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I have been making a lot of progress on myself over the last 2.5 months. I've done a decent job detaching and focusing on myself. I workout, I'm eating good, I'm staying hydrated. I'm doing things for myself, I bought some decent jeans I like instead of just using my farm stuff, I've scheduled a consultation for a new tattoo. Im finally having long stretches of good days with minimal to no anxiety but today I am feeling down. There isn't anything in particular I can think of making me feel this way. Even with it being a down day, there aren't any tears or feeling of tears at the moment. Earlier on in this process I was lucky to get 30 minutes or half a day without bawling my eyes out and I'm historically not an emotional person.

Things appear to be going well between myself and my wife, at least to my knowledge. We still live together, it feels like we are getting closer, we spend time together, are going on dates both are doing things to work on ourselves including counseling. I have some concerns about whether she is truly remorseful, but I'm figuring out how to navigate that without investing too much of my heart.

This is all new to me and I'm not sure how to navigate days like this. Do I contact my wife and tell her? Is it better to keep it to myself? Any advice or any support to lift my spirits is greatly appreciated.

Edit: I thought about it and I thinks it's a feeling of lonely. Posting on places like this I think helps me either because it distracts me or makes me not feel alone.

[This message edited by TrashPanda7 at 2:37 PM, Wednesday, November 19th]

Healing from infidelity is a marathon and not a sprint. Betrayal trauma is a b*tch. We have a saying about the emotional rollercoaster - it can take you for a ride at any time. It takes years to heal, and even longer to R.

If you're able to get out of bed, you're doing well. Give yourself grace and understand that there will be times when you're down, angry, emotional, stoic, fill in the blank for whatever emotion. You can let your wife know so that she can support you.

Infidelity sucks.

You may have mentioned it in one of your other threads, and if you did I missed it. How long ago was your discovery day? It's been 7 months for me. The good days outweigh the bad ones, but I'm still having some down days. Sometimes it's a trigger, and sometimes it just kinda hits me out of nowhere. Those days do become more infrequent over time, tho.

What most people don't realize is just how traumatic infidelity is. I grossly underestimated it until it hit me. You just can't know how devastating it is until it happens to you. A lot of people experience PTSD symptoms. It's different for everyone and sometimes it takes less time, and sometimes more, but the general rule is 2 to 5 years to recover. That doesn't mean it's all downhill and pure hell the entire time, but down days are just a part if it.

[This message edited by Pogre at 3:46 PM, Wednesday, November 19th]

Pogre,

I don't know if there is a way to reply to posts or if I'm just supposed to do it this way, but DDay was September 11th. Then the second dday was September 17th when I confronted her about continued contact. No contact with her and AP started that day (to the best of my knowledge).

I was having borderline panic attacks, nightmares, things would just pop in my head and send me down a spiral out of nowhere. I couldn't focus, like today but much worse. I have a hard time staying on task at work. I would break down on the way home from work and I couldn't shake it unless I cried it all the way out which was usually the rest of the day and like I said, I'm not that kind of person. I hated myself. If this isn't allowed, mods just let me know and I'll remove it, but thoughts of suicide crossed my mind multiple times. I thought of my 2 year old son and that I couldn't do that to him so I called a friend the first time it hit me. 988 has helped too at different times. Halloween was the last time I dealt with that and I don't anticipate getting to that point again.

This has me really messed up but I've improved alot and after finding a couple places like this and on Reddit, my perspective has changed and my mind is in a much better place. I am fearful still, but in a place were I think I would be ok if I decide to walk.

The roller coaster of emotions is typical and to be expected. Your whole life was tossed upside down due to no fault of your own. You found out something that is extremely traumatic for your brain to process and it takes a long time.

This early on my advice is to not tell your wife what you are feeling because it may give her a sense of power. If she thinks you cannot live without her that shifts the Power Balance to her and that is the last thing you want. Right now she needs to be afraid that you are going to end the relationship because of what she has done

Early on I was afraid to say or do anything that I thought would upset my wife because I thought it would just send her running to him. I was afraid she would leave but after several months of counseling and research and soul searching I was able to turn that around. I made it crystal clear that our attempt at reconciliation was going to take an incredibly long time and divorce is still an option. Once I was able to take back this power for myself it felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders

I finally felt that my head was clear and I could make good decisions that were not based on fear but on what is best for me. If something was bothering me I spoke up instead of keeping it to myself. It takes a while to get to this point but you will get there

Someone once told me feelings are not facts and feelings will come and go and all we can do is ride them out

All of us are here to help you through this

When you get to a place where you are good with or without your mate/partner/spouse, then you have healed. Maybe not fully but significantly.

Feeling alone is a natural side effect of infidelity and betrayal.

The solution is for you to find your own identity, hobbies and social life. Things you can do on your own away from your partner/family.

This will give you a sense of freedom and independence and balance. The times you spend together as a couple are not due to boredom or habit. It’s because you want to spend time together.

I can tell you in the first 60 days after Dday I had to function but I was a mess. Physically I could not eat. I could not sleep more than 45 minutes a night. I was facing financial disaster if my H walked out and he was planning to kick me to the curb for the OW so my future wasn’t looking so good.

