I'm so mad I don't know if I should scream or cry!

I found out today that my husband has been lying to me about something very important. This is something that I have asked him point blank about before, and he denied it every time. It's also something that costs quite a bit of money, and we don't have that much since I stay at home with the kids. He knew from the start that I'm against what he's doing, so he's just lied about it.

I am just so angry at him that I don't know what to do. I feel like yelling at him, but I know that doesn't accomplish anything, and I feel like crying because he's betrayed my trust in him. We've been married 10 years and I've never been this upset at him!! How will I ever deal with him when he gets home! Ugh!

Sorry to vent, but I just had to...

OK, and let me specify that it was not an affair.

All I can say is whatever you do,don't let this fester. Everyone will make a dumb mistake in a relationship sooner or late.

Thanks KF. I'm not letting if fester, as we've been talking about it all day. I'm just having a hard time forgiving. I know, not very Christian of me, but it's just hard.

Well, if it helps any...Ken and I had something similar happen about 2 years ago. I was so mad I was crying AND yelling. I was sick to my stomach for about 3 days. Needless to say, we will be celibrating our 9th year married at the end of the month. Time and love helped to forgive and forget

Dawn,
I don't know what kind of advice I can give you ..... See what made your husband do this, and have him give a good explanation. Tell him how you feel. I hope everything turns out ok

I guess I should explain a bit more. My husband is a amateur power lifter, and I found out today that he's taking anabolic steriods. He's sworn up and down to me for the last year that he would never to this, but he did anyway, and then lied about it repeatedly. I'm sure I'll eventually forgive him, but I have a hard time with lying in a marriage.

Dawn I am so very sorry you are having a bad time right now. If you want to talk or if there is any way I can help just let me know.

Meme

Hi Dawn.

You know I'm the last person to give relationship advice, given the way things are for me the last few months.

I don't know why it is men think they can't tell us stuff. I can only imagine that having their wives mad at them is very scary and must remind them of their mothers being mad when they were young boys. I mean, if he told you up front, you would have been mad but you would have gotten over it. Now you are not only mad, but you are also mad that he lied to you and feel betrayed, and wonder if he is trustworthy about other things. So even if you get over the thing, there is all that other damage that happened.

I also have noticed that husbands of at-home mothers seem to think that we are taking their money away from them. I know he worked hard to earn it, but I work too and I don't get paid for what I do. If he wants me to stay home, he needs to provide me with enough money to take care of household expenses, personal expenses (clothes, hair cuts, etc.), and some kind of entertainment as well as whatever the kid needs. Our consumer society only really recognizes personhood and authority as coming from having money, so at-home moms who have to ask for money and aren't gainfully employed are treated like a burden. I know that my husband resents giving me money out of his paycheck, not because he wants to deprive me of anything, but because he feels like he traded his time and energy to get it and he should have the full benefit of it. I understand his feelings, but that's not the agreement we made.

Anyway, what I do know is, you need to get control of yourself before you talk to him. It might take a couple of days. If he notices you are distant, that's fine, it's proof of how angry you are. If he asks you about it, you can say that you really want to talk to him but you are still in the yelling stage and would rather wait until you can talk without calling him names. Give yourself time to figure out exactly what you are mad about so that you can name it properly. Cry if you need to, but don't do it in front of him because most men don't get it when women cry out of anger. They feel manipulated and it makes them nasty. And let him know what the effect is on your marriage and what he needs to do to make reparations. Otherwise in a few weeks when life goes on, as it inevitably does, and something else triggers the same reaction, he's not going to understand that it was related and he's going to think you are holding a grudge. Forgiveness is a 2-way street, it only works if the other person repents.

I am assuming this isn't a marriage breaker for you, just a horrible thing that happened that you can get over if you both work at it.

Blessings

addendum: FWIW, there were only the 2 original posts from Dawn when I started thinking about this. Health concerns are a big deal, too.

Forgiveness will come with time, assuming he repents and changes. Do think about what that means to you (he stops lying but openly takes steroids might have to be acceptable, you forgive the lying and accept that he isn't going to change the other because he doesn't see anything wrong with it). Forgiveness is not about feelings, you know, it's about behavior, and the feelings heal later.

I don't have any wise words of wisdom for you, seeing as that I have never really had my spouse lie to me about anything that serious. But I just wanted to say that I hope you and your husband are able to move past this and work it out.

OK...I know this is not the focus here,but doesn't he realize what he's playing with?? Please talk to Catarinna or TipTop. They are both body builders and far more able to talk on this than me.

But just a personal note. My mom just returned from the hospital last Friday. she was sore and stiff,but we figured it was from all the tests. Friday night and all of Saturday she was in agony..she couldn't walk or do anything without severe pain. As soon as I called the doc he knew what the problem was. It turned out that some years back she was given steroids to combat Arthritus and had been taking them ever since. The hospital removed her from them resulting in the spasms. Now that she is back on them she's coming along fine...but she will have to take them for the rest of her life. If her heart had been weaker the withdrawal could have killed her.

Wow, Dawn, I can completely understand how you must be feeling right now. My boyfriend keeps threatening to take steroids for the same reason, and I keep making him promise he won't. It's even harder now because his best friend IS taking them. Sadly, they both know better, but want 'the look'.

Quote by sunlion: Forgiveness is not about feelings, you know, it's about behavior, and the feelings heal later.

