SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I feel my BS and I are stuck.
I know it's still very early days for us, but I feel we have entered a loop now.
DDay 1 was Oct 25 and DDay 2 was last April.

My BS tells me he is tired of feeling this pain. He doesn't want to be in this emotional hell anymore. Which I understand, I see how hard it is for him. For the first time, he keeps mentioning separation. If we separated/divorced, he wouldn't have to worry about trust, trauma, being a BS etc, anymore. And I get that. I don't want that, but I get it. He knows I wouldn't fight him or make things hard. But I also know he may not be done with giving us another shot (yet).

I try hard every day, I am in IC, I am transparent, I have done and still do extensive reading(including Linda Macdonald and Brene Brown), I am not triggered by his negative feelings anymore. I barely use my phone, I avoid triggers (as much as I can), I check on him. And he acknowledges that (he said he'd be already gone otherwise). But his tiredness is still there, and he wants to wake up and feel normal (just to clarify, I am not expecting him to feel better straight-away, he wants that)

Has anyone (WS or BS) experienced this? What helped?

Talking doesn't help anymore. He says he wants normality, not keep talking about it. I feel like we both want to heal and we manage to have good days, but it's always like we are "managing" this ordeal. It's the processing that is missing. I know it takes time, and I have suggested this may be just part of the healing process, but he feels he can't continue like this. He doesn't wish to go to IC or MC.

How can I facilitate / support his healing? How do I react to this request? How do I move us forward from this impasse?
Is it about healing or am I missing something altogether?

Again, I don't want things to magically solve themselves, I just want to support my BS.

Again, I don't want things to magically solve themselves, I just want to support my BS.

I know, big hugs ((LonelyGuilty)) this shit is hard.

You mentioned DDay 2 was just last month. Please understand that for your BH, the clock completely reset in April. He isn’t seven months into healing. It is vital to understand that a second DDay doesn't just add to the timeline, it completely took you back to ground zero. You are one month out and TT is no small thing. It tells your BSs brain that you are still capable of hiding the truth and that is their worst nightmare.

It's the processing that is missing.

I'm not so sure ... I mean maybe but look at this through the raw reality of the grief process. Grief is never a straight line, and it doesn't follow a timeline. Right now, being technically only one month out from DDay 2, your husband is likely in the protective shock phase. His brain has temporarily shut down the "processing" factory just so he can survive the day. This quiet numbness is the process right now.

His profound tiredness is literal physiological burnout. His brain has been running on emergency cortisol for months, and it has finally hit a wall and the hardest truth to accept is that you cannot force a breakthrough right now.

I imagine he does want a break from it all. If he doesn't want to keep talking, give him the gift of silence. Let him rest. Let him set the emotional thermostat of the house. Use this current period to strengthen your own endurance and work on your own foundation.

All you can do is offer reassurance.

Sometimes our reassurance has to change to look different based on what our BS needs. When a BS is this exhausted, pulls away into silence, the natural instinct for a WS is to worry, BTDT. True reassurance is showing him that you can handle his distance while remaining calm and emotionally stable even when he is cold or checked out. It proves to him ... "I am strong enough to hold down the fort while you are drowning."

Reassurance can also look like anticipating his practical needs so he doesn't have to think. Eliminating his mental load when and where appropriately. Making simple daily decisions (like what to eat or how to handle a chore) can feel like climbing a mountain for him.

But brace yourself, because this quiet, flat loop is just one part of the track. The rollercoaster will hit a high intensity again. When the numbing fog eventually lifts, the rage, the heavy triggers, and the grief will loop back around. Right now, he is likely just trying to build up enough emotional reserve to handle the next drop. Your job isn't to fix the coaster, it's to make sure you are sturdy enough to sit next to him when it plunges.

If we separated/divorced, he wouldn't have to worry about trust, trauma, being a BS etc, anymore.

That's not true. He will still have to heal. He will still struggle with trust issues. He will still have to work through the trauma. He will still have to find his own happiness and peace.

The only major difference is that he won't have you in his life anymore (or a minimal version of it).

I avoid triggers (as much as I can),

While that's very kind and thoughtful of you, it's impossible to avoid them all. While surviving infidelity, triggers can happen at any time and from all sorts of crazy, unpredictable, irrational sources.

Triggers are important. As a BS I had to deal with each and everyone as they came up. If I couldn't work through one, if I couldn't find a way to disarm the trigger, they'd just keep on repeating.

