SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

2 things I’ve been wrestling with these past few days:
1. I still distract to avoid my feelings. It is still a habit I automatically do without thinking. Every day I feel extreme grief and guilt, and I use different things to distract my thoughts: knitting, paint by numbers, puzzles scrolling on my phone, or working. I try to practice meditation, journaling, and I’m continuing therapy but I notice that my fall-back habits are still subconsciously "how can I distract myself right now". I will do paint by numbers or puzzles for 12 hours straight and dissociate the whole time. I’m intentionally choosing to sit with my uncomfortable feelings.

2. I have felt so stuck in shame, and a big part of that I realize is that I refuse to accept some of the things friends or therapists tell me. "You weren’t evil, you’re not a bad person, you made bad choices but you didn’t destroy your lives" etc.
I believe the reason I have felt stuck is because my brain continuously fights these beliefs. I will loop and loop through shame spirals, until I realized: what if I accept these as truth? Then what?
Then I vow to do better. To move forward actively choosing to be better. I need to accept that I was a terrible person, I did evil things by having an A in college and choosing to hide it throughout my relationship and marriage to my ex husband.
The day I confessed is the day I chose to actively not live a lie. But yes, I was a liar and a cheater and a bad person. I destroyed our lives, the lives we built together for 15 years.
Once I accept that, I can finally become better. I don’t need to fight or deny those truths, because then I will always be stuck. Now, I can say "I was a bad person for a long time. I will always feel guilt. But drowning in shame doesn’t undo it, doesn’t take away my ex’s pain, and doesn’t make me a better person."
I feel a sense of relief- no more lying to myself. Radical honestly includes being honest with myself.

This week will be challenging, but I will carry my honesty with me and try not to avoid anymore. One day at a time.

This resonates with me. My therapist is really pushing me on self-compassion, but it is not taking. My wife and I were taking about this today and I told her for some reason I do not seem to want to give myself any grace as it feels too much like justification.

At its core, I think a lot of this is from a traumatic childhood and being raised in a high demand religion / purity culture. I went off the rails pretty early after my dad left us and I think my brain got wired that I was just a bad person. I can look back now and see that I was a kid experiencing trauma and acting out as a result, but understanding that does not automatically change my the way I still perceive myself in relationships with others.

When my affair started I genuinely believed my wife was not really in love with or attracted to me and would leave me once our kids were grown. This was not because of anything she really did or said, but more because I felt a lot of shame from experiences I had before we met that I never shared with her including my childhood issues. I still find myself thinking that and even went down a deep rabbit hole thinking she has convinced herself she loves me because we have a comfortable life and divorcing is a worse option than staying. This is really unfair to her as she has been totally supportive.

My thinking often extends even to my kids. I think because I barely tolerate my dad that I think they must think the same about me. When I dissect our relationship I can believe they really love me, but it takes work.

The combination of past trauma and the guilt from the affair are hard for me to reconcile with anything that resembles a good person and I think that is why I am having a visceral reaction to self compassion.

I realize this is probably not helpful, but want you to know I admire the work you are doingb and it inspires me to try and think better of myself.

Acceptance is a critical part for both sides in my view.

This is how it works for me and as usual I got here the other way around but still I share as I see similarities in what I observed as well in my personal journey.

I don’t believe we are defined by our actions but we do often allow our actions to define us.

I am neither good for being faithful nor my wife is bad for being a cheater. In the absolute meaning, that event didn’t define the baseline person as good or bad.

What she allowed herself to do was evil at towards me, for her might have been a dream or whatever she told herself that was, that turned out to be again judged as evil the moment she discovered that the OM was not the dream partner she wanted but trash to her.

To me? Yes it did destroy my life because it was evil, it was abused and caused trauma ptsd and so on. But also Because I allowed it.

I might have never allowed myself to choose to actively do a similar evil to a partner, but I have allowed someone else choices to destroy me.

See what I am talking about? Agency.

The moment you take back your agency to allow yourself to chose what is good and not allowing yourself to chose what is evil, it is no longer the action of behavior that defines you, but is you defining the decisions.

Is basically what we teach kids but that’s not making it any less relevant to us adults (again we allow ourselves to forget the basics).

If you consider yourself a good person, no matter the flaws, that’s likely your baseline, your set of values and boundaries about what is "good " and what is "evil".

This is what WE define, our agency. You choose someone who aligns with your values as a partner, reject the rest.

For some reasons at some point you allowed yourself to betray your values and cross those boundaries, and when we do that we feel it even if we aren’t the recipient of the biggest amount of harm our decision causes, we do know we betrayed what we held dear, so we betrayed ourselves first.

