Rings
I know we have had many discussions in the past about rings. I have a bit of an offbeat one and I am hoping that I can get some ideas to work from.
After my affair, we took our rings off. Well, I took mine off, he never wore his, I don't even think he knows where it is. That ring I took off belonged to his mother, so it's super sentimental, but he told me at the time I didn't deserve to wear his mother's ring. She was a lady through and through and has since passed. I used to hope one day to put it back on, if he ever felt ready for me to do so. Now, I don't really know that it's ever going to be appropriate to do so, it definitely wouldn't be something I feel is fair to ask. I mean his mother loved me and I loved her, but this was her ring with his father who passed before we met and the fact. I simply have long since ruled that as not an option. One day, it will be passed on to one of our kids because that was her wish.
Fast forward, he surprised me with a new one. I am thinking it was around year two? It was a simple band, but it meant a lot to me because it signaled to me it meant something to him for me to wear a wedding band again. Anyway, fast forward to my finding out about his affair and this ring was given when he was hot and heavy in it. So, when I found that out, I threw it at him and told him I didn't want his "I'm guilty of having an affair so I am making myself feel better" ring. Because fuck that.
Okay, anyway, we eventually went away on the RV, traveled for a couple of years, and we were out having adventures that you wouldn't really wear a ring through a lot of it. My hands swell and we were always in hot weather, hiking, kayaking, biking, etc. And one day we were in an outdoor store and got some of those rubber type bands people wear to the gym. We still didn't really seem to put them on with any regularity and we were always together.
Now I am back to work (and sitting alone going through online trainings meant for people out of college so you are hearing from me more than normal, hopefully they will give me actual work soon) Anyway, I have been thinking that because my affair was with a colleague, that it would probably be a good habit to wear a band to work. I have been wearing the rubber one consistently for that reason but I don't like how it feels especially when I am typing. So, I am trying to figure out what I want to do. I plan to talk to him about it, I am not thinking of getting a diamond or anything so it's really not a financial thing.
I don't want the guilt ring, and I don't really want to put him in a position where he has to go along with me putting back on the other one. This sounds really stupid, but I have now have so many different feelings about all the rings I own, yet approaching him to say let's go buy me another one for some reason is not coming out easily. I don't think it's being avoidant, I think it's being unsure of what I really want to ask for, not wanting to overstep, but I think I want it to mean something other than just I should put it on because I am going to work. I don't know if that makes a lick of sense to anyone but me. I just want to prepare a little before having the discussion because I am a little afraid of tainting another ring.
I oscillate between that and not worrying about it. In many ways, a ring didn't keep anything from happening. I don't feel I need to ward them off. He says it isn't concerning him that I am back to work. (My position doesn't travel, I specifically avoided applying for things that do). Maybe I am old fashioned and the ring comes from the man's heart, and maybe that's really what I want to achieve if I am going to wear it? So it feels weird to initiate. I can't really settle on any one line of thinking so I am throwing this out to see what I get back.
37 comments posted: Saturday, May 18th, 2024
Abandonment/Self-abandonment
I recently stumbled across a speaker who asserted basically that people with abandonment issues and stay are actually less afraid of the other person leaving and more afraid of abandoning themselves when they are gone.
I can’t really settle on if I agree with that or not. My impression of abandonment issues is that there is past trauma that brings that on. However, it makes sense when you put it in the context of how we talk about focusing on yourself during recovery/early reconciliation.
And I will add on a personal level, I do think I have not been confident that I would be able to handle some of the things on my own. After decades of being with someone, you forget how much is divided that you willl have to I have to pick up. But I can’t classify that as fear of abandonment.
Anyway, this keeps rolling around as a concept that I neither dismiss or accept. It would be interesting if anyone has insight that supports this or eradicates the validity.
22 comments posted: Thursday, April 25th, 2024
Boundaries versus Marital Responibility
I am going to try and start this thread because I think it’s an interesting discussion to have. For context, this is sort of a spin off from the thread titled "ws looking for help from BS". What I wrote there is this:
We can only be considerate of others feelings. We are not really responsible for them. I have been seeing this theme a lot on here since I have been back on the forum.
