From Dr. Frank Gunzburg:Several people responded with stories that were so powerful, we called them up and recorded the WHOLE STORY. With the help of my editor Spencer, we captured the drama from beginning to end and want to share how one couple fought viciously to save their marriage of 32 years after Jerry had a 2 year affair.
Below is the story of Julie and Jerry Hamernick. These are real people and we HAVE NOT CHANGED their name. And yes, this is their picture to the left. They agreed very enthusiastically about sharing their identify.
As a matter of fact, they offered to post their phone number so people could call them. I thought that would not be the best idea, but if you would like to send an email I will be happy to forward it to them. (I will include a special email address at the end of this email) Here is their story.
Jerry & Julie Hamernick:
For 32 years Jerry and Julie Hamernick had the perfect marriage - 5 loving children, 13 grandchildren, 2 successful businesses, a house in Florida and one in Minnesota, and the money and leisure to travel around the world. They were living the American dream.
"People thought we were the ideal couple. They would tell us we were their model. I guess I kind of thought that way also. In my heart, I thought it was indestructible ..."
At least that's what Julie thought until Jerry revealed the horrible truth that he was having an affair.
"We were on vacation in the Caribbean and Jerry had been different - that's the only way I can describe it - he was hyper, preoccupied, so I asked him the question, I said, 'You seem so sad. You seem so preoccupied. Is there something you want to tell me?" I never expected the answer I got.
"I'll never forget the first sentence Jerry said to me. He said, 'You know, you've been so busy and you had rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia, and you didn't feel good. You didn't seem to feel like making love much ... I've found someone else and I've been seeing her for six months ...'
"I was totally numb when I heard those words. I was like a dead man walking. I didn't feel anything. I didn't dare to feel. It was like I was in shock. I could hardly believe my ears. I really, truly thought it was a dream and that I would wake up. Only I didn't ...
"Do you love her?" I cried.
"I think I do. I love you, but I just don't think I'm in love with you anymore."
"I wanted to go home. But we had guests with us, so I put on a face and pretended like nothing had happened for two weeks. I pretty much denied it. I thought I could control it. So, I kept it secret.
"I was too embarrassed to talk to anyone ... humiliated is the word. Everyone thought we had this perfect marriage, and I didn't want them to know we didn't. I lived those two weeks of vacation pretending I was happy ...
"Once we got home and I was in my familiar surrounding again, I went right to the internet and typed in "cheating husbands," or something like that. That's when I found Dr. Gunzburg's work ...
"I started reading Dr. Gunzburg's emails. One of the most helpful things as time went on were those letters from the doctor. I would gobble up every one. I would print them and leave them lay on Jerry's desk. He would read them, and sometimes we would discuss them. Those letters gave me the courage to keep on keeping on, even when things were darkest. I'll never give those letters up, even now that we're comfortable and happy again.
"So as soon as I found How to Survive an Affair, I paid the bucks and started reading the book. I began to realize as soon as I was reading it that I wasn't alone and that all those feelings I felt were normal.
"For example, I'm known in the community as a strong person, a professional woman. I'm pretty sassy and pretty spunky and I don't let anybody walk on me. People would say, 'If you've got a problem take it to Julie, she'll fight it for you.' I was a stand up person.
"That all went away when I learned about the affair. All of a sudden I just couldn't do anything.
"Immediately I didn't think I had value. I started telling myself, 'If I had sex more often, if I hadn't worked so hard and so long in our business, if I lost weight, if I started doing more sport activities, he would love me. I just thought it was all me. I knew he was the person who had done the act. But I was trying to figure out how I had caused him to do that.
"I didn't think I could ever have anyone else. I didn't think anyone would want me. I thought I was too fat and unattractive. I felt like I had nothing to offer. I lost all of me. I lost thinking that I was a desirable person, that I had value, that I was smart. It just went away and I got pretty depressed.
"Dr. Gunzburg helped me realize all of those feelings were normal after learning about an affair. I took a lot from the book in self-affirmations and getting back that it wasn't my fault. Certainly every person contributes to problems in their marriage, but the affair wasn't my fault. I had to learn that, and I learned it."
As important as these realizations were for Julie, the work had only begun on their marriage. Just buying and reading the program didn't change Jerry and Julie's relationship automatically. It took time for that to happen. You see, Jerry didn't quit the affair.
For 3 years he continued to see the other woman.
"It was a really weird time for me. During 30 years of marriage, I was never one of those guys that would go out to bars and stuff like that. Julie and I did everything together. I'd go out with the guys on golfing or fishing trips, but I wasn't one of those guys that went off to the bars and the girlie shows. It was never part of my interest.
