SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Hi all,

Today's another bad day. I'm trying as much as possible with NC. We share small children, one being a baby so i am around WH every few weeks - it's a trigger before he comes and when he leaves. I keep chat to minimum during these times and mainly email only about children/finances.

Today I'm really struggling I want to contact him and scream and cry and tell him how much I miss him but equally how much I hate what he has done to our family. I am so angry.

There will be no R.

I've read lots on here about the need for WH to be remorceful and truthful and begin to work on themselves to fully understand the devastation they have caused. Is this only the case if there is chances of R?

It comes into my head I want this even though we will divorce, this is probably my expectations as WH has zero ability to show empathy and I've never been told any truths only lie after lie. He's emotionally abused me for year with his betrayals and lies.

If I have to have some relationship with this man should I be looking for truth nd remorse or do I accept this isn't going to happen and there's no point because our M has ended?

I also wanted your thoughts- remind me why I should be NC? The urge today to make contact is strong. Two months since DDay3 - remind me why I should say absolutely nothing to him and show no vulnerability.

Thanks in advance

[This message edited by Notagain6526 at 7:46 PM, Monday, March 6th]

Notagain6526, I'm sorry that you are struggling.

It has been only two months after DDay so you're emotions are all over the place.

Try your best to not call you husband.

Doing so will just add to your pain.

I'm so sorry.

Sending hugs.

I have cheaters in my family and one of the things I can tell you is that they will do anything to justify what they did. They almost never feel deep pain because there’s some "reason" why they had to do it.
Don’t bank on him anymore in anyway. If it’s too painful to see him, is there anyway to get a relative or a friend to be there when he comes to see the children and you not see him at all?

I am so sorry for everything you are going through notagain.

I remember NC was such a daily battle for me. Especially in the early months. It took all my strength not to reach out. It was awful. I was dealing with so many emotions and I missed him. And I didn’t have young children to care for. I admire your strength through this.

The few times I did reach out he hurt me more. He added to my pain. He continued his emotional abuse. I didn’t see it at the time but he did continue to hurt me, comparing her to me, not caring about my feelings, stating why he didn’t want to be with me. How wonderful she was. It chipped away at my self worth.

Please try your very best not to reach out.

I never believed it when SI folks told me that NC was the only way to heal. But it’s true. It healed me. I am healing now. You will too.

I vented in the ‘no contact say it here’ section on SI. It really did help. I also posted here when I wanted to reach out. I also bought a big journal and wrote down all I wanted to say to him, that really helped too. I never re read what I wrote and burnt it.

Over time I started to feel better.

Reach out to us instead of him. We are here for you.

2 months is like it happened yesterday. I was all over the place, crying everywhere. It’s early days but you will get through this.

After a while you will see him more clearly. The emotional abuse. It’s freeing.

As hard as it is try to remember that he is a problem person. You have lost a problem.

Please keep posting.

Thank you for your replies. I feel like a broken record but I can't tell you how good it feels getting other people's perspective on here.

Cooley- I think it's coking to that because being around him even if it's every few weeks it's triggering. I just can't understand how he can go about life like things are normal while I feel I'm falling apart.

Summer- thank you.the journal is a great idea. You're so right everytime.i speak to him it sets me back and the emotional abuse continues.

I've got through today. It's been tough my babies are tucked up in bed. Tomorrow is a new day.

I'm going to research the 180 method.

If he emotionally abused you for years, it's possible that you're trauma bonded, which has some of the same symptoms as co-dependency. Dr. Ramani has some good videos on YouTube on trauma bonding and describes some of the stuff that's going on behind the scenes. (She specializes in treating victims of narcissist abuse. I'm not saying your STBXWH is a narc.)

Leafield- thanks you for this. I will look at those videos. I do believe I have a trauma bond. There's been emotional abuse for years in the sense that he's lied repeatedly, manipulated and gaslighted me for years with betrayal and affairs. That an him starting arguments and verbal abuse at times he's been having affairs to offset his guilt.

Still now I have to tell myself he won't make me feel better, that's the urge to contact him because I'm.so scared at times. When I'm thinking logically I know the person that's abused me and caused so much hurt isn't the one to help me.

[This message edited by Notagain6526 at 7:45 PM, Monday, March 6th]

Once I understood more about the brain chemistry behind trauma bonding, it made things a little easier for me. I understood why I wanted to contact him, even though my head definitely knew there was no going back.

It's the intermittent reinforcement and me remembering the love bombing that had me wanting that guy back. Problem is, the one I wanted didn't really exist.

That's it, the person I'm missing, the life I thought we had didn't exist.

Did you manage NC successfully? I hope you're healing.

There is an adage I learned around here that I really liked, "no new contact, no new hurts" and forgive me for the bold suggestion, but you should drop that comment in Word and make it bold, underlined and 72 point font, print it out and put it all over the place to remind you not to reach out to him. You cannot be permanently NV with him on account of the kids, but you can keep it to strictly business. Is there someone in your family who could help with the drop-off and pick-up so that you don't have to see or deal with him in person? I've seen quite often that this tends to be doting grandparents who love to step in and help, don't know your situation but not seeing him in person will help to give you some separation and detachment as well, so if your parents or siblings can help with that situation, see if you can enlist them at least in the interim while you work on yourself and detaching from him.