Boundaries are about where one person ends and another begins and knowing how to effectively navigate with the nuance of knowing when to negotiate, when to compromise, and when to recognize a boundary.
I am going to start a thread in it because I don’t want to derail this one when you are really asking different questions right now, but also because I know there re many here that might benefit from the discussion.
So some additional thoughts that keep this more general because this really isn’t about one person or one thread. It’s more that in the aftermath of infidelity, I think there is often a redefinition of this in the healing stages and I believe there is a wealth of knowledge from the people of this forum on this topic we can all benefit from, especially those in the trenches right now.
If I wake up in the morning and decide to be in a bad mood, and I take it out on my H, that is me not being responsible with my feelings because I am not considering how it might effect his day. it is consideration to be in control of myself and manage my own bad mood.
If we want to purchase a new car, then we may have to debate about what’s the most important aspects of that purchase and try to come up with a decision that suits both of our needs. That’s negotiation.
But when it comes to healing infidelity, many people look at having boundaries with their spouse for the first time. We kind of have a saying here (I am assuming coined by sisoon, but I don’t have history on that - I know that’s where I learned it) but it is "the bs heals the bs, the ws heals the ws, and together they heal the marriage." And I know there are nuances to that and not everyone agrees with that philosophy , but I think it’s maybe the cleanest way to explain boundaries in a reconciliation.
So for the benefit of those trying to navigate this, I would like to call on the collective group to maybe try and illustrate ways boundaries changed in your marriage, and if you are healed and fully reconciled how those things still play out.
I will say a couple things from my experience to kind of give examples:
1. As a people pleaser (reformed, but my default is always going to be generous to those who I love/care about. It just comes from a different motivation these days), I felt that I did things to make people happy. In reality, I can’t make other people happy. I can do a nice gesture they appreciate, and maybe that makes a bright spot in their day. Or when it comes to marriage it might give the overall composite that I am interested in his well being and being a good spouse. But the responsibility of making him or anyone else happy was a weight that I carried for an impossible task. So I had to learn to make myself happy and to be generous and stop expecting the outcome to show I had that much control over someone else.
2. In addition to this I thought that if I was the perfect spouse that would ensure that he would always love me. Again, this in reality is something I have only so much control of. I do think there are conditions that make that idea more favorable but people decide for themselves whether they are going to keep loving you or not. It’s really not my responsibility to ensure he does this. Instead I see it’s my responsibility to be a healthy, whole person, and take responsibility for my behaviors and thoughts within the marriage. I can’t control if that’s what he does or not. I can control my responses, but not his decisions.
3. In our pre-A marriage, I wanted him to read my mind and just know things. When he guessed right, I believed he loved me. When he didn’t pick up what I was laying down I felt unloved. Now I see these as tests no one could really pass and really indicative of nothing except I didn’t tell him what I wanted. . So I had to become responsible for knowing what I want, and for constructive communication about that.
Today, If I like something he does, I tell him thank you and how much that meant to me and I try to do that even over small things. Through this I have a different appreciation for just how much he really does consider me.
If I don’t l like something, I tell him that too. I don’t always need an apology, I just need him to be considerate of that in the future. Depending on how big a deal it is and how mindful he is of it, it may later result in a new firmer boundary. Otherwise, I will just trust that he will take care of his side of the street on the issue.
Every marriage has several recurring things that never is solved because the feelings and boundaries between the partners are just polar opposite. I think at some point it’s both of our responsibilities to put it away and agree to disagree and respect each others stance by finding a way to coexist in it.
These probably sound like no brainers because it’s easy to be neat and tidy until you try and heal from infidelity. Suddenly, my bad mood in the morning might be due to a trigger from his affair, and in that case it becomes less cut and dried for example.
Can you chime in and tell the group what you learned about boundaries, and how that has benefitted you. And if it has, how it benefited your relationship?