"I still wonder today why I did what I did. I wasn't out there looking for it. The affair started innocently. I was in a bar (I think alcohol had something to do with it), and we were drinking. A friend introduced us. We went out and danced. We started talking. Then one thing led to another ...
"When I first told Julie, I REALLY wanted to stop it because I could see how much I was hurting her. But for some reason I just couldn't. And I'm a pretty strong person. I'm very self-disciplined. I used to be a world-class athlete. I know what it takes to be self-disciplined. I just had no control over what I was doing or what I wanted. It was like an addiction. I couldn't stay away from it.
"I think I was feeling sorry for myself. It seemed like I was taking a back seat to Julie's work in our business. She was doing a great job at the business, but we were drifting apart emotionally and physically.
"I would keep saying things like, 'Why don't you come to bed?' I'm a very passionate, sexual person which had always been a part of our marriage. But over the last few years, it had gotten less and less. I kept thinking, 'Well she's busy, it's business.' But it was wearing on me.
"In addition, a couple years before she got hit with rheumatoid and fibro and the medication she was taking detracted even more from our sex life.
"I wanted to talk with her about my feelings, but I was afraid she didn't love me anymore. I was afraid to talk.
"It wasn't a good excuse, but I used it ... At the time, I was looking for excuses, and there is no justifiable excuse. Really, I was just feeling sorry for myself. I was looking for somebody that would love me. I wanted to feel loved again physically. I've always felt loved emotionally by Julie, but I wanted to feel loved physically.
"Some of my children even thought I was on cocaine. I wasn't. I've never taken drugs, but I was acting that weird. But when you're there, you can't quite see it yourself.
"I couldn't understand it. I couldn't understand why I didn't stay away from that woman. I tried many times. Over 3 years I broke it off 14 times and told her it was over..."
"I kept going back, I still can't understand it."
For 3 years Julie and Jerry were trapped in a vicious cycle where Jerry would leave to be with his mistress for several days at a time leaving Julie stranded on an emotional battlefield. He would even tell Julie he was going to see the other woman. Then he would call home, say he had made a mistake, and ask if he could come home again.
"I had really mixed emotions about what was going on. Was I going to welcome this guy home when I knew where he had been? But I was unable to not take him back. So he would arrive at my door looking like a street bum - he was disheveled, his shirt was hanging out and wrinkled, his eyes were red and swollen, he was crying - and he would hold a bouquet of roses, look at me with big puppy dog eyes and say, 'Can I come home?' I'd let him in and soon we'd become involved and it would lead to intimate things.
"I hated myself for that. I would think, 'How can I be intimate with this man when I know where he was and I know he was just being intimate with someone else?'"
When Julie took Jerry back, he felt a kind of absolution, as though his sins were washed away. He would try to do the work necessary to repair his marriage. They would live "normally" for weeks, even months at a time. Julie would believe Jerry was really done with it this time. Then the whole cycle would start all over.
During the "good" times, they tried to rebuild their marriage. They sought counseling as a couple, but it didn't work. They didn't click with the counselor. They tried other books and programs, but none of them really stuck. Jerry kept trying to reform, but he couldn't give up his "addiction." Julie kept hoping that she would make Jerry see the light. She saw the man she was married to wasn't "her Jerry." He wasn't even "Jerry's Jerry." He was someone else.
One of the things that held their marriage together during this difficult period was How to Survive an Affair. They both kept reading and re-reading the book and working the exercises in it. The hope Dr. Gunzburg inspired in Julie kept her going. And Jerry was slowly learning how to open up to his feelings and communicate them.
"We would sit together in this kind of quiet, sad silence reading.
"We would both highlight the book, him with a blue marker, me with a yellow marker, then we would talk about what we had highlighted."
They also did some of the journaling exercises outlined in How to Survive an Affair and, according to Julie that was the only way they could communicate for a long time.
"I couldn't communicate without crying and accusing and screaming, and Jerry couldn't communicate because he was inward and private so we would put our feelings on paper and share with each other that way in the early phases. We read each other's journal entries and discussed them. It was the only way we could begin to communicate.
"The whole time, I wanted to hear one sentence from him and that was 'I love only you.' He would say it in a million ways, but he would never say that one sentence. He just never gave her up during those three years, and I really knew that.
"I went through such emotional roller coasters. I cocooned. I didn't feel like going out and doing things. I didn't feel like seeing my friends. I just wanted to be by myself."
For 3 years, Julie rode this emotional roller coaster, hoping that it would all work out and relying on what she learned in How to Survive an Affair to help her through these difficult times.
Finally, after 3 years and taking Jerry back 13 times Julie gave up. She finally had enough of Jerry and she was ready to get a divorce and move on with her life.
"The last straw for me was number 13. We had a very sad dinner, but warm and we had been intimate and it felt very loving and real the night before he left the 13th time.
