New relationship anxiety
New Relationship affected by past trauma (F36)
Like many on this sub, the past trauma of my spouses infidelity was severe. When I found out about the ongoing affair with a coworker five years ago I immediately fell into a black hole of depression and anxiety. I could barely eat, work, talk, or function. On top of it, I had a baby to take care of. I don’t wish that pain on anybody.
Cut to five years later, I’m divorced with a new career and an amazing child. Nothing is perfect but therapy and anti-depressants helped prop me up to a functioning and mostly happy person! I am now managing my feelings with therapy check ins, exercise, and strong personal relationships.
Dating has been...interesting. One long-ish term partner (3 year) and a string of “almost” partners that never panned out. Enter a new person in my life a few months ago. He (43) is sweet, smart, financially responsible, honest and seems to value friends/family. This is the first guy I could clearly see a long term future with.
Last week he informed me that a female friend that he’s been close with for many years is staying at his house for the weekend from a neighboring state. They usually visit each other once a year and have been friends for 10 + years. This has been planned long before we started dating (activities planned, plane tickets, etc) She visits him and other friends in his city. He said they are strictly platonic. When he told me about this plan, I said “fun!” And honestly didn’t think much of it. I’m busy with work this weekend and couldn’t meet up anyways. Now that it’s actually happening my anxiety has skyrocketed and every intrusive thought in the history of man has crossed my mind. I know by posting here I might get biased opinions about this situation but ultimately know I need to bring it up to him. My mind and heart are not syncing up on an appropriate way to address this. New relationships are fragile and I don’t want to nuke a potentially good one because of my insecurities. How or do I even bring this up? Should I give myself time to process and then see how I feel a couple days from now? My brain feels permanently damaged by the lies of my past WS. The “just friends” line was a common gaslighting tactic by my ex husband m.
7 comments posted: Saturday, June 5th, 2021