And if you are in the trenches maybe this is a great place for you to look at whether your boundaries make sense and get feedback from some veterans here.
I think ultimately what I am looking for is to provide encouragement to the many here that take on more than belongs to them. Putting down the weight of carrying the other persons responsibility can be freeing and healthy for both ws and BS. I hope it sheds a light on what is your side of the street versus your spouse’s side of the street. Thanks in advance for sharing.
18 comments posted: Monday, March 18th, 2024
Past trauma
The other day I stumbled upon an article about how people with parents that are emotionally immature grow into people who have been conditioned to check everyone’s weather all the time and make guesses based on that.
I noticed as I started working on mindfulness years ago that I do this. And if I guess they are mad or upset I would tell myself stories about what I did wrong. I began to notice that it made me protective in my relationships. Connection requires vulnerability, but I could not stay vulnerable due to these narratives I built of people over the years.
I am currently staying with my parents because my first granddaughter has been born. We took a break from traveling and my parents is an easy place to stay. I have a good relationship with them but it’s not a connected relationship.
I have never stayed with them for more than a weekend since I left home and observing them it all makes perfect sense how this conditioning happened. My mom is the biggest victim I have ever met. She blames my dad for anything that goes wrong.
Tonight we were FaceTiming with our daughter to meet the baby. (We can’t go in because of Covid precautions) I had to go downstairs to fetch my husband so he could come upstairs with me and talk with them.
My mom poked in and was looking at them on my phone, so I let her see the baby briefly and headed up to our room to have a personal conversation.
I come back down and am told how rude it was, and how she probably would never meet the baby. Throwing a pity party. I was unbothered by it, which was affirming growth I have made in not walking on eggshells with her. I would have probably groveled to her in the past. Her feelings are not my responsibility, and I resent that I was taught they were meant to be.
Because I tried to manage her I learned to anticipate her feelings and modify my behavior. When I failed, I took in the negative tongue lashing and personalized it.
That’s one of many examples that reminded me day by day of this visit why I didn’t understand boundaries, why I am a people pleaser, why I twist myself into a pretzel for others. I understand my choices and behavior are not my parents fault, but I can clearly see where I started these patterns.
It was a full circle moment in some ways, being tested by having to navigate the people who some of it originated with.
I resolved many of these non-helpful thought problems by meditation. People think of meditation as clearing the mind but actually it’s learning to objectively observe your thinking. I took what I would notice to be unhelpful or without evidence and I would write it down. I wouldn’t do more than three at a time
Then, I would write a very short list (sometimes one is enough) of more helpful ones. (Replacement thoughts) Then for a week I would be cognizant of when that thought (or others like it) would come up and correct it.
It seems like this would take forever, but it didnt, usually thoughts follow the same patterns and over a few months it was evident to me that I could reframe (or let go of) more and more thoughts with virtually the same replacement ones I had used in my early practice of the exercises. Overtime it became quicker, and over more time the replacement thought started coming without the negative one.
Discerning patterns in our thoughts and conditioning is a big part of growth. I welcome anyone to post their aha moment or talk about their struggle with their thoughts.
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12 comments posted: Thursday, August 18th, 2022
A short article for People Pleasers
Hello,
I wanted to share this link for my fellow recovering people pleasers. Mostly I just liked the little graphic because it's a nice "cheat sheet". Earlier in my WS journey, I had a hard time deciphering the motivations behind my behaviors. I believe any WS who wishes to recover has to spend a lot of time evaluating their motivations and boundaries. It's difficult when so much that we do is automatic - based on patterns and past experiences.
A lot of my struggles were figuring out what I was and wasn't responsible for, and noticing that I spent a lot of time trying to control the things I am not responsible for. I was responsible for being true and authentic with myself, and understanding that I had no control over anyone's reactions to it.
My people pleasing and perfectionism came from the belief that I wasn't enough on my own. I wasn't worthy of love just for being me. I spent a lot of time telling myself stories about "if I do this I will be more valuable". I thought if I did x, y, z, my husband would love or value me more. But the longer this went on the more I added to the list, until my own life became untenable because I was losing my sense of self until it reached critical mass.
