Hi Brennan,
I will try and address your questions here. I was not a model ws in the early days, I did some things right and a whole lot wrong. I am going to give you the raw unvarnished view of this.
I need to put some framing here that may help you understand this better. I was already depressed before the affair. A lot of my affair was caused by wanting to leave my husband and family because I was exhausted.
I was exhausted because I put expectations on myself to be this perfect wife and mother, at great expense to my well being. I had lost track of who I was, what I wanted, and I largely blamed this on my husband. The reason is from the time I was a girl I equated receiving love with hustling to earn it.
When you are doing a lot of shit to get love and not feeling appreciated for it, it’s lonely. But my husband didn’t have these expectations, not really. I mean he had some expectations just like anyone would with their spouse.
All this to say, I had an exit affair in I felt through with the marriage. I didn’t want the ap either, it wasn’t I want to leave my husband for someone else, it was this entitlement I felt to escape and have some happiness. I went from feeling raggedy to feeling younger and attractive again.
I obviously could have done that on my own without an affair, and I could have done a lot of things differently. But I am saying all this because my only happiness got wrapped up into this affair quickly. It lasted two months, was mostly conducted on the phone apps, so it was easy to let my mind really make up a lot of bullshit.
So, ap gets caught, cuts off to save his marriage. And I felt like I was gonna die. Because he was great? Hell no. Because I was used to these surges of adrenaline, dopamine, and it’s a true addiction. I was barely functioning. I read here and I put myself in therapy immediately. Over the period of two months I saw I had an addiction, I saw I had projected a lot on the ap to fuel my escapism, and I knew I had really fucked up badly.
NC was never broken technically but during that time I still looked at his social media here and there. It was sick, I think I felt worse for his marriage than my own at this point. But my husband hadn’t learned of the affair so I wasn’t seeing the damage yet. I still felt he didn’t really love me, that he wanted someone to do all the things I did for him.
I didn’t know if I wanted the marriage, I will be straight with you. I had really exaggerated the problems in my justifications for what I had been doing. But it was at that two month mark that I came to decide, I need to tell him what is going on and we need to move through whatever is going to happen together. So I confessed. And I told him everything. That is the thing I did right. I didn’t get angry or defensive, I didn’t try and lie. There was some minimizing I seem to remember that was ridiculous but I needed to work through the justification by taking accountability for all of the parts. That took more time.
So, this point here is my rock bottom. I was definitely depressed and now I am watching my husbands pain. I missed the affair feelings too, but recognized that’s what it was and that it had nothing to do with AP. So this was probably through month 3 and 4. I stayed in therapy and I started posting here in earnest. Someone once told me that I was one of the foggiest ws they ever saw come though here. I don’t know if that’s true, I have seen some big denial but I am just saying this was many months of a process.
At this point I felt I did want the marriage and I started working very hard to get my shit together. I started OCD treatment to help with all the intrusive thoughts. We were both living in fresh hell during this time. I was struggling with my shame and he was struggling with what the hell to do. We spent a good deal of time in our own corners trying to recover. We talked, we had sex, but I spent a lot of time reading, journaling, going to therapy, doing my assignments, and trying to get to know myself again. I had to find healthier ways to cope, I started running which to me was a pivotal thing because I was producing good brain chemicals again and that helped a lot with withdrawal. I also ate food that assisted with it, and tried to get back into balance.
It was rough, and from and about 6 months to a year was a series of epiphanies. I realized I had blamed my husband for my own bad behaviors. I wasn’t feeling seen, heard or appreciated because I wasn’t living authentically. If you are just lost in the roles you play, it’s almost like "you" is gone. So I practiced saying no to things, and slowed way down to try and understand what I wanted again.
And I will say once I wanted the marriage again a few months in, I was consistent in my actions in aligning myself with that goal while still juggling the other stuff. It’s exhausting for the bs to be in the middle of that, and for the most part my husband did detach and do a lot of his own thing. He was prepared to divorce if needed, and I think that part was helpful. He didn’t do pick me, he told me how he felt, we had a lot of soul baring conversations, some that went late into the night.
I would say the withdrawal was managed, and I got my head out of fanstasy lane three or four months in. Which if you take into consideration my D-day didn’t happen until the end of month two of it being over, it wasn’t long at least until I understood it was physical (brain chemical) withdrawal and it was normal and could be managed.
I went all over the place, but I wanted to say it’s a process, the withdrawls is the step you are on but if you choose to try R, just hang tight and recover for a while, don’t do her work, don’t advise her, focus on you. If she has hit her rock bottom, she will want to fix herself. And if she fixes herself you have a good shot at R if you decide that’s what you want by then.
I think too many people try to go straight to fixing the relationship. That’s just an exercise in exhaustion, until you are working with someone who has deep remorse for their actions, understand they did this, it’s not the fault of the relationship or spouse.
[This message edited by hikingout at 5:04 PM, Friday, June 7th]