In any event you have to have patience and accept the slow healing process. But I think you are doing quite well given it’s only been about 60 days or so from Dday.

My first thread here was titled "d day was about 4 weeks ago," with me thinking that a fair enough amount of time had passed and we'd made good progress. Well, 4 weeks was really closer to "yesterday" than any real significant passage of time in these terms. 2 months is still fairly fresh, too, and it can be even tougher if there are still question marks, withheld information or a lot of defensiveness on the part of the WS.

You're going to be on the roller coaster for a while. Just know that's normal. I'm sure you've done enough reading by now to realize this isn't something you just "get over."

Posting here, venting here, and getting feedback was so helpful for me. Just telling my story in detail and typing it all out was very therapeutic for me. I did it in pieces. First the basics of what happened, then later got into some of the more gory details. Such as how d day went down for me. How I found out, what I did, and my wife's reactions and what she said that night. It was pretty ugly. She's wasn't crass or insulting, but she was downright thoughtless, cruel and heartless, and that went on for a couple of weeks until I decided I'd had enough and was ready to end it.

At 7 months now, the mind movies, reliving d day, and mental images of them together have calmed down quite a bit, but still happen. I just try to use grounding techniques, or sometimes what works for me is to just tell myself to "STOP IT!" What happened happened, and there isn't anything I can do to change it. Dwelling on it us just me torturing myself.

Just hang in there. You're not alone. We hear you. Keep posting here and vent away if it helps. Most of us know what you're going through.

The first rule is if you’re feeling down is to leave your house, be in the healthy outdoors, find somewhere private and proceed to tell a tree what’s on your mind.

It sounds F’ing crazy - and it may be - but man does it work. I have a favorite tree that has heard so much shit.

One of the best things I did for myself was to download the Meetup app. I found a group that does fun activities, one of which is sand volleyball :)

I told my wife I was going to play and it was just for me, she would not be joining me. THAT was hard to say. I said you have a social circle at work, I don't (self employed).

I was content with my world revolving around my wife. I didn't hang out with guy friends. After D-Day I realized this was unhealthy.

The first time I played volleyball you couldn't tear the smile from my face. It was awkward at first because I was flying solo. I was doing something fun without my wife. I had to relearn how to socialize. It was amazing!

So maybe find some people to do things with, without your wife. And then tell her how much fun you had ;)

This early on my advice is to not tell your wife what you are feeling because it may give her a sense of power.

Unless you can write a letter of this general nature that Bedman wrote to his WS. I think it is a masterpiece. It conveys the depth of his pain merely by stating the irrefutable facts of her behavior:

https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=586360&AP=141#mid7602449

This is a letter I plan to give my wife:

For me to move past these challenges, I need you to be sensitive to things that remind me of your affair, triggers as they say. I can be in an okay frame of mind one minute and the next something has reminded me of the meeting places in ********* you use to go to have sex with him and that you gave him a blow job in my new car. There are many reminders, as I have tried to give you insight into them over the past few days. These reminders hit me with debilitating panic and anxiety similar to how I felt when I first discovered your affair with him. I need you to acknowledge and have empathy to the emotional impact the aftermath of your affair has created for me.

There other things I need from you. It hurts me that you think of some of these requests as trying to control you. I see them as actions that prove you want this marriage, that you are selfless, humble and contrite in this horrible thing you have done to me. If you place conditions on what you are willing to do, I assume you really don’t want me and this marriage. Simply telling me you are remorseful and want to be with me is not enough. These items are not a matter of control, they are ways that you can prove to me how much you value me and our marriage. I recognize I am asking a lot. I will also tell you what I am willing to do for you.

What I need from you to move forward in our marriage:

1) Continue Individual counseling using the money you made while spending time with him and his family. We will need to sit down and calculate how much money this was.

2) Not wear your hair in a side braid.

3) Give me all of your ‘artsy’ sweatshirts, plus any item of clothing that has a motivational quote in large print (including tank tops), so I can get rid of them. You regularly wore sweatshirts when you were with him. Most of these sweatshirts were purchased at best friends clothing store. You know how I feel about her.

4) Not remind me of the following:

• That it could be worse and you could still want to be with him and not be willing to work on the marriage. That you might not be here. I have not reminded you that it could be worse for you, that I could have broken off our marriage the moment I discovered the affair. This is disrespectful to me.

• That you ONLY had sex with him 8-10 times. Again this is disrespectful. Clearly you would have slept with him more if his schedule and libido offered more encounters or your menstrual cycle didn’t get in the way. The affair would have gone on with OBS and kids now out of the house. You were going to sleep with him a lot more times. Giving blow jobs, hand jobs, kissing and sexting is no less. There were plenty of times you were all revved up for a sexual meeting with him only to have him cancel the meeting. You wanted it to be more and were looking to finally get him into his bed. You minimize what you did to your good friend OBS and your family

• That he was nice to you, that you liked him, that he smelled better than me, that he was in better shape than me, that you liked his chest and arm muscles. I don’t need to be reminded that you admire him.