The reality is, that was all manipulation and false sense of control. What I wanted was simple - to be seen, loved, and appreciated. These are things most people want. But, instead of just allowing it, I needed to control it because I didn't trust that I would receive it (because deep down I felt unworthy). The more I did, the more things got added that really had no value to my husband. Thus, the lack of appreciation would create more things in my list to keep chasing that acknowledgment, and increase my feelings that I would never be good enough.
This would have been true no matter who I chose for a spouse, and likely no matter which way I was being treated. Because the issues were internal, and in turn created my external reality. The more we pursue understanding our internal world and creating a new narrative, the more our external worlds will change. This means being very aware of our thoughts, our behaviors, what patterns they hold, where the patterns come from, and making different choices. That is where our true power is. Sometimes it means losing the relationship, sometimes it means rebuilding it, but for sure it means being in a better place moving forward.
Anyway, I hope this link is helpful as you sort through those issues for yourself.
Authentic Kindness Vs. People Pleasing
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4 comments posted: Tuesday, July 19th, 2022
Mod Please
I need permission to share a graphic?
3 comments posted: Wednesday, June 22nd, 2022
Self-adulation/validation in affair
I am going to try and share this to be helpful to other waywards. It is not my intention to excuse anything, nor is this anywhere near the whole of the problems. More, I am trying to illuminate one single aspect of what I think is a driving force common in affairs. And I realize, this is not true in all affairs.
Self- adulation. The Ap is your audience. Most of the time that is their value. They are there to validate this experience that you are really just having with yourself.
I will share how this was relevant in my situation because it’s the only experience that I have and I think it’s the only way I can illuminate the thought further.
When I started my affair, I could not have told you why. If you asked me I would tell you I had a good husband, a good marriage. Affairs are not often about that, it’s about the relationship you have with yourself. I never thought about that to even understand mine was lousy. I mean externally, I presented as a woman with everything. Surely if I was doing something wrong it would show up in my ability to be what people thought of as a successful person with a successful marriage and great kids.
The problem is to get those things I basically self abandoned. People pleasing. Playing a role. Hiding behind perfectionism. These are false ways we prop ourselves up and they are so flimsy. We never feel worthy of our blessings this way.
The appeal of the affair is almost never the actual appeal of the AP. The appeal the AP has is they don’t know you (at least not as well as your spouse). So you can present yourself in a new way.
But there is no foundation for that "new way", what we often do is fall back to who we were at a younger age. Suddenly we can go back to that time and pretend we are a cooler, hotter, more interesting version of ourselves. But it’s just another role, another round of pretending because we really do not know at all what we want or who we want to be.
The appeal is in that AP doesn’t question it. They are often in that same space. And it’s a cop out. Hiding in this pretend version of yourself so you can prop yourself up to be what you "once were".
Often I think this is why it’s easy to rewrite the marriage. You are so busy pretending to be this new awesome person that the marriage doesn’t fit your narrative. Who you are with your spouse is really the true you. But you don’t like that life you are living. It’s easy to pin the blame of that on your spouse - covenient. It allows you to maintain your narrative about this new person you are pretending to be.
This takes numbing, and that removes empathy. For some of us we never had it, for others like myself we busted it by self abandoning for so long. How can we care about the feelings of others when we don’t even know how to do that for ourselves any more?
Look at your affair. What did you care about most, talk about most? Often it’s ourselves. The value of the affair partner is that all the sudden you are shucking all you responsibilities, and hiding from who you are and the affair partner is validating that. Mostly because they are doing the same thing and not paying all that much attention to you either. Both of you are just scrambling to get good feelings.
And honestly they become the person most central to you because without them you cannot hide. You need their validation taht you are all these things you think you should be in order to be happy.
I think as ws, the biggest part of our work is to realize that we were in control the whole time. This person we don’t like and this life we are leading is not satisfying because we haven’t made it that way. It is our core belief that isn’t something we do. We find someone who does this for us.
