SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Title says it all.

I feel more sad now than I did when I first found out. Yes I know we have added trauma that isn’t helping but honestly I look at him and just want to cry some days. I’m back to having nightmares of his A. He wants to go do things (his normal hobbies with his brother) which last year I had no problem and I’m having bursts of anger over it for no reason. He’s done more than he ever has but idk , I’m mad. I snapped at him today and finally worked through my feelings and I pin pointed it wasn’t that he was going for four hours (that’s what I originally told him)!l its that I didn’t want him to go at all.

Should I just expect this ? I was hoping that I could get little peace before A season….
Currently at the gym trying to walk some of it off before going home.

[This message edited by Groot1988 at 11:25 PM, Thursday, January 23rd]

I agree Groot. These last few months I have been really on/off or hot/cold with WH.

Nothing new in our lives but I just keep rehashing A events. It’s weird!

Is it possible that you feel he got off "Scot free" from consequences?

He’s going out and doing things. He can escape you and your pain.

You, on the other hand, cannot escape from the pain and trauma of his affair.

Do you think this sums up where you are?

1st wife

Yes. I would have to say I think that’s a fair statement. I do feel like he should have to suffer and not do anything because I am still upset if that makes sense. It’s really hard for me to watch him do anything that he enjoys because most days I’m just beside myself. But like I said the first year I wasn’t so much like that but now it’s getting harder. I almost feel like the debt wasn’t paid by him, and I know in my brain that’s not how this works. He quit his job. He got a better job. He spends more time with the kids and I I go out and do things whenever I want I can’t keep him from living his life, but sadly I want to some days

Many people have described similar feelings in Year 2. The shock has worn off and you are sitting there realizing that this REALLY happened. My spouse REALLY did this. And it’s hard. You have to now accept the unacceptable.

What you are feeling is normal. Some have sadness, some go through the "plain of lethal flatness" (POLF) as the adrenaline that has been curing through your veins starts to reside.

Are you in IC? Having outlets like the gym is important, as is communicating what you are going through. How does he react when you tell him how you are feeling?

(Also, and this is hard I know, but try to tell him how you feel up front — it may be a different communication style than you are used to, but what would have happened if you told him you didn’t want him to go golfing at all instead of just not for 4 hours?)

Sending support- this stuff is hard, even in year 2.

My second year was full of sadness. I figured XWH wasn't really changing to be a safe partner, which he confirmed by confessing to sexual assault. Spent the rest of the year in IHS. Last quarter of year 3 was much better.

It took me quite sometime to get past the anger of it all. I mean years.

The lying and cheating were hard enough to deal with. But finding out he was planning on D me for months before I knew was just another "thing" to deal with. The secret scheming and planning was just a hard thing to wrap my head around.

At least when I planned to D him I told him the exact minute I knew.

Not sure how we reconciled but somehow we did.

I hope this helps you Release some of your negativity.

Bearly breathing

(Also, and this is hard I know, but try to tell him how you feel up front — it may be a different communication style than you are used to, but what would have happened if you told him you didn’t want him to go golfing at all instead of just not for 4 hours?)

Yes, I agree, I am getting better at eventually getting out how I feel but not before I word vomit and become mean. Then after I am mean and he just kind of stares at me like I hurt his feelings and just exploded. Which is true because I am bad at bottling and expressing how I feel the first time.
He was supposed to go golfing last Friday and I asked him not to because the place they were going to go was booked and the only one open was literally 3 miles from where the A took place and as I've mentioned before neither of us really feel comfortable with him being so close to the area, we both just live in anxiety if he is.
He didn't argue, he canceled and made sure with me that today was fine to go and I agreed. IF I would have asked him not to go , I don't have a valid reason to ask him not to, other than just I'm still mad about his A, I am the one that told him to spend more time with his brother bc he is depressed then I can't handle it... I feel so torn about my decisions every day. I feel like if I give a little , a little understanding, and compassion to him then I am giving up on my values and my self worth if that makes sense?

Are you in IC? Having outlets like the gym is important, as is communicating what you are going through. How does he react when you tell him how you are feeling?