• That the reason you decided to betray your friendship with OBS was because she didn’t want him anymore. You continue to say this despite it being a lie. You were emotionally and sexually involved with him long before you were aware their marriage was in trouble. This makes me question if you are actually taking ownership of what you did or if you are still in denial about some of the aspects of your affair. It also reminds me that you sugar coated the affair in the immediate weeks after I discovered the affair. Again this is disrespectful to me and OBS. I remember that you told OBS that nothing happened between you and him until after she move out in April, 4 months after you started having sex with him. These things make me question your true remorse, your true desire to make amends. I just learned yesterday that you’ve had an attraction to him for years ever since your friendship with OBS began 4-5 years ago.

• That you decided to betray me and the boys because the previous 13 years of our marriage were difficult and that I am a difficult person to live with. You had other choices, but took the cowards route. You are not the easiest person to live with either. That’s part of what marriage is about, working through difficulties. Its not an injustice to you. The decision to betray me and the boys was the same as your decision to betray the OBS, you just simply decided you wanted to be with him. All of these other explanations are insulting and lies. You wanted to be a bad girl, selfish, sow your wild oats, explore your new found sexuality with someone that could bring that out in you.

5) Touch me more, continue to have regular sex

6) Keep our bedroom a sanctuary as best as possible for only us to be intimate and have private conversations

7) Apologize in front of me to my mother, father, step mother, brothers, your family.

8) Apologize to OBS in writing allowing me to see the letter before you send it.

9) Apologize more to me. Any moment of silence between us to be filled with an apology from you. You cannot apologize too much.

10) Be sensitive to anything that might trigger a memory for me of your affair. Actively inquire about, remove the trigger and apologize for the horrible memory your affair created for me.

11) Stop speaking with anyone that you discussed your relationship with him prior to my discovery that wasn’t critical of you. This includes 5 friends...

12) Unfriend 5 friends from Facebook

13) Unsubscribe to the ***** email and facebook notification

14) Be open to a rational calm discussion about you quitting your job with ****** in the next 12-18 months.

15) Be open to a rational calm discussion about moving to a different part of the city in the next 12-18 months

16) To not discuss any details of what is going on in our relationship including this letter and these requests with anyone else but myself or a counselor without discussing it with me first.

17) Tell me about all conversations you have one on one with any male shortly after they happen.

18) Tell me immediately once you start having feelings for another male.

19) No flirting with any man. No texting any man. No training any man one on one. No calling any man without discussing with me first.

Does this go far enough? I have not been a saint either, should I provide a list of what I am willing to do as well?

Emotional swings are normal after d-day and you will be questioning yourself for a long time as things develop. This would be irrespective of what decision you make – R or D.

I think that now it might be a realization that you are gaining momentum along the wrong track...

I don’t think you have the truth, and nothing in your posts suggest you think you do. Like does she still insist there was no sex? This despite sexting, nudes and meeting up? Is there accountable no-contact? How do you know if OM is calling or not? What about accountability at her work? Sounds like everyone there was in on the affair, how do you feel about that?

What I fear is that for HER the present ongoing situation is comparable to battening down the hatches and weathering the storm. She thinks that if she stops seeing OM, is decent to you, you two date regularly, have sex and all that, then with time you will "get over it". The MC is an added bonus because successful MC should improve communications and might even justify that there were issues in the marriage.

Basically – what you fear is that this goes on, you remain married, semi-successfully rug-sweep and everything looks fine. Yet you will always have questions and doubt...

Edited to add this from my very first post on your situation:

Friend – I think marriages can survive anything that both parties want it to survive. It definitely won’t survive if only one is on board. I also think that the "anything" needs to be very clear and understood by both parties. In other words: you can survive if you have the truth. Like... if you KNEW that they had sex because she told you the truth about that, you could survive that. You two could work from that FACT. However – going on with you questioning if they had sex will prevent reconciliation. What will also wreck reconciliation is having been told NOW that they "only" had oral sex, or only at the office or whatever... and then discover six months from now that there was more. You can recover from what you know – the truth.

[This message edited by SI Staff at 10:51 AM, Thursday, November 20th]

Unless you can write a letter of this general nature that Bedman wrote to his WS. I think it is a masterpiece. It conveys the depth of his pain merely by stating the irrefutable facts of her behavior:

"[Do] Not remind me of the following:

That he was nice to you, that you liked him, that he smelled better than me, that he was in better shape than me, that you liked his chest and arm muscles. I don’t need to be reminded that you admire him."

I think if a letter like that is reflective of the current situation, then R is going to be next to impossible. Holy crap.

Friend, the symptoms you am describe are real. You are experiencing "Betryal Trauma" which actually affects your brain on a physical level. Two things I will offer that helped me survive. First, seek God like never before. Daily read God's word and pray to see Him in what you read. For me, Hosea and Psalms were most impactful.

Next, look up Jake Porter on YouTube. Watch his content. Will help you really learn what is going on and that itself will have a calming affect.

Keep talking here. If you can, find a Betrayal Trauma Specialist and see them, can be virtual. Hang in there. You are loved. You were done wrong. 🙏