I didn't think there was a possibility in the world that he could actually pack his bags and leave the next morning when we had this intimate, warm feeling night with each other. He got up in the morning brought me breakfast, then he packed his bags and suggested I don't watch when he leaves and he walked out the door.
"At that point I thought, 'Whose the sick person here?
It just hit me. All this time I was thinking Jerry was sick. Then I suddenly realized I was the sick person. Enough was enough was enough! I could be happier without him than I could be with him.
"I just thought, 'She's getting the best part of him and I'm the one in pain.'
"That last night of intimacy and then him waking up and packing his bags the next morning was kind of a killer. It wiped the slate clean for me. It was like, 'I don't even feel love for this man anymore.'
"I was pretty done at that point. I thought it was over."
That was when Julie finally decided to tell someone what was happening to her. She had a conference call with her children, told them what she planned to do, and called a friend for support.
"Obviously I tried keeping the affair a secret and didn't look for a support system, which is one of the first things Dr. Gunzburg recommends in How to Survive an Affair. That didn't work. So I decided to follow his advice. Once I had my support system I was able to make the move I made... "
"The move that saved our marriage."
Julie packed all of Jerry's possessions, his clothes, golf clubs, trophies, old letters, anything she could think of, and put them in the garage. She changed the locks on her doors, and went to a friend's house to stay.
Then she found an attorney, and started filing papers for divorce.
"I was done. I didn't have much emotion for him left. I had decided he gave me a lot of good things for a long time, but I couldn't live this way anymore and I was better off not living this way anymore. I felt like I had to survive for myself now."
When Jerry came home and saw everything he owned in the garage it struck him like a punch in the stomach.
"The very last time I was with my mistress, I had this sense - it was like a sixth sense - that I really didn't want to be with this woman. I also realized something drastic was changing at home with Julie.
"When I saw all my stuff in the garage, I tried to call our kids and none of them answered my calls. Until my eldest daughter called me back. Actually, she's my daughter from a previous marriage. Julie is her step mom, but she calls her mom. She did a kind of intervention with me. She really laid into me and told me what I had done wrong.
"It was then that I hit bottom.
"When I opened that garage I knew ... I knew all the way home I didn't love Jackie. I knew how much I really loved Julie. I finally knew what I wanted, but when I opened that door I thought it was too late.
"That was the turning point in my life. When I had the freedom to choose, I realized this isn't what I want. This isn't where I want to be. I don't even love that other woman. Then when I saw all my stuff was packed, I had the feeling that I had blown what I really wanted and I decided that if I ever got the chance I would never blow it again."
Even though Jerry had finally decided what he wanted, Julie didn't want to have anything to do with him anymore. She wouldn't respond to his phone calls or emails. The trust was finally shattered and she didn't want to take him back. She was ready for a divorce.
Jerry realized that if he had any chance of saving his marriage he had to open up to his true feelings and share them with his wife as outlined in How to Survive an Affair.
Instead of calling day after day, Jerry settled on a different tactic. He decided to write Julie a letter - something he had never done before.
"He wrote me a letter titled 'Trying to Understand Myself' that showed up on my fax machine. That was the turning point that made me stop and take another look and do it the 14th time. In it he recalled his first memory in childhood. He shared things in that letter I knew, but I realized there was so much more to learn about this man. He finally opened up to me."
Jerry had been burying his true feelings for years. When he became afraid that his wife stopped loving him he buried the feelings, terrified that he might be right and that the woman he truly cared for no longer cared for him.
It was, in part, that act of burying his emotions that perpetuated the affair. He thought he would find solace in someone else. He thought he could run from his true feelings, but what he learned was something completely the opposite.
"I was amazed of all the different feelings that the doctor said I would have from my perspective. They are really RIGHT on target. I realized that I wasn't acknowledging and admitting them to myself. I think it would have been over a lot earlier if I had been able to do that.
"Until you can be honest with yourself you can't be honest with your spouse. Until you learn to talk and communicate with feelings and honesty you're really not communicating. She'd ask me questions and I'd skirt around the answers because I was afraid of my own feelings. I learned to be honest with myself about my feelings by reading what Dr. Gunzburg said."
That act of honesty was what convinced Julie to open her heart to Jerry once more and try it one last time. And this time it worked.
"Once he started talking and telling me, I opened up my brain and said, 'Receive anything he says. No criticism. No nothing. Just receive what he says.' We started talking about his feelings and my feelings. When Jerry started communicating I began to appreciate him again.
"That was when the book was REALLY remarkable. After Jerry left the other woman everything fit. We could use the tools in the book to resolve problems in our marriage.
