Dear Juliet,

Work on Your Marriage

Why beat a dead horse? Her husband is just NOT good.

Continue struggling and working on your marriage. I'm going to be a little harsh here – life has not DEALT you any of this situation, you have made all these choices. You made a choice to get married to a man with questionable potential. Then you chose to break it off. Now you are choosing to give it another try. Despite how painful each of these situations may have been, you chose each.

Focus on Your Reasons To Stay Married

What are your reasons for choosing to try to reconcile with your husband? Think and focus on them. I can't tell you if it was the right choice – marriage is a deeply personal thing that means different things to different people (this I'm learning as my fiancé and I plan our own wedding and work through our own differences). Apparently, marriage does not necessarily entail fidelity in your husband's mind. Can you live like that for the rest of your life? Or do you have confidence that his central, personal meaning of marriage is evolving?

Get a Religious or Secular Counselor

These questions are extremely difficult, and sometimes having help to answer them is necessary. I understand that Romeo was helping you to think about them, but now that you've made the commitment to think about marriage within the context of your own marriage, maybe someone else could help you. If you think religion and faith has something to do with marriage, religious leaders are more than happy to help. A counselor will give you a more secular (and potentially more individual, less doctrinaire) view of marriage.

Be an Actor, Not a Prop

Regardless, you have to start thinking of yourself as an ACTOR in your life rather than a prop. You have the power to develop your own value system and make your own choices.

Good luck; these are difficult issues to be dealing with, but I'm sure if you invest the energy and commitment to finding the right solution for you that you currently devote to worrying about all of the other actors in your life, you will make the right choice.

– Judith

Read Judith's advice to Romeo