Help!.. I need somebody.. Help just anybody!... LOL

My story is long.. But I'll give you the short version. My daughter left her 7yr relationship to run off with a guy in Europe that she knew of all but 3 days. Now if that isn't upsetting enough, my family rallied around her and somehow I became the bad guy ( it wasn't that she left it's the way she did it) the straw that broke the camels back was when my husband (the last person I had on my side) I felt defeated that I just up and left for 6weeks w/o telling anybody. (We joke and laugh about it now Becuz when asked where did I go? My answer is "Berlin". I just happen to have a picture with a sign that said Berlin...LOL anyways as my relationship with my daughter became more estranged so did my marriage...we slept in different beds for the last two years....I had such anxiety that my dog who was everything to me became SOO freaked out I couldn't even touch him anymore and I had to put him to sleep. I blame my daughter although I've been told that I'm manifesting my dog for my daughter. Yes, I miss my daughter and yes, I hate her! I feel that Becuz of what she did she ruined my relationship with MY whole family ( mother, father, siblings, son, and husband) In the mean time my husband would leave me for shiort lengths of time to care for his parents (that have never done one thing for us in 22 yrs Becuz they hate me, but the feelings Mutual) so I felt so lonely...(now I know what ur thinking it's the added cliche of he/she got lonely) but it was certainly true in my case! I started to go out and have a social life and met a guy who I started to have a relationship with (he was younger than my two children) it was fun, exciting and an ego booster. Now that u have a background I want to say that my husband knows about the affair and he's now willing to go to counseling, he says he loves me Becuz he's still here. I know I love him but I don't know if I'm IN love with him! I was madly in love with him for 20 yrs I have always considered him my soulmate. I guess it's wishful thinking to ask for my old life back...

Life can present us with different challenges, some easier to confront than others. Ultimately, how you approach those challenges depends on you and you alone. Your daughter made a decision that she thought at that time was best for her. It may not be good for you, but screw it, it's her life, it's her resolve. Whatever happens, she'll have to take responsibility for her actions. Same goes with you. Whatever decisions or reactions you have made out of every situation you were presented with, you need to take responsibility for them and stop blaming others whom you've thought forced you to act or make an unlikely choice, than you would normally do. Cheating with a younger guy could have NOT stemmed from your daughter's decision to run with another man nor did it originate from your dispute with the family or husband. I'd take it that you are using your daughter's situation as an excuse to try to escape out of your already troubled marriage. Coming from you, "I love my husband, but I am not in love with him". The cheating is inexcusable no matter what. If you are truly no longer in love with your husband, leave him, get a divorce so he can find a woman who is deserving of his love. Meanwhile, get the therapy you need to help yourself. Clearly, you have deeper emotional problems than you can admit to.

Thank u sillyme for ur input. Yes, I am responsible for my actions and have ALWApresjus_bunniexYS been. I failed to me took that my parents said " but you've ALWAYS been the good one". I've always done the right thing and have been responsible...I was a young mother but have always been responsible, even of my niece who I helped raise. I have to interject here that my son has slept with almost every girl in our small town and my daughter there isn't a picture of here without some type of alcohol in her hand..that I once told her that if any thing happened to here these were the photos I have to help find her alcohol and her dancing on the bar! My family as well as myself have been tolerant of this behavior on the l past but there have never been any consequences...My husband first started out by password protecting his phone and closing a 16 yr old acct. Now we have always been truthful with sack other but when all the secrecy came about I was suspicious and even told him that we needed to stop this. But he flat out refused. My affair did result from my marriage trouble of my husband leaving me alone. That's not an excuse just a fact. I said that I was madly in love with my husband for 20 yrs. it's only recently that I feel I'm not sure I'm in love with him. He says he wants to go to counseling. So at this time I'm seeking a counselor. I do have my own issues now. But I also feel that if there are no consequences or judgement for what my children do then why do I have to be held to a higher standard? And don't say Becuz I'm a parent /mother Becuz I'm human too!