Until you take the time to see this self adulation is false, that really all you did was create another addiction to hide in, you can’t begin seeing that your life always was what you made it to be.
It was not your wife or husband that made you lose your sparkle. It wasn’t the Ap giving you a new sparkle. It was you and only you the whole time that was in control of that. And all this play acting is because you haven’t sat with yourself and decided you are worthy of your own pursuits that light up your life in a healthy way.
Chances are you don’t even have the first clue of what would light you up because you have looked for your light in others for so long.
I think this is the core of our work- getting honest with ourselves on what it is we want out of life and finding healthy ways to make that happen. But to do that you have to let go of the idea that something or someone else is going to do that for you.
Looking back, I can finally have compassion for myself. It’s no wonder I wanted to blow up a life that was no longer tenable to me. Realizing it wasn’t tenable to me because of my internal world and not my external world was years of slowly growing accountability. Years of showing up for the hard stuff so that I could finally learn to be confident in myself - to fully know I got myself in any situation.
There is no knight in shingling armor, only you can save you.
And years later I can tell you though at the time it seemed to be miserable, hard work. Years of self loathing, shame, and then turning to very intentional experiments that often failed. Understanding myself was the keys to unlocking where I really wanted to go, who I wanted to be, and building a life that I love.
We learn to love and respect others by doing that for ourselves. What we have we give easily, willingly, and with joy. If we have compassion for ourselves, we have it for others. If we take care of ourselves we don’t feel lack when we take care of others. We easily give it because we have it in spades and a never ending fountain of it that comes from the way we conduct our lives.
The affair isn’t that. The affair is self adulation of this idealism we have of who we can be and it’s about as shallow as a mud puddle. It mostly takes us back to our teen years again, and that’s how we act. We don’t have a true sense of self, we only know we were having more fun at that time. In our life so it’s our default.
Who we grow to be can be so much richer, more peaceful, more abundant. Why would anyone want to go back to the way they were as a teenager? No rational person would choose that.
To pretend means to turn off the parts of ourselves that doesn’t fit whatever narrative we are trying to achieve. So pretending to be a dutiful wife with no important needs of her own was the first act of driving myself into the ground. The second act was burying myself to do things I knew was wrong but felt temporarily much, much better. I simply ignored ll bad feelings and chased good. The Ap was my enabler, my audience, the one who wanted me to stay in that state so they could as well. But it brought me even further from myself, deepened my pain and my shame, the climb was astronomically harder if I would have done it without having had the affair.
Lies. All of it is lies. The only way to find the truth is to create a momentum of truth. Moment by moment, day by day, your task is to find your truth until that is the fountain that flows naturally and abundantly. We can’t get real with anyone until we get real with ourselves. Most of us are terrified of what that looks like so we continue down the path of hiding and staying in the lies.
The AP is not the love of your life. They are your dopamine hits and if you are honest they are interchangeable.
Your spouse doesn’t exist to make you happy to to make you the highest version of yourself. That is your job.
If you are not granted the miracle of reconciliation it is not a statement of your worth, it’s a statement of your past/current actions. If you are granted that chance or find yourself in a subsequent relationship you would like to not mess up, then take the time to really get to know yourself. Take stock. Then decide where you want to be and act accordingly. Self adulation is not self worth.
Playing a role to find self acceptance can feel neat and tidy but the beauty of being messy and allowing yourself to explore your truth will bring you to a place of solidness, rather than lack and always reaching.
The key to all of it is inside of you. Be brave enough to fail 1000 times, because each time you will get closer to what you are trying to achieve. But you have to do it for yourself and not to get someone else to do something.
When we live authentically it’s much easier to correlate our external world with something we deserve. It’s our own accomplishment and that feels far less empty than the void we were trying to get others to fill in those blanks for us.
14 comments posted: Friday, June 10th, 2022
Mod help!
Sorry on my self-adulation post I did not mean to post with a stop sign. Please remove. Thank you!!!