"I learned a lot in the book from understanding how it happened and the dangers of neglecting each other ... and ourselves ... becoming kind of passive in our passion, just assuming that a good marriage was there and that it would tolerate anything.
"It helped me realize there were things I was responsible for. There were a lot of things we had sort of gotten blasé about in our marriage. The biggest thing was communicating our feelings. Often times I would say, 'Remember the book ... it tells you you have to answer my questions!'
"Once we were both able to say things honestly about our emotions like 'That makes me feel hurt or neglected or I'm not important to you ...,' once we began to share intimate feelings I began to understand how it happened.
"I guess I understand it now. I'm not without guilt in this. I didn't have the affair, but things in our 'perfect' kind of marriage had broken down. I was involved in my business and didn't stop to look. I had this comfort zone that 'nothing would ever happen to MY marriage. It was perfect.'
"Now we have learned that there is no comfort zone. You have to keep working at a marriage."
As they began to learn how to communicate again, Jerry and Julie's marriage began to have a new life, but there were still more steps that needed to be taken.
For one thing, Jerry had to work through giving a heartfelt apology for what he had done. He used the steps in How to Survive an Affair and was able to create an apology that Julie could tell came from the deepest parts of his heart.
In addition, Jerry and Julie had to learn how to start going out together and being together once more. Using the steps in the book they developed new interests they could share and began to fall in love all over again.
But probably the most important lesson Julie and Jerry learned from How to Survive an Affair was the fact that they couldn't go back to their old marriage, they had to move forward to a marriage that was better than it had ever been before.
"One of the things we learned is that we couldn't have our old marriage back."
"The other woman is in the old marriage. It's 32 years long, but she's in it and we don't want it back.
"So we're starting over. We're falling in love. We're doing things that are different from the old marriage.
"Yesterday is a perfect example, we woke up and Jerry said, 'Let's take a drive.' We called it a Discovery Day. We stopped at a winery we didn't even know we had in our area and we tasted wine. Then we stopped at a cheese farm a few more miles up the road, and we had them make sandwiches. Then we took our wine and sandwiches and we went to a state park on the river and we ate lunch, laid out a blanket, and took a nap by the river.
"This is the most unheard of thing on Jerry's part. He's a 'Type A' personality. He speeds faster than life. For him to make the effort to do a slow, appreciative, 'smell-the-roses' kind of thing that I'm more into ... He did that for me. And he enjoyed it!
"We started to take up boating. I was never into that. I'm kind of scared of the water. So we take it slow (he does that for me), and now we're boaters. We go to the beach. I try to do more sporty things. We play golf a bit together now.
"We do the things that people do when they start relationships to impress each other. We do little things we never did before."
To this Jerry adds, "She's probably gotten more roses in the last couple months than she has in the last 30 years. I know she likes them so I try to get her some every week." In response Julie laughs giddily like a young woman who has fallen in love all over again.
"We're never going to get in the comfort zone again. We're going to appreciate. We're going to talk and keep communicating. Now we're aware of the danger zone.
"I don't think I ever believed there would be a danger zone. I was in the comfort zone. We don't believe one should get in the comfort zone anymore. You have to nurture a relationship for WAY longer than 32 years ..."
Jerry and Julie have now made it a priority to express their appreciation for each other - which is one of the three "A's" Dr. Gunzburg says are so critical for a happy marriage.
"Now, everyday, we let each other know that we appreciate each other. My wife is all these things, all the things I wanted and all the things she didn't think she was. She's beautiful and charming and intelligent. I almost destroyed that in her. I think that hurts me more than anything. I'm very thankful and I tell her how thankful I am...
I thank God every day when I get up that's she's as forgiving as she is and that she loves me. Now I just try to prove to her every day that I love her more than she loves me."
Julie and Jerry have made it through the storm that almost shattered their marriage. And they have come out the other side happy and in love once more.
"People ask me, 'How could you take him back 14 times'...
I say, 'Because that's how long it took.' I didn't want to cut off my nose to spite my face. I loved this man. I knew he was a good person that made bad decisions.
"Now we've finally crossed into a level of trust. I never thought that would happen. Of course, I'm sometimes afraid it will happen again, so we talk about that. We talk about it, and it makes me feel better.
For women usually talking makes them feel better and for men it usually makes them want to avoid it, but I guess Jerry has decided he's going to give me whatever I need to feel comfortable again, because he's been very open and communicative.
"You know, we just celebrated our 35th anniversary. I NEVER thought we would make it. In September we're flying to Hawaii for two weeks, and there's a special, tiny little place that has a chapel on that island. We're going to renew our wedding vows there and start over.
"We keep reading and working through How to Survive an Affair. We read the book early and we continue to refer back to it. Now we're planning to reread it again. It helped us save our marriage."
