SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Thank you Oldwounds for assisting me on my journey down this unfamiliar path. Your ongoing support, along with others, has been invaluable to my processing.

Asterisk

WoodThrush,

Thank you for taking the time to relook at my post and for expanding your question so that I could understand better. You doing so is greatly valued and appreciated.

I like your analogy and it is particularly a poignant one for me. I am the last remaining person in my entire family tree. (Excluding my two kids.) It has caused me much reflection for the past 10 years. That said, I don’t believe that it has caused me to drift into depression. More like, DANG, I’m next in line! And then I remind myself that is just as it should be and would want it to be.

If you had asked me if I was depressed 6 months ago when I arrived here, you might have nailed it. But these days, this post, is about being extremely happy with my circumstance. Somehow, I guess, I did not convey that message.

If that still has no relevance, and you feel I have wasted your time, then I apologize...but know it was done in good faith in an effort to potentially give insight.

Everything anyone says to me has some relevance. It may not be perfectly on task, but something is being picked up and I would be wise to evaluate it. Never, never, have I felt like you or anyone else has wasted my time. In fact, I know I’m asking people to give up valuable time to a stranger! The fact that you did as well as others is amazing. I have every confidence that you speak in good faith. Please, don’t conclude that when I push back a little that I’m not weighing everything said and value the person and their words they say. As I have tried to convey, words we use matter.

Asterisk

Thank you Pippin for a fuller understanding of the process. You are correct, there have been and most likely will be again, events that causes me to spiral downward. It doesn’t last as long and is not as intense but as you stated, it still isn’t fun. Having you reinforce that truth, really is helpful.

Gr8ful, thank you for that, I do believe it and I feel clean (and when I start to feel a little unclean for one reason or another, I know how to pray, confess, etc). It was kind of you to post that verse and to emphasise it.

My goodness, one never knows what one person will find offense and another feel refreshed. I clearly was unwelcoming to Gr8ful’s reply. I stand by my feelings but I will go back and relook at it, trying to see it through your eyes. It is a great reminder that I would be wise to remain open to others’ thoughts and ideas.

Asterisk

Asterisk, I had not read your response to Gr8ful when I left my note of thanks. It reminded me of my closest friend. She grew up in the Polish Catholic Church, joined a splinter community and then an evangelical one, and has been recovering from that experience for several years. She can’t read the Bible without getting all twisted up inside and she didn’t go to church for a decade I think (after moving through four different countries, she has finally found an indigenous Christian church that uses strawberry juice for the cup and fry bread for wafer, with a community that is healing for her). I recognize some of her in your reaction. Yes your feelings and reaction are valid. If you want to talk about it I would listen, and if not, I will take great care to sidestep religious stuff. I was not a Christian before finding SI and my wonderful SI friend who is now deceased, so it is central to all aspects of my way out of infidelity, but I know from my Polish friend (not the same one) how complicated it can be. And I am sorry that happened to you.

I read Gr8ful as saying I used to be those things and now I’m not (emphasis on WERE) which is as kind a thing a BS can say to a WS.

Thank you Pippin,

For your kind reply, and willingness to see that my response had some validity as I also gave yours. I was deeply injured by the faith and so I look at it, even when I try not to, with colored glasses. And, in full honesty, a person of faith looks at their faith, even if they do not mean to, with colored glass, just different shades, with different outcomes.

For instance, I can see how you could read that scripture from a "saved" individual and focus on the "you are washed clean by the blood of the lamb" therefor the doors of heaven are opened to you. But from my perspective, I focused on the whole scripture verse which condemned entire communities and peoples who do not necessarily follow Jesus as their lord and savior. The gates of heaven, the love of their creator, has not only closed the gates of heaven to them but has banished them to an eternity of burning hell and damnation.

I reread it from your perspective now I’d like you to reread it from mine and then ask yourself, was my thread a proper place to condemn those (me included) who are not of one’s personal faith? Was it kind to fellow SI’s (me included)? Was it necessary? What was the goal?

The community here at SI is large and diverse and to attempt to place judgement on them, shame them, and demoralize them based on one’s faith, not fact is just not acceptable to me and I will defend myself and my brethren every single time.

I may appear to be angry and I am not. But I am firm.

I hope you can understand.

Asterisk