Joining in just to offer support, and to assure you that your response is as normal as normal gets at 2.5 months.
I'm pretty sure I was *insane* at 2.5 months.
I remember that woman, the woman I was at 2.5 months past DDay2, our real DDay for the same incident (years earlier) but I'm pretty damned sure I'd never met her before.
My husband damned sure had not.
It was, surreal.
Surreal.
And I am a person who has, who had, been through significant trauma (unrelated to marital/romantic relationships) prior to our DDay.
I don't go into it here on SI because I fear that some to much of it could be personally identifiable.
Not to come off as The Valedictorian of Trauma, but I can say with humble confidence (NOT HUMBLE BRAGGING, I SWEAR, LOL!) that my personal Trauma Curriculum Vitae is deep, diverse, and impressive.
Add to that, I worked in clinical health care for decades, and all over that map. You name it, my discipline interacted with it, often neck deep.
Infidelity trauma hit me like a bomb.
Like small pox in an immunity naive population.
It does get better.
I do not mean this statement as cynically as it will probably sound, but-
One way or the other, it gets better.
It will get better,
With or without your wife.
You will find a way.
It does take time.
And there is no guarantee of any particular outcome.
On SI, waywards are often told to 'let go of the outcome.'
Accept that one's actions and choices have set in motion a series of consequences, and those consequences have a life (and a half-life, in the scientific meaning, this shit reverberates for a loooong time, as it should) of their own. Stop trying to manage the narrative, and the outcome, with various forms of dissemblance. Own up to what you did, to what happened, and give your betrayed partner the respect and dignity of living in truth, honesty and accountability, however painful for both of you.
To a slightly lesser degree (per my anecdotal observations) betrayed partners are also advised, on SI, to let go of the outcome. 'In order to save your marriage, you must be willing to lose it.'
You must be willing to completely destroy the constructs and permissions and disrespects and disregards and autopilots and compromises and rug sweeping that allowed an infidelity to happen in your lap in the first place.
*Here's the part where I get struck by SI lightning, lol.*
I am *in no way saying nor implying* that my husband's infidelity was *my* fault because I failed to do, to be, to provide, whatever.
I *am* saying that my husband's one (1) incident of (quite unambiguous) infidelity, years ago, was part of a much more pervasive pattern in both his FOO, and my FOO, and our marriage overall.
I've held from the beginning: sexual, romantic, intimate infidelity does NOT happen in a vacuum. It is NOT a 'stand alone incident' nor a 'stand alone behavior.'
My husband may not have been unfaithful romantically nor intimately, and he may have never again been unfaithful sexually nor physically,
But he would be the first to come here and admit, tell you, that he'd 'betrayed' my trust and my investment and my faith and my love in so many other ways.
You *are* going to 'lose' this marriage.
You *are* losing this marriage.
You are also losing yourself.
The truth is,
None of us 'survives' infidelity.
Not one of us.
Whether we stay married, or partnered, or not.
We all, 'die.'
The marriage, the relationship, 'dies.'
The spouse, the very person we were before this revelation, is gone.
Gone.
The altar is broken.
The temple is burning to the ground.
Everyone in the temple, if they choose to stay in the temple, burns to the ground with it.
Can we rebuild out of the ashes?
Sure, anything is possible.
But you, and your marriage, and hopefully your wife, will be different on the other side of this emotional conflagration.
Infidelity is the death of innocence in a marriage, in a relationship.
One of you played with the snake and took a big honkin' bite out of that apple.
And then 'shared' *visited* that destruction of innocence on the other partner.
Now you've both been unceremoniously booted out of the Garden of Eden.
You're both alive, you're still together, but life is looking a lot more bleak and a lot less enjoyable.
BTDT.
Welcome to SI! ;)
OK so life as you knew it is over.
But life is not over. <3
You're gonna survive in this unpleasant, inhospitable wilderness.
Your marriage may survive, or it may not survive.
To Be Determined.
Let go of that idea, just for a moment.
IMHO, your uncontrollable crying?
That's grief.
Everything you thought you knew,
Everything you thought you had,
Your points of reference to your world,
Your touchstones,
They have been ripped away.
You've suffered the equivalent of a sudden death:
Of your image of yourself,
Of your image of your life,
Of your image of your marriage.
I did not cry at this stage.
My 'cry' got cauterized years, decades ago.
I was a broken mirror, a pile of glass shards.
I was, insane.
Broken.
Beyond my own comprehension.
Marbles skittering across the floor.
Around six months,
My grief coalesced into white hot rage.
And I stayed there-
for a solid two years.
I do not recommend it.
It was, exhausting. LOL.
Blast furnace level exhausting.
Takes *a whole lotta fuel* to stoke a blast furnace for 2+ years.
Turns out that all that 'context' I was talking about?
All of those 'non-romantic, non-sexual, non-physical' betrayals I was talking about?
DAMNED FINE FURNACE FUEL.
DAMNED FINE.
THROW THAT FUEL ON THE FIRE.
I BURNED THAT DAMNED TEMPLE RIGHT DOWN TO THE GROUND.
AMEN.
My prediction is that *you will* come out of this grief process as a whole new person.
None of us 'survives infidelity.'
Neither do our relationships.
It burns down.
There is the possibility of constructing a new relationship-
but you *will* be a new person.
Your partner?
Whether or not your partner becomes a new person is on them.
Me?
Despite an impressive Curriculum Vitae of Survived Trauma, I have surprised myself.
I have emerged as a person who is stronger and more resilient than I ever knew.
I have found my Bitch Boots.
I *thought* I had Bitch Boots, but I didn't know that I could have THESE BITCH BOOTS.
I have grown into my New Bitch Boots.
And I am not afraid to use them. :)
I have not only burned the temple down,
and scorched the earth,
I have (quite literally) kicked a shat ton of disrespectful people, and fucking time and energy wasters, and shit stirrers, out of my life.
You may find this in your journey, or not, YMMV, but in my experience, kicking infidelity bullshit out of your life is going to take so. much. more. bullshit. with. it.
My husband is now more mindful, MUCH more mindful, of how and why he has a tendency to chase unhealthy validation and superficial kibbles into random dark holes and bottomless pits. A lot of *that* had to do with the emotional vampires and narcissists and shit stirrers and generally (or specifically) toxic people who informed our world. I kicked them out of my/our lives (overdue, I might add) with my new Bitch Boots.
I kicked those ass hats out and guess what??? THE WORLD DID NOT END.
IT ACTUALLY GOT BETTER.
A SHAT TON LESS TOXIC AND COMPLICATED AND NARCISSIST CENTERED.
TL;DR:
I am truly sorry about the tears. =(
That is grief.
It is normal.
It will get better.
Time helps.
You, and your life, *will* be better on the other side.
It's a process.
<3
[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 8:05 AM, Sunday, October 10th]