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That sentence holds SO much truth. You have to make the decision to forgive, but it doesn't mean you automatically forget everything and feel better about it.

I hope you get everything worked out eventually, and I REALLY hope he quits taking the steroids.

Dawn,
First and foremost, pray on it..long and hard. Secondly, take some time to breathe and then if it helps, write down why you dont want him taking them. Use this to calmly explain your point (even if you have a million times), and then provide him with interruption free time to explain his point. I think that it will help clear heads and come to a conclusion..not will you necessarily end up agreeing, but maybe agree to disagree. My prayers! jocelyn
PS..my own marriage would be perfect if I followed my own advice I'll try it.

Thank you all for your kind and helpful words. At least I didn't kill him last night, and I didn't yell and scream or cry either. He knows he's in the wrong, so he was pretty pathetic last night. He apologized repeatedly and said he actually wanted me to find out somehow because he didn't like lying to me. However, he was afraid to tell me about it.

He says he's not currently on the steriods, but he will tell me if he starts again. (I'm not sure yet if I believe this, but I hope he'd be truthful at this point.) I told him that I don't agree with them, but it's his body and if he wants to be that stupid, go ahead. I figure that I can't tell him to do with his body, and if I try, it'll just cause more problems. At least he knows how I feel about it.

But now I have to forgive him and learn to trust him again. I'm not ready for that yet. Maybe the forgivness part, but not the trusting part. I'm going to have to pray about this alot...

Hi Dawn :angel2:

I'm sorry to hear that your husband's been keeping this from you; but, I can tell you that it's not easy to tell someone...especially being in the competative sport that he's in and probably has peer pressure amongst his own personal pressure to attain goals he sets for himself. Most often than not, steroids are abused.
I really don't wish to talk too much about the subject on the boards, as I do think it would open up a can of worms. However, I know that my boyfriend, who held the title for Mr. USA, could answer every question that you would like to know and then some. If you or your husband would like to talk with him, I'd be more than happy to give you his email address. PM me if you like

Catarina

Dawn,

I was in a situation in a church where one of the members of the leadership staff was manipulating the congregation. The pastor was really burnt out so he didn't do anything about it, or maybe he didn't see that there was a problem, unless enough people got angry enough to force him to see it. So about once a month this man would get up in front of the congregation and apologize for being a jerk and ask for our forgiveness. He also gave the lesson some weeks, and one of his recurring themes was that forgiveness means everything goes back the way it was as if the error had never happened. Well, he was wrong. Or perhaps he was only telling half the story.

He kept us focussed on ourselves, so we never looked at him or his obligations. When a person asks for forgiveness, he needs to repent, that is, he changes his ways and makes reparations for the damage he caused. This man never repented, so our forgiveness amounted to letting him get away with taking advantage of us. He was never held accountable for the results of his actions, and without consequences he had no reason to change.

It will take a few days to stop feeling so angry with your husband, but you haven't stopped taking care of the things you usually do for him (dinner, laundry, whatever) so that is part of forgiveness. It might take a few weeks, but you will get to where you can look at him without thinking "I wonder what else he's hiding" all the time. However, he has to prove himself trustworthy in the meantime, and one of the consequences of this is your being skeptical or maybe even checking up on him now and then.

This reminds me of a little poem from the 1800's:

Friendship is like china:
Costly, rich and rare;
When broken, can be mended
But the crack is always there.

Forgiveness is the glue that holds the pieces of the plate together, but it doesn't eradicate every reminder of what happens when the plate is dropped. It just makes the plate whole again. And sometimes the strongest part of the plate is where the glue is.

I undertand why you're upset, thats a pretty good sized secret, especially if it's something you had discussed before, and he's been denying.
Some of this might help?

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sho...&threadid=5865

I undertand why you're upset, thats a pretty good sized secret, especially if it's something you had discussed before, and he's been denying.
Some of this might help?

http://www.thecatsite.com/forums/sh...=&threadid=5865

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Thanks Cleo. I must have missed that thread when it originally came up. I really liked it, especially the Eraser. I'm sure God intends this for the good, I only have to wait for his timing to reveal what it might be.

It will take a few days to stop feeling so angry with your husband, but you haven't stopped taking care of the things you usually do for him (dinner, laundry, whatever) so that is part of forgiveness. It might take a few weeks, but you will get to where you can look at him without thinking "I wonder what else he's hiding" all the time. However, he has to prove himself trustworthy in the meantime, and one of the consequences of this is your being skeptical or maybe even checking up on him now and then.

Click to expand...

You're right, Sunlion, it'll take some time. But I figure I did feed the man last night (even though it was only tuna casserole :tounge2: ), so I must be on the road to forgiveness. At least he admitted he was wrong and says he won't lie about it in the future. Only time will tell... (but don't you just hate the waiting? I wish it was all better NOW!)

Dawn, I'm really sorry to hear you have been going through all this, and that he lied to you, and broke your trust. It sounds like you have gotten some really good advice here, and I especially agree with Jocelyn about really praying hard about it. I know you have already been doing this, and I'm sure it has helped.
I wish I had some wonderful advice to give you...but I really don't know what I would do in that situation other than pray, and talk to others about it, like you have here. I can certainly understand why you are angry....especially when you asked him point blank if he was doing it and he said no.
It will take time to rebuild that trust, but it can be done. Please know that we are thinking about you, and I will also say a prayer for both of you, and please let us know how it goes.