2 comments posted: Thursday, June 9th, 2022
Fierce Self-Compasion
I am reading Fierce Self Compassion by Kristen Neff. There are some passages that challenge some of my beliefs about self compassion, and I thought I would share what I am connecting with.
As WS, I think we often have unhealthy relationships with ourselves and that is rooted in shame. The sources of that for me date back to childhood. Sexual abuse, verbal and emotional abuse, the ways that made me a weird kid that never self like I fit in, etc are mine. To me I think that always made me feel insecure, inferior, and like a bad person.
I can trace about all of it by now to becoming a perfectionist, over-doing for people so that they will love me, not leave me, hiding a lot of my internal world and genuinely ignoring it myself and not giving myself a voice. Just bury it and smile. A lot of Brene Brown’s book rising strong made me aware of my shame and how it was sabotaging my life.
These days I keep stumbling onto what I think of as branches of the tree that those shame roots grew. They are thoughts and behaviors that serve no purpose and are limiting. For me this is now more like a little pruning. But I find new little things regularly: this was one of the things that has kept me on this site because there is a lot here to "try on" and then either find it doesn’t fit, something I like, or something to work on.
So, I started reading this book after hearing it in some other sources of self help that I follow. Mostly because self compassion is the hardest thing to hold for me. I have to be kind of vigilant about it - I have a favorIte go to move to try and deal with lack of kindness towards myself. I will bring myself into the present moment and soothe that thought and reframe how I am narrating.
So for example when something brings up the memory of my cheating or watching my husband be destroyed in the aftermath - I might say to myself that I am no longer cheating, that I am not the same person anymore. And that I can’t change the past, I just have to keep moving towards the future. But I still have loathing for that person (not disassociating from being that same person, just hating that version) I am kind of simplifying it a bit so it gets to the point with the book.
In this book she suggests that we sometimes hate ourselves in the process of trying to convince ourselves that we are a good person. And in the process it’s keeping us from truly having self compassion, instead it’s another way of beating ourselves up endlessly.
I think everyone struggles with self compassion, but obviously in the wake of realizing the damage we cause, the bad decisions we have made, etc. it’s very hard to get your head above water. Do we just feel better by saying how horrible we were so we can convince ourselves that we are now good people? I think so, it’s very illuminating. Hopefully someone else can benefit, if nothing else it’s a thought provoking book. I am still working on figuring out how this fits with what I should do or think differently (or not) moving forward.
I also thought that I am not a judgmental person, but I have discovered in some ways I am and how that has limited some of my relationships. I read this is a product of an unresolved superiority complex. I could find myself relating to that as well. Now I look for that filter and how its effecting how I am presenting something to others. I have caught it now a few times.
For so long I was afraid to put away the self punishment for fear of what that meant. However I have found as I have made honest efforts to do that that the fear was unwarranted, it actually made me less fragile and more sturdy. Less defensive and more open minded to feed back.
I am not sure that I am really looking for any thing specific here but would welcome some other things you have learned about self compassion. How is your relationship with yourself evolving as time moves forward? Reading this has really made me curious to what else I have backwards?
11 comments posted: Tuesday, March 1st, 2022
Mods Please
Thank you!
1 comment posted: Thursday, May 6th, 2021
Mods Please
Comesinwaves would like to add a stop sign to his post. Thank you!
2 comments posted: Tuesday, January 26th, 2021
I don’t know where to put this.
I have been gone for a week, and here all day today. I can’t pretend things are normal right now. H is having an inappropriate relationship. I don’t have the energy to get into everything at the moment. I have told no one. And I didn’t even want to tell you all. I didn’t want to tarnish him to you all. How fucked up is that? I feel maybe more embarrassed saying this shit than anything I have ever posted as a wayward.
I had just posted something earlier where I think my resentment was showing. And I thought to myself - I should not talk about him this way. Then I got mad maybe more at myself and so now I am saying it. I have asked him not to come on for a while until I can sort myself out more. I am hitting submit before I can change my mind.
427 comments posted: Friday, October 16th, 2020
