SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Look, I'm gonna be real here. I think you're too wrapped up in yourself. I'm gonna sum up all the stuff I've seen here and that's what it comes to be to me. You're very self centered. Maybe because you've been injured in life - I have been too -but...so what. At some point we have to grow up and other people and responsibilities have to come to mean MORE THAN WE ARE ON OUR OWN. I think we have to stop thinking about ourselves and put other people first. Your first thought from now on should be.....how is t his going to affect my husband. My kids (I forget if you have them). Or whoever is involved. Not...HOW DO I FEEL....NO NO NO. Forget about how you feel. You think too much about how you feel. You need to start thinking about OTHER PEOPLE FIRST. And what they need and what you can do for them and how they feel and what your responsibilities are towards them and the world. Many of the problems of the world become solved when we get out of our own heads. This is not just you, this is a societal problem where we have become too focused on ourselves as individuals and we psychoanalyze everything. Get out of your head and do what has to be done. I think the more you get into this kind of thinking about others, you'll find that your life situation will start to improve. And if you have emotional reactions to various things in life as we all do....just let them go...just say...this is an interesting thought or feeling. What else can I do? Don't ruminate on things, it doesn't do any good. You just turn things over in your mind over and over, just let them go, free them into the wild. Go DO something positive for someone else. Maybe even an advice post online!

As for suicide, most of us think about this at times, especially when real problems hit - especially illness. Nobody wants to talk about it, but we all think....what if I blah blah blah. But if you do that....well, the whole game ends, you give up the opportunity of something good happening, of doing something better, you give up tomorrow....it's not worth it. Whatever you feel or think when you're at your worst, it's still temporary. You can feel better and you most likely will. Don't give into the worst things your traitor mind can concoct. Think about the best things that could happen. You might be surprised at how life can change, sometimes with small efforts. But you have to appreciate them. And you have to take the best physical care you can of yourself because if you're tired, run down, malnourished, whatever, it makes it harder to recover. Always think it terms of recovery because nothing in life is permanent including life. Things can always get better even if it takes some time.

I don't know if this helps at all, but I wanted to pass it on to you and maybe you will get some value out of it.

It occurs to me to make another comment here after rereading some of your initial post. I don't think you looked up your EX (who became AP) and got involved out of curiousity. I think you were looking for something, you have to decide what, but you might have been bored, or something else and you went looking for trouble. Don't deny it, you did. And you probably look for trouble at other times. You have to consider how much this is true about yourself and be honest with yourself. If you can't be honest with yourself about why you're REALLY doing things....because you have a pretty good idea of where this might end....you're not gonna be honest with other people. So consider why you got into this in the first place, or why you get into other things....you were curious what would happen if you touched the third rail. WHAT IF!!!! Well, now you know. But be honest and insightful about your motivation and where it might lead from the start. You can't change the past, it is what it is, but you can learn from it and try to become a different person. It totally depends on what you want to do, what you're willing to do, and who you want to be. On your own or with a spouse or with a cat. You have to be honest with yourself. And who knows where that will take you - you have to stick around to find out!

BondJaneBond,

While it is important for a WS to be sensitive to the needs of her spouse and family, to sit with her spouse in his pain, and to begin behaving in a way that puts them first… The WS’s healing and self-improvement is dependent on doing a lot of introspection and work on themselves. In the quiet moments alone, when nobody else needs us, it’s important to reflect on how we felt and what we thought before and during the affair, and how we think and feel now. We have to figure out what went wrong inside us that allowed us to cheat, and how we can change.

This is not mutually exclusive with thinking about others. There is time for both.