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I’m order for me to move forward and reclaim my life, I need to accept that the affair happened. And I do. It sucks and I wish it had not happened but it did. However I get ticked off, stuck on, and triggered by things he did during the affair. Example: him buying gifts for her, sending her flowers, and other romantic gestures.
I know I probably need to accept ALL of that as a package of the affair but how do I do that?
How do I see and lump the whole thing as ONE bad thing so I can move on? Btw we are in year 2 of R and going well. His actions have been solid. But my mind goes to those things he did with and for her that really really bothers me.

You can accept that the affair happened, and still be triggered by things that happened during the affair.

Gently, 2 years out is still relatively new. There's a reason we use the 3 to 5 year timeline.

It's normal to be years out from dday, and get triggered by something, even long after you've "moved on."

Time. I know that's not what you want to hear,but over time it gets better.

I remember having this exact question: should I think about the A as one monumental wrong or a long series of individual offenses? I’ve decided that I don’t really get to choose. In some contexts and on some days, it seems like a single life event and I feel it that way. And like Hellfire said, sometimes some specific thing is a trigger or just particularly impactful. I think we just have to process and deal with whatever our heart and mind is grappling with. Fucking trauma, it sucks.

19 years later, I'm still triggered to think of the A every time H opens a car door for me. It's not loaded with big emotions, but it's there. He never did it before his A and I didn't care, but then once we began R, he told me that he did it for AP so now he needs to do it for me, as a sign of respect. And I'm doomed forevermore to think of it either way: He opens the door, I think of why he's doing it. He DOESN'T open the door, and I wonder why he's not.

There are things that are just always going to be there and have negative connotations associated with them, not matter how much I'd like for them to vanish into the ether. But they don't hold a bunch of power over me anymore. They just trigger my brain to think of the past. That's the "time heals" aspect: they lose their punch.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 6:42 PM, Friday, November 3rd]

I totally relate to this. This is where I’m stuck now too. I think you’re right about the ONE big bad thing in order to "accept" or whatever that means and move forward. InkHulk is right probably that you can’t force it because your mind is gonna to do what it’s gonna do. But you probably can give your mind a push in the right direction. I don’t think it’s fair or right in the first year to not get hung up and process every little detail. But after a significant amount of time I think you might be right that you need to try to get it mostly in one bucket. It used to piss me off when my husband described it as one big thing—I took that as him minimizing, which it probably was. But for us the betrayed, who genuinely want and need for our own health and sanity to move forward, we probably need to start gathering the bad facts in one central location. If anyone knows how to do that I am all ears.

"I need to accept that the affair happened". It is interesting how you say this. It is how I would say it too. Because I can’t accept the affair. Accepting that the affair happened is just acknowledging the reality. But I think if we could get to "accepting the affair" it would be different. Maybe better. I am no more sure that I am capable of doing that than it sounds like you are. It is obviously unacceptable behavior. But I think "accepting the affair" could mean BOTH acknowledging that it happened AND finding peace within your mind with the facts.

I hear you about the flowers and romantic gestures. It is excruciatingly painful. At this point it feels like those things are always going to be excruciatingly painful. Although SS33’s statement about the car door makes me hopeful it could move to a dull ache. Do we just have to make a decision in our mind that we are not willing to let this hurt us on this level anymore? We are going to turn our backs on these bad facts and ignore them. They certainly aren’t going anywhere, we will never forget them. But can we turn away from them? I think maybe I have to try to do that. Otherwise its going to kill me and you, or at least the best parts of ourselves.

[This message edited by Stillconfused2022 at 8:30 PM, Friday, November 3rd]

SacredSoul33,

You wrote, 19 years later, I'm still triggered to think of the A every time H opens a car door for me. It's not loaded with big emotions, but it's there. He never did it before his A and I didn't care, but then once we began R, he told me that he did it for AP so now he needs to do it for me, as a sign of respect.

Yes even the positive changes are cause for triggering, possibly even more so because they seem insincere and like something done to save themselves.

Does you WH think that the affair was somehow good for the marriage and use his improved behavior as proof?

It's in a way akin to the sexual tricks they learned during the affair, my guess in my case they came from the OM and not created by WW. Although my WW only did it once and tried a second time, but I think the guilt overcame her sexual excitement and it never happened a third time.

Does your WH have an guilt over doing what he did with OW with you?

Cedarwoods,

I don't know how to de-compartmentalize an affair there are so many parts to it.

One difficulty in my mind is that the affair is a virtual divorce and a virtual marriage simultaneously. And there are so many facts to keep in mind that we cannot hold them all and process them all.

