Thank you all for your posts. It was helpful to see those things in the direct aftermath of Dday3. This past week has been... a lot. I've been posting everywhere but on this thread, which is where I needed to be posting the most. So here we go...
IF you have now truly come 100% completely clean with your BW, today is the first day of the rest of a life that can be lived with integrity.
Every single thing I have kept hidden from her about the A is now out. As is everything regarding historical porn use, and the times I was EA grooming (preoccupations sounds minimizing to me now) before and after our marriage. More details and changes/edits/timing of original story have been given while building verbal timelines over the past week.
I had no idea how much I was still keeping back. Truly. The level of self deception I've been participating in is terrifying. Seeing those emails again, photos, the last conversation... it brought back so many things that I had to correct. Things I didn't even remember. I have basically spent the past week correcting a false narrative that I perpetuated for almost 3 years. Or more accurately, slicing my wife open and taking her sense of reality and twisting it up. AGAIN.
I have made every mistake one can make in this process and my poor sweet wife is the one to suffer. She is in so much pain. And yet, she is still here, trying so hard to find healthy reasons to stay. She wants to believe in me, and in us. She is giving me one last chance to do this right. She wants this to work. I keep showing her that it is a bad idea. I will be better, and radical honesty is only the first step.
So yes, yay for me being brave and getting to live with integrity finally at the expense of my wife. The greatest disservice I could do her is to not show up and stay stuck in old patterns these next 1.5 months. Being honest doesn't make that happen, but it's impossible without it.
What is 'the most amazing marriage ever'?
Great question. Lucky for me my wife has only gotten more blunt and consice with her requests and boundaries over this R process, so she made it very clear.
A good way to remember details is to write a detailed time-line.
I have been trying to write a timeline for the past 2 years. I never did one with details, only generalized whens and whats. I shut down everytime I tried to include any detail; I have 3-4 versions of bits and pieces. I wanted so badly to forget, that I would physically shut down so I couldn't write anymore, and my brain would trip over dates and conversations and everything was muddled.
The sick thing about the timeline is that it was literally all right there in that email account. I exported entire days worth of conversations from the app I used. Photos, voice clips, actual emails, everything that took place. It was ALL there in that secret email, from the end to a few months in. But I "couldn't remember" and refused to acknowledge the existence of that email to myself, so instead I kept my wife tortured with no way to know if a damn thing I was saying was true for over 2 years, as well as no sense of closure or choice in even getting a detailed anything from my memory. She trusted I would tell her the worst parts. She trusted I would tell her any details that would severely change how she saw me and/or our story. I stuffed down those things, and told her versions of everything else.
I don't really know what to do about this now. Do I ask for access to the account so I can read every disgusting conversation and finally write a timeline of what actually happened and not the lies I've been feeding both of us?
the panic as I realized I had to come clean, the terror and defensiveness of giving up control of the outcome.
once I finally started to live with authenticity, and to put my BH first, it's like the world turned Technicolor. I never understood how much I was forcing both of us to live in black and white.
Panic and terror. Those are perfect words to describe what had been building in me over the past few weeks. I finally got it through my thick skull that I couldn't actually do the work of bettering anything if I was still hiding. I had felt so stuck for so long, exhausting myself (and her) with all my trying trying trying. You can't work to be an honest and safe partner if you aren't actually being honest and safe in every facet of your mind. That's so obvious and yet I thought I somehow could bypass the most basic "rules" of being authentic. I had no idea what authenticity meant, apparently.
And yes to Technicolor also. Last week I felt lighter and brighter and full of a confidence I don't remember having felt before. While I still feel confident, the shine of being free from the burden of lies has quickly been taken over by the dark and raw reality of what I have done to my wife with this final disclosure.
I broke her brain in even more ways than before and retraumatized her. She is back to waking up and not understanding when it is. It took her 2 years to be able to go a full minute without thinking about my A upon waking, back to 0. When we are driving around talking her brain tells her we are driving around in the city where the first 2 Ddays happened and she doesn't understand whereshe is. She goes from laughing and engaged with me to sad/angry/distant in an instant. I threw us right back on that fucking rollercoaster right as it was starting to even out.
I feel like telling her all of this was the biggest mistake, but I know it isn't. The mistake was not doing it in the first damn place. The mistake was waiting 2.5 damn years to grow a backbone and look in the mirror. The mistake was not heeding the advice of this community that I read being given to wayward after wayward, no matter what their betrayal consisted of. The mistake was thinking I wasn't taking away her choice because I wasn't "actively" lying or cheating. So many mistakes. She has paid and is still paying the price for each one.
telling me "forces him to act on it" rather than allow him to bury and pretend
I'm guessing you bs your ic as well? So fess up time to ic and tell them
This is exactly why I never said/wrote/thought a word of the email account. I knew if I let the knowledge out of my head it would become real. And if it was real, I would have to tell her. It was Schrodinger's Email and I refused to ever open the box to find out.
So yes, telling BS or my IC absolutely will force me to act instead of bury. And I did tell my IC everything at my last appointment. I cried and spilled every last drop. My BS is supposes to attend my appointment this week. Not for any kind of MC, but to know with her own eyes that I have told my IC everything and that i will be held accountable. Besides which a lot of spouses of bipolar people have regular checkins with their therapists for various reasons and we haven't done that yet. Seems like a good time to start.