I am not in IC anymore, I still have a counselor but unfortunately financially we just aren't in a good place due to our sons accident and us putting our daughter in counseling ( she needs it). I plan on going back when we can afford it again. We did touch on this before i stopped going and she gave me good advice that worked for a bit but I think I am struggling with what I said up there ^ it sounds good to recognize his change, to see that hes being a better person, H , and Dad, but letting go of what he did and feeling like he is being rewarded for cheating makes me sick. I know how that sounds even as I typed it, being able to have a life and a few hobbies shouldn't be me considering him rewarded, I just feel like maybe I am trying to take control of everything because I have lost so much control of my feelings and emotions? Probably because I lost all control to my sexual health, and my marriage because of his shitty choices. Sorry, anger at its finest.

Some days it is all too much.

The 1st wife

It took me quite sometime to get past the anger of it all. I mean years.

This makes me feel better because I have a feeling this will be me for sure...

I get that. Year 2 I was in the POLF so if I felt anything it was sorrow [as opposed to the shock and awe and panic and anger of Year 1]. But there were still angry outbursts.

This is why they say 3-5 years on healing [and I'd say closer to 5].

What you are feeling is normal [in a situation that should never be normal] and understandable. Be gentle with yourself.

He’s going out and doing things. He can escape you and your pain.

You, on the other hand, cannot escape from the pain and trauma of his affair.

As usual, The1stWife nails it. Even years out I struggle with this from time to time.

Currently at the gym trying to walk some of it off before going home.

I am happy to read this - what a great and healthy outlet & coping mechanism.

He seems to understand your feelings so that is a good thing.

Something that my H admitted early on in R but I overlooked it initially was that he was ashamed and regrets his affair, lying, etc. and he thinks about it every day. As in "how could I have been do stupid" thoughts.

Your H may feel the same way but just doesn’t verbalize it.

Year 3 was the turning point for me. I had to make a conscious decision to let go of the past and focus on what was right in front of me. And if I was still miserable then I had to D him. Because my anger and rage at him was no longer helping me heal. (though it goes feel good to unleash lol).

I hope this helps you.

1st wife

Something that my H admitted early on in R but I overlooked it initially was that he was ashamed and regrets his affair, lying, etc. and he thinks about it every day. As in "how could I have been do stupid" thought

Oh, yes. My H verbalizes it usually daily, he is very good at telling me how he feels and what he regrets, his emotions come easier to him now than mine do. He is very open with telling me how dumb he was and how he can't believe that he allowed himself to get that low to need to get the external validation , he has admitted to me since he stopped gas lighting me that he used her to make himself feel better. That there was nothing special about her but he had to tell himself that there was in order to make himself feel special. I see it, I believe it but I just don't care too much , it doesn't help. He has talked to his friends about the A, my family, his family, therapists, he hides nothing and has had so much humility through it all.. I don't think he can do anything else to fix how I feel, I know somehow I have to work though this crap.

For whatever reason he had the A , it doesn't change how it hurt me to my core. I am trying to give some grace to him because I can see where he was when the A happened and how he felt about himself but it will take some time I fear.

Year 3 was the turning point for me. I had to make a conscious decision to let go of the past and focus on what was right in front of me. And if I was still miserable then I had to D him. Because my anger and rage at him was no longer helping me heal. (though it goes feel good to unleash lol).

I think I am going to try to spend year 2 really digging through the emotions behind my anger and really pin point them and tell him how I feel. He deserves that and I deserve that if I am going to truly try to R.

Thank you for your responses they do help!

Many say the second year is worse than the first because the reality sets in that everything is forever changed while in the first year it’s a lot of recovery.

I wondered this- do you ever take four hours for yourself to do something important to you? Because I think that inequity can also make it hard to not be mad. If you carry the weight of your lives 24/7 and he takes breaks, then you are carrying the burden alone. Those breaks you could have to mentally unwind are crucial and I think important to your healing regardless of your relationship status. We need stretches of time to feel lighter. And while that might take practice and finding just the right thing that can do that for you- it’s a very worthwhile and needed mental break. YOU ARE IMPORTANT TOO! I think also if you do it and learn all the ways it benefits you, it may give you a different feeling about what he is doing.

