I mostly went into 2 ego states after d-day - in one, I was all feelings and thoughts about the A, how to heal myself, D vs. R, etc. In the other I was an observer, observing both myself and my W.
My observer concluded that I'll never understand my W's A in the way I wanted to understand it, no matter how many questions I asked, no matter how many times or ways I asked my questions. As observer, I also came to think that answering the questions - and I interrogated for hours almost every day for weeks, maybe months - benefitted my W as well as - maybe more than - me.
A WS can't heal unless they acknowledge and take full responsibility for their A and its outcomes. Like Ow, every honest answer - and I believe every answer was honest - made a small contribution to rebuilding trust. And every answer took my W a step closer to comprehending what she did. My W says it took her at least 5 months to find remorse and to recognize her A as just a garden variety A. But she knew immediately that she had fucked up badly and needed to change in order to prevent further major fuck-ups. She immediately took responsibility, and I think my Qs helped.
At first, I didn't feel a need for details about the sex. Then I did. Our MC told my W to answer all my questions (unless an answer violated he legal duty to maintain confidentiality), and she told me to ask any question I wanted to ask. I decided to ask any question at any time. So I did. For 18-24 months.
I recommend looking for a free download of Peggy Vaughan's Help for Therapists (and Their Clients). It's an analysis of surveys she did on infidelity and covers answers of over 1,000 people. Among her conclusions is that the more people talked about the A(s) with their WSes, the better they did.
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IDK ... I guess the sexual details can be a barrier to R. But the resolution of infidelity is way less important to me than the BS's healing, and the BS can't heal unless they know what they need to heal from. If certain sex acts are deal breakers, so be it, and the sooner the BS knows they happened, the better for the BS.
I recommend asking especially the questions the answers to which a BS is afraid to know. I asked those questions myself. If there was a deal breaker lurking in my M, I wanted to know ASAP. I did not want to surface a deal breaker 6 months, a year, 2 years into an R that was bound to fail. I'm grateful there weren't any deal breakers, and I can't guarantee what I'd have done if there had been one, but I think asking the scary questions is essential to healing.
It takes courage to heal, courage to R, courage to D. You might as well exercise that courage from the beginning. IMO, the sooner you use it, the better off you'll be mid- and long-term and probably in the short-term, too.
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Are you OK keeping hard convos to MC sessions? I could not have done that. My W was traumatized by what she had done, but she did it, and answering my questions when I asked them was one of my requirements for R, although I was OK with her putting some answers off until the next MC session. But I was really impatient to make a decision to R. You seem to have more patience than I do.
If you feel as if you're stifling yourself, your quickest way to healing is to get your IC & MC to help you stop. As you've noted, however, you've got to find the right balance for you balance between forgoing immediate gratification vs achieving your long term goals.
So much easier said than done....