Whenever you are feeling low like you want to contact him, come here and post those thoughts. It will help to get those thoughts out. If you don't feel that you can post those thoughts on here, write it in a letter and then burn/shred the letter. Getting the thoughts, feelings and emotions out in words can really be therapeutic, but do not share them with your WH. The best revenge is a life well lived.

I think to answer one of your original questions, in an ideal world, whether you R or D, the WS should do the work to be remorseful and truthful for what they have done to their spouse and family, even if that resulted in D. Of course, we don't live in the ideal world, but rather the real world where a lot of WS, including your WH, just up and leave the marriage and never spend a second analyzing their behaviors and how it impacts their lives and the lives of their loved ones. I am not familiar with your story, but I take it that your WH took off with his AP and is living with her or living at least away from if you aren't seeing him as much. Setup and email address that you will use for communicating about all things related to the kids so you can establish some boundaries and not give him your time.

Thanks so much for your reply.

No new contact, no new hurts

I'm going to print that out!

The affair ended for my WH lasy year when OBS found out. He told lies to OBS so he told the OBS we weren't together and other lies when in fact I was about to give birth and what I would describe as us being happy and in new family bubble, I was so content with my life. 2 months ago OBS made contact me with and told me, I'm so grateful as I would have never found out and my WH would have done everything in his power to manipulate to hide truth. He isn't with AP.

He works away which is why the gap is so big with visits but it's completely suiting me.

I need to think of next steps in terms of family doing drop offs etc. The issue just now is the baby is still so young but this won't be long term.

Bor - that's really accurate.. I feel with WH because there is no chance of R. He is just.moving forward without a single consideration of analysing his behaviour. It's so plain for me to make the link between his childhood and his ability to compartmentalise but for him this is just coincidental and bad choices.

At first, it was tough and there were some times when he reached out and I responded. I was in my own place for a year and so D wasn't started until then. Last contact with him was in October 2021 when there was a scam bill come in with both our names on it.

He moved on pretty quickly and had a few new skanks in between. He got engaged less than 6 months after the D was final, but had been living with his new schmoopie for some time.

I'm glad he's gone. He moved to another state, so I don't have to worry about running into him.

The affair ended for my WH lasy year when OBS found out. He told lies to OBS so he told the OBS we weren't together and other lies when in fact I was about to give birth and what I would describe as us being happy and in new family bubble, I was so content with my life. 2 months ago OBS made contact me with and told me, I'm so grateful as I would have never found out and my WH would have done everything in his power to manipulate to hide truth. He isn't with AP.

He works away which is why the gap is so big with visits but it's completely suiting me.

I need to think of next steps in terms of family doing drop offs etc. The issue just now is the baby is still so young but this won't be long term.

Wow. I'm sorry that you had to find out through the OBS, but I am a big believer in telling a newly minted BS that they need to make all attempts to tell the OBS what they know, because of exactly the story you just told...WS tend to tell the AP's BS fabricated stories like "we are separated" or "we are in the process of divorce" like your WH did. I mean, really, truly, your WH is just following the mythical (non-existent) "Cheater's Handbook"...I mean, we call it that because around here with the larger data set that we have, you begin to see patterns emerge which tell us that while the trauma and pain each of us a BS feels is unique to us and hurts very much, it is far from unique, it is actually, quite unfortunately, common and most cheaters follow the same basic script and activities along the way.

Like I said in my previous post, work on detaching from him. You will have to have this man in your life as your child's father forever, but that doesn't mean you cannot have firm boundaries and keep your distance. For your own sanity, maintain your no contact with him as much as you can. Because of your ties to him with a child, you cannot fully ignore him permanently, but phone calls should be truly reserved to an actual emergency related to the child or child care. Imagine the baby growing up (because they tend do that) and being a in youth sports league. If they are anything like me at that age, they are full of energy, rambunctious and a terror on the diamond/pitch/court. I went to kindergarten with a cast on my arm because I broke my wrist after I slipped off a diving board ladder at the municipal pool or when my brother at almost 3 years old stuck his fingers in the mechanism of a closing hide-a-bed couch, nearly severing the finger clean off. My poor parents, it is no wonder they had gray hair so early in life. My point being, in a true emergency situation involving your child, you will need to be able to reach your soon to be Ex-WH, but hopefully those kind of events will be few and far between, if ever, and you can separate from him and handle everything else through emails, which allow you to respond to him on your time as you please.

I just wanted to add that I started watching trauma bond videos by Dr Ramani and it really was a key component in my healing. Once I understood the effects this has on brain chemistry it really helped me understand why I felt such an intense bond and need to reach out to the person that was so damaging to me. I would also recommend a channel called Common Ego on You Tube that does videos on trauma bonding and covert emotional abuse.

It all helped me.