When he’s less calm, he makes out like I shouldn’t be so hung up on it after this time. I think it’s no time at all. He does apologise when calmer and agree…. I think I am right aren’t I, it’ll take years won’t it?
There is no time, your feeling is right.
Betrayal is not a blunder a mistake or a petty harm that added to your life a moment of unhappiness towards your partner, a bump that you can move over after regaining your equilibrium.
Betrayals takes away your reality. Does no Add, it subtract, that is why is different from all other kind of pains.
What you perceive that it took away from you may be different from another BS, however in general it takes away the Trust, the feeling of Safety, the Love Bond you think you had.
It can take out your self esteem, your faith in relationships, your complete identity.
It can do worse yet, take away forever other things that were precious to you.
Because Betrayal does not only affect the present, it affects and takes away your past (was it any of it ever real?), and often your future (will I ever trust and love again?)
What we try to 'heal' is the future, the rest has died, it often only stays as a memory, an echo.
But the future is possible, whether with your WS through Reconciliation, or with a new, more stable person (one who can truly heal your wounds), a fresh start.
Fresh starts with a new person might be the best way to fully heal and leave behind the betrayal completely:
from my experience: I was betrayed twice by 2 of my ex girlfriends before my wife.
Those have left zero marks on my life since I moved on, never spoke to them again, eradicated them from my life.
It is like they never existed, we never met. When a person matters nothing in your life, then has no influence over you no matter how bad could have been back then.
There is a faint memory of disgust for betrayal [naturally repulsive], but is like in abstraction, does not touch me.
That's what complete healing looks like. Like it never happened.
But not always the Betrayed Partner can move on from the WS, sometimes that person truly mattered too much for us to let them go outright.
This is where the R starts, and it implies that we will keep living in that shattered reality, the dark, dirty, painful reality that our Wayward Partner made only for us, where there is a knife lodged in our hearths that we'll keep holding with both hands, instead of abandoning them in this world of their own doing.
So you feel 'it's no time at all' because unfortunately 'time' as in our reality is too a victim of the betrayal.
Years….absolutely. But, you will eventually feel better. And the WS wants this over far quicker than is possible.
Treat yourself with kindness.
Yes, it can feel better.
The WS wants to erase their guilt and shame. They can't.
You would like to erase the betrayal. You can't.
So the WS wants forgiveness, you want to become whole again.
It happened, it cannot be undone.
But you can work on yourself to become much stronger.
If there is one thing a Betrayed Partner can get from Reconcile the WS from the ultimate wound a relationship can suffer, the "unthinkable" that already happened, is to be forever changed.
Betrayal change ourselves already by destroying our identity and world. Reconciliation, if successful and true, can make you stronger that you would ever be from moving on.
It's hard because R with a unfaithful partner carries the risk of more Betrayals that will destroy what you try to rebuild harsher than the first one.
But If you both make it through (you and WH), you will never fully heal or forget, but you will become a much stronger woman. (and your WH has the chance to become a much better man)
[This message edited by BackfromtheStorm at 6:13 PM, Sunday, January 18th]
