I have chosen it so actively that I really struggle to create boundaries and for my WW to have any real consequences to her actions.
Like I said, it's because your personal standards of kindness and goodness are diametrically opposed to boundaries and consequences. NOT because of something intrinsic to kindness and goodness. We agree - good, kind BSes can set boundaries and still be good and kind. Boundaries are not inherently cruel and evil. It's simply hard right now because you FEEL like boundaries are not kind and good. Perhaps because you fear what happens when you enact them. If your WW responds poorly to them, obviously that brings you closer to D and further from R which might happen. The opposite could happen too where your WW realizes if she wants to stay married, she will need to abide by your boundaries and she starts following the new rules. But regardless of what she does or doesn't do, the boundaries have a very important affect - keeping you safer.
But that fear is mostly grounded in what she may or may not do next, not that the marriage may end but that I'll feel more pain.
Here's something you need to understand - it doesn't matter WHY your WW is doing this. Yes, she needs to figure that out in order to fix herself but it doesn't matter to YOU why she does this. Imagine you're standing in front of a psycho with a knife. Do you care why the psycho keeps stabbing you? If the psycho stabber genuinely can't help themselves but stab you, does it suddenly hurt less when you get stabbed? Do you bleed less? Do you have a better shot at surviving multiple stab wounds? No, of course not. If you want to not be stabbed, you move out of the way.
Your WW is holding the knife of infidelity. She keeps stabbing you. "But she's sad!" She stabs you. "But she's depressed!" She stabs you. "She can't help it!" She stabs you. If you stand still and keep giving her every opportunity to stab you, do you know what's going to happen? She's going to stab you. She's going to stab you until she puts down the knife and makes a valiant effort through IC and self-reflection to never pick the knife up ever again. But until then, she's going to stab you. And stab you. And stab you. Until you move. Maybe, just maybe, if you move away, she'll miss you and put the knife down. But until then, she's going to stab you.
She pulled back then and it's taken until this week for her to have what appears to be a complete mental breakdown.
Ok, so now she's holding the knife and crying. You know what's going to happen when she stops crying? She's going to stab you. She needs to put down the knife and get help before she can stop stabbing you OR you need to move away and stop standing in her stabbing zone. That hasn't happened yet.
I just keep trying to listen to what my heart is telling me.
You might not like this but you have to take a step back. Ok, let's say your heart is a friend who gives you financial advice. You follow their advice, you lose money. You follow their advice again, you lose money. You keep following their advice and you keep losing money. If your heart was a person giving you advice and after years of following their advice you are no closer to your goal than where you started, would you keep listening to them? If listening to your heart has bought you 2+ years in infidelity, multiple DDays, multiple broken NC, and a recent serious threat from your WW for S/D, then do you think your heart gives the best advice for how to get out of infidelity and how to R? Doesn't sound like it.
So far that's where I've found the serenity dogcopter is referencing; I sleep through the night all night every night. It's not drug assisted. I don't have nightmares. Career has been going well. I'm healthy. I'm not sure what self-care looks like for me but I know I still need to do a lot of work in IC.
Gently, if everything was going great for you and you had no qualms about where your marriage was at right now, you wouldn't be here posting about it. Dogcopter isn't talking the small moments of day-to-day serendipity that you find in spite of a bad situation. He's talking about something greater - something it sounds like it's been so long since you've felt that you probably can't remember what it feels like - inner peace and lasting security.
It's impossible to feel that way when you're still mired in infidelity, experiencing threats of S/D, and dealing with your WW's unpredictable stabby nature because you don't live in a peaceful, secure environment. You're simply getting used to feeling frequent bouts of fear and insecurity to the point where you're no longer suffering from sleep issues. It's like spending a couple hours in the monkey cage. At first it smells terrible but after a while it's not that bad. Spend years in there and you won't even remember how bad it was the first time you walked in. You may even forget it smells at all.
If your brain didn't filter out how bad some of this is, you'd go crazy. It's safer for you to rugsweep the general misery than feel the full effects of it. Unfortunately, this is a very common response to repeated trauma and even worse - the pain doesn't just disappear because you don't feel it. It lingers and lays low until you start to feel safe enough to process it and BAM! It hits you all at once. You're likely going to be dealing with intense bouts of pain and discomfort for some time after your WW leaves too because you'll finally be ready to face it.
About your IC - what IS it doing for you? What has changed for you in the last year? You don't have to answer it here but really think about it. You know that you're in bad situation. You don't know how to get out of it. You know that you can only change yourself and not your WS but you still frequently fall back into old habits of focusing on her and not yourself. You know that if you want to stop getting stabbed, you need to set a boundary and move out of the way but you're no closer to that today than you seemed to be a year ago. Are you really facing these issues and confronting them in IC? Or has it become more of a "problem of the week" deal where you only look at your surface issues and slap a band aid on whatever feels bad today instead of digging in to how you can eliminate some of the root causes of these issues? Are you digging into your FOO and figuring out why you are so adverse to boundaries in the first place?
If the answer is no to any of the above and/or a yes to "problem of the week" therapy, then you have two options:
1. Recommit to the same therapist with a new goal. Tell them you need to focus on boundaries and getting unstuck. Follow through with the hard work and introspection that entails. Do the homework and ask for more. Read the books. Watch the videos. Listen to the podcasts. Make a real effort to make traction happen.
2. Find a new therapist willing to focus on real solutions to your problems and self growth.
You can have the best therapist in the world and still see no progress because you're not ready to take their advice, dig deep, and make changes. You can also be 110% committed to change and still be derailed by a therapist who will only be superficial with you and will only solve surface day-to-day issues as they arise. Sometimes a normally good counselor will see their patient's resistance to confronting hard problems and will go down the rabbit hole with them about solving smaller, less pressing issues as a way to deflect from doing the real work and they don't have a plan for getting their patient back on track. We have no idea which kind of issue you have but in 1 year of therapy, you SHOULD be seeing traction. In 3 months of therapy even, you SHOULD be seeing progress made. It's been a year and it sounds like not much has changed. More therapy as it is right now is not going to change that either. And in the mean time, she will keep stabbing you.
[This message edited by nekonamida at 1:36 PM, April 17th (Saturday)]