We all need things to look forward to and to pursue as an individual.

H/O absolutely you're right.

I do. I go to the gym 3-5 times a week, dinner once a week usually with friends, church, church group, I go to bed early and read , I go shopping. Honestly I do way more than he does... I guess it's hard for me bc sometimes I consider him working a break. Which I know that isn't true. I work from home and have only one child home now half day before she goes to preschool so really we both carry about the same amount of work.

He brought up that I do a lot of stuff and he doesn't complain and actually urges me to go do it. I wanted to say "yeah well I didn't have an A , so I deserve to." that is kind of where I think my logic is.

I am so glad to hear you are doing these things! So important.

It’s natural to feel the things you do at a year out. You are introspective like me and I think you will lean in to learning more about yourself and there is w lot of richness to be found in that.

I personally think there are a lot of resentments throughout the marriage as I said in the other post, and it’s going to take getting clear about that. From what you describe I couldn’t add anything to what he should be doing either but always keep in mind it doesn’t matter what he is doing now, you do not owe him anything. I don’t say that because I think you should get a divorce, moreso I think him doing the right things is putting pressure on you to get over it. And it’s not how that should work.

Sometimes the very things we resist cause then to persist so if I have anything at all to say it would be work on your acceptance of where you are right now. Accept it so you will not struggle against it. I am not saying stay there forever, but try practicing it for a while and you will see that it may help you move forward even if that doesn’t seem like it would help.

Give yourself permission. I know you have done that at times. I would still let him do his outlet but be pissed if that’s how you feel. It doesn’t mean you have to demonstrate it towards him, let him go and be pissed. It’s a higher vibration than being sad and if you let yourself feel it without interference it will be easier to let go.

It’s okay to be unreasonable sometimes when you need to be.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:14 PM, Friday, January 24th]

feeling like he is being rewarded for cheating makes me sick.

Well that sentence fired off some memory Neurons. Anger is a secondary emotion. I, myself, use anger to mask/supplant more painful emotions. Anger seems more active and yes it can give you a false sense of control.

Yep, that was me in year two. IC was instrumental in me realizing that anger had become a coping mechanism. Whenever I was emotionally tapped out anger usually showed up. I think back on things I did and said to my wife back then. . .Not my proudest moments. Once you say something in anger it can't be taken back.

The line I quoted rings very true to me. My W could eat, sleep, go to work, effectively act normal. While I couldn't do most of those things without help.(prescribed or self prescribed).

You know it is and feels extremely unfair. It took me a lot of discussions with my W and IC. To finally see that for what it was. My W had a lifetime of being able to seem normal and compartmentalize all the bad stuff. I still resented her ability to act normally on an emotional level, but logically I got it. Feelings tend to follow thoughts.

My W was also in IC going through a lot of digging. I highly recommend IC for both of you BTW. Anyway she was beginning to learn how not to compartmentalize her life.

Those compartments walls all came down and boy was it ugly. Years of hiding, avoiding, lying . . . she was finally coming to terms with a lot of her past present and future. Seeing my wife go from seeming to be ok (because of layers of maladaptive coping mechanisms) to having to experience everything without those mental gymnastics was beyond anything I had seen before. It was eye opening for me. She felt normal emotions, but they were heavily repressed, justified. . .whatever else you want to through in there...

My point is that you both go through a emotional journey in year 2 that seem like you can be growing apart. Year 2 was hard and yet I look back and can see things with less jaded eyes it was the beginning of our R. We just weren't ready to do that rebuilding because we both had things we needed to work through. People have limited mental and emotional capacities.

We had to "make room," for the work of building our M back brick by brick. We used some of the old bricks in M 2.0, but not all of them. We had to use different bricks in this new building effort. Ones that were healthier, honest and more able to support the foundation of our M 2 0.

Sorry I was wordy. I saw that sentence and related 100%. Please be cautious with your H about things said in anger. It feels right/good in the moment, but after the anger burns off it becomes regret.

