SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

We've been working a lot after discovery (it's been 2 years now since DD1) in IC and MC, but I just can't get over all I know. I have these terrible thoughts on things I know he did, messages he exchanged with the AP and I read (some of highly sexual content), some of the things he said about the affair that are deeply hurtful. I can't have a normal sex life, everything is there whenever he touches me. I know it might seem thinking too much of myself, that I fancy myself, for I am not better than anyone, but his former AP is ugly, deceitful, controlling, she's disgusting as a human being and as a woman and I keep thinking that he would have cheated on me with ANYONE available, it could be the most disgusting and cheap person in the world. I am losing all the hope, I'm becoming a cynical person. There's also everything I think he did and I don't know how to cope with all this. I think and feel my imagination is worse than any truth I would come across.
Has anybody has anything to say on this?

There is no magic cure that I know of. But here is a technique to take the edge off of them. You’ll want to work at making it a habit.

When you feel the trigger hitting, and I mean feel it in your body, immediately put all of your attention on that feeling in your body. Don’t think about the cause, don’t think about the future, don’t think about the affair, only watch that feeling in your body. In your heart, your chest, your abdomen, everywhere. Really feel it. It’s actually pretty easy to do, since the feeling is so strong.

It is incredibly easy to spend all of your time staring at the past when you are post-affair. Triggers in particular immediately turn your attention to the past. You end up rolling around in the stale manure of your memories for minutes and hours. When you put your attention onto the feelings that follow the triggers, and only the feelings, then it snaps you back to the present, to right now this minute. That is A Good Thing.

Those feelings are the manifestation of all of the raw emotions you are experiencing.

Try it. Then try it again. Keep doing it each time you get triggered. You may feel this internal argument along the lines of why you just focused on your body feeling when there are important things in the past that you have to think about over and over and over - that’s your ego trying to take over again. Just keep that laser like focus on the feeling in your body. See what happens.

Sending strength!

I am 28 years out and I still trigger. Two days ago I was doing the Spelling Bee game in the NY Times and one of the possible words from the seven letters they provide was her boyfriend’s name. Hit me like a runaway truck. I tried something that I read on a post on this site. I closed my eyes and imagined having an ocean wave wash over me and take the triggered feeling out to sea. Had to do it three times and it didn’t eliminate the gut punch feeling, but it lessened and let me concentrate on something else. My wife, as it turns out, saw me sitting with my eyes closed and asked if I was asleep. I do fall asleep sitting up, so it wasn’t a crazy question. After having been painfully DARVO’d the last two times, I have decided not to bring up her betrayal or my feelings ever again. She is resolved to not feel guilty and I will not get any comfort from her. I must look to myself for fulfillment. So I just said that I wasn’t sleeping. She then asked if I was "resting my eyes." I just said, "Yes."

You sound like you want advice on whether to divorce and jettison reconciliation. No one can tell you. You have to decide. On the positive side, you said, "We’ve been working a lot since discovery". So he is trying. This is really a good step to successful R. On the negative, if you can’t find a way to not be repulsed by his touch, you have to ask if you are really married. Personally, if I couldn’t enjoy sex with my wife I would leave her. And if I came to conclude that she had PIV sex with POS, I would be as repelled by her touch as you currently are by your WH’s. So I fully understand if this is your Rubicon, it was mine. You are in IC, ask if there is a therapy to get you past this. If not, you have a choice to make. Please know that you are not crazy and not alone. Exercise, eat well, and sleep. Breathe. Let the cleansing wave wash over you and out to sea.