Agree with (NOT-)SILLY's observations and advice, completely and utterly. They say, 'Monkey see, Monkey do'. But sometimes, equally, it works in reverse where the mother monkey copies the 'baby'. And once BABY does something yet survives, mum then sees it that she herself has no excuse. There was you - the good girl, the strong one (blah-blah) who'd always done the right thing - being shown (by your own mini-me, whom you must have trusted and in certain ways admired) that one CAN do seemingly rash, drastic things and NOT end up automatically on the scrap heap for it. Your daughter obviously was raised without the same pressure and constraints that you were by her age OR got born with the strength you didn't have back then to resist and rebel, to have been capable of all that she did. Well, let me tell you something: it's not whether something was done rashly and in extremis that matters, it's whether it was the right thing for all concerned (in the long run), i.e. the event turns out to be have been a good and useful one due to leading to better things. And that can mean the right thing merely AS A CATALYST, whereupon the only question is: does style out-do substance when bringing stuff to a head is the much- and long-needed objective (answer - no). Put it this way, had your relationships been stronger and healthier than they were, they would have weathered that whole episode in terms of how it stressed you out and set you off (popped your cork). Your daughter's extreme actions brought certain states of truth into (finally) sharper relief. That those relationships did not pass muster shows you that something DID have to give and had done for a long time. That being the case (and you sensing it), you did indeed 'use' your daughter and her choices and outcomes as your your leader-style guinneapig and opportunity to (finally) point to the emperor and yell, 'HE'S NOT *WEARING* ANY CLOTHES!'. Or it used you. Whichever. You could have been more tempered and subtle in your late-onset rebellion and self-liberation exercise, granted, but obviously that was beyond you, meaning only drastic action and going the whole hog in one fell swoop (so that you couldn't be tempted to bottle out or backtrack), was an option for one such as you. Well, that's what happens/what's perversely needed when you've allowed yourself to remain repressed and self-suppressed for too long. The cork eventually bursts free and, WHOOSH!...and all the bystanders get wet too. But wet with WHAT? - acid or Baby Bio? There's the difference that makes ALL the difference! This seems to be a case of, Baby Bio. But you indeed are the orchestrator of your own to-date events, make no mistake about it. Subconscious You (your inner animal) is still you. And subconscious you went and mutineered conscious you (as is its wont) because it was sick of having to put up and shut up alongside conscious you for yet another decade. It refused point-blank. And it's the secret boss, so that was that. Capiche? Now to your marriage: You've cleared the detritus from the deck with this nuclear bomb (and a taste of his own medicine), and, again ignoring the mere less-than-ideal/dignified methodology - that's great! Don't be fooled, however, by the fact that you're not IN-love with your husband. That was never a state but a daily, ongoing PRODUCT of what had incrementally been put in of late, meaning, it can bugger off for a while, possibly a long one, yes. But it can just as easily return. Think vending machine: coins in = choccie bars out (that honeymoon feeling). It's if you CAN'T STAND your husband (don't like the choccie bars themselves) or if coins can no longer produce choccie bars (vending machine empty) that you need to worry and think divorce. You don't + not the case. You still love him. And he's said - HE'S said! - he wants to go to counselling. A *man* who *wants* to go to counselling to the extent where *he* firmly suggests it?! Rare...very rare! That, if meant sincerely, is a superb sign - because men do MAKE you love them, make no mistake about that one, either: they ply you with wooing - pressing all the right buttons at the right times, etc. - until all the primitive, romance-centred software in your jello is commanded by its base programme to "RUN" (result - swoon-swoon, "whoops, me clothes have mysteriously fallen off, look!"). So the first part of the software activation process has begun...and will continue to run IF you agree to go.....whereupon you and he can start re-filling *and decorating* said decks. SIMPLE AS THAT! :-) In other words, you've GOT his full and seemingly earnestly wholehearted attention now so - use it, don't lose it. If he STILL messes you and your relationship around even AFTER a course of counselling, THEN dump the dud and hot-air merchant that he'll have irrefutably proven himself to be. Don't get me wrong: he was weak for having 'flooded' on vicarious stress followed by reaching for a mistress as if she could be a temporary bottle of Valium-stroke-Uppers. But it sounds like he basically is reactive to you and whatever you do/don't do and what state you're in (meaning, also, counselling must once have been YOUR idea). It must be, therefore, that you've recently calmed down again (which coming here would verify), ergo, he's calmed down too - enough to have seen better sense again and realised he doesn't and didn't ever want to lose you. In short, you DO have to set the standard and example (because you're the fairer sex) BUT!...not to the O.T.T degree YOU obviously used to go to...because now you know what results (POP-WHOOSH!). Any of that made sense? It's basically the longhand and deeper-down of what SILLYME just said, in which case this was just a one-off explanations interjection on my part, but with a difference of opinion when it comes to the question over whether you jump immediately to divorce despite he's willing to bring in a knowledgeable and capable third party as seems to prove that divorce is absolutely *not* what he wants. In other words: most men HATE the idea of (scary) counselling so it would seem he's basically showing he's prepared to French-kiss a decomposing corpse in order to keep you/you & he. It's when someone consistently *refuses* to accompany their partner to counselling that the giant Red Flag pops up. Once you get back that (quite possibly upgraded) loving feeling, all else/everyone else will automatically and naturally start to fall back into place; that's how it works, with you starting with your primary relationship being the obvious logical. Well, not back as such, but in the place it SHOULD have been by then. That's me done (if you're still awake, LOL) so I'll hand you back to SILLYONE et al.