And here's the really fucked-up part... you walking on egg shells, trying hard to avoid triggers, can be a trigger in itself.

Read foreverlabeled's post again, several times.

At one point my husband got stuck. He either wasn't self aware enough to share how he was feeling, or he didn't want to share, or he didn't want to admit it, but he definitely pulled away and detached. I think it was about 2 years after DDay1/1.5 years after DDay2, so that timing is different from you, but he spent most of the first couple of years trying to help me, so I suppose it was at that time that he turned his attention away from me and to himself. It felt pretty terrible for me, but after a really hard first couple of months, I started doing what I needed to do to find - if not happiness - at least some measure of peace. I changed jobs, leaned very hard on my therapist, read a lot, and basically didn't ask for much from him. We were as kind as possible to each other but not very intimate emotionally. After two years of that (4 years after DDay), he describes that he looked up, saw me again with different eyes, and wanted to be close again. I think something about me being able to stand on my own, and especially the two years of consistency, made me seem safe to him again. So if there are parallels for you, I'd remain kind to him, emotionally available, but not ask for much from him, and set about living your life as a new and growing person. He might see that and be re-attracted at some point.

Thank you all for your insight.

Some of the things you mentioned, I already thought about (e.g. taking over chores and practical needs), others I wasn't there yet.

I wish there could be practical things I could do when he asks me "I want to wake up tomorrow and have normality". It's a fine line between supporting him (even silently) and giving the impression that I am just "waiting it out". Like he needs to be out of the storm, while I can only navigate us through the storm to get out. But again, it's fine, I don't want to rush it. I just wanted to be sure I wasn't missing anything major (as I was before discovering this forum).

Thank you all. I am not good with words, but I really appreciate the feedback and the guidance.

I’m sharing my journey not as a "how-to," but as a perspective you might want to discuss with your partner. Personally, I found separation to be the absolute key to my healing.

I separated fairly immediately upon discovery. For about a month, I was just a total mess—drinking too much and barely surviving. I took time off work, which, at the time, I couldn't really afford to do. But I was drowning.

After that mourning period, I heavily attacked dating. I can tell you honestly: this was the single biggest factor in my early survival. Meeting others was the only way I found I could fix my shattered self-esteem and my sense of masculinity. Now, in hindsight, I’m not sure it was the "healthiest" solution, but when you are drowning, you don’t care about the quality of the raft. It didn't take long to learn I had plenty to offer others; I wasn't resigned to being single for life.

However, I probably spent to long in that that phase and eventually hit a wall. I dated heavily for 4 or 5 months before the diminishing returns set in. The first few people made me feel a hell of a lot better, but by the end, I realized it was barely numbing the pain anymore.

That was my turning point. Only then did I finally look inward. I discovered mindfulness, self-help work, and jumped head-first into physical hobbies like boxing and running.

I’ll be blunt: I cannot imagine healing while in the proximity of the person who caused the pain. For me, the "tiredness" your husband is feeling comes from the fact that you are the trigger.

A few things to consider from my experience:

The Impasse: You feel like you are "managing" the ordeal, but the processing is missing. In my experience, you can't process the fire while you're still standing in the smoke.

Life Factors: I was in my late 20s with no kids. We owned property together, which was a total nightmare to untangle, but outside of that, we had no shared obligations. That made the split easier than it is for some, but the emotional necessity was the same regardless of the paperwork.

Perhaps my journey won't be applicable to your specific life, but I’d put a strong case forward for separation. He wants to "feel normal" again, and for many of us, "normal" is impossible to find when we are constantly reminded of the trauma just by looking across the dinner table.

The desire for normality is ... normal. The retrogression to post-d-day ideation is normal after a 2nd d-day.

Whether the BS stays or goes, the BS's healing requires coming to grips with the A, doing some detaching from the WS, and taking in the fact that the WS cheated because of the WS's issues, not because of issues with the BS or the M. It's by seeing each other and communicating that the partners can test each other. It's that communicating and testing that makes or breaks R, and separating makes that testing muchmore difficult to do.

R requires integrating the A into both BS's and WS's life stories. IMO, that's much more easily done by staying together.

In recovering from being betrayed, the BS needs to take into full account both the A and the WS's behavior after d-day. Separation insulates the BS from the WS's post d-day actions, but does nothing to mitigate the A itself - the fact that the WS actually betrayed the BS. To heal, the BS has to accept that and figure out how to rebuild their self-esteem. Separation is too easy to use as a way of avoiding the A's impact on the BS themself.

