheat after being married for just over a year? That is so insane to me. It brings up a lot of issues, like do you want to waste your time at this stage of your life? Personally, I wasted a lot of years hoping for change that never came. But I can't let my experiences color his. He and his wife are not me and his father. I really want it to work out. I personally want to be able to trust her as well. It hurts me too, I love her like a daughter and I couldn't believe that she would ever do anything like this. It makes me wonder who she really is....did I not know her as well as I thought?

  The day they got married  I said to her at the wedding, during my toast, that I was trusting her with my son's heart. I meant it. Was my trust misplaced? She broke his heart into a million pieces and it just makes me cry for the pain that I know he is feeling. Girl, better be serious about this marriage. Because I will support both of them. I will hope that this is a big bump on a long and smooth road together. That they will be walking that road together for the rest of their lives. But god forbid that this happens again, because I will step in and it will not be pretty. Because when I let loose my fury, it is not good, especially when it comes to someone hurting my child. Every time I think about this, I start crying. No one wants their child to feel this kind of devastating pain, it breaks my heart.

It amazes me how many people take their vows so lightly. I think that is why I never want to marry again. I don't trust anyone to keep their vows as I did. I just don't. It is sad, but true. What many people who cheat don't understand is that they hurt so many people by their selfish actions. We are all hurt by this person that we loved and welcomed into our family. I wonder if she gets that. I wonder if anyone who cheats gets that.

Why, oh why, do people think like this?

So today I was browsing the day's news on the internet, as I tend to do, and I was reading an article about David Carradine who died from auto-erotic-asphyxiation a year or so ago. Just for those who do not know what this is, it is
the practice of cutting off the blood supply to the brain through self-applied suffocation methods while masturbating. Now it is truly sad that his wife who was left behind has to deal with this, she loses her husband to something that maybe she had no idea he was in to. But one of the worst things to me, and I've heard it before, is the people (mainly men) who spout off on messages boards and say "well, if she was a good wife".....OMG! I cannot tell you how many times I have heard that. Seriously, I hear that all of the time about cheating husbands. That if only his wife had been a good wife he wouldn't go looking anywhere else. Please define "good wife" for me. Tiger Woods' wife looked like she was a good wife, beautiful, took care of her home and her children. I imagine that she took pretty good care of Tiger too. Same with Sandra Bullock. From all sources close to her and Jesse James it seems as though she was the "perfect wife". Now I don't believe in "perfect" anything. But I think blaming cheating on the spouse who was cheated on is a cop out. Not to mention the fact that research shows that men cheat for various reasons but one of the biggest is self-esteem issues. Oh, you may say, if she was a good wife he shouldn't have self-esteem issues. Let me tell you from personal experience I did anything and everything to make my husbands life a happy one. I built him up as much as one can do and not lie. I gave him pretty much every thing he ever asked for and did anything for him.  I was a W-O-M-A-N, I brought home the bacon, cooked it up in a pan, and never let him forget he was a man. But he STILL cheated. 

It is really funny that when a man cheats it's because he's not getting his "needs" met at home. When a woman cheats, she's a whore. Seems pretty unfair to me. When I think about my marriage, by the "good wife/husband..." standard I realize that I'm the one who SHOULD have been cheating because MY needs weren't being met and that is the truth in all it's painful reflection. The man was abusive and cruel. And as far as the bedroom goes, truth be told I didn't have even ONE orgasm the whole time I was with him. And that was for a lot of years. I mean it's no wonder...I cannot tell you how many times I'd say "ow, that hurts" because of something that he was doing or if he was being too rough and his response was "no, it doesn't". Really? It doesn't? When did he slip into my skin and was able to feel how I was feeling. Not to mention that if you have to ASK if your partner had an orgasm, chances are......nope. He may have asked, but he didn't really care what the answer was as long as he got what he wanted. But I never, ever made him feel bad about any of it. I was a very good partner. Too bad I didn't have a good partner myself when I was with him. 

You may think that this doesn't have anything to do with PTSD, but it does. When you have PTSD everything associated with the trauma can be triggered. I was in a long term marriage that was trauma filled. When you are married to an abuser, chances are you will suffer from PTSD. It doesn't have to be violent either to be traumatic. There are so many ways to be abused. Here is what an abusive relationship looks like courtesy of Michael J. Formica, a Social Scientist and Educator via "Psychology Today"...

"Well, it's not always about being slapped around. Abusive relationships come in all forms along with physical abuse - social abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse (we are not referring here to molestation), financial abuse, etc. Abuse is about a dynamic of extremes, domination and submission. It is about giving and withholding, also in the extreme."

  So think about that if you know someone who fits any of this parameters. Abuse is a ripe breeding ground for PTSD. I believe in trying to keep marriages together, especially if you have children. But if you are being abused and you have a partner who won't get help....then you need to walk away before you find YOURSELF writing a blog like this one....