That’s the contrast and conflict you feel, the choice and its fallout makes you identify as it changed your baseline from good into bad.

It’s not, or else you would not be reformed or reforming, your baseline would have embraced unapologetically the way of the betrayer (in this example).

That you loathe it is telling is not your innermost self, is the betrayal of the self that pains you.

I will expand later

— later being now — expanding—

Your moment of acceptance was not a recognition of "I am bad" it was likely the moment of stepping up, reclaiming your original identity and values and giving a hard but rewarding recognition

This is who I am and what I want to be. And I betrayed it, I betrayed myself. I allowed my ghosts to overcome me and I believed in the lies I told when I indulged in this.

I chose to, and it proved me exactly how evil and bad and destructive it was. I am not like that but I convinced and allowed myself to become like that. I accept that I did it. No way I will allow it to define me anymore, I created that persona I will destroy it and keep its memory as a testament to never betray myself again.

I accept that I can’t take it back, but I will never allow it again

This is perhaps what you said to yourself when accepting it, here and now, not in the past. (Maybe less dramatic but that’s how I can convey it best)

Since this is your inside feeling and not a story you tell to the people hurting from your past choices, it’s not a fantasy.

I’d say you are at the stage of owning it, if yes your repulsion for those behaviors is likely to grow over time self reinforcing itself until you will eventually return to your original baseline, yes the story is tainted but you are not anymore, is just a scar.

Talking about your healing here, I don’t know if you left your bs or are still in the process of trying to rebuild. But it doesn’t matter because whatever is your goal the healing is the cornerstone, and I’d say this is a big, big step forward on that journey.

PS - a hunch?

You were stuck in shame you said.

I think shame is a symptom of the mental state of convincing you have "become bad". Shame is no empathy though, is a trick trying to both acknowledge the evil (I feel shame so after all I am not completely corrupted, there is still good in me) and at the same time excusing your actions as unavoidable because, after all, you "now became bad " hence that was the likely outcome, you couldn’t have done a different choice.

Yes that’s shame’s function, justifying your behavior due to lack of agency because you are like you are. And is a bitch to unmask as toxic because it works alongside your own betrayed values trying to recover. Cognitive dissonance does the rest, transforming shame (from self pity - justification) into something that must have positive value.

The moment you realized, accepted and understood it, is likely the moment shame will begin to fade and die away, because now you own it, but you are no longer identifying yourself with it.

If I am right, it should fade and be replaced by regret and remorse in the next future, and those may feel as much or more painful, but they are positive healing signals, full of empathy and drive to learn to love and make amends, not shame’s empty and toxic self loathing.

[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 1:47 PM, Monday, April 20th]

Hi heartbroken,

I am only at the beginning of the journey, but point 2 resonates deeply.

I have barely started therapy, but the therapist showed similar compassion and it really triggered me. A part of me obviously would let that pull me happily (you weren’t a bad person etc.. how soothing it is!) but at my core I feel I need to be seriously challenged in order to reform.

Hi heartbroken. I remember your early threads here and remember quite a bit about your story. I won't rehash or focus too much on that because I know the focus of this thread is about you. All I will say is, although what you did was very wrong, I do not think you single handedly destroyed your relationship. There's a lot more to your story, and while I think it's not unreasonable for you to feel bad about your part in it, I think what you experienced from your ex was pretty unforgivable and he has his own demons he needs to work on. If he were half the person you are, things would likely have been a lot different.

There are good people who sometimes do bad things, and there are bad people who do bad things. I firmly believe you're in the former camp, or you wouldn't be in therapy, you wouldn't be here writing about it, and you wouldn't be concerned about what happened. Bad people don't care at the level you do. Bad people don't care about harm they've caused. Good people care about things like that, and you're demonstrating that you care very deeply. You're putting in the work to change. You care. In my eyes that makes you a good person worthy of some grace. Give yourself some grace. Focus on the good things you're trying to do. Try to not beat yourself up so much. I know that's easier said than done, but from what I've seen you're worthy of it.

Ah yes I remember now that your husband pulled out some pretty bad shit on you. Thank you Pogre for putting attention on this.

So why the coping mechanisms and the shame working are still valid, girl, cut you some slack, you had a double whammy and it’s definitely not exclusively on you the damage to the relationship. If you were never a wayward your relationship would be in the same place because of him.

Work on your own ghosts because you can become a better person, the one you were meant to be.
But don’t carry his cross too, you are not responsible for his own crap.