Even if the BS leans towards D, the daily contact of staying together helps solidify that decision.

Have you written out a full timeline yet? You haven't said so either way. Anyway, this is extremely important. From start to finish in your affair, what you did at each step, what you were thinking when you did what you did each step, everything. Your poor BH is wasting so much mental energy that he isn't even conscious of, just trying to keep everything straight, and your multiple confessions and updates are not helping. That it is all down in writing will actually give his mind a break from having to process so much, he doesn't need to keep everything on his mind as it is already written down and he can just read it when he needs to.

It is also huge because right now your BH hardly even knows what is up. Is there anything else your BH does not know yet? His mind is in an infinite loop trying to unravel that--see the above paragraph. There is also a lot of confusion on his end too. You gave yourself permission to cheat, and now you are working so hard to save the marriage. Why? Why does the marriage matter so much to you now, when it clearly did not at the time of your affair.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 7:57 PM, Thursday, May 28th]

Duplicate post

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 4:03 PM, Thursday, May 28th]

DRSOOLERS - we discussed a temporary separation, but at the end we both have always preferred to remain under the same roof (also because we have young children)

Sisoon - thanks also for your perspective. This is probably what we are trying to do, before we reach the crossroad D or R.

WontBeFooledAgain: thanks for calling me out on the written timeline. No, I haven't. I have given him a timeline, but we have written down only the dates, not the details. But everything is out.
I offered my BS a written timeline with all the events and whys now, as per your suggestion.

That would probably be helpful for me as well, as my brain instinctively removes unpleasant memories (on different occasions, I went to my BS saying I wasn't sure if I had told him this or that about the A, and his answer was always that I already had). I don't have any medical conditions, but I am discussing this aspect in therapy (on top of all the other things).

Yes, you need to write out the timeline and offer it to your BH, and keep it if he says no at first as he may change his mind. Your BH may not even consciously know how beneficial it is to him and what a mental load it will take off of him. Also, you would benefit from this as well.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 10:58 PM, Friday, May 29th]

Detachment is a thing that helps. Not to be cruel, but you must own the being betrayed as much as the wayward owns having betrayed.

You must regain your center and direction, out of the illusion of being in two through life, no you are not, you are alone following your own path. You only have yourself and yourself is the only thing you have influence over, in absolute and right now.

When you find your center then you have no problem in allowing others to walk along your path with you.

You are open again to allow someone to enter your work too, no longer afraid of betrayal, if that happens again you keep walking and don’t look back.

When you get there you can finally even allow. You’re wayward to rejoin your side, maybe is just harder to allow them in because the past, so you are more wary about them than others naturally.

But if, and the if is important, the wayward wants to keep on your side and with time, now that you are detached, you can see they are truly different, maybe slowly things can get intimate (as in bonding) again.

Mind you, is a big risk, you are just so much stronger and more detached so you accept already that this partner can betray you at any time, they did already so they can do it again, they proved capable of it beyond any doubt. So even if the feelings are there it. Might require more time, perhaps even your entire life, it will be a process of patched bonding, not the natural and easy way as it used to be, no with this person, it will require constant work and boundaries.

But is not impossible.

You have been destroyed deeper than most thing could break a person. You must re find yourself before allowing someone else. That goes an order of magnitude higher if instead of someone else the partner is your wayward.

It can be done, is not as easy as a clean relationship because you can’t do it unless you find your center first (as in really do it, not just pretending).

this burden was un unrequested but you have it and you will carry it willingly or not unless you radically change path.

Doesn’t mean that he can’t have feelings for you, they might be there, is just a hard path to walk. You weren’t given the choice and somehow you chose to not drop it all. Only time can tell if it can be done or at some point the weight is becoming too much.

The mere attempt to carry it on should say to you something about how your partner valued you when they chose you.

You can’t make it lighter either, it’s outside of your influence. You can avoid making it heavier and be considerate (Simms your case) but you lost the power to lift it from your partner’s shoulders when you chose infidelity. Relief and help is forever out of your hands now.

You have agency on you alone. Healing your heart and mind is the best thing you can possibly do. And a "help" in other ways: can’t lift the burden, but maybe just maybe, can make it feel "worthy " to carry it