I said things to my W that I can never take back. Even though I explained and apologized it made us both feel worse. IC is a much better place to exhaust that anger.

I am sorry you are having a hard time and hope you find some peace along the way. This journey is one that none of us ever wanted to take. It evens out over time, but year 2 is easily thr hardest year of this journey for me. I learned so much about myself that year, but it was in no way easy.

I was in good emotional health on d-day, the result of several bouts of therapy in previous years. One of the things I think I learned from that therapy is that anger comes up when one wants something about their life to be different. I surely wanted to have no A in my life, but I knew that was impossible. Knowing I had to play the cards I was dealt helped me process my anger pretty quickly, as these things go. I mean, I felt immense anger, but I could let it go.

Sadness, I was taught, comes from loss. What a tremendous loss an A is! I lost a relationship that had been better than good for over 4 decades - that was almost 2/3 of my whole life, over 95% of my adult life. And oh, the illusions that had been shattered! So yeah, I was sadder than I ever had thought possible for 2-3 years. Big love, lots of time together - lots of grief.

My reco is: embrace it. If you feel it and let flow through your body, you'll be done with it - letting a feeling flow through one's body lets it go. But lots of grief means lots of letting it flow.

It gets easier, IME.

Grief isn't a problem. Trying to ward it off is.

And traumas build on each other. You've had an especially hard time. Your body knows grief. I don't think it separates grief from its sources.

You can think and act even while you have your feelings. There is nothing wrong with crying even over a trivial loss. Crying won't keep you from doing what needs to be done; it may even help.

(((Groot)))

*****

IMO, my W experienced a giant nasty consequence. She entered her A to avoid pain. As a result, she added to her burden. Then she had to deal with all of it, or lose me. And if I didn't like how she dealt with it, she'd lose me and still have to deal with her pain.

I watched her do that. She had it worse than I did, even though I gave her a pass.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 8:01 PM, Friday, January 24th]

One thing my therapist and I did was The Grief Recovery Handbook. You can buy it for about $5 on ebay. Why don't you get a copy and work through the exercises?

The definition of forgiveness is a little different. It's about giving up the thought of changing the past.

At the end, you write a letter and read it out loud. For me, I could feel a release as I read the letter out loud. You don't have to read it to anybody, but there's power in the spoken word.

I went into the exercise thinking it was not going to be helpful, but was surprised how beneficial it was.

FWIW, I was talking to a friend and she said her mom did this after a miscarriage. This works for more than infidelity.

ETA: I didn't R. XWH couldn't keep his hands to himself and crossed my hard boundary.

[This message edited by leafields at 6:11 AM, Saturday, January 25th]

I am not in IC anymore, I still have a counselor but unfortunately financially we just aren't in a good place due to our sons accident and us putting our daughter in counseling ( she needs it). I plan on going back when we can afford it again.

Hi Groot, I'm one of the many regular readers who doesn't post as often as I maybe should. If I'm feeling down, then I read through archives and am amazed at the wise advice that outperforms anything I pay for with counseling, workshops, or groups. Your pause on counseling jumped out to me, and I want to offer a resource that I think is secretly amazing. It's a life/wellness/meditation app called Waking Up, and the most amazing part is that their business model--"pay as you are able". The creator literally says "if you would have to choose between paying for a gym membership or this app, then I want you to email our support and we will give you a 1 year subscription completely free--no questions asked".

In particular, there is a section in "Life" on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy from an amazing psychotherapist Seth Gillihan. I've gotten so much peace from listening/practicing with him.

I have a link to a 30 day free trial if you want to get a quick sense of it. I think I can DM to you (not sure if I have permission), or if there's a mod that can give me permission or post the link themselves, then I can share that way.

Another free resource that I've gotten invaluable help from is a virtual support group. If you need help finding one, please let me know (the one I was connected with explicitly asks not to promote so I think a separate message is best).

Mostly, I just want to share that I validate and underscore your feelings in my own story, and I love sharing help (especially when it's freely available and not garbage/predatory).