Sometimes we see the trees sometimes the forest it's like an optical illusion which keeps flipping from one image to another, or possibly every time we look at it it changes.

survrus, I don't know, or possibly don't remember, why my H started opening doors during the A. Maybe AP said she liked it or that her XH had never done it for her or something, so he started doing it for her. And then once he had been chivalrous with her, he felt like a heel for having never done it for me. It was important to him, so I let him do it.

SS33,

I think one question is does WH opening the door for you trigger him to think about the affair?

Or do you think he has somehow buried it or legitimized it by doing it for you?

Knowing how his brain works, I'm betting that he doesn't think of it anymore. It's been a long time for us. I worry that asking him would link them back up in his brain, but if I have to carry it, I guess I should have him share the load, eh?

SS33,

You wrote, Knowing how his brain works, I'm betting that he doesn't think of it anymore.

I sometimes wonder if even in the case where he really doesn't think of the affair itself, it nevertheless becomes a personal belief about the world or a behavior.

After OM1 I think my WW changed the way she saw me to one where I was someone she no longer kissed passionately. It was as true to her as her belief that she never chopped down a tree with an axe.

I've asked her about the lack of passion and I get inconsistent answers so it's not easy to discern if she knows but is being deceptive or has completely lost the link and really does not know.

I think "sometimes it’s the forest, and sometimes it’s the trees" is a good description of it. At 3+ years out, the forest doesn’t cause me much overt pain. It’s a dull ache when I think of it, or a grief that has receded into the background. Occasionally, though, a tree stands out and wrecks me. The triggers aren’t super often anymore, but when they come, they can catch me off guard by how powerful they are.

When I found the emails that proved my husband was having an affair, one thing they contained was him calling her the "would be dream lover of my lifetime"—a slightly misquoted line from a Dylan song. And there were other emails where he called her his "dream lover."

There was so much stuff in those emails that this didn’t even fully hit me by itself. It was just one of many utterly devastating things.

A couple months ago I was listening to Dylan and that line came to my mind, and it wrecked me. Just completely wrecked me. His AP doesn’t even really like Dylan; and my husband and I both have always loved him. There were several things like that—artists or other references that we had shared as part of our romantic language over two decades that he just transferred over to her. Plus the pain of the fact that he never called me his dream lover. When that particular tree stood out from the forest of the affair, I was surprised how acute the pain was. I haven’t felt anything that severe In probably a yer or more.

Anyway, I don’t know if it’s possible to always keep everything lumped together into the forest. There are some trees that are just going to stand out. I don’t TRY to think of them, but it’s going to happen sometimes. When it does I just try to feel what I’m feeling, acknowledge why it’s painful, and put it to rest.

An A, like every other 'thing' that happened, is both its individual parts and the sum of those parts, and one's mind focuses sometimes on 1 element, sometimes on a set of elements and sometimes on the whole thing. The question is: What is one's mind saying each time one notices the A?

Sometimes it's saying something like, 'This is a pain point that's specific to the A that you need to work through.' Sometimes it's saying something like, 'I'm into attacking myself for some reason. What's that reason?'

*****

I think one healing requires us to accept more than that the A happened in a detached way. We need to accept the A into our life's story - perhaps something like, 'The A happened to ME, and here's how _____.'

JMO.

IC helped me the most. It helped me to see my own brokenness and learn compassion and healing for myself so that I could then also see my former partners brokenness. Their affairs are not personal, although they feel like they are bc we are at the receiving end of all of the hurts. Their affairs are about their own brokenness. They do things in their affairs to validate themselves and fill in the gaps within themselves.

What I did to move past that was to find my own broken places in IC and learn to see what the affair was triggering for me so that I could move through those pains and build myself up. As I learned to do that, I grew more confident and more compassionate, and knew my worth much better. My partner didn’t keep up with their own work in that same way and so I eventually outgrew my partner in knowing that I deserved better than what my partner was able to give. Still compassionate toward her, still forgiving of her brokenness, but no longer in a space to reconcile.

I honestly feel like I can’t recommend a good IC enough. One that you connect with that can help you grow with you. As you do that the hurts start to lessen, and if your partner is doing their work then you can both grow together. If down the line you find that they’re not, well, you have and you are stronger for it to move forward in whatever direction you find best suits you and brings you peace.

[This message edited by maise at 2:05 PM, Sunday, November 5th]

The A isn't one bad thing. It's thousands. Any one of which could be the deal breaker.

A complete timeline is key for this reason.

Tickle truth is an R killer.

You also can give yourself permission to accept the A for now and possibly change your mind later. This helps me a lot.

Great post, maise!

Thank you, HardKnocks!